Archive for the ‘Immigration Reform’ Category

What Does Tucker Carlson Believe? – The Atlantic

Read: The nationalists take Washington

The question, then, is whether this larger worldview Carlson is espousing each night, encompassing restrictionism, protectionism, and anti-interventionism, has currency with GOP voters absent a race-based appealin other words, whether an economics of meaning alone can sustain a populist revolution on the right. Carlson says it does, and it can.

His programming tells another story. On his December 6 broadcast, one day after our interview, Carlson featured Pete DAbrosca, a North Carolina congressional candidate campaigning on an end to immigration. DAbroscas plan appears rooted in his belief that white Americans are being replaced by third world peasants who share neither their ethnicity nor their culture. Hes been lauded by the white-nationalist website VDare and is strongly supported by the so-called Groyper movement, an offshoot of the alt-right led by Nick Fuentes, a 21-year-old who has, among other things, denied the extent of the Holocaust and argued that the First Amendment was not written for Muslims. DAbrosca went on Carlsons show to advertise his proposed 10-year moratorium on immigration. I think that theres a new Republican Party in town, DAbrosca said.

Carlson knows failure. This, in his view, is why, despite going to the same schools, working in the same towngaming the same systemas the elites he rails against, he doesnt share their narcissism. When you get fired in TV, you know, especially when youre running a show with your name on it, its impossible to evade responsibility for it, he told me, referencing his MSNBC show, Tucker, which in 2008 was canceled during its third season. When your show goes under, it goes under because people dont like you. Like, youre a loser I wouldnt recommend it to anyone, but it certainly is the only way you ever learn anythingby being humiliated, and crushed.

Yet Carlson also knows success. And if the lesson of failure is that its time to learn a new trick, he explained, the message of success is sometimes to sit still.

Talking with Carlson reminded me of a moment from my interview with President Trump earlier this spring. He was reminiscing about his first evening in the White House residence. Ill never forget, he told me. I came into the White House, I was here for my first night, and I said, Wow. Four years is such a long time.

Four years ago, Paul Ryan, the GOPs boy-wonder champion of entitlement cuts and immigration reform, was grudgingly settling into the speakership, having been drafted as the best hope of uniting his conference. Four years ago, the governor of Alabama was stumping on behalf of John Kasich in the GOP presidential primary. Four years ago, pundits were still calling Donald Trump a fluke.

Now we are here in this studio, where Carlson is reaping praise for a blistering segment on a Republican mega-donor, Paul Singer, that showcased how the billionaire hedge-funder had sapped a small Nebraska town of jobs after helping engineer the takeover of a sporting-goods chain that was headquartered there. Hes listening as Jeanine Pirro calls the impeachment of Donald Trump hogwash and reads passages from The Federalist Papers by way of explanation. In a few minutes, hell excoriate the think tank that served as the ideological bedrock of George H. W. Bushs administration and was predicted to be Paul Ryans employer post-Congress.

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What Does Tucker Carlson Believe? - The Atlantic

Fighting Border Madness, from 1980s Chicano Activism to the Abolish ICE Movement – NACLA

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In February 1980, Herman Baca, a Chicano activist from San Diego, wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter demanding he put an end to border madness. In the letter Baca detailed how officials from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) were detaining Mexican migrant children in local jails and immigration facilities. In particular, he denounced the detention of a 12-month-old baby as barbaric and inhumane. While Baca urged Carter to enter into discussion with policymakers, he believed that ultimately the detention of migrant children would only end with the abolition of the INS.

Continuing this activism, in 1981, Baca organized the first community-based call for the abolition of the INS. The call cited the detention of migrant children as an example of the abuse the organization would never cease committing. Such abolition advocacy, which is captured in Bacas papers held at the University of California San Diego Special Collections and Archives, shows that the movement to abolish institutions of immigration policing did not emerge recently in the face of the Trump administrations zero tolerance policy. While scholars have grounded the movement to abolish Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the ideological history of abolitionism, most have focused on prison abolitionism, overlooking previous movements to eliminate immigration policing. A closer look at Chicano activism in the late 1970s and early 1980s shows that immigration police have long targeted migrant children and that activists have been denouncing related violence for decades. Recognizing that the fight to abolish immigration policing is not new helps to better imagine a just world without immigration policing.

