'This administration is now deporting kids with cancer," said Rep. Ed
Markey, D-Mass., calling it "a new low, even for Donald Trump."
Mariela
Sanchez, of Honduras, comforts her son, Jonathan, 16, during a news
conference on Aug. 26, 2019, in Boston. The Sanchez family came to the
United States seeking treatment for Jonathan's cystic fibrosis. Elise Amendola/AP
Each
year, the U.S. gets about 1,000 applications from immigrant families in
the U.S. seeking permission to stay in the country and not face
deportation so family members can continue lifesaving medical care that
is not available in their home countries.
But
the Trump administration recently told families who were granted
permission to stay for medical care that their permission to stay has
been rescinded and they have 33 days to leave the country. The policy,
which was not publicly announced, is being applied retroactively to any
requests filed on or before Aug. 7.
In a conference call Thursday with reporters, advocates and Democrats expressed outrage over the rule.
“This is a new low even for Donald Trump,” Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said in a conference call with reporters Thursday.
Among those facing deportation is Jonathan Sanchez, 16, who has cystic fibrosis.
His
mother, Mariela Sanchez, told NBC 10 in Boston that her family arrived
in the United States in 2016 and she had recently applied for the
medical exemption. After losing a daughter to the hereditary and
incurable disease because doctors in Honduras did not diagnose it, she
knows what would have happened to her son if he was not getting the care
in the U.S.
“He would be dead,” she told the station.
The
Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a
request for comment from NBC News. In a previous statement, United
States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has said that it was
no longer considering nonmilitary requests for deferred action "to
focus agency resources on faithfully administering our nation’s lawful
immigration system."
“This administration is now deporting kids
with cancer. Perhaps that is why it was too ashamed to announce this
policy change publicly," said Markey, who has been trying to draw
national attention to the issue since it was first reported in Boston by WBUR-FM, a public radio station.
The
Trump administration is no longer considering medical deferred action
requests for immigrants. This could be a de facto death sentence for
patients. We all need to stand together against the deportation of sick,
vulnerable children.https://t.co/aWBnZk4v7U
The
change was not made public and members of the public were not given a
chance to provide comment before it went into effect. Families simply
received letters telling them they had 33 days to leave.
“They
are telling these people they need to leave on their own,” Anthony
Marino, director of immigration legal services,said on MSNBC’s “The
Rachel Maddow Show” about the families with seriously ill relatives now
facing deportation.
“I don’t know how they
expect parents to pull their children from hospital beds, disconnect
them from lifesaving treatments and go some place where they are know
they are going to die," said Marino. "But that is what they are telling
them to do.”
In Miami, attorney Milena Portillo told The Miami Herald
that families who have applied for the medical deferments include a
girl with an eye malignancy, a girl with cerebral palsy and the father
of three children — who are American citizens — who has a terminal liver
illness.
“We as a country, we are losing
our humanitarian side,” Portillo told the Herald. “We’re not reviewing
case by case, but we’re just giving a blanket ‘no’ to everyone.”
Rep.
Ayana Pressley, D-Mass., cited in the Thursday call the case of Samuel,
a five year old boy from Brazil. She said he is unable to eat solid
food and without care at Boston Children’s Hospital will not be able to
receive the nutrients he needs to live.
Sirlen
Costa, of Brazil, holds her son Samuel, 5, as her niece Danyelle Sales,
right, looks on during a news conference on Aug. 26, 2019, in Boston.
Costa brought her son to the United States seeking treatment for his
short bowel syndrome. Elise Amendola/AP
"With
this decision, again this administration has hit a new low," Pressley
said. "To be fighting for your life, imagine on top of that facing
deportation."
The American Immigration Lawyers Association
called on the USCIS to reverse the policy change. It has asked people to
contact elected leaders to change it.
A
backlash over the changes has led to confusion over which Department of
Homeland Security agency, the USCIS or Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, must enforce the new policy, as the agencies have pointed
to each other as having jurisdiction.
Medical deferrals are not the only denials imposed by the administration. USCIS told NBC News
that it applies to all other deferred action requests outside of the
military and immigrants enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrival program or DACA.
The policy change
is another in a series of actions the administration has taken that have
had direct impact on children, both who are immigrants and those who
are U.S. citizens.
The administration has taken numerous children from their parents at the border and some have yet to be reunited.
