Immigration – Page 7 – The Wrongologist

Monday Wake Up Call – June 11, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Interior, Cuba’s Capitol Building, Havana – 2018 photo by Conor Morrissey

Two things to address on Monday. Take a look inside the program that separates the families of asylum seekers. The WaPo reports that:

A Honduran father separated from his wife and child suffered a breakdown at a Texas jail and killed himself in a padded cell last month, according to Border Patrol agents and an incident report filed by sheriff’s deputies.

The death of 39 year-old Marco Antonio Muñoz, had not been publicly disclosed by the DHS, and did not appear in any local news accounts. Muñoz was found on the floor of his cell May 13 in a pool of blood with an item of clothing twisted around his neck:

According to Border Patrol agents…Muñoz crossed the Rio Grande with his wife and three-year-old son on May 12 near the tiny town of Granjeno, Texas. The area is a popular crossing point for Central American families and teenagers who turn themselves in to apply for asylum in the United States.

Soon after Muñoz and his family were taken into custody, they arrived at a processing station in nearby McAllen and said they wanted to apply for asylum. Border Patrol agents told the family they would be separated. That’s when Muñoz “lost it,” according to one agent…

Unruly detainees are taken to local jails where they can be placed in more secure settings or isolation cells. Border Patrol agents found a vacant cell for Muñoz 40 miles away at the Starr County Jail in Rio Grande City. Muñoz was booked into the jail at 9:40 pm. He remained combative, and was placed in a padded isolation cell. Guards said they checked on Muñoz every 30 minutes, and observed him praying in a corner of his cell the following morning.

A guard who walked by the cell at 9:50 am said he noticed Muñoz laying in the center of the floor, unresponsive and without a pulse. Local sheriff’s deputies recorded the incident as a “suicide in custody.” But the capper is this remark by an ICE agent: (emphasis by Wrongo)

Another agent familiar with what happened said he couldn’t understand why Muñoz “would choose to separate himself from his family forever” by taking his own life.

This asshole’s salary is paid by you and me! It’s time we see these agents for who they really are.

Second, last week the DOJ filed a brief urging a Texas court to invalidate the Affordable Care Act’s crucial insurance reforms, including the prohibition on refusing to cover people with preexisting conditions. In their complaint, states (including Texas and other red states) point out that since Congress has repealed the penalty for going without insurance, the freestanding requirement to get insurance, which is still on the books, is therefore unconstitutional. And because it’s unconstitutional, the courts must invalidate the entire ACA. From the Incidental Economist:

There’s a strong argument to be made in the ACA’s defense. And the Justice Department has had a durable, longstanding, bipartisan commitment to defending the law when non-frivolous arguments can be made in its defense.

If the Justice Department can just throw in the towel whenever a law is challenged in court, it can effectively pick and choose which laws should remain on the books. That’s a flagrant violation of the President’s constitutional duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. More:

The President has a duty to take care that all the laws are executed, not just the ones he likes. And while there are cases in which the Justice Department has deviated from that principle, they are extremely rare.

The Trump administration has just announced that it doesn’t care that a law was passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. All that matters is that it hates the law and has a (weak) argument for casting it aside.

Time to wake up America! There is a revolution underway, and we’re being fed the elephant of authoritarianism one little slice at a time. This time, the revolution is televised every day, but we’re not connecting the dots quickly enough.

To help America wake up, here is Iris DeMent with “Living in the Wasteland of the Free”, from her 1996 album, “The Way I Should”:

This song is 22 years old, but still rings true. Iris says: “The poor have now become the enemy” and “Let’s blame our troubles on the weak ones“.

Today, both are true, and are simply sickening.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 10, 2018

Trump says Russia should return to the G-7, making it the G-8 the way it was before Crimea. He says that Obama let Crimea get taken by Russia instead of blaming Putin for invading, and it isn’t his problem. OTOH, the G-7 seem like it would prefer to be the G-6.

