Immigration Diversion

First out of the gate with what was at that moment the latest Trump iteration of disturbing immigration policies was The Washington Post, which reported very late Thursday

White House officials have tried to pressure U.S. immigration authorities to release detainees onto the streets of “sanctuary cities” to retaliate against President Trump’s political adversaries, according to Department of Homeland Security officials and email messages reviewed by The Washington Post.

Trump administration officials have proposed transporting detained immigrants to sanctuary cities at least twice in the past six months — once in November, as a migrant caravan approached the U.S. southern border, and again in February, amid a standoff with Democrats over funding for Trump’s border wall.

If you instinctively recognized that President Trump intended to punish his enemies, you win a prize because

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district in San Francisco was among those the White House wanted to target, according to DHS officials. The administration also considered releasing detainees in other Democratic strongholds.

White House officials first broached the plan in a Nov. 16 email, asking officials at several agencies whether members of the caravan could be arrested at the border and then bused “to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities,” places where local authorities have refused to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation.

At least four Democratic Representatives- Mark Pocan (Wisconsin), Earl C. Blumenauer (Oregon), and Nydia Velazques and Alexandria (Sandy) Ocasio-Cortez of New York- have called for the abolition ofImmigration and Customs Enforcement, and at least two Democratic senators have strongly implied it should be dismantled. It seems, however, that it took that most evil of agencies to shoot down the President's brainstorm, for

The White House told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the plan was intended to alleviate a shortage of detention space but also served to send a message to Democrats. The attempt at political retribution raised alarm within ICE, with a top official responding that it was rife with budgetary and liability concerns, and noting that “there are PR risks as well.”

After the White House pressed again in February, ICE’s legal department rejected the idea as inappropriate and rebuffed the administration.

As so few have, someone from within the federal government has stood up to Donald Trump, and it turns out he or she is from ICE.

San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, demonstrating an impressive depth of dexterity with adjectives, called the President's idea "ludicrous," "petulant," "insulting," "un-American," "illegal," "immoral," "pathetic," and- most impressively- "the sophistry of adolescence." He did, however, omit one critical adjective: revealing.

Suppose you are an unauthorized immigrant caught at the border or in the nation's interior. You may be returned to the host country, given a court date and then released, or (if arrested for an offense), jailed and then released.

But Donald Trump reportedly wanted to deport (at government expense) some detained immigrants to sanctuary cities.  There is no legal or official definition of "sanctuary city," rather a general concept. Still, we know that if an individual were taken to what the Administration considers a "sanctuary city," he or she could simply relocate if wished.

Presumably, however, the immigrant would not want to move. He/she has been given free passage to a jurisdiction which treats illegal immigrants rather kindly. Moreover, most of these are municipalities in which already reside a large number of the foreign-born, thereby making it easier for the individual to adjust.

Were this policy to have taken effect, President Trump would have been giving the illegal immigrant a huge break and belated Christmas gift. This would not be an unforced error; it would be precisely what Donald Trump intends.

This is revealing, and even a little obvious, if unremarked upon by virtually everyone. Of course, Donald Trump's immigration policies are intended to be cruel; that's Donald Trump. And they are intended to promote "liberal tears," to sadden and/or anger liberals, minorities, and the other folks his base dislikes; that's Republican.

But they are a fraud. President Trump may be mean and heartless. However, contrary to the assumption of both supporters and opponents, his intent is not to limit the number of foreigners in this country. If it were, he probably wouldn't be expanding the H-2B visa program, nor slashing aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, thereby offering residents of those countries incentive to travel north.

ICE may understand what so many on the left, the right, and the center do not.  Trump is motivated less by ethnic animus or a desire to make America great again than he is simultaneously to welcome cheap labor and to signal to his supporters that he's standing up for "us," not "them." It's a cynical game he's playing, using race and pseudo-patriotism as a diversionary tactic. But his strategy has worked before, and he plans to make it work again.