The administration changed the so-called public charge rule so that immigrants wanting a green card or asking to move to the U.S. must prove they are unlikely to ever need public assistance, such as access to health care.
“There
can be no other explanation for why you would target such a small and
vulnerable community other than if your goal was to spread fear and
hardship,” Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., said.
“This
is all in character for an administration that is separating families
and abusing children in prison camps at the border," Chu added.
Chu
has filed a bill to defund the public charge rule but said “it’s clear
that this administration will not stop looking for any opportunity to
wage war on immigrants.”
Let's get one thing straight here right off: If you are a legal
immigrant in nearly every other country in the world, you are allowed to
participate in that country's national health system. You're paying for
the benefit through your taxes and other fees, and, goddamnit, just
like everyone else legally in the country, you don't have to worry about
paying much of anything else for your medical care. Nothing will be
held against you. Nothing will turn you into a "public charge" or
whatever fuckin' term for "undesirable" you want to use. And that's
because most every other country in the world is not filled with
ignorant savages who think that calling health care a "right" is akin to
mass enslavement by socialists.
We in the United States happen to live in a country that is, in fact,
filled with brutish idiots who would rather die in a ditch of a
treatable disease than have a government-run health insurance system for
everyone. So that means that only the poorest of the poor get to be on
Medicaid, and then you're considered on welfare and a burden to the
state. And that means that, unlike every other civilized nation, if
you're a legal immigrant, the American government wants to hold it
against you if you have a shitty job that doesn't provide health
insurance (like, say, in a chicken processing plant) and need help so
the flu doesn't financially ruin you.
We are a nation run by sadists who get off on hurting the poor. So, in the new rule, "Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds," published yesterday
in the Federal Register, taking advantage of a whole bunch of
government programs meant to, you know, help you survive could result in
you getting booted from the country.
See, previously, "'public charge' has been interpreted to mean a person
who is 'primarily dependent on the Government for subsistence, as
demonstrated by either the receipt of public cash assistance for income
maintenance or institutionalization for long-term care at Government
expense.'" Yeah, we didn't take into consideration "an alien's reliance
on or receipt of non-cash benefits such as the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps; Medicaid; and housing
vouchers and other housing subsidies."
But that was before motherfuckers took over and decided to redefine shit
that didn't need redefining unless you are a motherfucker. Here's the
new shit: "DHS is revising its interpretation of 'public charge' to
incorporate consideration of such benefits, and to better ensure that
aliens subject to the public charge inadmissibility ground are
self-sufficient, i.e., do not depend on public resources to meet their
needs, but rather rely on their own capabilities, as well as the
resources of family members, sponsors, and private organizations." Wow,
sounds almost logical, no? Except it's just fucking cruel for so many
reasons. Keep reading.
"This rule redefines the term 'public charge' to mean an alien who
receives one or more designated public benefits for more than 12 months
in the aggregate within any 36-month period (such that, for instance,
receipt of two benefits in one month counts as two months). This rule
defines the term 'public benefit' to include cash benefits for income
maintenance, SNAP, most forms of Medicaid, Section 8 Housing Assistance
under the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program, Section 8 Project-Based
Rental Assistance, and certain other forms of subsidized housing."
The fuckery is deep in this, but let's put this simply. Let's say you're
an immigrant who has been in the country for a few years totally
legally. All of a sudden., you lose your job when the restaurant where
you're waiting tables or, hell, the office where you're working closes.
For four months, you need to go on Medicaid, you need SNAP, and you need
housing assistance. That's it. You can be denied a green card for
circumstances completely beyond your control unless you starve, go
homeless, and let yourself be sick.
This has been one of the pet projects of presidential adviser and man
most likely piss in your swimming pool, Stephen Miller, whose head is
essentially shaped like a white hood. It's racism that is so plain, it's
almost laughable. Yes, let's punish those who want to come to the
United States and work our shittiest jobs so rich pukes can get richer.
Yes, let's make them pay sales taxes and other shit that prop up our
economy. And by all fucking means, let's take the income taxes of people
who may have paid them for years before needing some government
assistance.
In the UK, if you are a legal immigrant, once you receive your National
Insurance number, you have access to many (not all) financial benefits,
starting with the National Health Service. You can apply for Employment
and Support Allowance, in case you are too ill or disabled to work. You
can apply for a Carer's Allowance if you are forced to stay home because
you must care for someone. You can get housing credits, maternity leave
pay, and retirement income. And it's specifically because you've been
paying into the national insurance while living in the UK that you are
eligible. In the United States, it doesn't matter how much you've paid.
