The immigration thread: American Melting Pot or Get off my Lawn

[China]

Fewer People Are Interested In Migrating To The U.S. Than Ever Before. Here’s Why.

 

Andrea Archer, a 32-year-old children’s safeguarding specialist based in London, started spending holidays and other vacation time with her father in California when she was 4 years old. She always knew she would move to the U.S. when she grew up.

 

Archer pursued a green card — she was eligible for one because her father is an American citizen — in 2012. Barack Obama was president at the time, and Archer felt that a new era was beginning for the U.S.

 

But when Archer received her green card in 2017, the country that once seemed hopeful felt unsafe. The U.S. seemed volatile and politically fraught. She decided that she didn’t want to migrate to the States, despite her lifelong plan. In 2021, Archer returned her green card.

 

Archer is one of the many people whose outlook on the U.S. has changed drastically since 2017, according to Gallup World Poll data released Tuesday. Although the U.S. is still the country most people around the world would most like to migrate to, the number of people who want to do so is lower than ever before.

 

The poll surveyed 16% of adults worldwide, or about 900 million people, regarding their desire to move to another country. Globally, people’s desire to move reached its highest point in a decade, but interest in moving to the U.S. plunged. When asked where in the world they would want to migrate, 1 in 5 potential migrants — or about 18% — named the U.S. as their desired future residence. The new numbers marked a historic decline that began in 2017, when just 17% — the lowest rate ever recorded — said they’d want to move to the U.S. In previous years, the U.S. has polled between 20% and 24%.

 

Donald Trump’s presidency was in full swing by 2017. As one of his first acts as president, Trump signed into law the first iteration of a policy that banned travelers from several Muslim-majority countries. Children began being separated from their parents at the southern border that same year under the administration’s zero-tolerance program. In August 2017, white nationalists and members of the alt-right gathered for a violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

 

Such policies and events likely deterred people from moving to the U.S. and tainted how immigrants around the world saw the country, said Julie Ray, the managing editor for World News Gallup and one of the authors of the report. “It is a pretty well-documented, chilling effect,” she said.

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[CousinsCowgirl84]

A 3 percent difference? 17 vs 20 percent. Wooooo…

[Captain Wiggles]

I still wanna know who's all "hey **** moving to any of those other countries Saudi Arabia is the place for me". 🤣

[tshile]

Or Canada 😆 

[Renegade7]

 

[LD0506]

On 1/27/2023 at 3:01 PM, Captain Wiggles said:

I still wanna know who's all "hey **** moving to any of those other countries Saudi Arabia is the place for me". 🤣

 

Saudi Arabia imports vast numbers of people to be "guest workers" who end up being essentially slaves to do everything that Saudis consider beneath them, so they burn through them like Amazon.

[China]

Busing migrants was a partisan lightning rod. Here's why Democrats have embraced it

 

When Texas and Arizona's Republican governors began busing immigrants out of their states last year, they said it was in protest of the Democrats' "reckless" federal immigration policies.

Democrats criticized the tactic as dehumanizing, especially when migrants were misled about where they were going. But some cities and states led by Democrats later warmed to the practice, most recently Arizona's new governor, Katie Hobbs.

 

"If we're spending money to bus people, why just not get them to their final destination?" Hobbs told reporters at a recent press conference.

 

Here's how the politics of transporting migrants has evolved.

 

In the border town of Del Rio, Texas, for instance, the non-profit Val Verde Humanitarian Border Coalition receives immigrants directly from the U.S. Border Patrol station.

 

From there, they only have a few options for getting to their final destinations.

 

"You have to understand the locale here. The nearest major city is in San Antonio. That's a three-hour drive," says VVHBC operations director Tiffany Burrow.

 

A couple of Greyhound buses depart Del Rio each day. The local airport recently lost service after American Airlines pulled out. The non-profit also works directly with a private transportation company. VVHBC would typically help recent arrivals figure out where they needed to go, and then a family member would purchase them a ticket.

