Category Archives: Immigration

Yes, this is what governors should do

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I’ve mentioned before, I think, that one of a number of reasons I enjoy reading The Boston Globe is that it tells stories about serious people dealing with real issues in ways I don’t find morally and intellectually offensive and painful to read.

I saw that in the lede story in the paper a couple of days back, headlined, “Healey tells Biden administration Mass. has ‘desperate need’ for faster work authorizations for migrants.” That was the online headline. As you can see above the print version was shorter — print headlines require greater discipline. There are no space constraints to speak of on a web page.

An excerpt:

Governor Maura Healey on Thursday implored the Biden administration to quickly grant work permits to the thousands of migrants who have overwhelmed the state’s shelter system in recent months.

“The significant influx of new arrivals . . . shows no sign of abating,” Healey wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Massachusetts, she added, faces a “desperate need” for federal funding, changes to federal immigration policy, and, most urgent of all, faster processing of work authorizations for migrants who are legally present in the state’s shelters but not allowed to work.

The firmly worded letter followed an August meeting between Healey and Mayorkas about the state’s escalating migration crisis, which has led the governor to declare a state of emergency and to deploy the National Guard in recent weeks…

Of course. Speed up the work permits. It’s absurd to hold desperate people indefinitely and not let them do what they came here to do: work. Especially when your state needs the workers, as the governor went on to explain in the press release about all this:

“Massachusetts has stepped up to address what has been a federal crisis of inaction many years in the making. Communities, service providers, and our National Guard are going above and beyond to ensure that families arriving in Massachusetts have a safe place to sleep and their basic needs met,” said Governor Healey. “We are grateful to Secretary Mayorkas and his team for meeting with us to hear about the emergency we are facing and the help we need from our federal government. This letter memorializes our requests for additional federal funding and changes to the work authorization process that would support families, reduce the burden on our shelter system, and help us address our state’s workforce needs.”

“Massachusetts is facing twin crises that aren’t unique to our state – we have rapidly rising numbers of migrant families arriving here who want to work but can’t get their work authorizations, and we are facing severe workforce shortages in all industries,” said Lieutenant Governor Driscoll. “We have the opportunity to not only address both of these issues, but also to grow our economy and strengthen our communities in the long run. We are hopeful that the federal government will take these requests into serious consideration.”…

Now, I don’t know this Governor Healey at all. Maybe the next 10 things she does and says will be idiotic. But she certainly makes sense on this, in this particular instance. And I’m not used to it. I see too much of governors doing things such as this. Or this.

Immigration is a federal matter. And when the feds aren’t doing the job right, and you’re a governor whose state is being affected, get on them about it, and tell them what you need.

But get on them for the right things. Speeding up the process of letting these folks work is a good place to start.

You don’t wish the migrants hadn’t come, and shake your fist at the heavens — or worse, endanger the lives of people determined to come to America and make a better life. And you don’t ignore the problem. You look for practical ways to address the challenges, and they are indeed many…

Evidently, everything is now perfect in South Carolina!

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Henry on the border.

Obviously. You just have to think it through.

At first, I was a bit taken aback when I saw this:

All I could think at first was, “Huh. I didn’t realize that was in any way the governor’s responsibility.”

In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not. Nor should it be. Unless I’m looking at the map wrong. I mean, I’m about as sure as I can be that South Carolina doesn’t even come close to bordering on Mexico, so… how does it get to be a state issue? Well, it doesn’t. It isn’t.

Of course, this brings up a festering question: What in the world are South Carolina National Guard troops doing down there, anyway? Were they federalized for this purpose? I vaguely remember something like this happening in the course of one of the many insane nightmares of the past four years, but I guess I had blocked it out. It’s rather startling, in an unpleasant way, to be told they’re still there…

But then I got to thinking further about it, and it suddenly hit me that this was very good news!

Think about it: If Henry’s got time to do this, taking a vacation from his duties and all, it means everything that is actually his job has been taken care of. South Carolina is now perfect. COVID is gone. Everyone has healthcare coverage. Our schools are the best in the country. Racism, which seemed to be making a big comeback, is flat gone. Malfunction Junction? Fixed, without running an Interstate through my front yard.

And Yankees have stopped coming down and overcrowding all our beaches. This must be. Otherwise, everybody in South Carolina would be rising up and saying, “Henry! What the hell are you doing down there? Get back here and fix this mess!”

Awesome! As y’all know, I was for the other guy in 2018. But how was I to know that Henry would SC perfect, in less than three years? I’m just blown away.

And remember, you read the good news here first…

Henry on the border

Wait! Is that… is that the Wall? Is Henry posing at the Wall itself? My, my…

 

 

Fox wants to use that old Biden video again…

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A very blurry Sen. Joe Biden, in Columbia in 2006.

A very blurry Sen. Joe Biden, in Columbia in 2006. Click on the image if you must watch the bad video.

It’s probably the worst video I ever shot, technically speaking. It’s horrendous. You can hardly make out what’s going on. I didn’t have my little digital camera I used in those days, so I shot it with my phone. We’re not talking iPhone here — no HD or anything. It was 2006. I shot it with a Palm Treo, if I remember correctly. That’s even worse than my old Blackberry.

