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Ronald Reagan vs. Stephen Miller on Immigration

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2024 //
6

At the infamous Madison Square Garden hate rally, Trump’s close advisor Stephen Miller railed against immigrants. If Trump is elected, Miller will be in charge of the program to round up and expel millions of undocumented immigrants.

And Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who has shaped many of Trump’s immigration policies, said Americans are having their jobs “looted and stolen from them” and sent to foreign countries. 

He went even further: “America is for America and Americans only,” he said, a starkly anti-immigration view that advances what has already been said throughout the campaign. 

But President Ronald Reagan had a different message. This was his last message as President. He devoted it to welcoming immigrants. During his time in office, he passed legislation to reform the immigration system so that all immigrants entered legally. He extended amnesty to those who were in the U.S. without documents.

An immigration website describes Reagan’s bipartisan legislation:

President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan

A few months into his presidency, Ronald Reagan issued a “Statement on United States Immigration and Refugee Policy” in which he outlined his goals to continue America’s tradition of welcoming people from other countries, especially those fleeing oppression. He called for the millions of undocumented “illegal immigrants” present in the country to be given recognition and a path to legal status — without encouraging further illegal immigration.

On Nov. 6, 1986 Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the most far-reaching immigration law passed during his presidency. The Act’s most significant effect was that it allowed immigrants who had entered the U.S. illegally before Jan. 1, 1982 to apply for legal status, provided they paid fines and back taxes. This provision — which Reagan himself referred to as “amnesty,” allowed around 3 million immigrants to secure legal status after paying $185, demonstrating “good moral character” and learning to speak English.

Categories Bigotry, Elections, Immigration

Why Are So Few Employers Using a Federal Program to ID Undocumented Immigrants

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2024 //
18

Yes, there is a federal program to verify the legal status of immigrants. It’s fast and efficient but most employers don’t use it. Why? They need laborers, and they don’t care about their legal status.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

  • A long-standing computer-based federal program called E-Verify makes it easy for prospective employers to spot and reject unauthorized immigrants seeking jobs.
  • Yet, in California, only about 16% of employer establishments are enrolled in E-Verify, even lower than the overall national figure of 27%, according to a Times analysis of federal data.
  • The program’s low use reflects the reality that many businesses — and the broader economy — have come to rely on undocumented immigrants. 

WASHINGTON — For all of Donald Trump’s railing against immigrants and Democrats’ insistence on creating a better pathway to citizenship, one thing almost no one ever talks about is a computer-based federal program that makes it easy for prospective employers to spot and reject unauthorized immigrants seeking jobs.

The program, known as E-Verify, is highly reliable and involves relatively little red tape. If fully utilized, many experts say, it could significantly curb the flow of undocumented immigrants by effectively removing one of the biggest reasons so many come to the United States illegally to begin with — getting a job.
Yet even though E-Verify is free for employers, with more than 98% of those checked being confirmed as work-authorized instantly or within 24 hours, the program is significantly underused.

Nationally the program is voluntary, except for certain businesses such as federal contractors. Most states don’t require employers to use it. In California, only about 16% of employer establishments are enrolled in E-Verify, even lower than the overall national figure of 27 %, according to a Times analysis of data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Its low use reflects the underlying reality that many businesses — and the broader economy — have come to rely on undocumented immigrants. And in many ways, it’s both symptomatic and an outcome of what both major political parties acknowledge is a “broken immigration system,” in which unauthorized employment has become an intractable condition that employers, consumers and politicians have lived with for years.

Employers face few sanctions for hiring undocumented workers. And the odds of getting inspected are even less than a taxpayer’s likelihood of being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.

Even during the Trump administration, which stepped up enforcement and publicized a few raids, such as the 2018 sweep of 7-Eleven stores in L.A. and other cities, federal agents closed 6,065 cases of unauthorized employment and labor exploitation nationwide in 2019, its peak year, involving fewer than 31,000 undocumented workers, according to data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), with Republican colleagues including Ohio Sen. JD Vance, former President Trump’s running mate, in June introduced a bill to make E-Verify mandatory across the country. But similar efforts in the past have repeatedly failed to win enough bipartisan support.

And one key reason: There are simply not enough “legal” workers to fill all the jobs a healthy, growing U.S. economy generates. And that’s especially so in low-wage industries.