 

But in 2022, the non-profits and aid groups at the border had trouble meeting basic needs for the record number of people trying to come to the U.S., per federal data.

 

Buses operated by the state are "incredibly useful," says Burrow.

 

Some bus passengers also appreciate the free ride.

 

"I didn't know that the ticket to get here cost $500 dollars," says Selina, a migrant traveling from Chile who caught a state-run bus from Texas to Philadelphia.

 

Selina, who wants to meet up with her brother-in-law in New Jersey, tells NPR in Spanish that when she got into the United States, a guard told her about the free buses and showed her where to get in line for one. Otherwise, "I couldn't pay," she says.

 

That reality has helped shift the politics of transporting immigrants. "Something that looked like a punitive thing towards immigrants done for political gains suddenly turned itself on the head because migrants are rational people," says Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.

 

Not only could they get a free ticket to a family or a shelter, but "they found these cities were actually quite hospitable to immigrants," says Chishti.

 

Government agencies and nonprofits in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago and New York have welcomed tens of thousands of immigrants bussed from the border. In many cases, they provide food, shelter, legal services and help with transportation.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Larry]

Just curious.  Is the author above really trying to make the point that busses can be used humanely, and inhumanely?  

 

Or perhaps he's trying to dispose of the notion (which I've never once heard anyone make, other than people trying to lie) that the thing that's evil about dumping people in politically targeted places, for use as props in a political stunt, is the bus?  

[CousinsCowgirl84]

On 1/27/2023 at 3:01 PM, Captain Wiggles said:

I still wanna know who's all "hey **** moving to any of those other countries Saudi Arabia is the place for me". 🤣

That was probably pseudo slave labor working to build infrastructure around the World Cup…

29 minutes ago, Larry said:

Just curious.  Is the author above really trying to make the point that busses can be used humanely, and inhumanely?  

 

Or perhaps he's trying to dispose of the notion (which I've never once heard anyone make, other than people trying to lie) that the thing that's evil about dumping people in politically targeted places, for use as props in a political stunt, is the bus?  

Sometimes your 900 words short on your minimum monthly writing quota sent down by corporate and just gotta pound a story out, or maybe AI wrote it…

[Larry]

1 hour ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

Sometimes your 900 words short on your minimum monthly writing quota sent down by corporate and just gotta pound a story out, or maybe AI wrote it…

 

Remember when the Skins picked RG# in the first round.  And then took Kirk Cousins in the 4th.  And ESPN spent like an hour talking about how terribly this undermines the QB that you haven't even signed yet.  

 

And my response was "They've got 12 hours of air time to fill.  Name a bigger story on Day 3 of the draft."  

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[Larry]

He go through the $20M he already had, for that?  

[China]

'Solutions must be rooted in facts': Gen-Z congressman easily dismantles top GOP anti-immigration talking point

 

United States Congressman Maxwell Frost (D-Florida), the first Generation Z lawmaker elected to the House of Representatives, drowned Republican criticisms of President Joe Biden's immigration policies during a Monday hearing on border security.

 

Speaking with Customs and Border Protection Chief Patrol Agents Gloria Chavez of the Rio Grande Valley Sector and John Modlin of the Tucson Sector, Frost took aim at the GOP's rhetoric.

 

"You know, it's unfortunate that this hearing started off with a ton of hyperbole and posturing saying that President Biden and his administration have created the worst border crisis in American history. That isn't about oversight. It's about stoking the fears of immigrants and those seeking asylum. And it's something I take personally as a son of a Cuban refugee," Frost said. "Look for, for many folks around the country who might only watch far-right media or just listen to even some of the folks on this committee."

 

Frost posited the same simple question to each of the officials.

 

"I'm, I'm curious, uh, Chief Chavez. When President Biden took office, did your agents stop enforcing the border and just allow everybody to come in thus creating what we hear here is, is an open border? Did that happen when the president took office?" he asked.

 

"Sir, thank you for your question. Uh, the answer is no, sir. We continue to enforce policy and loss," Chavez replied.