But it’s been popular, particularly among people who want to take a dig at Joe Biden — or, worse, support Trump. So popular that, as bad as it is, it’s garnered 111,000 views, I just saw from glancing at YouTube. (I think that’s a record for me, although it’s been so many years since I checked to see which of my vids were most popular, that I’ve forgotten how to do it.)

I wish, if people were going to make such a fuss over it, they’d have chosen something that makes me look like I can handle a camera. But such is life.

This was shot at a Rotary meeting on Nov. 27, 2006. Joe Biden was our speaker, and while I had heard Joe speak, energetically and at great length, before, he was outdoing himself that day. When he got so worked up that he left the podium and started wandering about among the tables of Rotarians, I thought, “I’ve got to get some video of this for the blog,” with or without a decent camera.

Here’s the resulting post, in its entirety:

South Carolina, Joe Biden really, really wants you to help him get to the White House. I’ll write about this more later in the week, but for now I’ll refer you to this video clip I shot with my PDA (meaning it’s even lower quality than MOST of my videos) at the Columbia Rotary Club.

The clip begins right after he left the rostrum and waded into the crowd to answer a one-word question: “Immigration?” Note the passion, the waving arms, the populist posturing, the peripatetic delivery. Joe Biden has always loved to talk, but this Elmer Gantryesque performance went far beyond his routine style.

Most of his speech was about Iraq, by the way. And it went over well. This Rotary Club never goes past its 2 p.m. ending time, but he had the audience still sitting politely listening — some of them truly rapt — past 2:30.

It was quite a performance. You may think politicians act like this all the time, because of stuff you  see on TV and in the movies. But I have never, in real life, seen a national candidate get this intense seeking S.C. votes two years before the election.

That’s it. As you can see, what interested me the most was the Iraq stuff (although after all this time, I can’t tell you what he said about it now). But that’s not what has drawn attention since then. It has been passed about, and used on FoxNews and elsewhere, because of what Joe was talking about during those two minutes and 51 seconds that I captured on the Treo.

That was about immigration, and Joe was trying to win over that conservative crowd by persuading them of how tough he was on controlling the border. He talks about having voted for a fence, for instance. And he does so with the same intense animation that he used in talking about other things (I suppose — it’s been a long time). That, of course, is why Trump fans love the video.

Being me, I wasn’t interested in the immigration stuff. I was interested in showing people how pumped up Joe had been at Rotary.

Others, of course, have been more interested in the immigration stuff.

I’ve been vaguely aware of the video cropping up from time to time — cropping up, I mean, somewhere other than the blog, where it has sat for all these years. Back in the fall of 2019, I was more aware than usual, because Erik Wemple at The Washington Post reached out to me to talk about it. He wanted to talk to me for a piece he was writing that criticized Fox for failing to credit the source of material they used. And in this case, they had apparently become aware of my video not from my blog (which is a shocker, right?), but from this CNN piece by Andrew Kaczynski.

“Acute stinginess in terms of crediting CNN is something of a pattern at Fox News,” Wemple wrote — and my video was the first of several instances he offered.

The part of the video that seems to fascinate everyone, especially the folks at Fox, is when Joe says, as his blurry, low-res image moves about the room, “Folks, I voted for a fence, I voted, unlike most Democrats – and some of you won’t like it – I voted for 700 miles of fence.”

This apparently is the bombshell. Even though it was no secret. And even though, as Kaczynski notes, “The bill was also supported by then-Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”

What do I think about what Joe was saying there? Not a lot. In the end, his point was that yeah, I voted for a fence, but you can build all the fences (or walls) you want, but you’re still going to have the same problems unless a.) things get better in Mexico and b) U.S. employers stop hiring illegals.

The first of those two points is pretty much what I’ve thought for many years. The U.S. should be working to improve conditions in Mexico and Central America. That would be tough, but worthwhile. It’s rather crazy to complain about people wanting to come here when they live in intolerable conditions where they are. No, I don’t have a grand plan, but this is why I have over the years supported such things as NAFTA, so maybe things get better south of the border.

Laura Ingraham was apparently delighted by my video because “He sounds like Trump there,” according to Wemple Well, no. If it had been Trump, he’d have said his big, beautiful wall was going to solve everything. That’s not at all what Joe was saying, because Trump is an idiot and Joe is not.

But they love it nevertheless. And now, they want to use it again.

Over the last couple of days, I kind of let my email get stacked up again, and so I just saw this one from two days ago:

Hello Brad!

My name is Errin Kelly and I am a producer on Fox Business Network. I hope you are doing well! With your permission and credit to you, our show would like to use this video of President Biden at The Rotary Club in 2006.

Did you shoot this video? If so, may we please have permission to use on Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, Fox Nation and all Fox News Edge affiliates across all platforms until further notice with courtesy to you? Do we also need anyone else’s permission?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15djRzWG3_0

Thank you for your time!

Errin Kelly

Well, at least they’re asking this time, and promising to credit me, which should please Wemple. Beyond that, I had the following series of thoughts in quick succession:

  • Here we go again. I guess this time they’re going to try to use this, somehow (it will require some gymnastics), to hammer Joe about all the kids stacking up down on the border. The Trump-lovers really think they’ve got Joe on the ropes on this one. (Here’s what I think about that.)
  • I guess I’ll tell them OK, as I pretty much always do. Let the chips fall, yadda-yadda.
  • I’ll also ask them to give me a heads-up when it runs, so I can see what they did with it.
  • Or should I say no, or ignore it? It would be interesting to see if they use it anyway. I guess that would be Wemple’s prediction. (Hey, since it’s been two days, they may have used it already.)
  • I know what! I’ll ask folks on the blog what they would do!

