Tag Archives: immigration

From a comment thread over at jabberwocking.com:“The walls are more a sign of desperation than power. A better way is to fix Central America so there is a larger buffer between the US and the problems in South America. Fixing includes making conditions in the continent prosperous enough for all that we don’t have hordes desperately attempting dangerous journeys.”Exactly. Walls don’t work. But the GOP would rather spend billions on futility than spend...

The Republican Party has demonstrated it’s subservience to Donald Trump and rejection of policy making as such. In a sane country, this would doom the party to a very long period in opposition, but I am a citizen of the country I have not the country I want. I think the issues are well known, but I will attempt a brief review. First, while most Republicans in Congress agree that the US should aid Ukraine, some side with Putin. More importantly,...

Haley  Nikki Haley is staying in the race for the Republican nomination, at least for now.    Why?  If she only cares about becoming president, this year could be her best shot even with Trump way ahead of her in the polls.  Trump may be convicted or become incapacitated, and she could win the nomination as the last woman standing.  It is far from clear her political brand will be in better shape with Republican primary voters 4 years from...

The single most significant thing Republicans could do to reduce undocumented immigration is to require E-Verify for all hires and jail employers who don’t use it or who hire in spite of it. Why not use this?“At the same time, ordinary economic migrants could be most effectively dealt with via E-Verify. If you make it hard to hire undocumented workers, they’ll stop coming. The problem is that even immigration hawks tend to downplay this because it...

Texas took it upon themselves to guard the border and not allow the Border Patrol entry to Shelby Park, a 47-acre Texas public park. The Border Patrol typically apprehends people crossing the river at that point. Texas/US military soldiers were sent to the area to block any migrants from crossing the river. A group of six had trouble crossing the river. One woman and two children drown in the presence of the National Guard. The Border Patrol was...

December 17, 2023, Letters from an American, Prof. Heather Cox Richardson It seems that former president Donald Trump is aligning his supporters with a global far-right movement to destroy democracy.  On Saturday, in Durham, New Hampshire, Trump echoed Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s attacks on immigrants, saying they are “poisoning the blood of our country”—although two of his three wives were immigrants—and quoted Russian president Vladimir...

Good evening, hope all is well by you. Two days ago, my wife of 52 years took off to my oldest son’s home to visit and to meet my youngest son’s woman friend. We are very pleased with this and the story behind all of this is long and too enduring to be told here. However here is another story of a man and his family thriving in the US in his own business. The day before my wife went to Chicago, my neighbor Aldofo asked if we would attend...

There are good reasons to want to know the cause of an accident, a fire, – or even a crime; finding out the cause of – the reason for – something undesirable happening could help prevent a recurrence.The media seem to think that we, the public, feel that assigning blame is at least as important as determining the cause. Or, perhaps, it is top-down; the media want us to think it is at least as important to find someone to blame as it is to find the...

For the past few days I have been wondering if Netanyahu has a plan for responding to the Hamas terror killings, or if he’s just temporizing.  More and more, it seems like he is just skating in front of the breaking ice.  If this is right, it’s one more misdeed for which he and his cronies need to be held accountable. Any competent military would have a carefully worked out contingency plan for all-out war against Hamas.  That plan would take into...

This post will be long and confused. It is on a topic on which I am unusually especially ignorant as I decided that the case was hopeless 20 years ago and stopped following it. The current war makes me think that, at least things could be less horrible than they are, and I can’t help trying to think of how the horror could be reduced. First, I think that the current Israeli military action is a strategic mistake. I also think that the civilian...