But we start this week with RFK:

Fifty years ago, RFK was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, his coffin carried by his sons and only surviving brother. He was a man of promise, of purpose. Someone who could have made a huge difference, but it was not to be. This puts Wrongo in mind of the last line of “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald:

And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Wrongo didn’t know what Fitzgerald meant when he first read this line in high school, more than 50 years ago. Now, he realizes that as we age, there is more of the past. It is a beacon, a lighthouse, both a warning and a welcome.

We can’t know what RFK’s future would have been, or how it would have shaped the future of America. We can be fairly sure he would have beaten Richard Nixon in 1968, but even that isn’t a certainty.

California’s blue wave may not hit the beach:

Trump shows the G-7 he really does love Russia:

Some cakes in Colorado really do have two guys holding hands:

We are the only country with an uneducated person as the Education Czarina:

GOP proves once again that it has no moral core:

Trump’s new pardon box:

The US Also Has Immigration Issues

The Daily Escape:

One World Trade Center viewed from Brooklyn, NY – 2018 photo by nyclovesnyc

Yesterday, we talked about immigration-skepticism in Europe. As if to underline that toxic atmosphere, the Hungarian government just announced it has drafted new laws to criminalize acts that help illegal migrants in Hungary. From the BBC:

If passed in its current form, the legislation could make printing leaflets with information for asylum-seekers and offering them food or legal advice a criminal offence.

Reuters quotes Hungary’s Magyar Hirlap newspaper saying that prison sentences ranging from a few days to a year, are part of the new legislation. Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia all oppose an EU plan to relocate 160,000 refugees from Italy and Greece, where migrant camps are overcrowded.

While the US is now wrestling with its own immigration issues, it has more immigrants than any other country in the world. Today, more than 40 million people living in the US were born in another country, about one-fifth of the world’s total migrants in 2015.

The US granted nearly 1.2 million individuals legal permanent residency in 2016, more than two-thirds of whom were admitted based on family reunification, a policy that Trump wants to end. Other categories included: employment-based preferences (12%), refugees (10%), diversity (4%), and asylum seekers (3%). At the end of 2017 there were more than four million applicants on the State Department’s waiting list for immigrant visas.

Donald Trump and his Attorney General Jeff Sessions, have many anti-immigrant views. Trump has tried to ban immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries, but it’s clear that his main issue is with migrants from Mexico and Central America, not Muslims. From the Council on Foreign Relations:

Trump more than halved the annual cap of refugees admitted to the US to fifty thousand, and his orders could make it more difficult for individuals to seek asylum; more than 180,000 applied for asylum in 2016. In 2017, the administration ended temporary protected status (TPS) for thousands of Nicaraguans and Haitians who were allowed into the US after environmental disasters in their home countries in 1999 and 2010, respectively….In 2018, Trump ended the same relief program for nearly two hundred thousand Salvadorans who came after a 2001 earthquake.

Trump signed several executive orders (EO) affecting immigration policy. The first, focused on border security, ordered the construction of a physical border wall across the US border with Mexico.

The second EO restricted federal funds to so-called sanctuary cities. That isn’t as bad as Hungary prosecuting anyone who assists migrants, but it’s getting close.

The third banned nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen from entering the US for at least 90 days, and blocked nationals from Syria indefinitely.

Trump also cancelled the DACA rules.

But the new policy of separating immigrant kids from their parents should earn the Trump administration a special place in hell. Families crossing the border are being separated, with kids going to a separate place of detention, while their parents go to a different holding facility. To help facilitate the process, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, (ICE), developed a bus fitted with child seats for the small children who still need them, and who were separated from their parents when ICE arrested the parents. Here is a screen grab from website of the ICE contractor, the GEO Group:

Of course putting children on buses can be innocuous. Most of us have ridden on school buses. But the picture is disturbing even if you didn’t know that it was used as part of an immigrant round-up, because every seat is a car seat.