So here you go. Thoughts?

We have to elect Joe, if only for these 545 children

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Back during the 2018 campaign, I used to say I’d be voting for, and working for, James and Mandy if only for one thing: their promise to expand Medicaid. There were so many other reasons, but that alone would have been enough.

In this election, I can say something similar. Discount everything else… withholding military aid appropriated by Congress to pressure an ally into serving his personal political advantage; talking about “very fine people on both sides;” forcing protesters out of the park so he could stage an amazingly stupid and pointless photo op; firing people who did their duty by testifying truthfully against him; “shithole countries;” getting his crooked friends off the hook with the law; stiff-arming allies and having “love” affairs with tyrants; 220,000 dead from the pandemic… obviously, I could list hundreds of utterly horrific, wildly abnormal things he has done to degrade this country and damage its ideals and interests.

But we would have to do everything we could to get him out of office, and replace him with Joe Biden, if all there was was this:

Advocates for immigrants say they still have not found the parents of 545 minors who were separated from their families starting three years ago during President Trump’s immigration crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The 545 children are among more than 1,500 who were separated from their parents as far back as July 1, 2017, and they include cases that were part of a pilot immigration program at the time and were not immediately disclosed to the U.S. District Judge who ordered the families reunited in June 2018, said American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Lee Gelernt….

headline

Be happy. Be like #GreenShirtGuy

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If only we could all be like this guy, we’d all be living in happier times.

He seems like… an earlier version of ourselves. A Regular Guy from pre-2016. He’s never seen or heard this kind of nonsense before, so the stupidity of it all just cracks him up. Or maybe it’s the woman tugging at her cutoffs while she makes her earnest statement. Or the guy next to her who apparently prepared a handmade sign for the occasion, but when the time comes can’t be bothered to put down his supersized sugary drink.

In any case, we need to be as philosophical as Alex Kack…

greenshirtguy

Rep. Hart underlines silliness of the ‘wall’ nonissue

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Here’s a release with a silly headline about a silly bill mocking something equally, you know, silly:

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I only have one beef with it: I had to show you the release as a picture, rather than copying and pasting text, because it wasn’t sent in a text form.

Which is inconvenient. And irritating. And perhaps silly as well…

As to the merits of the measure that the Democrats are filibustering — I have no idea. Don’t know why Republicans are for it; don’t know why Democrats are against it. Don’t much care. Here’s a Tweet about it; that’s all I’ve got:

The Chuck and Nancy thing was an added weirdness bonus!

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We knew all along that it would be extremely weird to see the strangest president in our nation’s history by far using his first live address from the Oval Office to try to convince us there’s a crisis on our border, and that it’s worth shutting down the government in order to implement his own preferred remedy for said nonexistent crisis.

Especially since we’d been conditioned all our lives to expect such addresses to be about something, you know, important. Like escalating the war in Vietnam, or killing bin Laden.

But there was an added weirdness bonus to the evening — Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi doing a Siamese twins impersonation standing behind one small podium at the same time.

It was predicted that we’ll definitely see this odd visual on SNL this week, and there were some good shots on social media as well:

You know, we took a lot of criticism during the campaign for not separating James and Mandy more, but sheesh — at least they took turns at the microphone on their joint appearances….

The fury directed toward migrants actually looks like ‘hate’

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The "Two-Minutes Hate" in Orwell's 1984...

The “Two-Minutes Hate” in Orwell’s 1984…

A lot of the more strident folk on the left like to classify people with whom they disagree as “haters.” To disagree with them is to “hate.”

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to be called a bigot. To see a human fetus as having moral value and a claim upon our consciences, for instance, can be classified as “hating women.” Which might be great for eliciting contributions from some quarters, but not so great for increasing understanding across the gulf of disagreement.

If we’re to have civil conversations in our society, conversations with some hope of leading toward synthesis, toward solutions, “hate” is a word we need to be careful with.

But in recent days, that word has seemed more and more like precisely the right one to explain the way some of our fellow citizens regard what is going on down on our border.

What we’re seeing now, and what we’re hearing from the people who defend Trump’s actions, pretty much does seem to be… hatred.

How else to label the FURY these people direct at poor folk trying to come here for a better life?

I’ve been marveling over this for years. I guess it was the early 2000s when we started seeing this surge of anger toward people who came here to pick crops, do back-breaking construction, or work in the stench of a chicken-processing plant.

Then came the dehumanizing rhetoric — words such as “animals” and “infest” — and the jaw-dropping rationalizations: If they don’t like having their children torn from their arms, they should have thought of that before they tried to come here…

It’s the ANGER that amazes me. The folks who say those things are furious, apoplectic that these people from the South cross a line in the desert without the proper paperwork. What is it about that bureaucratic lapse, that misdemeanor committed by some migrants, that stirs such anger?

And I’m not even getting into the fact that this attitude goes beyond illegality, and has increasingly taken the form of wanting to decrease legal immigration.

I don’t know where the anger comes from. But the more I see of it, the more it seems to qualify as hatred…

Trump miraculously discovers he has power to stop doing the horrible thing he’s been doing

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That is, one of the horrible things he’s been doing…

This just in:

Trump, in reversal, says he will sign order to end family separations at border

But… but… but… How can that be? His peeps have been telling us it’s not up to him! That it’s Congress’ fault, or the fault of previous presidents who never did such a horrible thing!