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Another Guy Who Has Never Done Anything Wrong

Writing in The New Republic about the former Vice President, Alex Shepard notes

Although he has yet to formally announce his candidacy, in public appearances he has dismissed complaints that he is not progressive enough. Recently asked about his claim that he had “the most progressive record of anybody running,” Biden snapped back. “I’m not sure when everybody else came out and said they’re for gay marriage,” he said. “I’m not sure when everybody came out and talked about a lot of the things I’ve talked about, but my point is the definition of a progressive now seems to be changing. That is, ‘are you a socialist?’ That’s a real progressive.”

  

Most of those progressives whom Biden sarcastically derides had previously come out (pun intended) for same-sex marriage. It's Barack Obama who had not done so, who had afraid of admitting that he had no problem with it.  However, given that Barack Obama was President, the head honcho, at the time, Biden's proclamation was fairly bold.

That was thoroughly uncharacteristic of Joseph Robinette Biden, who has been known less for courage than bluntness. Shepard adds

Speaking to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers on Friday, Biden made light of the stories of his uninvited touching, joking twice that he had “permission” to hug the male, electrical workers’ union president Lonnie Stephenson. Asked by reporters about the women’s allegations, Biden once again was dismissive, and emphatically so. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand more,” he said. “I’m not sorry for any of my intentions. I’m not sorry for anything that I’ve ever done. I’ve never been disrespectful, intentionally, to a man or a woman. That’s not the reputation I’ve had since high school, for God’s sake.”

I'm not sorry for anything that I've ever done.

We have heard that before. In September, 2015 Donald Trump told Jimmy Fallon “I fully think apologizing is a great thing, but you have to be wrong … I will absolutely apologize sometime in the distant future if I'm ever wrong.”

Biden says he's "not sorry for any of my intentions" because his motives are pure.  He has "never been disrespectful, intentionally, to a man or a woman" because there are few people (Trump an obvious exception) who do or say things intending to offend people.  It isn't his reputation for God's sake because Biden has been playing his Catholic card for a long time.

Yet, it is being played by someone who says not "I'm not sorry for anything that I've ever done to comfort a fellow human being," as some of his defenders claim as his motivation. Nor is he unrepentant  because "I'm sometimes overcome by emotion," a trait for which he's admire. It's I'm not sorry for anything that I've ever done.

Biden typically wears his Catholic faith on his sleeve- even when it suits his purpose to think of him as, well, Jewish. If he's "not sorry for anything that I've ever done." in the sacred realm he has a quarrel with a major apostle. In the secular realm, he sounds a little too much like the man currently occupying the top office.

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Anti-Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Too

Though Protestant, I must be anti-Protestant, for I dislike Donald Trump, a professed Presbyterian, Mike Pence (Catholic turned evangelical Protestant), and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, presumed to be the Baptist her father is.

On Monday Ilhan Omar tweeted

Stephen Miller is a white nationalist. The fact that he still has influence on policy and political appointments is an outrage. https://t.co/7NyMDgojd7

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) April 8, 2019

Stephen Miller is a white nationalist. The fact that he still has influence on policy and political appointments is an outrage.

Slamming Omar, GOP strategist, Trump campaign adviser and Orthodox Jew Jeff Ballabon remarked

The fact is, Jews are not only minority. Jews are the most victimized minority in this country, far more than blacks, Muslims and women, which is what Ilhan Omar keeps on being characterized as though she’s being attacked.

That's an actual quote from one of Stephen Miller's defenders, another of whom is Donald Trump:

'What’s completely unacceptable is for Congesswoman [sic] Omar to target Jews, in this case Stephen Miller.' Jeff Ballabon, B2 Strategic, CEO. @Varneyco," Trump tweeted, referencing a segment on Fox Business Network.

Eager to please the boss, Representative Lee Zeldin of New York tweeted "During my time in Congress before @IlhanOmar got here, I didn't once witness another Member target Jewish people like this with the name calling & other personal attacks. In 2019 though, for @IlhanOmar, this is just called Monday."

For Lee Zeldin (and Donald Trump). this is just called dishonest.   Omar did not criticize a Jew; she criticized someone she considered a white nationalist who happens to be Jewish, whose religion would have escaped the attention of most of America if the President hadn't pointed it out.