It implies that there are going to be a bunch of infants and toddlers in the bus with few, or no parents. The damage being done by the Trump administration by separating these kids can’t be undone.

It’s like those kids in Detroit drinking lead-laced water. This will damage all of them.

Just when we think humanity’s capacity for vileness can’t be exceeded, we are again proven wrong. It’s not just that the Trump administration had the idea for a prison bus for children to begin with. It’s not just that the contractor is proud enough to advertise the bus on their website. What are they both telling us?

Why do they bother with the child seats?

The implication is: “Sure, we rip these small children away from their mothers, but we care a lot about their safety in traffic.”

Trump and Sessions should live in a pit of fire in their special place in hell.

Europe’s Immigration Dilemma

The Daily Escape:

The Labrouste reading room, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris France – photo by Thibaud Poirier. The room was finished in 1868 by Henri Labrouste.

Wrongo and Ms. Right were in Hungary and Poland last week, and it was clear from discussions with locals that both countries are immigration-skeptic. In the past year, we have also been in England, France, Germany and the Netherlands, and immigration from the Middle East and Africa is a hot button issue in each.

The forever war in the Middle East is at the core of the political upheaval underway in Europe. From Carnegie Europe: (brackets by Wrongo)

Suddenly, [in 2015] hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants climbed out of boats, walked across borders, and occupied public spaces in European towns and villages. Their chaotic arrival not only shattered an illusion of tranquility but also pointed to Europe’s loss of control.

At the time, Europe was also emerging from the worst economic crisis of the postwar period. The new arrivals placed a burden on social services and public budgets. Like in the US, Europe’s citizens felt that the refugees were enjoying privileged access to benefits while citizens were losing out.

Immigration and refugee policy now dominate all political agendas within the EU, even though overall refugee flows to Europe are down substantially. The continent saw around 171,000 sea arrivals in 2017, compared to over one million in 2015. The National Interest reports that about 1.2 million refugees that made it to Europe applied for asylum in 2016:

This exposed deep fissures in the EU’s current system. It divided the continent on how to handle the refugees who have already arrived, and what to do with the many thousands that will inevitably land on Europe’s shores in the coming years. Europe now needs a strategy that can simultaneously address the legitimate concerns of some EU members but also place refugee well-being at the forefront of decision making.

Many throughout the EU are concerned about losing social homogeneity and cohesion. We heard that while in Poland and Hungary, where even government officials said that they think that immigrants must be fluent in the language even to be allowed in the country.

Yet, many European countries have low birth rates. According to Eurostat, Europe’s population rose in 2016 only because of migration. Eurostat says that without migration, only Ireland, France, Norway and Britain would see rising populations by 2050; Germany and Italy would both see population declines.

Much of Europe needs immigrants in order to sustain their economies. To capitalize on this, the EU and individual countries need to increase programs that help with language and skills training for refugees. Partnering with private firms could also help ease the transition from immigrant to productive citizen.

Since conflicts in the Middle East show no signs of abating, far-right parties across Europe will have easy selling points on the threat of migration for the foreseeable future. The rise of the populist right has coincided with an electoral catastrophe for the center-left throughout Europe.

Listening to fears and addressing concerns openly has to occur. In that regard, Project28 just conducted its third annual survey of 1000 Europeans about migration, in which 78% of EU citizens said that the external borders of Europe should be better protected. There was a clear majority in all European countries for the view that immigration represents a “very serious” or a “somewhat serious” problem.

A frightening 50% of Europeans believe that their children will have a worse life than their parents. This view is noticeably higher in countries like Austria, Greece and Germany, which have been at the forefront of the migration crises. 70% of the European public believes that the “rapid population growth of Muslims” is either a “somewhat serious” or “very serious” threat to Europe.

The future for immigration is unclear in both Europe and the US. How it works out will depend on the wisdom and skill of our political leaders over the next few years. Will Europe adopt more exclusionary policies on immigration and refugees? Will these new policies be the kind that the majority of people in Europe can live with?