He must be a magic man, Mama!

Oh, and South Carolinians… Don’t forget that, only hours before the world magically changed just now, our governor was standing foursquare behind Trump’s (Trump’s and no one’s but Trump’s) policy of separating families at the border:

“I agree with the president 100 percent. If we don’t have secure borders, if a country doesn’t have borders, you don’t have a country, so we must secure the borders,” McMaster said in Spartanburg, goupstate.com reported. “Now the President is determined to see that it’s done in the right way, what he’s doing right now is he’s following the law, unlike some other chief executives who did not follow the law.”

And he was so very proud to do so…

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Caskey strips out stupidest part of sanctuary cities bill

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Micah Caskey selling his amendment in the House./@TigerMuniSC

Rep. Micah Caskey selling his amendment in the House./@TigerMuniSC

Yesterday afternoon I ran into my representative, Micah Caskey, on my afternoon walk, and asked what he’d been up to on such a fine Wednesday.

He was glad to tell me, as he’d had a good day doing worthwhile work for us all. He told me briefly about it, and followed up with more info today.

You know about Henry McMaster’s stupid Sanctuary Cities bill, the pointless solution to a non-existent problem. We have no Sanctuary Cities in South Carolina, a fact that no one disputes — but in order to pander to the Trump crowd, the governor would force South Carolina municipalities to file a bunch of red tape proving they’re not sanctuary cities, or lose state funding upon which they rely.

So Micah got the House to amend the bill to strip out the reporting requirements. You see, Sanctuary Cities are already against the law in South Carolina. Micah’s amendment would allow the state attorney general to take legal action against any municipalities suspected of the heinous crime of being nice to illegal aliens. (Currently, only a resident of the relevant municipality can can file a lawsuit to enjoin the city from adopting such policies.)

Micah did a nice job selling his amendment, bringing along this Powerpoint presentation to explain the actual facts of the situation, and what he proposed to do.

So basically, he managed to strip out the stupidest part of a stupid bill, minimizing the damage of what he termed the Incremental Growth of South Carolina Government Act.

Here’s how he summed up the change:

Original Bill

  • Paperwork shuffle (ICR)
  • Grows government
  • Adds to SLED workload
  • No due process
  • Violators lose LGF

Caskey Amendment

  • Empowers AG to enforce
  • Due process ensured
  • Protects rule of law
  • Violators lose LGF

“LGF” means “Local Government Fund.” “ICR” means “Immigration Compliance Report.”

Nice job, Micah. This is a good case of, as you put it in your presentation, “Common Sense Trumping Politics.”

McMaster touts victory over his imaginary foe

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Speaking of "intellectually-bankrupt campaign materials," this is the first thing you see at the McMaster for Governor site.

Speaking of “intellectually-bankrupt campaign materials,” this is the first thing you see at the McMaster for Governor site.

This bit of nonsense just sort of floored me last night:

I responded thusly:

I mean, come on, people — who can possibly take seriously, for even a second, the governor of South Carolina celebrating his great “victory” (or initial step toward victory) over a completely imaginary foe?

“What’s next?” my own representative, Republican Micah Caskey, asked. “Are we going to require cities to certify that they didn’t rob a bank?”

He added: “There is no one, other than politicians, who have suggested this is something we actually need and should waste our time on.”

And I would add, only a certain kind of condescending, pandering politician, completely lacking in shame.

This morning, Micah added this via Twitter: “Sanctuary cities are already illegal in South Carolina. (See SC Code Ann. 17-13-170 and 23-3-1100.) The governor should read more of our laws already on the books and less of his intellectually-bankrupt campaign materials.”

Amen to that. And I suppose he meant this sort of campaign material…

Liberal friends, here’s an example of left-leaning irrationality

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Some of my liberal friends here are constantly on my case for what they call my “false equivalence.” They believe they are not contributing to the careening, irrational polarization of our era — it’s the extremists on the other side who are entirely to blame.

Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat

Which, of course, isn’t true. Yep, the Republicans (or a lot of them) have been getting weirder and weirder in recent years, but  there are plenty of people on the left who are happy to keep pushing them away.

Conservative columnist Ross Douthat of The New York Times wrote a provocative column a day or two back. Basically the thrust of it was this: As objectionable as Stephen Miller is, maybe he needs to be at the table if a viable immigration compromise is to be reached. For years, we’ve tried fashioning a comprehensive solution without the nativists at the table, and nothing has passed. Maybe it’s time to try something else.

He concludes, “But a bargain that actually reflects the shape of public opinion, not just the elite consensus, can only happen with someone like Stephen Miller at the table.”

This sent a lot of people ’round the bend, causing Douthat to spend much of the next few hours answering critics on Twitter. Some engaged what he actually wrote. But here’s what Salon said:

In case that Tweet embed doesn’t show you what I’m seeing (a frequent problem I’ve noticed), the headline of the Salon piece is “To Ross Douthat, white immigration is the only good immigration,” and the subhed is “A New York Times columnist praises the whites-only rhetoric of Stephen Miller.”