Go fuck yourself in your old country if you need Medicaid for over a
year.
Of course, the demented dullards of the Trump administration are all on
board. Acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,
that verminous cockscab Ken Cuccinelli, couldn't
even fake it when he completely undercut the Emma Lazarus poem on the
Statue of Liberty, ignoring the "huddled masses" and "wretched refuse"
part. And then he insisted that the poem was about Europeans, which,
really, just sodomize your ass with a burning cross at that point.
As for resident Ignoramus Q. Shiteater, when asked
about the rule and Cuccinelli yesterday, he said, " I don’t think it’s
fair to have the American taxpayer paying for people to come into the
United States...I am tired of seeing our taxpayer paying for people to
come into the country and immediately go onto welfare and various other
things. So I think we’re doing it right." We should point out that not
only are the taxpayers of the country paying for the months and months
of vacation he has taken, but a good chunk of that taxpayer money is
going straight into his business coffers and his own pockets.
Frankly, it's pretty fucking clear who should be booted from the country for being a public charge.
You have to be a special kind of son of a bitch to look at filthy,
exhausted people wearing rags and desperately trying to get somewhere
they won't be raped, tortured, murdered, or forced into gangs or where
they won't watch their children starve to death, and think, "Fuckin'
stop them because they gotta be terrorists." You gotta be a particular
type of motherfucker if you exploit those families, those mothers, those
fathers, those children in order to whip a horde of idiots into an orgy
of xenophobia and racism where a perverse, heaving mass of flesh, all
sweat and pimples and whiteness, so much whiteness, pumps and sucks,
fucking themselves until they reach an undulating roar of intolerance.
Goddamn, the stink.
At each of his rallies of the damned, resident Donald Trump, a lump of
cow shit with bits of undigested hay stuck in it, has been that son of a
bitch and that motherfucker, frothing in a Mussolini-esque squawk about
the immigrants and the vile Democrats who allowed this to happen and
the depraved leaders of Honduras and Guatemala and Mexico who have not
halted the march of the immigrants. Jesus, how the mob of Trumpistas lap
it up like semen spooged straight from Jesus's circumcised dick,
fighting over each other for who can ingest the last precious drops as
Trump does his dance with the ghost of Hitler, demonizing, condemning,
promising violence, stopping just short of advocating violence himself,
but ensuring that the mob's adoring hatred will drive them to the voting
booths to protect him, protect the future he has promised, the white
future, the rich future, when the nation is Mar-a-Lago and you're either
a member or you're staring in longingly from the gate.
Trump has mastered the art of layering lie upon lie, creating a shit
parfait of lies, the essence of his entire career. He told the gathered
villagers in Houston
last night to get their pitchforks and torches ready for the "caravan"
of immigrants traveling to the United States border with Mexico because
"I think the Democrats had something to do with it and now they're
saying I think we made a big mistake because people are seeing how bad
it is...look, that is an assault on our country and in that caravan you
have some very bad people. You have some very bad people and we can't
let that happen to our country." Yes, the president of the United
States, with no evidence at all, is saying that the opposition party is
behind a mass of immigrants who are hiding evildoers. He said earlier
in the day that, if you search the thousands of immigrants walking over
1000 miles, "You’re going to find MS-13, you’re going to find Middle
Eastern, you’re going to find everything."
Many of the Hondurans and others are fleeing from vicious gangs who have
threatened to kill them or their families, who have killed family
members, who have taken over communities. You think that they'd want
open gang members to be along with them? Or are they in disguise as
young children being carried by their parents? And, as for Middle
Easterners, you think that immigrants who want to start a new life are
totally fine covering up for terrorists? They'd probably be able to tell
the difference between a Saudi and a Guatemalan.
You know what would happen if those immigrants were treated like asylum
seekers and refugees ought to be treated in the supposed wealthiest,
greatest, mostest wonderfulest, sexiest nation in the history of the
earth and universe forever? The adults would get jobs. They'd open
businesses. The kids would go to school. They'd all create safe
communities if they didn't have to worry about ICE coming in to tear
their worlds apart. They'd want to become Americans if our shit system
for allowing that wasn't hopelessly backlogged and broken. They would
barely be a blip in the immigration radar.