Employers say that requiring E-Verify — without other overhauls to the immigration system, including easier ways to bring in workers — would be devastating.

“I think you would see a general overall collapse in California agriculture and food prices going through the roof if we didn’t have them do the work,” said Don Cameron, general manager at Terranova Ranch, which produces a variety of crops on 9,000 acres in Fresno County.

At least half of the 900,000 farmworkers in California are thought to be undocumented, even higher than what national surveys suggest, says Daniel Sumner, an agricultural economist at UC Davis. Neither Cameron nor most anyone else in California farms, among other sectors, is in favor of mandatory E-Verify.

Even in red states, which are more prone to require and use the program, E-Verify isn’t exactly widely popular in immigrant-heavy states. While Georgia’s participation rate is among the highest, at about 85%, only about 30% of employer establishments in Texas had signed up for it as of last year.

‘The status quo makes business sense’
And enrollment was even lower in Florida, although the state last year made E-Verify mandatory for employers with more than 25 workers, sparking an immediate backlash from some businessess.

“If the documents [presented by a prospective worker] look good on their face, it’s good enough for them because they’re desperate for labor,” said Chris Thomas, a Denver-based attorney who has counseled scores of companies facing government investigations of their immigration practices.

“It’s a wink and a nod,” he said. “ The status quo makes business sense. ”

It’s not simply a matter of not having enough workers to do the hard, often dead-end and low-wage jobs that most U.S. citizens don’t want to do. It’s the shortage of workers overall, experts say.

For decades, birth rates in the U.S. have been declining, as they have in most of the economically developed world. Today, the birth rate among American women of childbearing age has dropped below the level needed to meet the country’s replacement rate. California’s birth rate is at its lowest in a century.

If the economy is to grow and prosper, as almost all Americans say they want it to, additional workers must come from somewhere else.
“It’s not in our macroeconomic interest to prevent unauthorized immigrants from working, because the U.S. population is aging,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. “Because we haven’t had immigration reform to allow in more immigrants legally, people are just coming anyway, and they come in bigger and smaller numbers as our economy demands them.”

David Bier, director of immigration studies at Cato, a conservative think tank, says there’s some evidence that large-scale immigration has kept the country out of recession and increased tax revenues, contrary to what Vance has said about undocumented immigrants draining Social Security funds. Most economists agree that new arrivals have been crucial in sustaining high employment by filling many job openings in recent years.

Immigrants, for example, many of them undocumented, make up 40% of California’s home healthcare and child day-care employment, according to The Times’ calculations of Census Bureau data. That, in turn, helps other moms to stay in the labor force.

“The whole idea that these workers are bad for native-born workers — there’s not much evidence for that,” Bier said.

Bottom line: Congress must act to pass a reorganization of our immigration laws so that all immigrants enter legally.

Categories California, Economy, Immigration

Obama on Trump Blaming Immigrants for Everything: Must Watch

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2024 //
5

Barack Obama is a skilled orator, probably the best of our time. In this 3-minute clip, he asks the quintessential question. Trump says to Kamala, “You were there for four years, why didn’t you solve the border problem?” Obama asks of Trump, “Dude, you were there for four years, why didn’t you solve the problem?”

Categories Elections, Extremism, Failure, Harris, Kamala, Immigration, Obama, Trump

Racism, Hate, Division, Lies: Another Day in the Trump Campaign

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2024 //
47

I follow whatever is posted by the Meidas brothers. They do a great job of pulling together clips from the campaign, to show you what’s happening.

This series of clips is an eye opener. It’s frankly disgusting to see the racist, anti-immigrant appeals that Trump and his surrogates deliver to the voters.

We used to pride ourselves on being a nation of immigrants. Now Trump wants us to see immigrants as murderers, rapists, and criminals.

He says he will invoke a law passed in 1798 to round-up millions of immigrants and deport them. Is this The Final Solution?

Can he be elected by serving up a steady diet of hatred and fear?

Categories Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Immigration, Lies, Trump

Historian Timothy Snyder on Mass Deportations

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2024 //
22

Timothy Snyder is a historian at Yale University, where he teaches European history.

He posted this podcast today. It’s only 10 minutes and well worth the time.