I responded to that Tweet by saying, “That’s not what he wrote and it’s not what he meant. He was WRONG, but he didn’t commit the evil of which you accuse him…”

The closest Douthat comes to “praising” Miller is when, after nothing that about a third of Americans, like Miller “want immigration reduced,” he writes this:

And there are various reasonable grounds on which one might favor a reduction. The foreign-born share of the U.S. population is near a record high, and increased diversity and the distrust it sows have clearly put stresses on our politics. There are questions about how fast the recent wave of low-skilled immigrants is assimilating, evidence that constant new immigration makes it harder for earlier arrivals to advance, and reasons to think that a native working class gripped by social crisis might benefit from a little less wage competition for a while. California, the model for a high-immigration future, is prosperous and dynamic — but also increasingly stratified by race, with the same inequality-measuring Gini coefficient as Honduras….

But that is immediately followed by this:

With that said, illegal immigration has slowed over the last decade, and immigration’s potential economic and humanitarian benefits are still considerable. And it’s also clear that many immigration restrictionists are influenced by simple bigotry — with the president’s recent excrement-related remarks a noteworthy illustration.

This bigotry, from the point of view of many immigration advocates, justifies excluding real restrictionists from the negotiating table…

… which leads to Douthat’s point that doing so hasn’t worked; maybe actually negotiating with these people could.

I read that as damning Miller with something harsher than faint “praise.”

Overall, I consider Miller and what he wants to do beyond the pale, because of the ugly nativism that animates the anti-immigrant position (and yes, in this case we’re talking anti-immigrant, not just anti-illegal immigrant). What he wants to achieve shouldn’t be dignified with serious consideration.

But it doesn’t make you a racist or a fan of racism to suggest that he should be let into the conversation.

And saying, in no uncertain terms, that it does is itself an example of the kind of extremism that’s driven our country apart.

Now you’re acting more like yourself, Sen. Graham

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I don’t know what LIndsey Graham thought he was doing the last few months, building his new reputation as the “Trump Whisperer.” Did he think he could manage the grossly unfit POTUS, guiding him gently toward wise policy on immigration and making him think it was his idea?

Whatever his plan was, it didn’t work, and the moment that became fully apparent seems to have been the infamous “s___hole” meeting a week ago.

Now, he seems to have decided to concentrate his attention on actual grownups, people with whom he can have intelligent conversations and not feel the need to delouse afterward. He sent out this release yesterday:

Momentum Growing for Immigration Reform Proposal

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today welcomed the support of Republican Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota) for a path forward on DACA and immigration reform.Graham-080106-18270- 0005

They will join Republicans Graham, Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) and Cory Gardner (R-Colorado) in backing this measure and working to protect Dreamers.

“It’s imperative that Congress act quickly so that young people who were brought to the United States as children, through no decision of their own, can stop living in fear of deportation.  I have talked with Dreamers living in Maine who have grown up in our State and have known no other country as their home,” said Senator Collins.  “This issue transcends political divisions, with members of both parties expressing sympathy for the Dreamers and support for a legislative solution.  I am proud to join this growing bipartisan group of leaders in advancing this important effort that will fairly address the needs of the DACA population, strengthen border security, and help improve our immigration system.”

“President Trump and the bipartisan members of Congress who met at the White House ought to be able to agree on a proposal that both secures our borders and provides a solution for DACA recipients,” said Senator Alexander. “I intend to support such an agreement which is why I’m cosponsoring the Graham proposal as a starting point for reaching consensus and will support other responsible proposals.”

“I am proud to be a part of this bipartisan solution for the Dreamers,” said Senator Murkowski. “We should not punish children for the actions of their parents. Those who were brought to this country by their parents, were raised here, educated here, lived here, and dreamed here, should be welcomed to stay here. They should have the right to work and a path to citizenship. Fulfilling that dream renews our American Dream. I have consistently cosponsored legislation to provide just that, and I am heartened to see so many diverse voices supporting a legislative solution for the Dreamers.”

“I thank Senator Graham and others for their commitment to strengthening border security and fixing our broken immigration system,” said Senator Rounds. “The current proposal is an important first step in more immigration reform that secures our borders and transitions to a merit-based system. Legal immigration is a proud part of our nation’s history, and today it plays an important role in our economy – including South Dakota’s own workforce which depends on temporary, H2B visa workers to fill jobs during the busy tourism and construction seasons. While this bill is not perfect, I will continue to work on a product that includes appropriate e-verify provisions, a stronger border security system and lays the framework for more reform, including work visas. These are the provisions required for me to support the bill in final form so we can get to the next phase, in which permanently increasing the cap of H2B visas will be a top priority for me.”

“I’m very pleased that our bipartisan proposal continues to gain support among my Republican colleagues,” said Senator Graham. “Our hope is to bring forward a proposal that leads to a solution the President can embrace. The goal is to begin fixing a broken immigration system by fairly dealing with the DACA population, securing our border, and moving toward a merit-based immigration system. This proposal would receive wide support and is a good solution for Phase I as we move to Phase II, comprehensive immigration reform.  As we debate how to fix a broken immigration system and who to allow to become an American, we must not change what it means to be an American.  As I’ve always said, America is an idea defined by its ideals – not by its people.  The idea of self-determination and freedom to speak one’s mind, to worship God as you see fit, and to be served by the government – not the other way around.  I believe there is bipartisan support for that concept.”