Some would commit crimes, sure, but, statistically,
at a lower rate than citizens. And a few might join a gang because
that's just how the world goes. But the vast majority just want a
goddamn life and a chance for their kids to survive and thrive and they
are willing to fucking walk 1,500 miles for the barest thread of hope.
(And, by the way, the caravan is just inside Mexico. Walking nonstop,
it'd be at least two months before they got to the border, unless George
Soros provides them with some helicopters, so everyone just calm the
fuck down.)
Even if every single one of the immigrants were let into the United
States, it would have no effect on your life (unless you work in
resettlement or enforcement). They're not all gonna settle in your
neighborhood. Some would live with family already here. The rest would
be dispersed to different areas. The most you might see is a new family
moving in next door. If that frightens you, well, you're a fucking
dumbass and aren't worth talking to.
You know what will have an effect on your life? If Republicans continue
to run the government without any check on their power, Mitch McConnell
has vowed
to go after Medicare and Social Security cuts to help pay for the tax
cuts for the greedy, wealthy pig fuckers who fund our fraught and frayed
political system. That's a real goddamned threat to you and your
family.
If Republicans keep both the House and Senate, they have vowed to try
again to overturn the Affordable Care Act, even as they blatantly lie
about protecting the pre-existing conditions exemption. That's a real goddamned threat to you and your health.
If Democrats lose in the midterms, we'll fall even further behind on
anything to slow climate change as even supposedly smart Republicans
have come down on the "Well, the climate is changing, sure, but we don't
know what causes it" side of the bullshit (even though we totally know what causes it). That's a real goddamned threat to you and safety and security and property.
You know what's not a threat to you, your family, your health, your
safety, your security, and your property? The fucking caravan of
immigrants in Mexico right now. If you give an actual shit about
protecting your ass, you'll get rid of the people who have flat-out
promised to do shit to kill you.
Let me tell you a story about Stephen Miller and chain migration.
It begins at the turn of the 20th century, in a dirt-floor shack in
the village of Antopol, a shtetl of subsistence farmers in what is now
Belarus. Beset by violent anti-Jewish pogroms and forced childhood
conscription in the Czar’s army, the patriarch of the shack, Wolf-Leib
Glosser, fled a village where his forebears had lived for centuries and
took his chances in America.
He set foot on Ellis Island on January 7, 1903, with $8 to his name.
Though fluent in Polish, Russian and Yiddish, he understood no English.
An elder son, Nathan, soon followed. By street corner peddling and
sweatshop toil, Wolf-Leib and Nathan sent enough money home to pay off
debts and buy the immediate family’s passage to America in 1906. That
group included young Sam Glosser, who with his family settled in the
western Pennsylvania city of Johnstown, a booming coal and steel town
that was a magnet for other hardworking immigrants. The Glosser family
quickly progressed from selling goods from a horse and wagon to owning a
haberdashery in Johnstown run by Nathan and Wolf-Leib to a chain of
supermarkets and discount department stores run by my grandfather, Sam,
and the next generation of Glossers, including my dad, Izzy. It was big
enough to be listed on the AMEX stock exchange and employed thousands of
people over time. In the span of some 80 years and five decades, this
family emerged from poverty in a hostile country to become a prosperous,
educated clan of merchants, scholars, professionals, and, most
important, American citizens.
What does this classically American tale have to do with Stephen
Miller? Well, Izzy Glosser is his maternal grandfather, and Stephen’s
mother, Miriam, is my sister.
I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, an
educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect
of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our
family’s life in this country.
I shudder at the thought of what would have become of the Glossers
had the same policies Stephen so coolly espouses— the travel ban, the
radical decrease in refugees, the separation of children from their
parents, and even talk of limiting
citizenship for legal immigrants — been in effect when Wolf-Leib made
his desperate bid for freedom. The Glossers came to the U.S. just a few
years before the fear and prejudice of the “America first” nativists of
the day closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees.
Had Wolf-Leib waited,
his family likely would have been murdered by the Nazis along with all
but seven of the 2,000 Jews who remained in Antopol. I would encourage
Stephen to ask himself if the chanting, torch-bearing Nazis of
Charlottesville, whose support his boss seems to court so cavalierly, do
not envision a similar fate for him.