Can Europe’s politicians adopt anti-immigration policies like those proposed by their populist, right-wing adversaries that are doing so well politically? If they can, it increases the odds that Europe’s liberal democracies will resist the corrosion of press freedom, and independent civil society that we have seen in Poland and Hungary.

Saturday Soother – April 7, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Cherry Blossoms, Tokyo Japan – March 29 photo by Eugene Hoshiko

Maybe Wrongo has Spring Fever, but how could he, when it snowed again yesterday? He promises to put the snow shovel in the garage for its three-season nap on Monday, no matter what.

The delay of spring’s arrival got Wrongo thinking about change. We like to think that little changes in our environments, either natural, or socio-cultural, but change they do, every day. And except for a few details, Wrongo is certain that this blog’s readers are all on the same page: Change is in the air, and nothing stays the same. And we’re not just talking about the weather.

Yesterday is gone
Tomorrow is already here.

Wrongo has been writing this blog since March, 2010. Over the past eight years, he has explained how our political/social/economic systems operate, and why/how they can easily fail. And how we do not seem to have a rational, coherent plan to avoid that failure. Yet, each year we seem to inch closer to failure.

Are we doing anything more than Don Quixote was doing? Wrongo, by writing and you, by reading this blog? But Wrongo persists. He’s here, you are here, and once again, as in 1968, change is in the air.

Millions of people are on the move, leaving their ancestral homes, fleeing conflict and poverty. They are trying to find a place to survive, while others who were left behind are dying in the millions. With the increased efforts by migrants to survive, both Europe and the US are closing the gates, hoping to keep the immigrant mob on the outside. But at home, we already have achieved conflict, poverty and death that isn’t caused by immigrants. It is, to paraphrase Jimmy Buffet, “Our own damn fault”.

On Monday in our little corner of Connecticut, we will have a very New England form of direct democracy, a special town meeting. Those citizens who show up will get to vote on whether the Town issues bonds to finance the repair of our roads, which have suffered 20+ years of deferred maintenance. Maybe 100 people will show up, (out of 8,000 voters) maybe less. Those who do show up will decide if we fix our roads, or not. They will decide if lower taxes are better than safe roads.

So Wrongo and Ms. Right spent today stuffing envelopes into mailboxes. This vote is the culmination of a two-year effort to get our town to address how poor our roads have become. We will see if our efforts today help to break voters from their Golden Slumbers, and participate.

If they fail to show up, it will be their own damn fault if the vote goes against whatever their viewpoint is on the bonds.

Wrongo believes that political change is in the air, but that change locally and nationally depends primarily on voter turnout. Turnout depends on people being motivated enough to waddle on down to their polling place and vote, even if the weather is bad, the candidate isn’t perfect, and their one vote doesn’t seem to matter.

But today’s Saturday, and it’s time to settle back, relax, and get soothed. Or work on your taxes, if you have procrastinated. To help you relax, brew up a cup of Gedeb Lot 83 Ethiopia Natural coffee ($18.95/12oz) from JBC Coffee Roasters in Madison, WI. It has a sweetly tart structure with a rich umami undercurrent and satiny mouthfeel.

Now settle back in your favorite chair and listen to “Spring Waltz” supposedly by Frédéric Chopin.

However, it isn’t really called that, it isn’t a waltz, and it isn’t by Chopin. It is actually “Mariage d’Amour” composed by Paul de Senneville in 1987. It was wrongly titled and became wildly popular, so the various YouTube channels that feature it won’t correct its name. Still it is very beautiful, and of the season:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 14, 2018

Let’s make something clear. When Trump called Africa and Haiti “shitholes”, the issue wasn’t that the president swore in the Oval Office, that surely has happened with all modern presidents. No one in the media should have a fainting spell because Trump swears. The issue was saying we should promote immigration from predominantly white countries like Norway. That made what Trump said racist. It also places Trump out of the mainstream. Americans have always looked all over the world for talent, and then lured it to our shores.