 Highlights of the bipartisan proposal include:

  • At Least Ten Years Before a Dreamer Can Become an American Citizen:  It would be at least ten years before a Dreamer can become an American citizen.  The legislation calls for a 12-year waiting period, but select Dreamers who registered for DACA could earn up to two years credit for time. Dreamers – who do not receive any federal assistance or welfare today – will likely continue to be ineligible for welfare and federal assistance for the first five years they have legal status.
  • The current Diversity Visa Lottery will be abolished, and a new merit-based immigration system instituted in its place. Half of the Diversity Lottery visas would be allocated to a new system for ‘priority countries’ who are currently underrepresented in visa allocation.  A new merit-based system would ensure those visas are awarded to those most ready to succeed in the United States.  The other half of the visas would be allocated to recipients of Temporary Protected Status (TPS).  After the TPS backlog is cleared, all of the former Diversity Lottery visas will be allocated to nationals of priority countries under the new, merit-based system.
  • Additional Border Security Measures: The proposal contains $2.7 billion in border security improvements, including the planning, design, and construction of a border wall and additional surveillance and technology along the border. There will also be several provisions from border security pieces of legislation related to border infrastructure and Customs and Border Protection operations and oversight.
  • Down Payment on Chain Migration: Parents of Dreamers would be eligible for 3-year renewable work permits.  There are no new pathways for them to obtain American citizenship.  If they brought a child who becomes a beneficiary of the Dream Act into the country, they would be ineligible to be sponsored for lawful permanent residence or citizenship by any of their children. Additionally, lawful permanent residents would only be able to sponsor their nuclear family members, their spouses and unmarried children under the age of 21.

They may not succeed, but at least he’s now working with people highly unlikely to disrupt a bipartisan meeting with an obscene racist rant…

Graham should be more specific about what he heard

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You were there, Senator. So what did the president say, and how did he say it?

You were there, Senator. So what did the president say, and how did he say it?

Since some Republicans, after a day or two of thinking about it, started claiming Trump didn’t really say “s___hole” (hilariously, one of the lines of defense has been to claim he really said “s___house“) it’s refreshing that Lindsey Graham has stuck to his original version of the story, as Andy Shain reports:

Trouble is, his original story remains vague and indirect. He seems to want to have his cake and eat it, too — to call the president out for his racist assertions without quite, you know, calling him out.

We know from colleague Tim Scott that Graham told him the media reports of what Trump said were “basically correct.”

And Graham has made sure that we know that he gave Trump a piece of his mind in response to, you know, whatever he said:

When Trump made the incendiary remark, Graham spoke up, telling the president that “America is an idea, not a race.”

“I tried to make it very clear to the president that when you say ‘I’m an American,’ what does that mean?” Graham said. “It doesn’t mean that they’re black or white, rich or poor. It means that you buy into an ideal of self-representation, compassion, tolerance, the ability to practice one’s religion without interference and the acceptance of those who are different.

“So at the end of the day, an American is a person who believes in ideals that have stood the test of time,” Graham added. “It’s not where you come from that matters, it’s what you’re willing to do once you get here.”…

Agreed, senator. But since people are standing up and saying Trump didn’t say what he said, it would be helpful if you’d be the truthteller and give us a precise account of what you heard.

As the late Howard Baker might have said, What did the president say, and how did he say it?

‘You shall not molest or oppress an alien…’

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Dr. Heyer during her lecture.

Dr. Heyer during her lecture.

This past Sunday, I did the first reading at the Spanish Mass, the first time I’d done so in awhile.

It was from Exodus Chapter 22. Here’s how it began:

Esto dice el Señor a su pueblo: “No hagas sufrir ni oprimas al extranjero, porque ustedes fueron extranjeros en Egipto. No explotes a las viudas ni a los huérfanos, porque si los explotas y ellos claman a mí, ciertamente oiré yo su clamor; mi ira se encenderá, te mataré a espada, tus mujeres quedarán viudas y tus hijos, huérfanos….

For you gringos, it goes like this:

Thus says the LORD:
“You shall not molest or oppress an alien,
for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.
You shall not wrong any widow or orphan.
If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me,
I will surely hear their cry.
My wrath will flare up, and I will kill you with the sword;
then your own wives will be widows, and your children orphans….

Because I had just read that Sunday (after a lot of practice that morning, which I have to do with Spanish these days), I was struck to hear the same message again last night, when I attended this year’s Cardinal Bernardin lecture at USC.

Our speaker was Kristin Heyer from Boston College, and the rather involved title of her lecture was “Immigration Ethics in a New Era: Embracing Cardinal Bernardin’s challenge to be both ‘prophetic and public’ amid the contemporary political climate with respect to migration.”(Headline writing isn’t a core strength of academics, I find.)

I won’t go into the whole thing, except to say that the message was not, shall we say, Trumpian.

But I was struck at the serendipity of her slide citing numerous biblical injunctions to be good to the alien. The first one she cited was from the chapter after the one I had read from in Exodus, and it’s a stripped-down, to-the-point version of what I had read:

You shall not oppress a resident alien; you well know how it feels to be an alien, since you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt…

That was Exodus 23:9. Think maybe somebody’s trying to tell me something this week?

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So in SC, you’d be ‘guilty’ of being kind to illegal immigrants unless you prove your ‘innocence’

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Say "sanctuary," and I think of a place like this. And it doesn't make me angry...