He wrote in introduction:

As a historian of forced population movements and as an American, I don’t think we are taking the consequences of the Trump-Vance deportation plan seriously enough. The reality will be much more personal and awful, and the politics more transformative and durable, than we might think. 

I will write this up soon; but I was moved to do a recording by the urgency of this, and by the desire to catch the end of Hispanic Heritage Month. 

Please listen and please share.

You might find it useful to read my thoughts about the thousands or tens of thousands of detention camps that would be needed in every state.

Categories Bigotry, Elections, History, Immigration

Heather Cox Richardson: Lies, Lies, and More Lies

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2024 //
14

Heather Cox Richardson sums up the previous day’s lies from Trump and his campaign. His most recent blatant lie is that the Biden administration bankrupted FEMA by handing over all its funding to pay for the needs of illegal immigrants. Previously he said that Biden was not helping Georgia because it’s a red state; Governor Brian Kemp corrected Trump and said Biden gave him whatever he asked for (Trump was thinking of his own actions when he withheld emergency federal money from California because it went for Biden). Trump is obsessed with immigrants. He loathes them (they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” he said). He announced that after he is elected, he will strip away the protected status of the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, and send them back to Haiti.

She wrote:

MAGA Republicans are now lying about the federal response to Hurricane Helene in much the same way they lied about Haitian migrants bringing chaos and disease to Springfield, Ohio. Both disinformation efforts are flat-out lies, and both are designed to demonize immigrants. Immigration was the issue Trump was so eager to run on that he demanded Republican lawmakers reject the strong border bill a bipartisan group of lawmakers had hammered out. 

The federal response to Hurricane Helene has drawn bipartisan praise, with Republican governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina thanking Biden by name for what McMaster called a “superb” response. 

But on Sunday, September 29, two days after the hurricane hit, the right-wing organization started by anti-immigrant Trump loyalist Stephen Miller posted: “Billions for Ukraine. Billions for illegal aliens. And what for the Americans? Reprogram every single dollar that FEMA has dedicated to support illegal aliens to go towards Americans who are facing unprecedented devastation!”

Yesterday, in Saginaw, Michigan, Trump echoed Miller, claiming that the Biden administration is botching the hurricane response because it has spent all the money appropriated for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on “illegal immigrants.” “They spent it all on illegal migrants.… They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them,” he said. Today, he claimed that “a billion dollars was stolen from FEMA to use it for illegal migrants, many of whom are criminals, to come into our country.” 

Early this morning, X owner Elon Musk posted to his more than 200 million followers: “Yes, they are literally using YOUR tax dollars to import voters and disenfranchise you! It is happening right in front of your eyes. And FEMA used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason.” On Wednesday, Dana Mattioli, Joe Palazzolo, and Khadeeja Safdar of the Wall Street Journal broke the story that Musk has been financing groups with ties to Miller since 2022. 

But of course, it is NOT happening in front of anyone’s eyes.

On Wednesday, Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in which FEMA is housed, told reporters that FEMA’s disaster relief fund is adequately funded for current needs. But, he warned, “extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and severity,” and we are not yet out of hurricane season. If another emergency hits, FEMA’s disaster relief fund will be stretched thin. 

Congress also appropriated money for a different fund, the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), which is part of Customs and Border Protection but is administered by FEMA. Established under the Trump administration in 2019, SSP gives grants to states and local governments to provide shelter, food, and transportation to undocumented immigrants. After Trump’s accusation, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement: “These claims are completely false. As Secretary Mayorkas said, FEMA has the necessary resources to meet the immediate needs associated with Hurricane Helene and other disasters. The Shelter and Services Program (SSP) is a completely separate, appropriated grant program that was authorized and funded by Congress and is not associated in any way with FEMA’s disaster-related authorities or funding streams.”

Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post did not leave the story there. “Trump has a habit of assuming other politicians act in the same way as he would,” Kessler wrote. So he looked into why Trump would have accused Biden “of raiding the FEMA disaster fund to handle undocumented migrants. It turns out that’s because he did this.”   

In the middle of hurricane season in 2019, Kessler explains, Trump took $155 million from the FEMA disaster fund and redirected it to pay for detention space and temporary hearing locations for immigrants seeking asylum. “No, Biden didn’t take FEMA relief money to use on migrants,” the article title reads, “but Trump did.”