Successfully straining to be objective, Eric Levitz explains

Reasonable people can disagree about whether or not it is worth maintaining a semantic distinction between individuals who openly identify as white nationalists and those whose words and deeds betray an ideological commitment to maintaining the United States as a majority-white nation.... But we do know that he has tried to ban Chinese students from American universities and pushed for the deportation of Vietnamese refugees who have been in the United States for decades — a policy with no national-security, economic, or assimilationist rationale. We also know that Miller reportedly told a colleague, “I would be happy if not a single refugee foot ever again touched American soil”; and a middle-school classmate, that they couldn’t be friends anymore because of the classmate’s “Latino heritage.” And we know that he wrote in his high-school yearbook, quoting Teddy Roosevelt, “There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100 percent Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else.”

But as Levitz would understand, facts are not at issue when the objective is to stir up animosity among religious and ethnic groups.  There was no mention or hint of Miller's religion, heritage, or ethnicity in Representative Omar's statement. Maintaining merely "Stephen Miller is a white nationalist" who should not have " influence on policy and political appointments," the congresswoman was criticizing someone impersonating a white supremacist who happens to be Jewish.

The GOP response, invoking anti-Semitism out of thin air, was taken following a particular comment by a particular member of Congress. That would qualify me as anti-Protestant, given that I believe that the entire GOP Congress, about half of which is Protestant, is a pack of cowards cowering before a president doing a bad impersonation of a President, a worse one of a human being.

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A Trump Immigration Diversion

President Donald Trump has

once again insisted the US immigration system was overburdened and illegal border crossings must be stopped on a visit to the US-Mexico border in California.

Trump traveled to Calexico, California, on Friday to view a section of the border barrier and participate in a roundtable on immigration.

“There is indeed an emergency on our southern border,” Trump said at the briefing, adding that there had been a sharp uptick in illegal crossings. “It’s a colossal surge, and it’s overwhelming our immigration system. We can’t take you any more. Our country is full.”

Maybe not quite so full. The New York Times notes

In smaller cities and rural areas, demographic decline is a fundamental fact of life. A recent study by the Economic Innovation Group found that 80 percent of American counties, with a combined population of 149 million, saw a decline in their number of prime working-age adults from 2007 to 2017.

Addressing the same topic, Ezra Klein explains that these

communities also see weaker housing markets, higher borrowing costs, and more vacant properties. And because these communities were larger in the past, they find themselves struggling to support infrastructure built for a bigger tax base than they now have.

All of this can create a cycle of exit, in which the residents most able to find jobs elsewhere flee, leaving the economy even weaker, which drives out the next tranche of residents with the best opportunities elsewhere, and so on.

America’s political system is structured to advantage sparsely populated areas over densely populated ones. To the extent that more areas are seeing populations stagnate and even decline, and more economic growth is concentrated in the fastest-growing zip codes, turbulence is to be expected. Arguably, it’s already here.

President Trump has an answer to these demographic realities, maintaining in a briefing at the Mexican border in California

There is indeed an emergency on our southern border. It’s a colossal surge, and it’s overwhelming our immigration system. We can’t take you any more. Our country is full.

Maybe not quite so full. (Continue if you read that a moment earlier.) The Washington Post reports

As President Trump threatened to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border in recent days, his Department of Homeland Security nearly doubled the number of temporary guest worker visas available this summer.

The Homeland Security and Labor departments plan to grant an additional 30,000 H-2B visas this summer on top of the 33,000 they had already planned to give out, the agencies confirmed.

The H-2B visa allows foreign workers to come to the United States legally and work for several months at companies such as landscapers, amusement parks or hotels. About 80 percent of these visas went to people from Mexico and Central America last year, government data shows....

With the additional visas, the Trump administration is on track to grant 96,000 H-2B visas this fiscal year, the most since 2007, when George W. Bush was president.