Say “sanctuary,” and I think of a place like this. And you know what? It doesn’t make me angry…

I meant to post about this yesterday, but got sidetracked…

South Carolina cities and counties may soon have to prove they are not “sanctuary cities” providing safe harbor to undocumented immigrants.

S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster and Republican lawmakers said Monday they will push to require cities and counties to prove they are cooperating with federal immigration agents and allowing immigration laws to be enforced.

Jurisdictions that fail to comply with federal immigration laws would lose their state money for three years, McMaster said, announcing the proposal in Greenville….

I thought Henry McMaster was a pretty good attorney general — which surprised me somewhat at the time.

But now… how does an attorney, an officer of the court, say that not someone is obliged to prove he is innocent of wrongdoing?

Particularly when the “wrongdoing” is, at worst, being softhearted. Yeah, I know: You’ll say, but they are harboring illegals! And you’ll say it as though they were gunrunners, or terrorists — instead of being poor people who failed to get the proper paperwork before coming to this country to do backbreaking work in order to better their lives, and those of their families.

Of course, we can argue about whether such sanctuaries are a good thing all day, but let me stop you and point out that, to Henry’s knowledge, there are no “sanctuary cities” in South Carolina. (The punchline to this joke, I suppose, is “See what a great job I’m doing keeping them away?”)

So… the governor of our state, having no reason to believe there are any sanctuary cities in South Carolina, nevertheless wants to force these city governments to waste resources going through the rigmarole of proving a negative.

And if they fail to prove their innocence, what happens? He would cut off the state funds that are a significant portion of local government’s budgets — meaning he would deny the law-abiding South Carolinians who live in those cities their share of the state taxes that they are paying to the state.

But you know what? I don’t think Henry cares a bit about this, as a policy matter. I doubt he’s someone who sits up nights worrying about whether there’s an illegal alien in Charleston, or Florence, or Greer who for the moment is free of worrying about imminent deportation.

No, as an early advocate of Donald Trump, he just wants to sound like he’s going to be meaner to illegals than the next guy.

Or gal. And meanwhile, Catherine Templeton is bound and determined to let you know that she was being mean to illegals way before that ol’ softy Henry was:

I’m not sure how that fit into the duties of the chief of DHEC, but whatever. The details don’t matter, as long as you’re sounding like the kind of person who gets indignantly angry at the sound of nasty words such as “sanctuary.”

Modest demonstration last night for ‘Dreamers’

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DACA 2

You know how Facebook is always putting events on your calendar, whether you want it to or not? Well, it does that to me.

Anyway, for once it put something on there that I was interested in attending — or perhaps I should just say, “checking out.”

It was a “Vigil for DACA and Immigrant Dreamers,” described on Facebook this way:

Tuesday, September 5th is the deadline set by a group of Attorneys General to sue the federal government over DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). DACA currently protects nearly 7,000 young undocumented immigrants in South Carolina and nearly 800,000 nationally.

Because DACA is at risk, join us Tuesday at 6pm in front of the State House to show our support for DACA youth and to pray for moral strength and guidance of our political leaders to come together and pass the bi-partisan DREAM Act. The DREAM Act would provide safety and security through a pathway to citizenship for these aspiring citizens.

Speakers include faith leaders from local Catholic, AME, United Methodist, Jewish, and Unitarian Universalist congregations, as well as DACA recipients and local immigration advocates.

Bring friends, prayers, and visual signs of support — signs, posters to support Dreamers and banners/flags/stoles/clothing that represent your various faith traditions or secular beliefs.

As this is a vigil, we hope that the nonviolent intent of this action is clear. Everyone participating in this Event will be required to abide by all applicable laws and lawful orders of authorities. This Event will be nonviolent and will not involve any civil disobedience or other violation of law.

And that’s pretty much the way it was.

It was a modest, but respectable-sized, crowd. Very low-key while I was there. Kind of a usual-suspects crowd — nothing that would cause the GOP pols who run our state to say, “Golly, my constituents are up in arms! I’d better take a stand against Trump.” But everyone meant well, as it seemed to me.

And that’s all I have to say about that…

Alan Wilson did drop the threat of joining in the challenge to DACA. But he didn’t do it because of these folks and their vigil. He did it because good ol’ Donald Trump made it unnecessary:

DACA 1

This time, nativists can’t hide behind the word, ‘illegal’

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The inscription on the Statue of Liberty. But Stephen Miller reminds us the inscription was added LATER. So, you know, it doesn't count...

The inscription on the Statue of Liberty. But Stephen Miller reminds us the inscription was added LATER. So, you know, I guess it doesn’t count…

You know how the conversation goes with some of our friends who get all worked up about immigrants among us. You call them nativists, and they come back with, “I just object to the fact that they’re illegal!”

Now there’s this:

WASHINGTON — President Trump embraced a proposal on Wednesday to slash legal immigration to the United States in half within a decade by sharply curtailing the ability of American citizens and legal residents to bring family members into the country.

The plan would enact the most far-reaching changes to the system of legal immigration in decades and represents the president’s latest effort to stem the flow of newcomers to the United States. Since taking office, he has barred many visitors from select Muslim-majority countries, limited the influx of refugees, increased immigration arrests and pressed to build a wall along the southern border.

In asking Congress to curb legal immigration, Mr. Trump intensified a debate about national identity, economic growth, worker fairness and American values that animated his campaign last year. Critics said the proposal would undercut the fundamental vision of the United States as a haven for the poor and huddled masses, while the president and his allies said the country had taken in too many low-skilled immigrants for too long to the detriment of American workers….