As in Springfield, a bipartisan group of lawmakers are begging MAGAs to stop the disinformation, which is keeping people from accessing the help they need and gumming up relief efforts as workers and local and state governments, as well as FEMA, have to waste time combating lies. Scammers and political extremists are making things worse by spreading AI-generated images and claiming that the federal government is ignoring the people and emergencies the images depict.

MAGA Republicans launched another major disinformation campaign today when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released another blockbuster jobs report. It showed that the country added about 254,000 jobs in September, far higher than the 140,000 jobs economists expected. It also revised the job numbers for July and August upward. The unemployment rate dropped from 4.2% in August to 4.1%, and wages have outpaced inflation. 

Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, wrote that the jobs report “cements my view that the economy is about as good as it gets. The economy is creating lots of jobs across many industries, consistent with robust labor force growth, and thus low and stable unemployment. The economy is at full-employment, no more and no less. Wage growth is strong, and given big productivity gains, it is consistent with low and stable inflation. One couldn’t paint a prettier picture of the job market and broader economy.”

Yet MAGA Republicans deny that the economy is strong. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) openly called the jobs report fake. And when a reporter asked Trump, “Jobs are up, the stock market hit that all-time high. Do you acknowledge that the economy is improving?” he answered: “No it’s not.”

But, apparently stung, this afternoon Trump posted on his social media site what appeared to be an announcement. After an emoji of a flashing red light, a headline read, “New: Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has endorsed Trump for President.” A representative for Dimon instantly denied such an endorsement, saying it is false. According to a spokesperson for JP Morgan, Dimon has neither contributed money nor endorsed Trump, or anyone else, in the 2024 presidential race. But Trump has not taken the post down. 

Hugo Lowell of The Guardian notes that Trump has admired Dimon for a long time and likely craves his support. Trump has been unable to attract major endorsements, while celebrities throw their influence behind Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz almost daily. Yesterday, musician Bruce Springsteen endorsed Harris. Today, businessman and former Los Angeles Lakers basketball player Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr. endorsed her.

The firehose of lies is designed to make it impossible for voters to figure out the truth. The technique is designed so that eventually voters give up trying to engage, conclude everyone is lying, throw up their hands, and stop voting. Holding on to facts combats the effects of the storm of lies.  

Finally, tonight, the X account of Trump’s team and the Republican National Committee—now run by the Trump family and loyalists—showed a clip of Biden unexpectedly entering the White House briefing room today, joking with reporters, and saying, “Welcome to the swimming pool.” Referring to “Biden (or whatever’s left of him),” the post suggested his “swimming pool” reference was a sign of mental incapacity.

In fact, the briefing room was indeed originally a swimming pool. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt added the pool to the White House in 1933 after he found swimming helped to keep him in shape after his 1921 bout with polio. Presidents Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy (who had a mural by Bernard Lamotte installed around it), and Lyndon B. Johnson used the pool frequently. Richard Nixon did not. In 1970, Nixon had the pool covered and the space converted into the White House Press Room.

Nixon ordered the change made in such a way that it could be easily undone in case he got pushback for covering up FDR’s pool, but his successor, Gerald Ford, who was an avid swimmer, largely ended the conversation when he added a new outdoor pool to the White House complex in 1975.

Biden’s reference to the press room as a swimming pool was a historical joke rather than a sign of mental incapacity. This lie deserves the same scrutiny as the other whoppers from today, though, because as Glenn Kessler accurately observed, Trump’s common pattern is projection.

—

Categories Bigotry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Immigration, Lies, Trump

Imagining Trump’s Immigrant Detention Camps

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2024 //
33

Trump says he will deport 11 million illegal immigrants. He says his deportation program will be unlike anything the nation has ever seen. He is right.

Trump says that Franklin D. Roosevelt deported over one million Mexican immigrants. Not literally true. His aide Stephen Miller must have told him that; Miller will probably be put in charge of the program if Trump wins the election. He hates immigrants.

