Tag Archives: illegal immigrants

State news

On the border: more of the same

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A young man I know who is a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper has just returned from another deployment on Texas’s southern border.

He said he noticed that “it’s all the same down there. The same ol’ same ol’.” Gov. Greg Abbott has been sending troopers to the border to assist US Border Patrol officers and local police in rounding up illegal immigrants.

“Nothing is going to change until after the election if Donald Trump wins,” my DPS friend told me. Then he said two things are bound to happen. Trump’s get-tough policies will return and “those who now are trying to get into this country won’t want to come here” if Trump is elected.

He said DPS then won’t need to go to the border to lend a hand.

Hmm. Interesting, I thought to myself. I should have said that Abbott won’t send DPS troopers to the border because he won’t want to stick it in Trump’s ear the way he does with President Biden. I didn’t tell him so.

I guess it doesn’t matter to many Texans that Biden did issue an executive order that shuts down the border when crossings exceed a certain amount. Does that constitute an “open border policy”?

Not even close.

International news

Biden needs policy reset

I trust you’re sitting down while reading this brief blog post, so with that I’ll offer something some of you might not expect.

President Joe Biden needs to perform a serious reset on what is a serios foreign policy blunder: the immigration crisis along our southern border.

The first task at hand for the Biden administration is to use the term “crisis” in describing what is occurring along our border with Mexico.

That said, I will continue to resist Republicans’ demagogic accusation that President Biden favors “open borders.” He damn sure does nothing of the sort, given the number of immigrants our Border Patrol and state law enforcement officers are rounding up daily.

I get that using certain terminology doesn’t constitute a substantive policy change by itself. It does, though, fill the air with rhetoric that the administration understands the problem with which it is dealing.

The refusal to call it a crisis appears to be a Democratic Party thing. Recall that Texas Democratic governor candidate Beto O’Rourke refused to call the immigration issue a crisis. It cost him votes on Election Day.

Do I favor deporting every single illegal immigrant immediately back to the country from where they came? No. I do believe there absolutely needs some serious streamlining of the process that enables those seeking refuge from tyranny to seek permanent resident status.

What appears to be developing on our border is chaos feeding more chaos. That has to stop. The Biden administration also needs to call it what it is: a crisis.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, local news, State news

Praying for DACA recipients

I am going to say my prayers tonight. Yes, I think often of my family and pray for their good health and safety and for my friends, many of whom have suffered death in their family.

I also am going to pray for the survival of a humane and to my mind a  totally acceptable public policy. The Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals needs to stay on the books. Why? Because it grants U.S. residents who were brought here as children protection from being deported … even though they have done nothing wrong as de facto Americans.

The Texas Tribune reports: In 2018, Texas and other Republican-led states filed a lawsuit against the federal government arguing that the Obama administration overreached its power by creating an immigration program without Congress’ approval. The lawsuit has led to a yearslong legal battle.

DACA recipients prepare for possible end of program as court ruling looms | The Texas Tribune

DACA came into being as the result of an executive order issued by President Obama. It is meant to protect those who came here as children, some of whom were infants and toddlers. Many thousands of these children have grown into responsible adults; they have paid their taxes; many of them have achieved academic excellence.

What’s more, they did all of this in the only country they ever have known. Those who were brought here as children only did so because they were too young to act independently.

And now some of us want them deported? To a country they don’t know? It is inhumane to the max to punish these DACA recipients in this manner.

Therefore, I will pray that they can be allowed to stay in this country, allowed to seek citizenship or permanent legal resident status and be allowed to continue to contribute to the country where they came of age.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, State news

Voter fraud: reddest of herrings

I am likely to begin screaming at the top of my lungs.

What will cause me such apoplexy? It will occur the next time I hear Donald John “Smartest Man in History in Chief” Trump declare that mail-in voting is an inherently corrupt method of exercising our rights as citizenship.

The second-most probable cause for my scream would be to hear it from his Republican cultists who like to echo the idiocy that pours forth from the nation’s No. 1 liar.

Texas might allow voters to cast their ballots by mail for the July runoff elections that were delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, it is that very health crisis that gives all-mail voting the legs it normally wouldn’t necessarily have.

I need to remind everyone who fears a non-existent threat of “rampant voter fraud” of this fundamental truth.

It is this: We already have voter fraud in this country. It’s been a small problem in certain pockets of the country for, oh, about as long as we have had a United States of America. Every now and then, we hear about cadavers casting ballots; does Duval County, Texas, ring a bell for anyone?

Do we have widespread, rampant voter fraud now? No. We do not!

Does mail-in voting necessarily produce voter fraud? No. It does not!

How does one define “widespread” voter fraud? Well, I suggest it involves a level of fraudulent voting that far exceeds the hit-miss instances we hear about on occasion.

In 2016, roughly 135 million Americans voted for president of the United States. The vast bulk of those votes went either to Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Virtually every ballot cast in 2016 was done according to the rules set by every state in the nation.

