Tag Archives: immigration

International news

Immigration doesn’t harm culture

I just heard once again Donald J. Trump’s comments about “immigration” in Europe.

He told The Sun newspaper in London about how “immigration” was harming Europe. How it was hurting Europe’s “culture.” How it was going to change the continent “and not in a good way.”

What I didn’t hear from Donald J. Trump’s mouth was the word “illegal” preceding the word “immigration” or “immigrants.”

So, what are we to presume? I’ll take a leap and suggest that Trump doesn’t favor immigration. He believes the immigrants who are going to Europe — legally or as refugees from persecution in, say, the Middle East or Africa — present a problem for Europe.

Doesn’t the Xenophobe in Chief understand the value that immigrants bring to any region of the world? He, of course, has declared open warfare against immigrants who want to enter the United States. Yes, I understand that he has zeroed in on illegal immigrants. However, he continues to paint them all with the same broad brush, making damning presumptions about all of them: they’re coming here to commit violent crimes against Americans.

Fascinating, yes, coming from someone who has been married to two women who were immigrants, one from Czechoslovakia and one from Slovenia.

So what does the president presume to know about European “culture” that suggests immigration endangers it?

Moreover, how does he define “European culture”? Does he actually believe that the continent of Europe comprises sovereign nations that adhere to a singular culture?

We see yet again another demonstration of the president’s ignorance about the world, not to mention the very nation he was elected to lead.

International news

Europe is ‘losing its culture’? Which ‘culture’ is it, Mr. POTUS?

Donald J. Trump needs to read more. He needs to understand the world. He needs to get a grip on the world as it is, as it has been and what it will become.

The president has declared that immigration is destroying Europe’s “culture.” Now, think about that for a moment.

Europe comprises disparate nations. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting a handful of them. Greece is nothing like The Netherlands; Germany and Denmark are separate nations with unique identities; Sweden and Great Britain are worlds apart.

My point is that there is no such thing as a monolithic European “culture.”

However, the president took time this week to disparage immigrants who are going to Europe, many of them fleeing persecution in their home countries, some of which I’ll presume Trump thinks of as “sh**holes.”

Donald Trump once again is revealing a sinister element of his world view. It suggests to me a deep-seated racist and xenophobic view of how the world should be.

As The Hill reported: The president’s comments during his interview with The Sun, however, highlighted Trump’s deeply held skepticism of immigration and resurfaced a line of attack that he had used often on the campaign trail — that Europe was being overrun by non-Europeans and was quickly becoming a shell of what it once was.

“I think you are losing your culture,” he told the tabloid. “Look around. You go through certain areas that didn’t exist ten or 15 years ago.”

Donald Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

For the president of the United States — which used to welcome people from throughout the entire rest of the world — to seek to slam the door shut on immigrants is to ignore our own country’s history.

Indeed, the United States of America’s culture is a conglomeration of many cultures. Each of them is unique and each of them has contributed mightily to the greatness that defines America.

Now he’s spreading his anti-immigrant poison to Europe?

Disgraceful.

military news, national news, political news

Military taking a big bite out of its own hand

Donald Trump must really mean it when he implies that America should become an immigrant-unfriendly place.

The New York Times has published a story that tells of how the U.S. Army is ordering an increasing number of legal immigrants out of the military service. Why? According to one of them — an immigrant from China, with a business degree, a wife and a small child — they are deemed “unsuitable.”

As the Times noted in its story, the Army is booting out an increasing number of immigrants even though it cannot meet its recruitment goals for 2018.

The program, adopted during the Bush 43 administration, is designed to allow legal immigrants a fast track to citizenship. The Trump administration seems to see little value in the program.

What a disgraceful display of un-American treatment of men and women who come here to this country on their volition and want to serve in our military.

The irony is so rich you can taste it, given that the commander in chief sought to avoid military service during the Vietnam War by obtaining a series of student and medical deferments.

Take a look at the NY Times story here.

I am reminded of a time when this country granted automatic citizenship to immigrants who enlisted in the armed forces. How do I know that? My own grandfather, George Filipu, became an instantaneous American by enlisting in the Army in 1918. He wanted to fight in World War I. But then the war ended in November of that year. He didn’t get into the fight — but he retained his U.S. citizenship.

That’s what service and commitment to our country is all about.

