Tag Archives: immigration

International news

Open borders? Bullsh**!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Demagogues make a handsome political killing by throwing out key words and phrases that have little to do with any sort of reality.

Let’s look at the term “open borders.”

Right-wing demagogues are fond of accusing those who oppose their policies of favoring “open borders.” They suggest that any view that opposes construction of walls means by definition that one favors just throwing the borders of this nation open to anyone who wants to enter the United States of America.

These demagogues should be ashamed of themselves.

I dislike building a wall along our border, namely our southern border, which has gotten all the attention during the past four years. I also dislike the notion of throwing our borders open to everyone. I happen to believe in border enforcement. I believe we must insist on legal entry for those who want to live in the United States.

What’s more, I am not going to tolerate any notion that those of us who oppose the build-the-wall fanatics favor “open borders.”

The term is a canard. It seeks to drive wedges between Americans. “Open borders” implies favoring lawlessness. My goodness, let’s not go there.

The demagogues among us are going to keep throwing that inflammatory term out there just to gin up support for a policy that seeks to wall this country off from the rest of the world comprising individuals who believe the United States should stand for opportunity.

Do we need comprehensive and total immigration reform? Absolutely. President Biden has brought back the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program enacted by President Obama but rescinded by Donald Trump. Biden wants to streamline the legalization process for undocumented immigrants to obtain citizenship or permanent resident status.

I do not hear Joe Biden espousing an open-border policy that allows anyone into this country. Demagogues need to be called out when they suggest their foes favor a lawless border policy.

Uncategorized

Welcome them, however …

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden said he is wants to “go big” on an immigration reform proposal for Congress to consider.

I agree with him, but with an important caveat. I want there to be strict border security and enforcement of immigrant-entry rules for those seeking to come to the United States.

The president has unveiled a sweeping reform that enables undocumented residents already living here an eight-year path to seeking citizenship or legal resident status; it seeks to speed up that path for agricultural workers and recipients of the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program; and, yes, it seeks technology to help patrol the nation’s borders.

The childhood arrivals idea, aka DACA, became a favorite target of the Trump administration. Donald Trump rescinded President Obama’s executive order granting a form of amnesty from deportation for those who were brought here illegally as children. Joe Biden then rescinded Trump’s order in a kind of take-that approach to peeling back his predecessor’s policies.

Democrats unveil Biden’s immigration bill, including an eight-year path to citizenship (msn.com)

I am trying to take a longer view of the approach to immigration reform is taking. For sure I do not want to see a continuation of the heartlessness espoused by many of Donald Trump’s immigration advisers, namely that prince of darkness Stephen Miller who sounded for all the world like someone who wants to shut the door completely to all immigration. As the grandson of immigrants, I take deep personal offense at the approach that the Trump administration took and I welcome the more compassionate approach being expressed by the Biden team.

And no, I do not favor any sort of “open border” notion that has become a sort of whipping boy for those on the right who suggest that anything short of walling off the United States is an endorsement of welcoming everyone … legal and illegal immigrants alike. That is the stuff of demagogues.

I want President Biden to deliver on his 2020 campaign promise to fix the nation’s immigration policies. He has thrown a bold plan out there to ponder. Finding common ground is the basis for sound legislation. The president’s decades of experience as a U.S. senator puts him in position to lead that effort.

International news, national news

Biden restores humanity to immigration policy

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden, using the power of the pen, is doing his level best to restore a sense of humanity and compassion to a national immigration policy that took on a radically different tone during the tenure of his immediate presidential predecessor.

Signing executive orders left and right in the Oval Office, Biden has reversed a Donald Trump administration policy that separated children from their parents in a widespread effort to stop illegal entry into this country.

The president said he isn’t enacting a new law, just discarding a bad policy with his executive order. The policy is as inhumane as anything we have seen in the past, oh, 60 or 70 years.

Politico reports: “Fully remedying [Trump’s] actions will take time and require a full government approach,” a senior administration official said in a briefing with reporters on Monday night.

“But President Biden has been very clear about restoring compassion and order to our immigration system and correcting the divisive, inhumane and immoral policies of the last four years,” the official said, adding that Biden’s action, so far, was “just the beginning.”