In 1979 Bacas organization, the Committee on Chicano Rights (CCR), began to speak out against the detention of migrant children. Baca and friends formed the CCR in 1971 to fight violence Chicano and migrant youth faced as the era of undocumented immigration led to increased policing. As members of the Chicano Movement, these activists viewed open borders as an end goal. We didnt cross the border, the border crossed us, student activist Salvador Reza told me, reflecting on the borders connection to Mexicos loss of land to the U.S. in 1848. Basically, we had the right, somos un pueblo sin fronteras. Believing individuals of Mexican descent to be a people without borders, activists like Reza and Baca protested and advocated forpolicy change as part of a campaign to denounce immigration policing and its inherent denial of the communitys right to move freely in the borderlands.

Baca began to raise awareness about the detention of migrant children in 1979 to inspire resistance to the policing of Chicanos and migrants. While Baca had been fighting immigration policing for several years at this point, the communitys particular concern for migrant youth played a crucial role in his ability to drum up mass support for abolitionism. Baca presented information about migrant detention at the CCRs Chicano National Immigration Tribunal held in April 1981.Designed to put policies of immigration policing on trial, the Tribunal gave victims the opportunity to act as prosecutors: Individuals presented testimony in over 50 cases of violence committed by local police and the INS.Activists from the CCR listened to this testimony with the intention of using it to construct policy demands in the form of a Chicano position paper.

At the Tribunal, Baca highlighted how the detention of migrant children connected to the racist criminalization of non-white youth. Bacas testimony, coupled with local newspaper reporting, revealed that as immigration policing militarized the border throughout the 1970s, it became common for undocumented migrants, especially children, to hire smugglers to help them cross the border. While in 1965 only 40 percent of migrants used a smuggler, by 1975 over 70 percent of migrants did. However, traveling with a smuggler did not ensure successful settlement in the US. The Border Patrol, the enforcement arm of the INS, working to stop both human and narcotic smuggling, often apprehended migrants during their crossing.

In the 1970s, the U.S. government intensified its prosecution of smugglers.While at this time the INS quickly deported undocumented migrants, the agency treated smuggling as a criminal act that merited a trial. As part of this prosecution, officials detained migrants who crossed the border with a smuggler and forced them to serve as material witnesses in the cases.Migrants being held until giving their witness testimony formed a substantial portion of the tens of thousands of migrants the INS detained annually in San Diego. In 1979, 14,346 migrants served as witnesses in cases against smugglers in San Diego, around 600 of whom were children.

The children waited for the trial of their smuggler at three detention centers in San Diego. The INS held some children at their two facilities in the region: El Centro and San Ysidro. However, they sent most to the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) which had a relationship with the U.S. Marshalls, an agency with a history of facilitating the detention of migrants. The MCC opened in 1974 as part of the ongoing war on crime. In revealing that police held material witnesses at the MCC alongside individuals charged with criminal offenses, Baca demonstrated how immigration officials criminalized migrant children who had an ancestral right to exist in the borderlands.

Although designed as an adult facility, the INS used the MCC to hold children like 15-year-old Jose, who came to California from Durango, Mexico. While police incarcerated some children with their mothers, they separated most, including Jose, from their parents. At 15, Jose was one of the oldest children in the facility. The INS imprisoned Rosa Rivass 6- and 1-year-old children without her. When the INS brought a mother back into custody after giving birth, they even incarcerated a newborn.

While Baca previously criticized perceived links between Mexican teenagers and criminality, he made a strategic decision to turn his attention to younger children in his letter to Carter and at the Tribunal. Baca believed that focusing on young children would dramatize immigration policing and demonstrate how it criminalized innocent youth. Baca, like other activists past and present, trusted that no one could dispute the cruelty of incarcerating a newborn and that this common sympathy would garner criticism of immigration policing as a whole.

Abolition Advocacy

Bacas was correct: The Chicano community agreed with him about the brutality of incarcerating children. In spearheading mass outrage over the detention of migrant youth, Baca connected his work to protect migrant children with his ideological emphasis on open borders.