The young man who might now be deported to China — after swearing an oath to “protect and defend the U.S. Constitution — now might be punished in his home country simply by enlisting in a foreign military organization.

That’s how you “put America first”? I don’t think so.

national news, political news

Hey, POTUS just ‘tells it like it is’

Donald John Trump’s tweet storms are overwhelming him.

Slate.com reports that the president has just denied saying something he actually said via Twitter three days ago.

The Slate.com article is here.

He said this weekend that he never asked Republicans in Congress to vote on an immigration bill.

But, but, but …

Three days earlier, in an all-capital-letter tweet — to emphasize the point, I guess — he did encourage Republicans to do precisely the very thing he would deny urging them to do.

Is this just the president “telling it like it is”?

To me, it is the president fumbling, bumbling and stumbling his way around a process of which he has zero understanding.

Weird.

national news

‘Dreamers’ are still getting kicked around

Oh, man, I hate that so-called “Dreamers” keep getting kicked around like the political football they have become.

It happened yet again as the U.S. House of Representatives voted down a compromise immigration bill that, among other things, gave Dreamers a “pathway to U.S. citizenship.” Conservatives saw that “pathway” provision and translated it to “amnesty.” They would have none of it.

This bill also included money for a wall. I don’t give a damn about the wall, other than I hate the idea of it. My thought today is about the Dreamers.

Dreamers are those who came this country as the children of illegal immigrant parents who brought them across the border in the search for a better life. They were granted a temporary reprieve from deportation by President Obama who signed an executive order creating the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program, aka DACA.

DACA residents deserve that pathway. They shouldn’t be deported because their parents brought them here. Many of them were babies. They know no other country. They are de facto Americans.

But in the Age of Trump, all illegal immigrants — even DACA residents — are now thought to be criminals. They need to be deported.

This is heartless. It is inhumane. It is un-American.

media news, national news

‘Easier to judge quickly than to take time to understand’

Philip Rucker is a first-class reporter for The Washington Post. He posted a Twitter item that stated:

First Lady Melania Trump in speech tonight: “Kindness, compassion, and positivity are very important traits in life. It is far easier to say nothing than it is to speak words of kindness. It is easier to judge quickly than to take time to understand.”

I am blown away by part of what the first lady said.

“It is easier to judge quickly than to take time to understand.”

That’s what she said, according to Rucker. She is correct. Spot on. However, as with most matters involving the first lady, one must feel a bit of pain for her, given that she is married to someone who is too damn eager to “judge quickly” and is so very reluctant to “take time to understand.”

Illegal immigrants, anyone?

Consider what the president of the United States keeps saying about those who enter this country without the proper immigration documents. He is labeling them all with the same epithet. They’re criminals intent on doing serious harm to Americans, he keeps telling us.

The president refuses to “take time to understand” why they’re coming here. Refugees? Escaping crime? Fleeing persecution? In search of a better life for them and their families?

Who needs to “take time” to realize that not all illegal immigrants are motivated by evil intent? They aren’t all coming here for nefarious reasons.

The president is exhibiting a shameful prejudice toward all illegal immigrants and, by implication, almost all of those who come to this country.

If only the first lady’s wisdom could get through to her husband, who remains blind and deaf to the pleas of those who admonish him to cease the cruelty of his views toward immigrants.

It’s a lost cause. A president who makes public policy pronouncements via Twitter isn’t going to heed anyone’s advice. Not even his wife.

International news, national news

Due process? Who needs it?

Donald J. Trump, the champion of due process and the rule of law, has decided, um, that he wants to toss it all out the window in his quest to rid the United States of every single person who comes here illegally.

The president launched another Twitter tirade today in which he suggested rounding up every illegal immigrant he can find and then sending them back immediately to their country of origin.

“No court cases,” he said. “No judges,” he added. Just round ’em up. Get rid of ’em.

This kind of red — and raw — meat plays well with his base. That’s his audience anyway. The rest of us? He doesn’t care.

According to The Washington Post: “We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,” Trump wrote. “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order. Most children come without parents.”

The president continued in a second tweet, “Our Immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, is very unfair to all of those people who have gone through the system legally and are waiting on line for years! Immigration must be based on merit — we need people who will help to Make America Great Again!”