Actually, the deportations were started in 1930 and reached a peak in 1931, before FDR was elected. Estimates for the numbers of those deported ranged from 300,000-2 million, about half of whom were American citizens. President Herbert Hoover approved the deportation program on the belief that Mexicans were taking jobs from white people. Most of the deportation was implemented by local and state governments.

What would it look like to deport 11 million people?

First, they would have to be rounded up in massive raids. Imagine the terror as federal agents arrived at the homes of immigrants and raided them, carrying away families–men, women and children.

Where to put 11 million people?

Then, the federal government would have to build thousands, tens of thousands of detention camps. Every state would have detention centers. This would be a massive undertaking, because the camps would need to be constructed and supplied with beds, food, personnel, doctors and nurses.

Trump has suggested that the deportees would each have a serial number. Would it be tattooed on their arms?

Inevitably, families would be torn apart, people would die, women would give birth in the camps.

The images sent around the world of detention camps for millions of people would humiliate our country as a cruel, heartless place.

Someone should drape a hood over the Statue of Liberty, so that she does not see what is happening as she lifts her lamp “beside the golden door.”

On the base of the Statue of Liberty, “The New Collosus,” by Emma Lazarus.

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! 

No more. Stay home. We are full. No more room. Not at this inn.

Categories Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Immigration, Trump

Ohio: Sheriff Threatens Democratic Voters

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2024 //
11

In Ravenna, Ohio, the sheriff issued a stern and intimidating warning to anyone who placed a Harris-Walz sign in their yard. There was no official reprimand. In Ohio, it seems, voter intimidation by an official is not a problem.

Politico reports:

RAVENNA, Ohio — A local Ohio elections board says the county sheriff’s department will not be used for election security following a social media post by the sheriff saying people with Kamala Harris yard signs should have their addresses recorded so that immigrants can be sent to live with them if the Democratic vice president wins the November election.

In a statement on the Portage County Democrats’ Facebook page, county board of elections chair Randi Clites said members voted 3-1 Friday to remove the sheriff’s department from providing security during in-person absentee voting.

Clites cited public comments indicating “perceived intimidation by our sheriff against certain voters” and the need to “make sure every voter in Portage County feels safe casting their ballot for any candidate they choose.”

A Ravenna Record-Courier story on the Akron Beacon Journal site reported that a day earlier, about 150 people crowded into a room at the Kent United Church of Christ for a meeting sponsored by the NAACP of Portage County, many expressing fear about the Sept. 13 comments.

“I believe walking into a voting location where a sheriff deputy can be seen may discourage voters from entering,” Clites said. The board is looking at using private security already in place at the administration building or having Ravenna police provide security, Clites said.

Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski posted a screenshot of a Fox News segment criticizing President Joe Biden and Harris over immigration. Likening people in the U.S. illegally to “human locusts,” he suggested recording addresses of people with Harris yard signs so when migrants need places to live “we’ll already have the addresses of their New families … who supported their arrival!”

Local Democrats filed complaints with the Ohio secretary of state and other agencies, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio accused Zuchowski of an unconstitutional “impermissible threat” against residents who want to display political yard signs. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine called the comments “unfortunate” and “not helpful.” The secretary of state’s office said the comments didn’t violate election laws and it didn’t plan any action.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Extremism, Immigration, Ohio

Jonathan V. Last: Who Will Republicans in Springfield, Ohio, Vote For?

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2024 //
8

Jonathan V. Last is the lead editor of The Bulwark, the Never Trumper blog and one of the best political blogs.

He wondered whether Republicans in Springfield will vote for Trump after the venom he and Vance have directed at their town.He quotes from a Wall Street Journal article that dashed all of the spurious claims about the Haitian immigrants in Springfield. Yet Trump and Vance continue to spew their hateful lies about Haitians. On Twitter,

Jonathan Last wrote:

1. Cats and Dogs

Springfield, Ohio, is Trump country. In 2020, Clark County—of which Springfield is the major population center—went for Trump 61 percent to 37 percent.

The mayor of Springfield, Rob Rue, is a Republican.

And today the Wall Street Journal has an extraordinary piece of reporting about the town’s interactions with the Trump campaign.

These bits include revelations that:

(1) The Trump campaign contacted the Springfield government on September 10 to ask if the cat/dog eating stories were true. The campaign was told, point blank, that they were not. That night, Donald Trump asserted them on the debate stage anyway.