Like other immigrants, our family’s welcome to the USA was not always
a warm one, but we largely had the protection of the law, there was no
state-sponsored violence against us, no kidnapping of our male children,
and we enjoyed good relations with our neighbors. True, Jews were
excluded from many occupations, couldn’t buy homes in some towns,
couldn’t join certain organizations or attend certain schools or
universities, but life was good. As in past generations, there were hate
mongers who regarded the most recent groups of poor immigrants as scum,
rapists, gangsters, drunks and terrorists, but largely the Glosser
family was left alone to live our lives and build the American dream.
Children were born, synagogues founded, and we thrived. This was the
miracle of America.
Acting for so long in the theater of right-wing politics, Stephen and
Trump may have become numb to the resultant human tragedy and blind to
the hypocrisy of their policy decisions. After all, Stephen’s is not the
only family with a chain immigration story in the Trump administration.
Trump's grandfather is reported to have been a German migrant on the
run from military conscription to a new life in the United States, and
his mother fled the poverty of rural Scotland for the economic
possibilities of New York City. (Trump’s in-laws just became citizens on
the strength of his wife’s own citizenship.)
These facts are important not only for their grim historical irony
but because vulnerable people are being hurt. They are real people, not
the ghoulish caricatures portrayed by Trump. When confronted by the
deaths and suffering of thousands, our senses are overwhelmed, and the
victims become statistics rather than people. I meet these statistics
one at a time through my volunteer service as a neuropsychologist for
the Philadelphia affiliate of HIAS (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid
Society), the global nonprofit that protects refugees and helped my
family more than 100 years ago. I will share the story of one such man I
have met in the hopes that my nephew might recognize elements of our
shared heritage.
In the early 2000's, Joseph (not his real name) was conscripted at the
age of 14 to be a soldier in Eritrea and sent to a remote desert
military camp. Officers there discovered a Bible under his pillow which
aroused their suspicion that he might belong to a foreign evangelical
sect that would claim his loyalty and sap his will to fight. Joseph was
actually a member of the state-approved Coptic church but was
nonetheless immediately subjected to torture. “They smashed my face into
the ground, tied my hands and feet together behind my back, stomped on
me, and hung me from a tree by my bonds while they beat me with batons
for the others to see.”
Joseph was tortured for 20 consecutive days before being taken to a
military prison and crammed into a dark unventilated cell with 36 other
men, little food and no proper hygiene. Some died, and in time Joseph
was stricken with dysentery. When he was too weak to stand, he was taken
to a civilian clinic where he was fed by the medical staff. Upon
regaining his strength, he escaped to a nearby road where a sympathetic
driver took him north through the night to a camp in Sudan where he
joined other refugees. Joseph was on the first leg of a journey that
would cover thousands of miles and almost 10 years.
Before Donald Trump had started his political ascent promulgating the
false story that Barack Obama was a foreign-born Muslim, while my
nephew, Stephen, was famously recovering from the hardships of his high
school cafeteria in Santa Monica, Joseph was a child on his own in Sudan
in fear of being deported back to Eritrea to face execution for
desertion. He worked any job he could get, saved his money and made his
way through Sudan. He endured arrest and extortion in Libya. He returned
to Sudan, then kept moving to Dubai, Brazil and eventually to a
southern border crossing into Texas, where he sought asylum. In all of
the countries he traveled through during his ordeal, he was vulnerable,
exploited and his status was “illegal.” But in the United States, he had
a chance to acquire the protection of a documented immigrant.
Today, at 30, Joseph lives in Pennsylvania and has a wife and child.
He is a smart, warm, humble man of great character who is grateful for
every day of his freedom and safety. He bears emotional scars from not
seeing his parents or siblings since he was 14. He still trembles, cries
and struggles for breath when describing his torture, and he bears
physical scars as well. He hopes to become a citizen, return to work and
make his contribution to America. His story, though unique in its
particulars, is by no means unusual. I have met Central Americans
fleeing corrupt governments, violence and criminal extortion; a Yemeni
woman unable to return to her war-ravaged home country and fearing
sexual mutilation if she goes back to her Saudi husband; and an escaped
kidnap-bride from central Asia.