Baca first proposed the abolition of the INS to fellow activists at a conference in 1980. The resolutions passed at the end of the gathering stated: That this conference go on record in calling for the abolishment of the INS/Border Patrol. A year later, at the Tribunal, Baca fostered more unified Chicano support for this demand. As Baca recalled, by the end of the Tribunal, Everybody was on the same page of the INS/Border Patrol have got to go...Its an agency that was placed there to make sure we stay in our place. And thats what were fighting against.Having learned about the INS detaining children, community members concluded that the organization existed to impede the right of Mexican youth to live and migrate safely. As a result, the documents produced at the Tribunal affirmed the need for the abolishment of the INS/Border Patrol in order to end the detention of migrant children, among other practices.

By this point, support for the idea of abolition was spreading. For the first time, a large portion of the Chicano and migrant community in San Diego expressed the need for the complete elimination of the INS. As a journalist from La Prensa San Diego reported in 1981, when Baca announced his demand for the disestablishment of the INS, the audience of 800 individuals roared with approval.By that year, CCR leaders and community members together concluded that the INS needed to be completely and permanently abolished to allow free and safe movement in the borderlands.

Noting this mass support for the abolition of the INS, Baca vowed from then on to not deal with anyone who doesnt call for the abolishment of the Border Patrol, the INS.While Baca remained steadfast in his dedication to abolition, and today is outspoken against ICE, after the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 many former allies shifted their focus to assisting undocumented migrants in applying for amnesty.

In 2003, the U.S. government dissolved the INS, which had been part of the Department of Justice, and replaced it with ICE, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security. Today, as people speak out against ICEs detention of migrant children, who now mostly come from Central America, this country has once again seen a rise in calls for the elimination of institutions of immigration policing as they currently exist.

The history of pro-migrant activism that began in the Chicano community in the 1970s and 1980s helps position todays abolition advocacy as grounded in traditions of Chicano activism. Besides valorizing a long-ignored historical actor, exploring Bacas work urges a recognition of the principles that guided nascent pro-migrant abolition advocacy. It is imperative that present-day Abolish ICE supporters contemplate the desire for open borders that underpinned the first calls for the abolition of ICEs predecessor, the INS. For instance, returning immigration policing to the Department of Justice, as Bernie Sanders recently proposed, fails to recognize Bacas belief that the mere existence of immigration policing is a threat to the borderlands community. Only by embracing these historical antecedents can we build bold and inclusive resistance to the policing of migrant youth.

Erin Mysogland is the Program Coordinator of the Center for Community Action and Research at Pace University where she works with undergraduates to connect academia and activism. She has a MA/MSc in International and World History from Columbia University and the London School of Economics. She researches and writes on themes of migration, race, and gender in U.S. and Latin American history.

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Fighting Border Madness, from 1980s Chicano Activism to the Abolish ICE Movement - NACLA

How Andrew Yang would improve health care – POLITICO

I support the spirit of Medicare for All, Yang said in rolling out his new plan on Dec. 16, adding that he feels eliminating private insurance for millions of Americans is not a realistic strategy.

Instead, Yang is calling for a set of policies to bring down pharmaceutical drug costs; use technology to help rural and low-income people access care; beef up mental health, dental, vision and reproductive health benefits; and keep lobbyists and executives out of policy-making.

Yang lays out six steps he maintains will address the underlying problems of our current system.

His proposal to lower soaring drug costs would empower the government to directly negotiate pharmaceutical prices. The plan does not specify whether this would apply only to Medicare and other public plans or whether it would include the private market as well.

Those negotiations would be shaped by international reference pricing an idea supported by some Democrats and, earlier this year, by President Donald Trump, that would peg the amount the U.S. pays for drugs to what other developed nations pay. Should those negotiations fail to bring down costs, Yang would direct the government to manufacture drugs itself to create more competition or import cheaper drugs from overseas ideas previously floated by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, respectively.

Yang also proposes making telehealth services more widely available, licensing doctors to practice across state lines, and creating a rural broadband internet network to reach underserved communities.