 

"Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it," Frost responded, after which he turned to Modlin.

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

[China]

He deported thousands of people, then learned he was undocumented

 

Raul Rodriguez says he’ll never forget the moment he realized his life was built on a lie.

 

He was so shaken that he felt the blood rushing to his feet. In a matter of seconds, a family secret had shattered the way he saw the world and his place in it.

 

“That day will never leave my mind. … It’s a terrible feeling,” he says.

 

It all began in April 2018 when federal investigators showed him a shocking document: a Mexican birth certificate with his name on it.

 

A conversation with his father soon afterward confirmed what Rodriguez had feared as soon as he saw the paperwork. The US birth certificate he’d used for decades was fraudulent. Rodriguez wasn’t a US citizen. He was an undocumented immigrant.

 

Rodriguez says he had no idea he’d been born in Mexico before his father’s confession that day, but he knew immediately how serious the situation was. He’d spent nearly two decades working for the US government at the border.

 

By his estimates, he’d helped deport thousands of people while working for US Customs and Border Protection and before that, for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Suddenly, he found himself on the opposite end of the spectrum, fighting for a chance to stay in the United States.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

TEXAS STRIKES DEAL TO BUILD ABBOTT’S BORDER WALL ON BIG DONOR’S RANCH

 

More than a year and a half since Governor Greg Abbott launched his taxpayer-financed plan to build a border wall along the Texas-Mexico border, the state has made little progress. But Abbott may soon have several miles of new wall to tout—thanks to a major deal the state just struck with one of the governor’s top campaign donors. 

 

Late last month, Texas acquired five miles of land to build 30-foot steel fencing through a sprawling 40,000-acre private ranch owned by Stuart Stedman, a Houston-based heir to an oil and ranching fortune who also happens to rank among the governor’s biggest political patrons.

 

Stedman has contributed $1.1 million to Abbott’s campaigns since 2015, including $600,000 in the most recent election cycle, campaign finance records show. In 2021, Abbott appointed Stedman to the board of regents of the University of Texas System, the type of influential post the governor has long used to reward his most generous political backers. Prior, Stedman was one of the governor’s appointees to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. 

 

The Texas Facilities Commission (TFC)—the state agency charged with orchestrating Abbott’s wall project—inked the agreement with Stedman to build through a property he owns called Faith Ranch in northwestern Webb County, according to a copy of the easement the Webb County Clerk’s Office posted earlier this week. TFC paid Faith Ranch $1.5 million to acquire permanent land rights for the wall, per state agency expenditures compiled by the Comptroller’s Office. 

 

The deal marks the state’s largest and most costly land acquisition so far for the Texas border wall program, providing a shot in the arm for the governor’s pet project. Since launching, Abbott’s wall-building crusade has been hampered by delays; only 1.6 miles of new fencing has been completed on a remote piece of state-owned land in the Rio Grande Valley. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, House Republicans scour southern border, but don’t find any illegal crossings

 

Republican members of Congress eager to see immigrants illegally entering the United States gathered late Wednesday night in roughly a dozen vehicles, some clearly marked as belonging to police, to search the Arizona border with Mexico.

 

As they rumbled along the entry port of San Luis, a dam along the Colorado River and more desolate sections of the U.S. border between Arizona and Mexico, though, their search came up empty. Hours later, immigration officials would spot a group crossing north, but it was long after Congress members had retired for the night.

 

The cold and windy night marked the start of a House Judiciary Committee convoy to the border, led by its chairman, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican. Jordan has taken the committee’s gavel as the GOP gained control of the U.S. House of Representatives following the 2022 election, promising new investigations and legislative priorities.

 

Immigration has been among his first targets, though his policy-making prospects remain unclear as Democrats control both the U.S. Senate and the White House.

 

No Democrats were along for the ride to the border. They declined to join the convoy, made up of more than a dozen congressional Republicans, a large contingent of staffers and a handful of reporters.