There is a big problem with people being here illegally, and it's individuals and families overstaying their visas.  Citing a report by the Center for Immigration Studies, Politifact last year found "overstayers were 42 percent, or nearly half, of the country’s undocumented population in 2014" and "with the decline in illegal border crossings, it’s fair to estimate that visa overstayers now account for an increasing share of the country’s undocumented population." That same report, another media outlet summarized

finds that from 2016-2017, people who overstayed their visas accounted for 62 percent of the newly undocumented, while 38 percent had crossed a border illegally.

"It is clear from our research that persons who overstay their visas add to the US undocumented population at a higher rate than border crossers. This is not a blip, but a trend which has become the norm," said Donald Kerwin, CMS' executive director, in a statement.

Xenophobic? Ethnocentric? Evidently not, because Kerwin adds

"As these numbers indicate, construction of hundreds of more miles of border wall would not address the challenge of irregular migration into our country, far from it."

The study also finds that the undocumented population from Mexico fell by almost 400,000 people in 2017 and that since 2010, the number of undocumented from that country fell by 1.3 million.

In Politico last week, three Homeland Security veterans observed "A wall will not stop asylum seekers from coming to the United States and being able to claim asylum. A wall will not address, let alone fix, the issues with America’s asylum system and immigration courts." Nor will it account for the millions of individuals living in the USA illegally.

Donald Trump's policies are only making these problems worse. He is right, though, about one thing: there is a severe immigration problem. It's just not the one he has been selling for nearly four years.

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The Moral High Ground, Lost

Blown opportunity.  On March 6, I wrote (typed)

Yet 6-7 days after Democrat Omar made her comment decrying alleged dual allegiance, House leadership has been unable or unwilling either to remove Omar from the Foreign Relations Committee or to denounce anti-Semitism.

In the coming days, Pelosi and her caucus will do something. The optimum decision would be to remove her from a committee which has jurisdiction over foreign affairs, including in the Middle East, which includes the Jewish state and American ally, Israel.

They did do something. Under the Speaker's leadership, House Democrats pushed through a measure with the support of every Democrat and most Republicans. Omitting the name "Ilhan Omar," the resolution argued "whether from the political right, center or left, bigotry, discrimination, oppression, racism and imputations of dual loyalty threaten American democracy and have no place in American political discourse."

One Democratic aide, perhaps generously, labeled it "a kitchen-sink resolution." Nonetheless, after its passage I hoped "Omar will learn to curb her tongue and Twitter finger."

So far at least, it appears that she has. However, no one has ever lost money betting against Donald J. Trump making a vile remark- or two. And so it was that when he was

Addressing American Jews on Saturday in Las Vegas, President Donald Trump casually invoked the anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty by referring to Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, as “your prime minister.”

Given that Trump was speaking to Jewish Republicans — including Sheldon Adelson, the American casino magnate who is one of Netanyahu’s biggest donors — the president was not wrong to assume that the crowd was strongly pro-Israel, but the accusation that the loyalty of non-Israeli Jews to their home countries is somehow suspect has a long, ugly history.

Later in his address to the Republican Jewish Coalition gathering, Trump referred a second time to American Jews as if they were Israelis by saying that a victory for Democrats in the 2020 election “would cripple our country and very well could leave Israel out there all by yourselves.”

Several journalists expressed discomfort as Trump went on to suggest that his Jewish supporters should explain “to some of your people” in business and finance that they should stop opposing his imposition of tariffs on imported goods.

Prepare to be shocked! shocked! Trump elevated his hypocritical game by remarking during the same speech “Special thanks to Rep. Omar of Minnesota. Oh, I almost forgot. She doesn’t like Israel ... I’m so sorry!”

Trump will be Trump, hypocritical, bigoted, partisan to an unprecedented degree.  But it was a missed opportunity a month ago for the Democratic Party which the President slammed and slandered, and which decided that the words "Ilhan Omar" or even "the congresswoman from the 5th district of Minnesota" could not be uttered in an "anti-hate" resolution.