Biden signs executive orders on family separation and asylum – POLITICO

President Biden’s order establishes a task force that seeks to identify children separated from their parents. The Trump administration enacted what it called a “zero tolerance policy” on illegal entry and separated roughly 5,500 families; more than 600 children remain unaccounted for, according to officials.

President Biden vowed during the 2020 campaign to restore a sense of humanity to our immigration policy. No, he doesn’t favor “open borders,” which has become a demagogic canard for those who favored the family-separation policies enacted by Donald Trump’s administration. Biden’s stated goal is to give undocumented U.S. residents a faster track toward obtaining legal residency status or citizenship.

He wants families restored first. That is what the executive order seeks to do.

national news

Census should count ‘residents,’ not just ‘citizens’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I concede that I am not a constitutional scholar, but I recognize clear and definitive language contained within the U.S. Constitution when I see it.

For example, the Constitution declares that the census should be taken every 10 years and must count all those who live this country. It doesn’t say “citizens.”

So, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that a challenge to a Donald Trump administration effort to limit the census count to just citizens doesn’t have merit. Hmm. The court ruling doesn’t make sense to me.

The court ruled 6-3 — with the conservative majority holding firm — that the complaint was “premature.” The decision by the SCOTUS doesn’t preclude any future challenges, just stops this one at this time.

The court’s conservative majority comprises justices I presume to be “originalists,” meaning that they take the founders’ words as written literally. The founders were clear on who should be counted. That’s why they said the census should include all “residents.”

What does this mean? It means that if the Trump exclusion holds up, states — such as Texas, which is home to many thousands of residents who aren’t U.S. citizens — can be denied the congressional representation they deserve. In addition to counting all U.S. residents, we’re going to reapportion the House of Representatives alignment; Texas stands to gain as many as three more House members because of our state’s population growth since 2010.

As ABC News has reported:

Immigrant advocates who sued Trump over the policy stressed that the Court’s move does not mean the fight is over.

“This ruling does not authorize President Trump’s goal of excluding undocumented immigrants from the Census count used to apportion the House of Representatives,” said ACLU attorney Dale Ho. “The legal mandate is clear — every single person counts in the Census, and every single person is represented in Congress. If this policy is ever actually implemented, we’ll be right back in court challenging it.”

Yes, this ruling does involve undocumented immigrants. Indeed, that is the crux of the conservative argument in support  of the Trump exclusion. Let’s not forget to include the so-called “Dreamers” who were brought here as young children by their parents who entered the nation illegally. Those folks once again are being punished unfairly because of something they could not control.

The Supreme Court has punted on this issue for now. My hope would be that judicial conservatives stick to the principle that they believe the founders had it right when they inscribed the method for counting every person who lives in this country.

national news

DACA recipients get a boost from judge

(Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)exe

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents have gotten a welcome boost from a federal judge who has informed the Homeland Security department to start accepting applications to become involved in a program established during the Obama administration.

These residents are those who came here illegally as children, brought to the United States by their parents. They’re called “Dreamers,” and the Obama administration shielded them from deportation through the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals act. President Obama established DACA by executive order; Donald Trump rescinded that order, seeking to end the DACA initiative.

Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis’ ruling restores DACA for those Dreamers, giving them a chance to seek citizenship or legal resident status.

Indeed, as I’ve noted already on this blog, DACA recipients need some compassion from the U.S. government. Many of them came here as children, some as toddlers or infants. They know no other country than the United States. They have no connection to their country of birth. The Trump administration sought to round them up and send them packing to their birth country, which to my way of thinking is absolutely cruel in the extreme.

President-elect Biden is vowing immigration reform legislation in his first 100 days in office. It must include a permanent restoration of DACA for those who are willing to do what they must to become citizens or legal residents.

They have been given another reprieve from a federal judge to start that process once again.

As CNN.com reported: “Immigrant youth have resisted this cruel administration’s continuous attacks, and once more we have won,” said Johana Larios. “Now, first-time applicants like me will be able to have access to the DACA program and current recipients will be able to breathe a little easier as DACA is restored to its original form. I am now able to look forward to returning to school, and feel safe that I won’t be separated from my community.”

I am hoping for a return to humane immigration policies.

national news

Biden a ‘far lefty’? Huh?