However, you will recall that Trump came forth with an accusation that since has been debunked and dismissed, that about 5 million “illegal aliens” voted for Clinton, giving her the 3-million vote plurality she won; Trump was elected, though, because he won enough Electoral College votes to win the presidency.

My point is that Trump’s yammering about mail-in voting “corruption” is merely a continuation of his ongoing bitching about the voting process.

Voter fraud is a canard, a phony-baloney excuse to disguise Trump’s real intent, which is to deny Americans the ability to vote. Mail-in voting boosts turnout tremendously and empowers Americans who otherwise might be inclined to sit on their hands.

With the nation still reeling from a pandemic, we need to search for ways to keep our democratic process alive and well.

State news

‘Mistakes were made,’ governor? Who made them?

I worked for a newspaper editor who detests passive-voice sentence construction. He drilled it into us to write with active-voice construction.

So, when I hear a politician say that “mistakes were made,” I think of my former editor — and current friend — and I see such a statement as a way of a politician seeking to cover his a**.

The basic difference between passive and active voice grammar is that the reader understands who is doing the deed being described in the text he or she is reading.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has said that “mistakes were made” in the release of a fundraising letter the day before the shootings in El Paso and Dayton. The letter sought to gin up support for efforts to “DEFEND” the Texas border against, I presume, illegal immigrants.

The letter went out and then a moron drove from Collin County to El Paso, Texas, and opened fire at a Walmart shopping center, killing 22 people, most of whom were of Latin American descent. Is there a connection? Maybe, perhaps.

As the Texas Tribune reported: “I did get the chance to visit with the El Paso delegation and help them understand that mistakes were made and course correction has been made,” he said.

The Tribune continued: “The national Democrat machine has made no secret of the fact that it hopes to ‘turn Texas blue.’ If they can do it in California, they can do it in Texas — if we let them,” Abbott wrote in the fundraising appeal.

The governor signed off with another pointed warning: “Unless you and I want liberals to succeed in their plan to transform Texas — and our entire country — through illegal immigration, this is a message we MUST send.”

I am left to ask: Who made the mistakes and what is the precise nature of the “course correction”?

I am quite certain my former editor, who has returned to Texas, will read that statement and go into apoplectic shock over Gov. Abbott’s passive-voice a**-covering.

International news

No, Mr. POTUS: The U.S. isn’t ‘full’

Mr. President, how many times do we have to tell you that your anti-immigrant rhetoric is un-American?

Your recent trip to the California-Mexico border contained more of the same, tired rhetoric about how you intend to crack down on illegal immigration, how you want to stop drug traffickers from entering the United States and how you no longer want asylum seekers to even bother making the effort to escape oppression in their home countries.

You said the country is “full.” There’s no more room at the proverbial inn? Is that what you mean?

So now you give Mexico a year to shut down the illegal drug trade before you carry out your threat to “close the border.” Yeah, I heard you say that “I’m not messing around.”

Then you “mess around” by backing off on your shut it down now mantra by declaring you intention to wait a year? Do you know what that tells me, Mr. President? It tells me your initial threat was as phony as all the other threats you fire out there.

You said you want to repeal the Affordable Care Act now. Then you say you want to wait until after the November 2020 presidential election. Same thing, Hoss. That initial threat was hollow. It was phony. Bogus. It was full of crap.

Mr. President, the United States is not full. We comprise about 3.7 million square miles. We are a big and until now a welcoming country. Hey, my grandparents — all four of them — came here in search of a better life than what they had in southern Europe. They found it and contributed more to the advancement of the American ideal than you’ll ever contribute.

They believed in the American dream. You were born into immense wealth and you believe in personal enrichment.

You may stop the bloviating and the bluster about shutting down our southern border. You are now more than welcome to stop proclaiming that the door is now shut, that the “United States is full.”

No sir. It isn’t.

International news

Is it really a ‘national emergency’ on the border?

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I cannot possibly profess to know all there is to know, but one current issue has me baffled in the extreme.

I am unable to discern where along our nation’s southern border we are experiencing a “national emergency.” Donald Trump is now threatening to declare that such an emergency exists if he doesn’t persuade Congress to appropriate $5.7 billion to build The Wall.

The president has just backed down from a standoff he engaged in with congressional Democrats. The partial government shutdown was called off. Trump didn’t get any money for The Wall. He said he would keep the government shuttered for as long as it takes until he got money for The Wall. Then he caved, blinked, backpedaled, retreated . . . whatever you want to call it.

Now comes the threat to declare a national emergency. What does it mean? It means that Trump can deploy military personnel to build The Wall and move money appropriated for other projects to finance its construction. Former U.S. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, a Texas Panhandle Republican, has said such a move runs counter to Pentagon policy and that the military mission should not include wall construction.

What’s more, if he does declare such an emergency, the president can expect an immediate and ferocious legal challenge from congressional Democrats.

I do not live along the border, but I do live in a border state. Texas shares the longest stretch of any of the four states that border Mexico. The entire Texas-Mexico border is along the Rio Grande River. In some areas along that river, it is virtually impossible for anyone to enter one country from the other.