When Speaker Nancy Pelosi presided over the process which led to the resolution, the Democratic Party considered criticizing the individual who had made the remark(s) which precipitated the vote.Then it whiffed, instead settling on a grab bag of victims, thus (as one GOP opponent properly quipped) "left out the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we left out Wiccans, we left out Jehovah’s Witnesses, we left out disabled people."

Democrats ceded the high ground on anti-Semitism. It was theirs to lose, and they lost it, lost it under Coach Nancy Pelosi, responding to concerns of the black and progressive caucuses. Now President Trump clearly has accused American Jews of dual loyalty, and the Democratic reaction is....... silence.

It didn't have to be this way. Democrats could have placed in front of House members a statement of disapproval of an apparent anti-Semite, passed it overwhelmingly, and now credibly condemned President Trump.

Instead, leadership made an unforced error in deciding not to offend its pro-Palestinian bloc. Now President Trump, whom Democrats realize is reprehensible, has reinforced one of the oldest tropes about American Jewry. In (lack of) response, congressional Democrats, Jew and non-Jew, cannot find their voice. This was a failure of leadership, and for once it was not of Donald Trump's making. 

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Trump And God, A Dyad

He's out of touch, and not only because he likes touching men and women who don't want to be touched. When criticized for praising GOP members of Congress during the fall campaign, Joe Biden responded in January

I read in the New York Times today that one of my problems if I were to run for president, I like Republicans. OK, well, bless me father for I have sinned. From where I come from, I don't know how you get anything done. I don't know how you get anything done unless we start talking to one another again.

From where I come, we all sin and fall short of the glory of God, but he has his Christian church and I have mine.

Switching awkwardly from the people of the Old Testament and the New Testament to the people of solely the Old Testament, I refer to Wikipedia, which explains

Dayenu (Hebrew:דַּיֵּנוּ) is a song that is part of the Jewish holiday of Passover. The word "Dayenu" means approximately "it would have been enough", "it would have been sufficient", or "it would have sufficed" (day in Hebrew is "enough", and -enu the first person plural suffix, "to us"). This traditional up-beat Passover song is over one thousand years old. The earliest full text of the song occurs in the first medieval haggadah, which is part of the ninth-century Seder Rav Amram.[1] The song is about being grateful to God for all of the gifts he gave the Jewish people, such as taking them out of slavery, giving them the Torah and Shabbat, and had God only given one of the gifts, it would have still been enough.

If we had the Internet and not YouTube, it would have been enough. Still, we have one of the interpretations below from YouTube and lyrics here. 

Nonetheless, you need not bother with learning those lyrics praising God for what he did not have to do, yet chose to do. Norm Coleman, who was somehow a United States senator from Minnesota until the great Al Franken (barely) defeated him, is now chairperson of the Republican-Jewish coalition. Introducing President Trump on Saturday at the organization's annual convention, he

led the audience in an adapted version of the Passover reading “Dayenu,” as he recounted what Trump had done for Israel.  “Dayenu” which roughly means "it would have sufficed" is a song of thanks found in the haggadah traditionally sung at during the Seder.

Coleman praised Trump with a speech riffing off the song with phrases like, "Had President Trump only put two conservative Supreme Court judges...Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, we would say: DAYENU. Had President Trump only appointed Nikki Haley ambassador to the UN, sending a powerful message that we will not tolerate the UN's anti-Israel bias: DAYENU."

Coleman was helpfully blasted by Jews including respected blogger Joshua Micah Marshall, William Kristol, and Alaska senator Brian Schatz, the latter asserting “This is not my kind of Judaism and I suspect I’m not alone in that view."

Credit to all those speaking  up for the Judaism Coleman chose to denigrate. Donald Trump has denigrated Christianity for a few years now, and there has been far too little pushback from Christians, especially from those who know better. The Jewish community, the vast majority of which has refused to be suckered by Trump, can handle this swipe at Judaism.So for those of us not Jewish, the main issue is somewhat different.

If Coleman's remarkable insinuation is roundly criticized by Republicans, I'll issue a mea culpa. The chance of that happening is slim and none, and slim has been observed riding out of town.This is not Donald Trump's party. He has not only taken over the party; the party is now Trump.