Stop it, Mr. President. You’re killin’ me!

You’re now trying to paint Joe Biden as some sort of squishy far-left, socialist-leaning, open-borders guy who will take our guns from us and appoint wacky loons to the federal judiciary.

Forgive the candor, Mr. President … but I think you’re off your rocker.

The first signs of the kind of campaign you are going to wage against the former vice president are coming into sharper focus now that the Republican National Convention has commenced.

I don’t listen to you when you speak on my TV. If I don’t turn the TV off I’ll mute the volume, given that you have nothing — not a single damn thing — to say that I want to hear.

However, the media report what you say and I do read media reports. They say you’re accusing Biden — an establishment Democrat if there ever was one — of adhering to some far-left idiocy.

I think of all the things you have accused Biden of supporting, I laugh the hardest at the open-borders assertion. Jumpin’ jiminy, Mr. POTUS, no reasonable American wants to throw open our borders. Indeed, the term “open borders” implies no enforcement of immigration laws, no intercepting of undocumented immigrants. Has the former VP ever said anything that suggests such nonsense? Umm. Let me think. No. He hasn’t.

Yet you keep yapping that he wants open borders. That he’s now a tool of the far left.

You seek to denigrate Biden the way you did to Hillary Clinton. The former vice president is trading on his decency, on his compassion, on the very virtues that you lack. That will be his staunchest defense against the scurrilous attacks you are going to launch against him.

So, I cannot wish you “luck” in your effort to defame a decent — and knowledgeable — political foe. I will turn away from you whenever you spout that nonsense and I intend fully to call attention to the lies you spew whenever they fly out of your mouth.

See you in the funny papers, Mr. President.

national news

Immigrants, yes; also American patriots

The picture attached to this blog post is of three of my grandparents.

The woman on the left is my father’s mother, Katina; the gentleman is my mother’s father, George; the other woman is Mom’s mother, Diamondoula. I don’t know who snapped this photo; perhaps it was Dad’s father, John.

What do they have in common? For starters, they were immigrants. They came to this country from southeastern Europe. Dad’s parents came from southern Greece, while Mom’s parents came here from Turkey. They all were Greeks and proud of their heritage.

They had something else in common. They all loved the United States of America.

I want to honor them today to remind you about an immutable fact of this country: The U.S. of A. was built by immigrants. Whether they came her voluntarily, as my grandparents did, or were rounded up and transported here aboard slave ships, they all built this nation.

My grandparents were the proudest Americans you ever would want to know.

Dad’s parents brought seven children into the world, four of whom served in the military. Dad served in the Navy during World War II; one of his brothers fought for the Army during the Korean War, while his other brother saw Army duty in Europe between the Korean and Vietnam wars; one of his sisters served in the Navy. Mom’s parents produced three children; her two brothers both served in the military; one of them fought with Army Air Corps during World War II; the other served as an Army reserve colonel.

I want to salute my grandparents because they were Americans by choice. They forged a good life in this land. They honored the nation by flying the flag proudly. My maternal grandmother adored Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy, keeping pictures of JFK in her home.

The current political discourse contains an unhealthy dose of anti-immigrant dogma. One of the president’s closest advisers is known to be anti-immigrant and has infused the president with the notion that we need a “merit-based” immigration policy that allows only those identified as potential high achievers into the country. Under that policy, none of my grandparents would have qualified … and the United States would have been made immeasurably poorer by their exclusion.

This weekend we’re going to honor the founding of this nation. We’ll celebrate it under a cloud brought to us by the pandemic. Still, we will honor our founders’ genius in crafting the framework that put together the world’s most indispensable nation.

I intend to honor — and recall with great fondness — the contributions that my grandparents made after arriving here from far away places.

They became the greatest of Americans … and played a major role in making America great.

legal news

SCOTUS scores a win for DACA recipients

It looks for all the world as if the U.S. Supreme Court has been smitten by a case of humanity along with a touch of compassion.

The court issued a ruling, albeit a narrow 5-4 decision, that upholds the Obama administration’s executive order protecting the residency status of hundreds of thousands of folks who came here illegally, many of whom as children brought to the United States by their parents.