There he goes yet again. He is painting every illegal immigrant with the same broad brush, presuming that every one of them is here to bring havoc to Americans, that they want to kill us, rape us, sell us illegal drugs, kidnap our children and then peddle them as sex slaves.

Due process? U.S. immigration law gives illegal immigrants certain rights, such as the right to have their cases heard by a judge. The president doesn’t give a damn about that.

Get rid of all of them, he said.

His posture is not going to “make America great again.” It is going to make us a pariah state.

Disgraceful.

International news

‘Merit-based’ immigration policy? Define ‘merit’

What is seemingly lost in all the furor over the “zero tolerance” debate and the fate of children taken from their parents at the southern border is a key element of Donald Trump’s proposed immigration policy.

The president said it again just this week. He wants a “merit-based” immigration policy that allows for a greater degree of selectivity. If you have something to contribute to the United States … you’re in. If you’re, um, not so meritorious, well, call us when you deserve to be admitted.

Trump wants to restrict legal immigration while eliminating illegal immigration. I am with him on the effort to make all immigrants enter this country legally, with proper documentation.

It’s the caveat he is seeking to attach to legal immigrants that bothers me in the extreme.

I am the grandson of immigrants. All four of my grandparents came to this country at the turn of the 20th century. They weren’t highly educated. They didn’t bring special talents or skill — although my maternal grandfather was fluent or conversant in about seven languages, owing to his years of service as a merchant seaman.

I am unclear whether any of them would have made the cut under Donald Trump’s plan to institute a merit-based immigration policy.

Here’s another thing to consider: Two of my grandparents came from Greece, two came from Turkey. I am wondering here and now whether Trump considers Turkey — a predominantly Muslim nation — to be a “sh**hole country” along the lines of El Salvador, Haiti or anywhere in Africa.

This nation — with the exception of Native Americans — is made up of people who all were immigrants. Most of our ancestors came here voluntarily; others of them were forced to come here — as slaves!

To suggest that we set the bar higher than many immigrants can clear is to deny our nation’s history and its tradition of being a land that opens its doors — along with its arms and heart — to the rest of the world.

International news, national news, State news

Is the president creating a crisis where none exists?

I keep getting this feeling in my gut that Donald J. Trump’s insistence that we have an immigration “crisis” is a figment of the president’s imagination.

Or worse, it is a ploy he is using to curry favor with Americans who have this fear about immigrants of all stripes, legal or otherwise.

Trump keeps harping on the flood of immigrants pouring through our “open border” to do harm to Americans. He is managing to cast all immigrants in the same ultra-negative light: They’re murderers, rapists, drug dealers, sex traffickers, kidnappers.

Here’s the nasty part of it: Trump appears to be succeeding in this hideous effort.

The media are covering this “zero tolerance” story with zeal and aggressiveness. The children who have been separated from their parents and sent to something called “tender age” internment camps have broken our hearts. Former first ladies have issued statements condemning the practice.

I keep asking myself: Why? Why are we reacting with such hysteria over this story?

I heard a statistic the other day about how border crossings are down. Yet to listen to the president tell it, the nation’s southern border is awash in people pouring northward into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

I don’t spend a lot of time along the Texas border with Mexico, although I recently did travel to Laredo. My wife and I spent a few nights at a Texas state park along the Rio Grande River. We also spent some time on the road traveling southeast along the river.

What did we see during those few days along the border? We saw Texans going about their daily lives. We looked at families playing at parks. We saw people shopping. They were enjoying meals. They were walking their pets along city streets.

We saw life continuing at a normal pace.

We did not see a community in crisis. We didn’t see a region gripped by a flood of illegal immigrants/criminals.

This was two years ago. Has it changed dramatically since then?

I think not.

I also believe the president of the United States — who launched his first political campaign in 2015 with a pledge to curb immigration along our southern border — has created a crisis where none exists.

Sickening.

International news

Only Congress can fix it? How did POTUS do it?

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen made it clear: Only Congress can fix the situation regarding the policy that enabled Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to separate children from their parents at the border.

The president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, said the same thing.

So did the White House press office.

What, then, happened today? The president signed an executive order doing the very thing he and his aides could be done only by congressional fiat.

Was the president lying? Did he tell the nation’s DHS secretary to lie? Did the secretary lie on her own, all by herself?