While most GOP politicians probably don't actually believe that President Trump is God, they at least want voters to believe that he is. Therefore, there will be no compromise. There can be no compromise with God.

Forty-five of every 82 Republicans with an opinion believe God wanted Trump to be President. Sarah H. Sanders claimed God "wanted Donald Trump to become President and that's why he's there."  It was a slippery slope from God putting Trump in the White House to Trump becoming God. God no longer has chosen sides. He is one side.

The disease infecting the GOP is not limited to Donald J. Trump, who retains the approval of nearly 90% of the Republican electorate.Unfortunately, Biden isn't the only Democratic presidential hopeful who does not understand that the problem is not limited to one man. O'Rourke, Buttigieg, are among those who don't recognize that the GOP, headed by the man with God's blessing, believes it is in a death match with its enemies.

However, Biden alone served as Vice President to a President whom Republican voters were unconvinced was born in the USA and whom they wanted obstructed at every opportunity. The other Democrats who want to be President are relatively inexperienced and may still learn.  Joe Biden has had plenty of opportunity and seems still to be completely unaware.

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Accenting The Obvious

At the National Action Network convention in New York City, New York, Representative Alexandria humble-bragging Ocasio-Cortez stated

I'm proud to be a bartender. Ain't nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with working retail folding clothes for other people to buy. There is nothing wrong with preparing the food that your neighbors will eat. There is nothing wrong with driving the buses that take your family to work. There is nothing wrong with being a working person in the United States of America and there is everything dignified about it.

Sandy is no longer a bartender, and has become such a sensation she's often referred to only by her initials, roughly akin to calling mega-superstar Lebron James "LBJ." Nonetheless, No one has said there is anything wrong with folding clothes for other people to buy, preparing food for your neighbors, driving buses, or being a "working person" at all. And if someone had, the congresswoman accepted for herself a responsibility to name names. Understandably, though, that's not the focus of criticism of her remarks, to which Ocasio-Cortez has responded

As much as the right wants to distort & deflect, I am from the Bronx. I act & talk like it, *especially* when I’m fired up and especially when I’m home.

It is so hurtful to see how every aspect of my life is weaponized against me, yet somehow asserted as false at the same time.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 5, 2019

Well, now, that's interesting because nobody- from the Bronx or otherwise- has stepped forward to say that Ocasio-Cortez ever has acted or talked as she did at the NAN gathering.  Unless she's living in the 1970s- well before Ocasio-Cortez was born- she doesn't walk around saying "ain't." Nor is it likely that many of her constituents in the Bronx do, however old they may be.

Nor is "wrong" pronounced like "rahng," as Ocasio-Cortez did, in Manhattan, the Bronx, or Washington, D.C. It's not even a common pronunciation in the deep south. It's from- oh, I don't know, and neither does she.

Whatever accent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was trying to mimic in her verbal analog to blackface, she did a bad job.  And if you're going to patronize a group of people, at least do it well. Sometimes success is an effective defense.

Nevertheless, Ocasio-Cortez has figured out that when the facts are not on your side, accuse your opponent of "weaponizing" something or other, as Trumpaholics are doing.

Now that the House Ways and Means Committee has finally requested Donald Trump's tax returns, House Minority Leader McCarthy claimed Democrats "voted yesterday to weaponize the IRS to attack political opponents."  Representative Kevin Brady of Texas chimed in "That's the dangerous precedent that comes when you weaponize the tax code" while Georgia's Bob Woodall, a GOP member of the Ways and Means Committee, claimed “to see what the Ways and Means Committee is doing, now to use its Article 1 power to weaponize the tax code is really disturbing.” Karl Rove added "weaponizing the IRS in this manner so that you can use the IRS to get the tax return of a political opponent to embarrass them or attack them."

Impressively, Ocasio-Cortez recognizes that this country is not the ethnocentric "America" or even the "United States" but the "United States of America."  So at least she knows where she is, even if she hasn't found the authentic accent.

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