President Obama issued the order called Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. It protected about 650,000 immigrants from deportation. Donald Trump rescinded that order. The high court, though, today said “not so fast.”

Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four progressive justices in siding with DACA recipients, writing the opinion that said Trump’s order lacked sufficient legal foundation.

This a good deal. Many, if not most, DACA recipients have known no other country but the United States. Many of them are unfamiliar with their country of birth. They speak English. They attend school here. They work here. They pay U.S. taxes. They live as de facto Americans. Except that they aren’t citizens.

Donald Trump sought to ship them out, send them back to a country with which they have no understanding or familiarity. Politico reports: Roberts, who has emerged in recent years as a semi-regular swing justice on the court, wrote the majority opinion concluding that the decision to phase-out the program was unlawful because it did not consider all the options to rein in the program and failed to account for the interests of those who relied on it.

So the fight continues. It appears that the Trump administration will be unable to craft a new order in time for the November election.

My hope is that if Trump loses the election that the new president, Joe Biden, will scrap the effort to eliminate the DACA program and allow these once-young immigrants to continue to pursue their dream of living in the land of opportunity … provided, of course, that they seek to legalize their standing as U.S. residents.

national news

The Wall buckles under the wind

We chuckled a bit in our house today when we heard this news: Stiff wind knocked over a portion of The Wall that Donald John Trump is seeking to build along our southern border.

We were able to laugh because there was no injury or loss of property. Just a portion of The Wall was blown over near El Centro, Calif.; a portion of the structure fell into Mexico.

It illustrates one of the many problems facing Trump’s effort to erect this structure, which he said Mexico would finance. Mexico has responded categorically: Oh, no we won’t!

The wind along out border poses just one obstacle for construction of this barrier. If you’ve been anywhere near El Paso or along the Trans-Pecos region of far West Texas, you kind of understand the wind-related problems associated with building a wall that is strong enough to withstand the battering it will take.

Then we have the issue of purchasing private land to build this structure. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees just compensation on matters such as this. It’s going to get mighty expensive for a federal government that is running an annual budget deficit that exceeds $1 trillion.

And so it goes. Trump keeps insisting Mexico will pay for a wall. Meanwhile, he is pushing to spend our money appropriated for other purposes to foot the bill that is supposed to go to Mexico.

Are you confused? So am I.

Meanwhile, the wind howls and parts of The Wall fall down.

local news

What? Right-wing Amarillo bucks governor’s refugee ban?

How about that New York Times, for my money the greatest newspaper in the nation if not the world? It is reporting that Amarillo, Texas, the unofficial “capital city” of the right-wing Texas Panhandle is taking a dim view of Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to ban refugees from settling in Texas.

We used to live in Amarillo. We had a wonderful life there. We are forging a new wonderful life in the Metroplex. But I was fully aware of Amarillo’s reputation as a hotbed for far right-wing political thought. The NY Times article suggests a latent reservoir of good will. God bless Amarillo and the NY Times.

The article cites how Amarillo has been a magnet for refugees for many years. Many refugees have become part of the community. They contribute to the community’s life. They have been embraced by their neighbors. They call themselves Americans.

Abbott, though, has issued an order that declared that Texas would become the first state in the Union to opt out of a presidential edict that gives states the option of accepting or rejecting refugees; Abbott has shut the door on new refugees.

That ain’t the American — or the Texan — way, governor. The Times article spells out how Amarillo has opened its door — not to mention its heart — to those who have ventured to the Panhandle, which the Times article describes as a somewhat desolate, wind-swept, dusty place.

As the Times reports: Here in Amarillo, which for a time took in more refugees per capita than any other Texas city, few share the governor’s alarm over refugees, and those who do have a far more nuanced view. They have long lived with refugees, not as abstract political talking points, but as neighbors.

Refugee Services of Texas and Catholic Charities of the Texas Panhandle have taken on the refugee issue head-on, helping resettle 7,000 individuals from 2007 to 2017, the Times reports.

The article makes me proud of the city my wife and I called home for more than two decades.

Here is the full article in the New York Times.

Amarillo will remain a stronghold of support for Donald Trump and for Gov. Abbott. It is full of many fine individuals who understand that they live in a place that serves as a beacon for those who need a refuge from oppression and tyranny