 

The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, New York’s Jerrold Nadler, described it as a “stunt hearing,” saying his members didn’t get enough notice of the trip to make plans to attend. He said they’d make their own trip to the border next month to “hear from the community and government officials on the ground.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Latino Workers Reach $1 Million Settlement Over Raid at Meat Plant

 

Nearly 100 immigrants who were rounded up during a 2018 raid at a meat processing plant in Tennessee have reached a $1.17 million settlement against the U.S. government and federal agents, who they said used racial profiling and excessive force during the operation, stepping on a person’s neck and punching another in the face.

 

The agreement, approved late Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, is very likely the first class settlement over an immigration enforcement operation at a work site, according to immigration experts. In the past, only individual immigrants have reached settlements related to immigration raids.

 

Under the terms of the settlement, members of the lawsuit will receive $550,000, or more than $5,700 each.Six named plaintiffs will receive a total of $475,000 from the federal government to resolve their claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which allows individuals to be compensated for negligent or wrongful acts by agents of the federal government.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[mcsluggo]

On 1/26/2023 at 10:57 PM, China said:

Fewer People Are Interested In Migrating To The U.S. Than Ever Before. Here’s Why.

 

Andrea Archer, a 32-year-old children’s safeguarding specialist based in London, started spending holidays and other vacation time with her father in California when she was 4 years old. She always knew she would move to the U.S. when she grew up.

 

Archer pursued a green card — she was eligible for one because her father is an American citizen — in 2012. Barack Obama was president at the time, and Archer felt that a new era was beginning for the U.S.

 

But when Archer received her green card in 2017, the country that once seemed hopeful felt unsafe. The U.S. seemed volatile and politically fraught. She decided that she didn’t want to migrate to the States, despite her lifelong plan. In 2021, Archer returned her green card.

 

Archer is one of the many people whose outlook on the U.S. has changed drastically since 2017, according to Gallup World Poll data released Tuesday. Although the U.S. is still the country most people around the world would most like to migrate to, the number of people who want to do so is lower than ever before.

 

The poll surveyed 16% of adults worldwide, or about 900 million people, regarding their desire to move to another country. Globally, people’s desire to move reached its highest point in a decade, but interest in moving to the U.S. plunged. When asked where in the world they would want to migrate, 1 in 5 potential migrants — or about 18% — named the U.S. as their desired future residence. The new numbers marked a historic decline that began in 2017, when just 17% — the lowest rate ever recorded — said they’d want to move to the U.S. In previous years, the U.S. has polled between 20% and 24%.

 

Donald Trump’s presidency was in full swing by 2017. As one of his first acts as president, Trump signed into law the first iteration of a policy that banned travelers from several Muslim-majority countries. Children began being separated from their parents at the southern border that same year under the administration’s zero-tolerance program. In August 2017, white nationalists and members of the alt-right gathered for a violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

 

Such policies and events likely deterred people from moving to the U.S. and tainted how immigrants around the world saw the country, said Julie Ray, the managing editor for World News Gallup and one of the authors of the report. “It is a pretty well-documented, chilling effect,” she said.

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

In 2017 Saudi Arabia was the THIRD MOST DESIRABLE (tie)  emigration destination ... in the world... !!??      😦

[mcsluggo]

On 2/26/2023 at 4:21 PM, China said:

He deported thousands of people, then learned he was undocumented

 

Raul Rodriguez says he’ll never forget the moment he realized his life was built on a lie.

 

He was so shaken that he felt the blood rushing to his feet. In a matter of seconds, a family secret had shattered the way he saw the world and his place in it.

 

“That day will never leave my mind. … It’s a terrible feeling,” he says.

 

It all began in April 2018 when federal investigators showed him a shocking document: a Mexican birth certificate with his name on it.

 

A conversation with his father soon afterward confirmed what Rodriguez had feared as soon as he saw the paperwork. The US birth certificate he’d used for decades was fraudulent. Rodriguez wasn’t a US citizen. He was an undocumented immigrant.