(2) This entire conflagration began with neo-Nazis deciding to make Springfield a cause célèbre. Meaning that JD Vance is literally following a playbook put together for him by white supremacists:

On Aug. 10, a group wearing ski masks and carrying swastika flags and rifles marched in Springfield. The ADL identified them as Blood Tribe, which it describes as a growing neo-Nazi group claiming to have chapters across the U.S. and Canada.

On Aug. 27, during the routine public-comment portion of the Springfield City Commission meeting, a man identifying himself as a Blood Tribe member said: “I’ve come to bring a word of warning. Stop what you’re doing before it’s too late. Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in.”

(3) Vance produced the name of one person he said had experienced a kidnapped pet cat. The WSJ decided to check the story out:

A Vance spokesperson on Tuesday provided The Wall Street Journal with a police report in which a resident had claimed her pet might have been taken by Haitian neighbors. But when a reporter went to Anna Kilgore’s house Tuesday evening, she said her cat Miss Sassy, which went missing in late August, had actually returned a few days later—found safe in her own basement. 

Kilgore, wearing a Trump shirt and hat, said she apologized to her Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter and a mobile-phone translation app.

(4) The part of Vance’s assertion that “disease” was on the rise in Springfield? Also false:

Information from the county health department, however, shows a decrease in infectious disease cases countywide, with 1,370 reported in 2023—the lowest since 2015. The tuberculosis case numbers in the county are so low (four in 2023, three in 2022, one in 2021) that any little movement can bring a big percentage jump. HIV cases did increase to 31 in 2023, from 17 in 2022 and 12 in 2021. Overall, sexually transmitted infection cases decreased to 965 in 2023, the lowest since 2015.

Read the whole thing.

Springfield’s Republican mayor said this to the Journal:

“We have told those at the national level that they are speaking these things that are untrue,” added Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, a registered Republican. But he said claims have been “repeated and doubled down on.” 

Here’s my question: How is Rue going to vote in November? 

And the same question goes for Ohio Governor Mike DeWine.

These guys are on the ground. They see what’s happening. They know the truth. And they understand that Trump’s and Vance’s lies—which are approaching the status of blood libel—are hurting their constituents. Not in some theoretical, possible-future-case way. But in a real way. Right now. Today.

Are they going to vote for Trump and Vance? I feel like someone should probably ask them. 

Share

I think we know what Anna Kilgore’s answer will be. The WSJ shows a picture of this nice cat lady. In her Trump shirt. And her Trump hat. In front of her Trump flag. It seems not to bother her at all that the Trump campaign used her to lie about the people she felt the need to apologize to.

How does that work? What’s the psychology?

No, really. Give me your most charitable explanation. Because what gets me here is that Ms. Kilgore felt bad enough about have accused her neighbors of stealing her cat that she apologized to them. So she knows the difference between right and wrong. 

Talk about this in the comments, please. And be kind. This is an exercise in understanding, not condemnation.

Leave a comment

2. Immigrants: They Get the Job Done

I keep pointing you to Radley Balko because he’s wonderful and you should subscribe to his newsletter. He has a piece up about what immigration has done to Springfield.

First there’s the Haitian immigrant supply part of the story:

The sole claim Trump and Vance have made about Springfield that’s actually true is that since 2021, about 12,000-15,000 Haitian immigrants have moved to the city. But no one — not the Biden administration, not George Soros, and not Kamala Harris — “sent” them there. . . .

After the devastating Haiti earthquake of 2010, the Obama administration allowed displaced people from that country to come to the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a policy created during the George H.W. Bush administration for refugees from countries in crisis. Thousands of Haitians took advantage of the opportunity.

Donald Trump revoked that status in 2019, infamously calling Haiti one of those “shithole countries” from which the U.S. should never accept immigrants. Trump would later add that all Haitian immigrants “probably have AIDS,” and lament that the U.S. doesn’t get more immigrants from better countries like Norway.

Trump’s TPS revocation threatened the immigration status of tens of thousands of Haitians who came after the earthquake, many of whom by then had children who were U.S. citizens. The Biden administration then reinstated TPS protection in 2021. This is why Trump and Vance blame Biden and Harris for Springfield.