Trump wants to make us believe that these desperate migrants are an
existential threat to the United States; the most powerful nation in
world history and a nation made strong by immigrants. Trump and my
nephew both know their immigrant and refugee roots. Yet, they repeat the
insults and false accusations of earlier generations against these
refugees to make them seem less than human. Trump publicly parades the
grieving families of people hurt or killed by migrants, just as the
early Nazis dredged up Jewish criminals to frighten and enrage their
political base to justify persecution of all Jews. Almost every American
family has an immigration story of its own based on flight from war,
poverty, famine, persecution, fear or hopelessness. Most of these
immigrants became workers, entrepreneurs, scientists and soldiers of
America.
Most damning is the administration's evident intent to make policy
that specifically disadvantages people based on their ethnicity, country
of origin and religion. No matter what opinion is held about
immigration, any government that specifically enacts law or policy on
that basis must be recognized as a threat to all of us. Laws bereft of
justice are the gateway to tyranny. Today others may be the target, but
tomorrow it might just as easily be you or me. History will be the
judge, but in the meantime the normalization of these policies is
rapidly eroding the collective conscience of America.
Immigration reform
is a complex issue that will require compassion and wisdom to bring the
nation to a just solution, but the politicians who have based their
political and professional identity on ethnic demonization and exclusion
cannot be trusted to do so. As free Americans, and descendants of
immigrants and refugees, we have the obligation to exercise our
conscience by voting for candidates who will stand up for our highest
national values and not succumb to our lowest fears.
Melania Trump spent her first few weeks in the United States working
illegally. Her parents were just sworn in as citizens through chain
migration.
These are both items that Trump has said have to go, and
under the new proposed rules for immigrants that become citizens,
Melania would technically be up for having her citizenship revoked.
The
rules, however, aren’t meant to target people that look like Trump, as
Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains.
You've heard it over and over from Republicans: they are just concerned
about undocumented immigrants (or "illegal aliens," as the Justice
Department has been ordered
to say). If you ignore the fact that Customs and Border Protection
treated asylum seekers who presented themselves as such at the proper
border crossings - doing everything legally - like they were
undocumented migrants, and if you ignore the mostly-Muslim ban, well,
you could maybe sort of believe Republicans if you squinted and stuck
your fingers in your ears.
Of course, mistreating the undocumented was never the full plan.
Because, see, White House adviser and Man Most Likely to Be Caught
Eating Hamsters Whole, Stephen Miller, is a fucking ghoul, and he's
getting the Trump administration to change
how legal immigrants are treated. And if you're thinking, "Oh, they
must be getting extra nice to documented immigrants because they've been
such pricks to undocumented ones," then you're a fucking idiot who
doesn't understand the level of cruelty for cruelty's sake these
shit heels exist on.
What they want to do now is get rid of legal immigrants and they're
gonna contort the fuckin' law to do it so they don't need congressional
approval. The plan: "immigrants living legally in the U.S. who have ever
used or whose household members have ever used Obamacare, children's
health insurance, food stamps and other benefits could be hindered from
obtaining legal status in the U.S." You got that? You have a kid who's a
U.S. citizen and is on CHIP? No green card for you. You have a green
card and get an Obamacare subsidy? No citizenship and, hey, we'll take
that green card away. Back to the unstable visa system for you or, the
real goal, deportation.
How fucked do you have to be to believe that this is in any way good for
the country? You gotta be some bullshit white genocide-believing,
Nazi-loving motherfucker to go along with this. Or, you know, an average
Republican in this worthless age of Trump.
So you can live in this country legally for years, have kids here, and
pay your taxes. But if you avail yourself of something that your taxes
are helping to fund, you can go fuck off back to Mexico or whatever
shit hole you came from. You're a "public charge" now, even if you're
just getting the barest of help from the government.
Trumpistas also say that they are targeting people who did something
else wrong at some point in their lives, like lie on a visa application.
But, as is the way with Donald Trump, who never met a contract he
wouldn't violate, even people who had an agreement with the government
are finding that the deal has been broken by this administration.
In one example, a Haitian man who has a green card "had used a fake
passport given to him by smugglers when he entered the U.S. from Haiti
in 1989, but confessed to border officers and received a waiver from
USCIS absolving him of his wrongdoing and allowing him to obtain a green
card in 2011." Now, though? Fuck the waiver we gave you. "When he went
for his citizenship interview in August 2017, the USCIS officers told
him they were going to revisit the decision to waive the fake passport
incident, meaning he could potentially lose his green card as well." And
then he found out he was denied citizenship. The man works 80 hours a
week and takes care of a disabled daughter. He's further fucked because
he has used public assistance to help with his American kid. How does
this make America great again? If "great" means "whiter," then, sure,
goal met.