Well, the advocates for this don’t have “illegal” to hide behind.

They’ll find other excuses, of course. I heard a guy on the radio this morning rattling off numbers of all the people in this country who’ve given up on finding work (and don’t show up in numbers showing we’re pretty much at full employment), implying that these folks might re-enter the workforce once immigrants aren’t taking the jobs and driving down wages. He’d done his homework. But then another guy came on and kind of took those numbers apart.

Here, by the way, is what our senior senator had to say:

But Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, noted that agriculture and tourism were his state’s top two industries. “If this proposal were to become law, it would be devastating to our state’s economy, which relies on this immigrant work force,” he said. “Hotels, restaurants, golf courses and farmers,” he added, “will tell you this proposal to cut legal immigration in half would put their business in peril.”

What Graham was voicing there is the traditional conservative, pro-business view — what was once the standard Republican approach. I can still remember when much of the objection to immigration, legal or illegal, came from the pro-union left. But that equation sort of changed over the years.

The interesting thing is, a key argument being used for keeping these furriners out is an old pro-labor one: These people take jobs from, and lower wages for, American workers. But then, nativists have always said that, too.

Anyway, I suppose this new wrinkle will help separate the folks who are really, truly, just opposed to illegal immigration from those who just don’t want more foreigners here, period.

Should be interesting….

Meanwhile, Graham steps up with Dream Act

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graham dreamers

Even as I was saying that with his particular friend John McCain out of action, the country really needed Lindsey Graham to step up… he was doing so.

Today, he and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin announced they were introducing the Dream Act. Here’s a release about it:

GRAHAM, DURBIN INTRODUCE BIPARTISAN DREAM ACT TO GIVE IMMIGRANT STUDENTS A PATH TO CITIZENSHIP

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) today introduced the Dream Act, which would allow immigrant students who grew up in the United States to earn lawful permanent residence and eventually American citizenship.  These young people, known as Dreamers, have lived in America since they were children, built their lives here, and are American in every way except for their immigration status.  However, under current law they live in fear of deportation and have no chance to ever become citizens and fulfill their potential.

“These young people have lived in America since they were children and built their lives here,” said Graham.  “There is support across the country for allowing Dreamers — who have records of achievement — to stay, work, and reach their full potential.  We should not squander these young people’s talents and penalize our own nation.  Our legislation would allow these young people – who grew up in the United States – to contribute more fully to the country they love.  They have a powerful story to tell and this may be an area where both parties can come together.”

“Hundreds of thousands of talented young people who have grown up in our country are at risk of deportation to countries they barely remember.  I’ll do everything in my power as a United States Senator to protect these Dreamers and give them the chance to become American citizens so they can contribute to a brighter future for all Americans,” said Durbin.  “I first introduced the Dream Act 16 years ago and I’ll continue fighting until it becomes the law of the land. I thank Senator Graham for partnering with me in this bipartisan effort.”

The Dream Act would allow these young people to earn lawful permanent residence and eventually American citizenship if they:

  • Are longtime residents who came to the U.S. as children;
  • Graduate from high school or obtain a GED;
  • Pursue higher education, work lawfully for at least three years, or serve in the military;
  • Pass security and law enforcement background checks and pay a reasonable application fee;
  • Demonstrate proficiency in the English language and a knowledge of United States history; and
  • Have not committed a felony or other serious crimes and do not pose a threat to our country.

A one-pager of the Dream Act is available here.  A section-by-section of the Dream Act is available here.

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We’ve needed both Graham and McCain’s leadership on immigration, which had waned somewhat in recent years. Because if they don’t step up, who among the majority will?

Here’s video of Graham’s and Durbin’s announcement (It doesn’t actually start until 23 minutes in.):

Pssst, media types: Ixnay on the Umptray ailurefays…

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Mind you, I'm not saying we need to run pictures like this and report, "Look what Trump built!" Not exactly, anyway...

Mind you, I’m not saying we need to run pictures like this and report, “Look what Trump built!” Not exactly, anyway…

When I see headlines like this (in The New Yorker), it makes me a little nervous:

HOW TRUMP GAVE UP ON HIS BORDER WALL

It worries me because touting Trump’s failures walks all over his poor little ego, and it seems likely that such bruising would cause him to redouble his efforts. And we do not want that…

Look what happened with the Trumpcare failure. At first, he seemed content to let the whole repealing-Obamacare thing slide. But after about the billionth headline noting how he’d failed on this central (to his base) promise, he started pushing on Congress to try again.

And now, if everyone makes a big deal about him stepping away from the stupid wall thing, it’s liable to get his back up, and we’ll be wasting time talking about that again.

I’m not saying lie or mislead — I don’t want the media to actually start making a truth-teller out of Trump by reporting “fake news.” We don’t need to run pictures of the Great Wall of China on front pages and tout what a great job Trump did building it.

I’m just saying, you know, that maybe we could not rub in the failures as much. If he’s content to let his most spectacularly dumb ideas die a quiet death, maybe that’s a good thing.

I mean, report it, but don’t go on and on about it. Go easy on the poor guy; he’s having a rough year.

I’m saying, must Kathleen Parker write columns headlined, “Dealmaker in Chief? More like the Backdown President.“?

Sigh… I suppose she must…