He proposes paying physicians by salary instead of by a fee-for-service basis, doing more to shield providers from malpractice lawsuits, and incentivizing doctors to work in rural areas by forgiving student loans.

He also says he would shift the focus of the health system to preventive care; boost coverage of mental health care, vision, dental, reproductive and maternal health, veterans' health and care for people with disabilities; and curtail the influence of lobbyists.

Yangs plan is a combination of executive and regulatory actions he could take as president, pledges to work with Congress on passing legislation, and promises to pressure the health care industry to make reforms. These tactics in combination, he argues, would reduce high health care costs more swiftly and effectively than a full-scale overhaul like Medicare for All. His plan doesn't have a cost estimate.

Much of Yangs plan depends on Congress the drug negotiation piece in particular. This year has shown how difficult it is to pass even modest health care fixes on Capitol Hill.

The plan also doesn't address the tens of millions of people who are uninsured or those who are struggling to pay their insurance plans high premiums, co-pays or deductibles.

Additionally, it isnt clear how Yang would accomplish several of the provisions in his plan. He pledges, for instance, to ensure Americans have access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive care, including STI screenings, contraception, and abortion but does not indicate what combination of executive orders and legislation that would entail other than repealing Trumps Title X rule that cut funding to Planned Parenthood.

Nearly the entire 2020 Democratic field falls under two basic camps: those supporting a Medicare for All system that would essentially replace private insurance, and those who favor a public option that would exist alongside and compete with private health plans.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the loudest voice in the latter camp, has proposed a public option along with enhanced subsidies and benefits for existing enrollees in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces. His campaign says his plan would give 97 percent of Americans health care coverage.

South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg has released his own Medicare for All Who Want It proposal that would keep the existing private insurance industry with an option for health insurance from the government. Like Bidens plan, it would also enhance subsidies.

Warren, who has embraced Sanders' Medicare for All bill, has additionally detailed her own $20.5 trillion plan to finance the single-payer system with a mix of sources, including tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans, employer contributions, and comprehensive immigration reform.

Yangs plan puts a strong focus on mental health, care for veterans, people with disabilities, reproductive health, and HIV/AIDs detection and treatment. The plan would also help those with chronic conditions like diabetes or cancer who struggle to afford their medication, and people in rural areas who would benefit from the telehealth and doctor incentive proposals.

Yang has already come under fire from Sanders' progressive supporters and staffers for not embracing his Medicare for All bill that would essentially make private insurance obsolete.

Pharmaceutical companies are also likely to fight tooth and nail against any proposals that would cut into their profits.

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How Andrew Yang would improve health care - POLITICO

The Other Side: Immigration The – The Hawk Eye

Immigration is a very contentious current issue, especially under the Trump administration.

The Republican Party is not opposed to legal immigration. The conservative viewpoint, which supports upholding traditional American values, strongly believes in the American dream and people moving to the United States to pursue opportunity and work hard to meet their goals. Its widely acknowledged that immigrants enrich the American melting-pot culture of diversity and hard work.

Republicans acknowledge that immigrants provide an important labor force, too, and they support legislation that increases the number of issued H-1B visas (work visas) and expands the H-2A program, which brings in foreign labor to work in agriculture.

However, these points are made toward legal immigration. Yes, its really hard to get into the country legally, especially now. But Republicans see a reason for that. They support a selective immigration process to try to ensure that the people coming into the country are not a threat to national safety and have good intentions and goals.

While the party supports having a selective process, it can be agreed that making the process less complicated could encourage more immigrants to do things the right way. Many Republicans would prefer to make the immigration process more lax if it means they know who is in the country rather than continue to keep it strict and have so many undocumented people living here.

Republicans, and even Trump voters, support changing the immigration system a CNN poll cites 80% of Trump supporters are supportive of immigration reform. While this number doesnt include what kind of change is supported, the most popular belief is that we need stricter border security so we know who is coming in and out of the country as a matter of national security and public safety. Party members support reforms that discourage illegal immigration, which they see as an issue as well as being unfair to people that come into the country the right way.