Here you go, Republicans. Another shot to stand up and say to Trump,
"No. Fuck this. This is too far. Fire that Miller cockhole and act like
you're a goddamned human being." Except you won't. Because it is you. It
has been you for decades. You're just finally getting to be your worst
selves.
In a tweet, ABC News called Trump’s child concentration camps “shelters.”When did you first realize that the Republican Party jumped the shark
and began falling into a deep dark abyss of hostility to facts, reason,
and empathy?
Was it when Nixon sent the National Guard to Kent State which
resulted in that horrific massacre of anti-war protesters? Maybe for
some it was Nixon and Watergate? Well, I get it. It would be fairly understandable to believe those were just aberrations.
But why wasn’t it enough to come to that understanding when Reagan
decided to launch his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi the
city where some of the most brutal civil rights killings took place, but
not to memorialize the dead and and send a warning to the future, but
to embrace concepts like “reverse racism,” which was clearly a dog
whistle to the “I will tell you who the REAL racists are”?
OK, maybe coincidence? What about his nomination of a deeply racist
man in Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship? Or the nomination of an
equally racist man in Judge Bork to the Supreme Court who also called
the Ninth amendment to the constitution an “irrelevant inkblot.”
No?
What about Reagan’s press secretary cracking jokes about gay men dying of AIDS during an official White House press conference?
What about Reagan’s cynical invention of the racist “welfare queen” stereotype of poor black women?
What about what remains one of the most hateful political conventions in history in the 1992 Republican Convention?
No? Just a few bad apples?
What about Bob Dole’s return of donations to the Log Cabin
Republicans as to avoid offending his right wing base because he did not
want to be seen as affiliating himself with LGBT who agreed with the
Republican Party’s platform on all but one measure?
What about the subliminal confession of an absence of compassion for
the suffering of others among the Republican faithful when George W Bush
felt a need to coin the term “compassionate conservatism.”
No? What about when the Republican majority on Supreme Court decided
to take the unprecedented step of reviewing state election law to
shutdown attempts to have a proper recount in Florida?
No? Not then either?
What about when the Bush administration fabricated an excuse to go
into a preemptive war in Iraq? What about Colin Powell’s fake vial of
anthrax at the UN? What about Condi Rice’s mushroom cloud scare tactics
to grow support for that illegal war? And it was an illegal war.
What about Abu Ghraib? Guantanamo? Water boarding? “Enhanced interrogation? No?
What about the cult of personality surrounding Sarah Palin who ran
a smear campaign against Obama so awful that her own running mate had to
refute her claims?
What about the threat of martial law in the USA if Congress did not give $800 billion to the big banks?
What about lies about “death panels?” What about “do not ask what
good you could do?”
What about tea party activists waving guns at
protests outside of events featuring Obama?
When did you figure it out? Was it when Republicans booed Rick Perry
from uttering that very politically incorrect term “compassion” at a
Republican debate? Did you figure it out then? Did you figure it out
when mass shooting after mass shooting Republicans refused to act to
protect the citizenry for the sake of the gun industry that lined their
pockets?
What about the enthusiasm for Trump’s overt racism, xenophobia, islamaphobia?
If you just figured out the Republican Party is deep into an abyss of
darkness, lies, mendacity, racism, and bigotry when they got to ripping
babies from their mother’s arms, and refusing to give those children
back to the mothers after immigration proceedings were over, you figured
it out too late.
WASHINGTON — resident Donald Trump said Tuesday that several
thousand Liberians who have been living in the United States under a temporary immigrant status will have one year to return to their country or they will face deportation.
The resident said in a memo
to the secretary of state that he was formally ending a program that
has allowed Liberian immigrants to remain in the United States and work
legally since 1999, when then-President Bill Clinton established it in
response to conditions in the country after a civil war.
More than 800,000 Liberians were displaced by the war and fled the country. Some sought refuge in the United States.
The program, known as Deferred Enforced Departure, has been renewed
for Liberians since, giving the immigrants the ability to remain in the
United States without fear of deportation. But in the memo, Trump cited
the improved conditions in Liberia as evidence that the program was no
longer needed.