People migrate primarily for wealth and/or safety, and since the early 1900s, America has offered both. That was the main reason many waves of Europeans came at first, and later, people from other, non-white places came to this country.

Bloomberg View offers some insight about African immigrants: (emphasis by Wrongo)

According to Census data, more than 43% of African immigrants hold a bachelor’s degree or higher — slightly more than immigrants from East Asia. Nigerian immigrants are especially educated, with almost two-thirds holding college degrees — a significantly higher percentage even than Chinese or South Korean immigrants…That education translates into higher household income. Nigerian-Americans, for instance, have a median household income well above the American average, and above the average of many white and Asian groups, such as those of Dutch or Korean descent.

Trump wrongly equates the worth of individuals with the place where they come from, probably like many of his supporters.

This is what Trump meant by strict vetting of immigrants:

Trump’s staffer Steven Miller auditions as the new Lady Liberty:

Mueller asks to speak with Kaiser Tweeto:

Jeff Sessions goes after marijuana. It doesn’t fully mellow him:

Why Florida is exempted from off-shore drilling:

Donny offered new words for the National Anthem when he went to the football game:

Saturday Soother – January 13, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Wizard Island in winter. Crater Lake, OR – photo by Livid Narwhal

How do we avoid talking about him when he reveals himself so completely? We could split hairs, and discuss whether to call him a racist, or a white supremacist, but why bother? How is this any different from the way he’s always been? We’re talking about a guy who wanted the Central Park Five executed, and took out full page ads in the New York papers to say so at the time. They were later found innocent.

Trump has become the GOP’s id. He uses an air horn while the rest of them know to use a dog whistle. He asks:

Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here? Why do we need more Haitians?

Answer: For the same reason your grandfather and mother fled their countries. Americans weren’t clamoring for more Germans and Scots in their day, either.

It is possible that his comment was calculated. The far right wasn’t happy after Trump, during the bipartisan immigration photo op, showed off his stable genius skills, only to end up looking like he had no clue about the GOP’s immigration policy. GOP House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried reeling him back in, but the stable genius was insisting that the GOP try to give the Dems what they wanted on immigration and DACA.

The RW reaction was immediate: Ann Coulter went on Lou Dobbs’ show and trashed Trump. Many others on the right were pissed off.

Immigration is a red line for all deplorables. So maybe calling the countries of black and brown people “shitholes” was just the ticket, to let his base know he still has their backs. And then saying white immigrants “from Norway” are cool, drove it home.

This kind of talk has been normalized. White business leaders and politicians, as recently as the 1970s talked like that, and no one gave it a second thought. Since then, racist talk became shameful. But Trump’s open bigotry carries no shame for him, or for others who engage in it. His base loves him, because now they can come out of the closet with their hate.

And it’s ok, if you accept the argument that PC talk is a worse sin than showing your naked prejudices to the world.

This is how he was raised, and how people talk in his circle of friends. He’s mouthed off like this his entire life with zero consequences. He’s not likely to suffer any consequences from this either. Remember, this is a man who doesn’t understand why we can’t actually use nuclear weapons.

We need to remember this every day until 11/06/2018. And every day after that until Trump can no longer hurt America.

Wrongo certainly requires soothing, and so do you. Maybe we’ll go and see “The Post” this weekend, to remember a time when newspapers had the courage to take on a president.

In the meantime, sit back and make yourself a vente cup of Ethiopian Fancy ($19/lb.) from San Francisco’s Henry’s House of Coffee. Now, put your feet up and listen to the “Sonata in G Minor for Violoncello and Continuo” by Henry Eccles. Eccles was an English violinist and composer in the Baroque era. He was a member of the Royal Band of Queen Anne. He moved to Paris, and entered the service of King Louis XIV. This recording has Simca Heled on violoncello and Edward Brewer on harpsichord, although it is often played with a double bass and piano, or violin and piano:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI5NYRz7EQw

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 5, 2017

This week, we all heard about tax cuts, the NYC terror attack, Trump’s Asia trip, and the World Series.