 

Rodriguez says he had no idea he’d been born in Mexico before his father’s confession that day, but he knew immediately how serious the situation was. He’d spent nearly two decades working for the US government at the border.

 

By his estimates, he’d helped deport thousands of people while working for US Customs and Border Protection and before that, for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Suddenly, he found himself on the opposite end of the spectrum, fighting for a chance to stay in the United States.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

wasn't that the plot to "logan's run"   ?

 

(yes..i know that only geezers over 55 know whatthehelliamtalkingabout...   but still, Farah Faucet was in it!!!  and.. Jenny Agutter's boobs!  (before she was a nun) )   

[China]

35 minutes ago, mcsluggo said:

 

wasn't that the plot to "logan's run"   ?

 

(yes..i know that only geezers over 55 know whatthehelliamtalkingabout...   but still, Farah Faucet was in it!!!  and.. Jenny Agutter's boobs!  (before she was a nun) )   

 

I'm old enough to have seen that in the theaters (at White Flint mall) when it came out.  And yes, Jenny Agutter (also of American Werewolf in London fame)

 

[China]

Texas Legislators Propose Takeover Of Federal Immigration Enforcement

 

Over the past two years, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has championed his own brand of aggressive border enforcement.

 

Now, state legislators are considering a smattering of legislation that would annex authority to enforce immigration law away from the federal government and hand it to the state.

 

One of the most extreme proposals would give Texas officials the power to “repel” and “return” undocumented migrants crossing in from Mexico, a power currently reserved for the federal government, affirmed most recently by a 2012 Supreme Court decision.

 

But with this new package of laws and a federal judiciary stacked for the right wing, that all may change.

 

“Texas has been one of the states ready and willing to test the boundaries of federal immigration law,” Alexis Lucero, an El Paso immigration attorney, told TPM. “They don’t mind if they step on the toes of the administration, step on possible human rights violations, as long as they get their day in court and present their side to a potentially sympathetic ear.”

 

That extreme proposal — HB 20 — would create a state-run “Border Security Unit,” empowered to deport undocumented migrants to Mexico if they are seen crossing the border, and establish a 10 year maximum prison sentence for crossing into Texas illegally. The bill would also allow the unit to deputize civilians into its ranks, grant its employees criminal and civil immunity, and allow local magistrates to set electronic tracking as a condition for bond release on misdemeanor trespass — a charge that, under Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, has led to thousands of migrants being arrested.

 

It’s not clear that HB 20 will pass in its current form. But Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan (R) has said that passing it is a priority, and the bill lists more than half of the Texas House Republican caucus as co-sponsors. It comes alongside other proposals in the state Senate to empower federal Customs and Border Patrol officers to enforce state law. Another Senate proposal, championed by Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick (R), would criminalize crossing the border at the state level.

 

Under Operation Lone Star, Texas has spent billions of dollars in funds that were at least partly drawn from federal COVID relief aid to detain migrants on trespassing charges, plan to build 40 miles of wall, and deploy national guard troops in a controversial show of force along the southern border.

 

Abbott has cast the policy as a response to an “invasion” from Mexico, and as an effort to stem the tide of drug imports and cartel violence. Photoshoots alongside state-funded portions of wall, images of national guard troops along the Rio Grande, and statistics on hundreds of thousands of arrests of illegal immigrants for local trespassing offenses have become a cornerstone of the governor’s messaging operation. Fox News Host Tucker Carlson pressed Abbott in December to “block” the border, describing the situation as an “invasion.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

[Captain Wiggles]

Give them both green cards. They've earned it.

 

[China]

2 hours ago, Cooked Crack said:

 

 

I don't think a wall's gonna cut it for folks like these.

[Cooked Crack]

12 minutes ago, China said:

 

I don't think a wall's gonna cut it for folks like these.

Trump 2024: We're implementing a no fly zone above the wall. We've got the best pilots ready to blow these illegals out of the sky.

Edited March 26, 2023 by Cooked Crack