“Liberia is no longer experiencing armed conflict and has made
significant progress in restoring stability and democratic governance,”
Trump wrote. “Liberia has also concluded reconstruction from prior
conflicts, which has contributed significantly to an environment that is
able to handle adequately the return of its nationals.”
Advocates for Liberians in the United States had urged Trump to
simply extend the protections.
Members of Congress from Minnesota, which
has the largest Liberian population in the country, wrote a letter to Trump this month to echo those requests.
“Many of these people have been in our state for decades, and they
are an important part of our communities, where they serve as business
owners, teachers and health care workers,” the lawmakers wrote, asking
for an extension of the program.
On Tuesday, Emira Woods, a Liberian-American advocate for immigrants,
described the resident’s decision as a mixed bag. She noted the year
that Liberians have before facing deportation, but said ending the
program would force them to abandon lives in the United States. “Many of
these Liberians had children in the United States,” she said.
The Deferred Enforced Departure program for Liberians was scheduled
to expire Saturday. Though he declined to renew the program, Trump
ordered what he called an “orderly transition” so that Liberians living
in the United States could get their affairs in order before returning
to Liberia. That period will extend for 12 months, Trump wrote.
The decision about the Liberian program mirrors the actions the Trump
administration has taken toward other, larger groups of immigrants in
the United States. Since taking office, the resident has ended
temporary protected status for certain immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan, arguing that conditions have improved significantly in those countries.
According to a report from state news channel Fox News, Donald Trump is “seriously considering” pardoning Crooked Joe Arpaio, who was recently convicted
of criminal contempt of court for his racist and illegal campaign
against Latinos and immigrants in Maricopa County as sheriff.
He faces
up to six months for his reign of terror.
“I am seriously considering a pardon for
Sheriff Arpaio,” the president reportedly told Fox News at his club in
Bedminster, N.J. “He has done a lot in the fight against illegal
immigration. He’s a great American patriot and I hate to see what has
happened to him.”
Arpaio is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 5
and could spend up to six months in jail. Though his attorneys are
planning on appealing the conviction, a presidential pardon would be the
swiftest exit from the case.
Trump told the network the pardon could come as early as this week.
Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, on Sunday blasted the
Republican Party's "know-nothing nativism anti-immigrant" ideology after
Dr. Ben Carson criticized President Barack Obama's recent executive
orders to reform the immigration system.
Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, on Sunday
blasted the Republican Party's "know-nothing nativism anti-immigrant"
ideology after Dr. Ben Carson criticized President Barack Obama's recent
executive orders to reform the immigration system.
On ABC's This Week, Democratic strategist James Carville
asserted that Americans would understand why the had to take action on
immigration because Republicans in the House had 515 days to act on the
Senate's comprehensive reform bill, but refused to take action.
"No, it's their fault, and he exposed them brilliantly," Carville
said. "And every Democrat I know said, 'Ha ha.' And every Republican
said, 'How can he do this to us?'"
Carson argued that the president was making the issue partisan instead of dealing "with things that are pro-American."
"And one of the things that we have to recognize is we have millions
of people in this country, in our inner cities, in our rural areas, in
Appalachia, who are suffering," Carson continued. "Why don't we deal
with them?"
"Wait a minute," Vanden Heuvel interrupted. "Why are you pitting
those people against the undocumented immigrants? I agree with you that
this shouldn't be a Democratic or Republican problem, though the gap
between the two parties is so clear. And for the the Latino community,
they know which party is on their side."
"But this is about lifting those up who are suffering from a recovery
which isn't helping them," she noted. "And this should be about lifting
wages for all. This should be about a humane, moral politics."
Former Bush aide Matthew Dowd advised Republicans to deal with the
"Latino issue" by passing their own version of an immigration bill as
soon as they took over Congress in January.
"The politics of the Republican Party today are not George W.'s,"
Vanden Heuvel reminded Dowd.
"You have a Republican Party which is
driven in large measure by a know-nothing nativism anti-immigrant
stance, and so I think this is dangerous for them."
As the segment ended, ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked Carson if
he could support the bipartisan Senate bill that was passed nearly 18
months ago.
"I would have to read it thoroughly before I could answer that question," Carson replied to snickers from the panel.