Then there’s the Springfield demand side:

[L]ike much of the Rust Belt, the manufacturing plants began to close in the 1980s and 1990s, and Springfield atrophied. The ornate Victorian homes that lined the city’s main streets fell into disrepair as those with means moved away. The city has lost about 25 percent of its population since 1970.

So in the mid-2010s, city officials embarked on a campaign to lure new businesses to the area, citing Springfield’s low cost of living and ideal geographical position for shipping and manufacturing. The plan worked. Factories started opening up. Other businesses followed.

But there was a problem: The population that remained in Springfield and surrounding Clark County was aging. There weren’t enough workers to fill the available jobs. So the companies looked to immigrants. This happened to be right about the time Haitians were coming to the U.S. under TPS. Word quickly spread in the Haitian immigrant community that there was a town in Ohio with a low cost of living and lots of well-paying jobs. So that’s where they went.

The companies did not turn to undocumented immigrants to pay “slave wages,” as some immigration opponents have claimed. They were documented immigrants with taxpayer ID numbers paid at a market rate (as noted below, wages have increased in Springfield since the Haitians arrived).

Haitians with TPS can live where they like. A large number settled in Springfield because that’s where they found jobs. . . .

This is a recurring pattern with immigration in the U.S. Immigrants settle in geographic clusters, close to other immigrants from the same country. This allows them to establish networks, find housing, and open and patronize restaurants and businesses that offer the comforts of home. This is why Patterson, New Jersey, has a “Little Lima.” In the mid-20th century, Peruvian immigrants settled in the city after taking jobs in area textile mills. It’s why Nashville has the country’s largest Kurdish community, and Minneapolis to large Somali and Hmong populations. Terre Heute, Indiana once had a thriving Syrian population; Lowell, Massachusetts has the country’s second largest Cambodian population. Rochester; New York has a large Turkish community; and Russian immigrants settled in places like Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

This is how immigration works.

When you put supply and demand together, good things can happen:

Income has gone up. In 2020, the median annual household income in the city was $39,344. Two years later — and the last year for which the U.S. Census has data — it was at $45,113.

Immigration opponents also claim that immigrants depress wages. But again contra Vance, that hasn’t happened in Springfield. The mean hourly wage jumped 18 percent between 2020 and 2023, from $21.33 to $25.16. That’s well above the 13 percent that wages increased nationally over the same period. . . .

Haitians have grown Springfield’s tax base. Because of TPS, they have Social Security or taxpayer ID numbers, so they pay all the same taxes any other resident pays. Those who have made enough money to buy a home now pay property taxes. Those who don’t own a home pay rent, which their landlords then use to pay property taxes. . . .

In a recent interview with CNBC, Vance said, “If the path to prosperity was flooding your nation with low-wage immigrants then Springfield, Ohio, would be the most prosperous country — the most prosperous city in the world. America would be the most prosperous country in the world, because Kamala Harris has flooded the country with 25 million illegal aliens.”

As with much of what Vance has said since his abrupt MAGA conversion, almost nothing in that quote is correct. There are nowhere near 25 million undocumented people in the U.S. in total. Kamala Harris doesn’t set the Biden administration’s immigration policy. And all the data suggest immigrants have made Springfield more prosperous, not less.

Read the whole thing.

3. One More Springfield

Kevin Williamson went to Springfield and wrote a fantastic piece.

Poor people have been coming to Ohio in search of jobs in its factories and warehouses for centuries: From the original New Englanders who settled in the Northwest Territory to the Scots-Irish to the Irish and Germans in the 19thcentury to the Haitians today, that story has been repeated over and over. At the turn of the 20th century, a majority of Cincinnati’s population consisted of those who either were foreign-born or were the children of foreign-born parents, mostly German. Naghten Street in Columbus, on the other hand, became “Irish Broadway” in the middle of the 19th century. The J.D. Vances of that era didn’t much care for the whiskey-drinking, potato-eating papists invading their cities, but they made good use of the canals and railroads built by those illiterate exotics from distant lands. 

The guy who wrote Hillbilly Elegy understood all that. This asshole who is running for vice president, on the other hand . . .