The Republican Partys primary stance regarding immigration is the widespread belief that illegal immigrants should not receive government benefits. While undocumented immigrants are not officially eligible for government programs such as food stamps or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, enforcement of legislation like DACA, Plyer vs. Doe and the DREAM Act drain a significant amount of resources from government (the Title I budget in 2018 was 15.9 billion). The federal budget covers the meals and education of about one and a half million (according to the Pew Hispanic Center) undocumented children.

Republicans primarily believe in smaller federal government and already disapprove of its sizable deficit and the fact that numerous people who are U.S. citizens are in need of aid already. This leads many to disagree with the enforcement of legislation like this, especially DACA, which was never authorized by congress but was passed as a presidential memorandum.

These viewpoints could be seen as cold, but Republicans and conservatives both are most concerned with the safety of the American people and smaller federal government.

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The Other Side: Immigration The - The Hawk Eye

Republicans and Democrats finally act like adults at negotiating table | TheHill – The Hill

House Democrats and the White House announced their agreement this week on the United States Mexico Canada Agreement, which will replace the North American Free Trade Agreement once it is enacted. Republican Senator Rob Portman accurately described the compromise necessary to reach the agreement as a rare feat that should be celebrated. Indeed, we can celebrate this rare bipartisan legislative victory in Washington.

However, we should also insist that lawmakers working effectively across the aisle for the good of the American people not be such a rarity. For that to happen they will need to overcome the mythical fixed pie belief most of them seem to hold that a deal that is good for one party must be bad for the other. That belief was reflected in the news headlines blaring that Democrats caved by handing President TrumpDonald John TrumpDems want tougher language on election security in defense bill Five aides to Van Drew resign ahead of his formal switch to GOP The myth of the conservative bestseller MORE this legislative victory.

But to decide whether Democrats let him score a win is the wrong idea. A signed trade deal is good for the Trump because it fulfills his campaign promise to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he described as perhaps the worst trade deal ever made. It is also good for Democrats because it shows that they are not so focused on impeaching Trump that they cannot work with him to deliver policy for the good of the nation. The new trade deal is good for both parties and Americans as a whole. It would also be good for all of us if lawmakers could transcend partisan pettiness long enough to reach agreements on pressing issues like health care, gun control, climate change, and immigration reform.

However, that will not happen until lawmakers and those of us who elect them to office think of ourselves first and foremost as Americans and only secondarily as Republicans or Democrats, and until we can truly focus on doing what is best for our nation rather than what is best for our party. The question should not be whether the Democrats handed Trump a victory or whether the Democrats scored a win. It should be whether Republicans and Democrats finally worked together to hand workers a trade victory.

House Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiTrump-Pelosi trade deal creates strife among progressives Trump: Pelosi's teeth were 'falling out of her mouth' during press conference Schiff: I 'hope to hell' I would have voted to impeach Obama if he had committed same actions as Trump MORE, when asked why she would give Trump a win, responded, This is the right thing to do for our trade situation and for our workers. Democratic Representative Daniel Kildee, when asked if the new trade deal was a win for the president, said, We are working to try to preserve American jobs, and if it does that, the fact that some benefit might accrue to him should not be a reason not to do it.

It is encouraging to see members of both parties set aside pettiness and finally act like adults at the bargaining table long enough to accomplish significant policy together. That will remain a rare occurrence, however, until they are consistently motivated by the shared purpose of serving Americans and treating each other with mutual respect and appreciation. After the deal was announced, however, both sides quickly lapsed into trading insults instead of showing mutual respect and appreciation.

Vice President Mike Pence tweeted that Democrats finally acquiesced to the voice of the American people, in allowing the vote on the new trade agreement. Pelosi described the new deal as infinitely better than what was initially proposed by the administration. As a savvy negotiator, she should realize that doing a victory dance that only leaves your bargaining counterpart feeling badly about the deal they just reached with you leaves them less favorably disposed to working with you to reach future deals.

Here is to hoping that Republicans and Democrats overcome their worst bargaining instincts, build on their success in reaching a trade agreement, and deliver even more legislative wins for Americans across the nation.

Joseph Holt is an associate professor who teaches leadership and ethics with the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame.

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Republicans and Democrats finally act like adults at negotiating table | TheHill - The Hill