The GOP released their tax plan. The first analysis says everybody gets something:

Tax reform also brought up an old issue:

Trump’s trip to China won’t bring us any new “deals”:

The NYC terror attack hit close to home. One of the dead lived in Wrongo’s home town:

Hating immigrants, and hearing cries for extreme vetting have been on the agenda for a long time, as this 1903 cartoon shows:

Hat tip to Jack Cluth for the immigration cartoon

Houston got really good news this week:

Where Can The Working Class Afford To Live

The Daily Escape:

Quilotoa Crater Lake, Ecuador. You get there by bus, and it takes six hours to walk around it.

The Senate is trying to pass their worst possible health care idea. They have already passed a $700 billion military budget, more than even Trump wanted. And they are trying to pass a $1 trillion tax cut for their buddies. Will any of that help you? No.

They should be focused on improving the lives of working class people, but they can’t be bothered with that, because they have no desire to accomplish it. Things are just fine the way they are for Senators.

Wrongo has been remiss by not turning you on to howmuch, a site that creates visualizations about money, and in-depth tools about what things cost in the US. You should spend time checking them out. They created this very interesting chart about where working class people can afford to live in the US:

Source: howmuch

Each bubble represents a city. The color corresponds to the amount of money a typical working-class family would have left over at the end of the year after paying for their living costs, such as housing, food and transportation.

The darker the shade of red, the worse off you are. The darker the shade of green, the better off you are. The size of the bubble has meaning — large and dark red means the city is totally unaffordable. Bigger dark green bubbles indicate a city where the working class can get by. So, where are the best places from a financial perspective for a working-class family to live? These are the top five cities with the net surplus remaining after living expenses:

Fort Worth, TX ($10,447)
Newark, NJ (($10,154)
Glendale, AZ ($10,120)
Gilbert, AZ ($9,760)
Mesa, AZ ($7,780)

The worst five cities are:

New York, NY (-$91,184)
San Francisco, CA (-$83,272)
Boston, MA (-$61,900)
Washington, DC (-$50,535)
Philadelphia, PA (-$37,850)

Yes, a typical working-class family would need to make an additional $91K+ per year in NYC just to break even on a reasonable standard of living. And most job creation is taking place in cities, so the challenge for anyone, working class or higher, is how to afford living in one of them. There are exactly zero affordable cities on the West Coast. More from howmuch:

Of the ten most populous cities in the country, the only place where you can enjoy a decent standard of living without taking on debt is San Antonio. Out of the top 50 largest cities, only 12 are considered affordable. Low-wage workers are better off in smaller cities.

Kevin Erdmann, who blogs at Idiosyncratic Whisk, says the problem is that most coastal cities have closed access to housing, while inland cities have open access. Open access cities have relatively liberal housing and zoning codes that allow for new building, including relatively low-cost housing. Houston is the most prominent example. Closed access cities artificially reduce supply of housing, driving prices up. NYC is the most prominent example. From Erdmann:

You can tell what type of city it is just by looking through the newspaper. In open access cities, people complain that poor people are moving in and taking away jobs, pushing down wages. In closed access cities, people complain that rich people are moving in and bidding up rents.

People in red states have experienced high in-migration of low income people, both natives and immigrants. Poor people are leaving the closed access cities. So, to someone living in a closed access city, it seems racist for people to focus their ire on Mexican immigrants.

And think about what happens if folks in a bad neighborhood manage to do the hard community work to make it somewhat livable. In New York or Los Angeles, the minute that a neighborhood becomes safe, the plots that hold those $100,000 duplexes will be worth $500,000, and the neighborhood will gentrify.

Rinse, lather and repeat, and the cycle starts again.

Can a working-class family live comfortably in your town? If so, can they find work?