I fuel up and have the big 6.7L diesel spooled out and growling happily as I speed by the exit for Possum Hollow Road—honest to God, that’s the name of the place; you can’t make up details like that—way out here in the Blue Ridge Mountains where it is 40-odd degrees early in the morning in the last days of summer. The Appalachian Highlands are gorgeous this time of year, with all sunshine and sapphire skies and cool breezes, good green hills and splendid rivers, and pretty good asphalt that is, barring the occasional construction backup, wide open for RPMs. If you like to drive, it doesn’t get much better in the eastern half of these United States. There’s a lot of that gross, weird old leg-tattoo America out there, too, of course, including a guy with a leg tattoo of the Monster Energy logo, along with the inescapable herpetic rash of Dollar General stores and the strip-joint billboards sprinkled like pox along the highways and backroads from the fine vistas of southwestern Virginia to the alpine rivers of West Virginia to the literal amber waves of grain in Ohio’s cornfields.

It makes you wonder why they ever left—the Vances and the rest of those Appalachian folk who followed Steve Earle’s “Hillbilly Highway” up to Detroit or down to Houston or wherever else the Scots-Irish diaspora ended up. And then you remember why: need and desperation. There weren’t a lot of Dairy Queens or Walmarts out here, and even if there had been, there were no jobs to earn money to spend in them. It was a world—and a life—of subsistence agriculture and hustling, with very little in the way of rule of law or decent public administration, where the biggest business was organized crime and where politics vacillated between demagoguery and banditry, beautiful in some parts, hideous in others, and poisonously backward—you know: Haiti, but with white people.

Read the whole thing.

Categories Elections, Hoax, Immigration, Lies, Ohio, Racism, Trump, Vance, J.D.

Jamelle Bouie: JD Vance Should Resign in Shame!

By dianeravitch
September 15, 2024 //
9

Despite the debunking of the story about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs, despite the story becoming a national joke, JD Vance continues to peddle it. Vance is a senator from Ohio, meaning that he is hurling insults at people he supposedly represents.

Jamelle Bouie is a regular columnist for the New York Times.

If Senator JD Vance of Ohio had a moral compass, a shred of decency or a belief in anything other than his own ambition and will-to-power, he would resign his Senate seat effective immediately, leave the presidential race and retire from public life, following a mournful apology for his ethical transgressions.

As it stands, Vance has done none of the above, which is why he is still, as of today, using his position in the United States Senate and on the Republican Party presidential ticket to spread lies and smears against his own constituents in Springfield — Haitian immigrants who have settled there to make a new life for themselves.

The main impact of those lies and smears — which began Monday when Vance told his followers on X that “reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country,” and continued Tuesday when Donald Trump told an audience of 67 million people that “they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats” — has been to terrorize the entire Springfield community.

On Thursday, bomb threats led to the evacuation of two elementary schools, city hall and the state motor vehicle agency’s local facility. The mayor has received threats to his office, and local families fear for the safety of their children. Several Springfield residents, including Nathan Clark — father of Aiden Clark, the 11-year-old killed when his school bus was struck by a minivan driven by a Haitian immigrant — have pleaded with Trump and Vance to end their attacks and leave the community in peace.

“My son was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti,” said Clark, rebutting a claim made by Vance. “This tragedy is felt all over this community, the state and even the nation, but don’t spin this towards hate,” he continued. “Using Aiden as a political tool is, to say the least, reprehensible for any political purpose.”

This direct rebuke from a grieving father has stopped neither Vance nor Trump from spreading anti-immigrant — and specifically anti-Haitian — lies and fanning the flames of hatred. “Don’t let biased media shame you into not discussing this slow moving humanitarian crisis in a small Ohio town,” Vance said on Friday. “We should talk about it every day.”

The “humanitarian crisis,” it should be said, is the revitalization of Springfield after years of decline. Haitian immigrants have filled jobs, bought homes and filled city coffers with property and sales taxes. And while there are growing pains from the sudden influx of new residents, the charge that Haitian immigrants have, in Vance’s words, brought a “massive rise in communicable diseases, rent prices, car insurance rates and crime” is false. He is lying about people, the very people he swore an oath to represent, in ways that will inspire additional threats of violence and may well bring physical harm to the community.

Categories Elections, Fake, Hoax, Immigration, Lies, Ohio, Vance, J.D.
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