Back to my point. Is there really and truly an emergency occurring down yonder? I have trouble believing that the illegal immigration situation today is any worse than it has been for decades. Indeed, I keep hearing about surveys that tell us that illegal border crossings have declined in recent years. Border Patrol agents have been arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants for as long as the agency has existed.

Trump has sought to scare the daylights out of Americans by implying that hordes of illegal immigrants are pouring across the border to commit all manner of crimes against unsuspecting Americans. I will admit I haven’t spent a lot of time on the border, but I have been there and have wondered where the hordes of criminals have been hiding.

I am simply not going to accept the president’s assertion about the need to declare an emergency. I really wonder if it really exists.

media news

Twitter use? Sure, why not? ‘Fake News’ epithet? Unacceptable

I have learned to accept that Donald Trump is going to use Twitter to express himself whenever he wants. I don’t like it, but that’s his way of communicating, so I’ll let that aspect ride.

What I cannot let stand is his continual use of the term “fake news” to describe media with which he disagrees.

He said this regarding the Davos economic summit, which he decided to skip  because of the partial government shutdown:

Last time I went to Davos, the Fake News said I should not go there. This year, because of the Shutdown, I decided not to go, and the Fake News said I should be there. The fact is that the people understand the media better than the media understands them!

C’mon, Mr. President! Knock off the “fake news” epithet.

He throws that term out whenever he describes media outlets that report news he finds objectionable, which is another way of saying he dislikes media that report the news accurately.

Moreover, the president of the United States is the uncrowned king of fake news. He foments lies continually. He has continued to speak untruths about current events, about his political foes, about the media. He promotes “fakes news” whenever he opens his trap and says things such as:

Barack Obama was ineligible to run for president because he wasn’t a U.S. citizen; he witnessed thousands of Muslims cheering the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11; millions of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016; the “caravan” of refugees fleeing Central America contained many “Middle Eastern” terrorists intent on killing Americans.

That’s just a sample of what I am talking about. The president is the master of “fake news.” For him to accuse the media of promoting “fake news” is just, well, another example of Donald Trump’s penchant for prevarication.

International news, national news

POTUS moving ball slowly toward compromise

I’ve been rolling Donald J. Trump’s latest gambit on this government shutdown nonsense around in my noggin.

Here is what I’ve come up with: The president seems to be inching ever so slowly toward compromise with congressional Democrats who do not want to build The Wall along our southern border.

I don’t want The Wall built either. Or whatever form it takes: slats, chain-link fence, steel wall, concrete. None of it sounds appealing to me as an American who hates The Wall but who supports the notion of enhancing border security.

Trump, though, has pitched an enticing notion: He is willing to grant illegal immigrants who came here as children a three-year “amnesty” that enables them to start walking down a “path to citizenship.” We call ’em Dreamers. They came here when their parents entered the nation illegally. They formerly were protected under a program called Deferred Action for Children Arrivals, or DACA. Trump rescinded that Barack Obama-issued executive order.

Now he’s budging a good bit on giving DACA recipients a break.

That is progress. It’s not enough to suit Democrats. Interestingly, the president also has pi**** off hardliners on his far right who don’t want DACA recipients to get a break, even though they did nothing wrong on their own to get here; many thousands of them have grown into adulthood knowing only life as de facto Americans. They have become productive residents of the United States. Many of them have excelled scholastically and have contributed greatly to life in the Land of Opportunity.

So . . . what now?

I would hope those on the left and the right would seek a way to understand that Trump has begun moving the ball just a little bit.

It’s an effort to end this shutdown, which has thrust 800,000 Americans into the ranks of the unpaid and unemployed. They need relief. They need to get back to work.

This shutdown, precipitated by Donald Trump’s silly boast that he would be willing to take the heat for the consequences, needs to end. If a three-year reprieve for DACA recipients can end this stalemate, then I am all in.

national news

Vote recount = election theft? Hardly!

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Donald J. Trump is so adept at tossing out unfounded and unsubstantiated allegations it’s getting difficult to zero in on matters deserving of comment.

But here’s one that does. The president has tweeted an allegation of electoral theft in Florida — without any evidence, quite naturally — because officials there have ordered a recount of ballots in the races for U.S. senator and for governor.

Democrats and Republicans are locked in vise-tight battles for both offices. Trump now has warned of possible theft of the election moments after the recounts were declared.

Hey, he’s a pro at this kind of fear-mongering. Remember how he contended that “millions of illegal aliens” voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, accounting for her nearly 3 million vote lead in the popular vote?

America is still waiting for proof of that allegation, Mr. President.

He once warned of a “rigged election” were he to lose the 2016 presidential contest. Hah! He won that election, but hasn’t said a disparaging word about the allegation over whether Russian interference might have “rigged” the results in his favor.

How about letting the recount proceed, Mr. President. We don’t need to hear another word from you on whether there’s any “theft” involved. If the Republicans end up winning the Senate seat and the governorship, at least they will have ensured that all the ballots are counted. The same thing will hold true as well even if the Democrats emerge victorious.

That’s how the system works.