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Trump Is A Phony On Immigration

Trump Is A Phony On Immigration

Donald Trump’s recent rant against all things Mexican followed hard upon his promise of a gentler approach toward most of the estimated 11 million immigrants here illegally. The political media continue to agonize over what Trump really wants, but isn’t it obvious by now? He wants confusion.

One of his tricks is to say ordinary things paired with vulgar smears against Mexicans. That makes the ordinary things sound tough.

Consider his “deportation task force” to deal with undocumented felons. Well, who’s not for sending criminals back? The Obama administration has been doing that for years — and without the blowhard theatrics.

What is Hillary Clinton’s stance? She supports comprehensive immigration reform along the lines of the bipartisan Senate bill passed in 2013. Had the Republican House leadership allowed a vote on similar legislation, which would have been approved, America would now be well on its way to curbing illegal immigration. And the Republican Party would undoubtedly be marching behind a more respectable candidate.

The Senate bill would have forced all employers to eventually use E-Verify — a system whereby every hire’s photo or biometric ID would be checked against a central database. Those permitted to work in the U.S. would get an instant go-ahead. Counterfeit IDs would set off alarms.

The comprehensive reform also called for beefed-up monitoring of the southern border, including improved surveillance technology and up to 40,000 more Border Patrol agents. And it would have required that enhanced border security go into effect before any green cards could be handed to undocumented workers.

The path to citizenship, meanwhile, would have involved the paying of fines and taken 10 years.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that passage of the bill would have cut the budget deficit by $700 billion over 10 years. There would have been costs, yes, but they would have been swamped by an increase in federal tax revenues.

Trump’s nasty rhetoric should not hide the reality that he’s taken no fixed stand on whether millions of otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay in the country. Some days, it’s deportation. Some days not.

NBC’s Chuck Todd tried to get a straight answer out of Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, but with no luck. Every time Pence was cornered, he slipped and slided. “I think Donald Trump’s been completely consistent,” Pence insisted, lying through his teeth.

Trump clearly has no personal objection to unauthorized foreigner labor, having infamously employed 200 undocumented Polish construction workers in the building of Trump Tower. They toiled in 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, for $4 or $5 an hour. Trump stiffed some of them on even those measly wages.

For all we know, Trump might want to keep workers illegal because they’re cheaper that way.

In the meantime, Trump continues to entertain his baying fans with promises to build that ludicrous wall along the Mexican border. No matter whether the United States, Mexico or New Zealand would pay for it, the fact remains that more Mexicans are now returning home than coming to the U.S.

Three years has passed since the House failed to take up the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform. The undocumented millions are still here, and there’s no requirement that all employers use E-Verify to confirm the legality of their workers.

The reforms backed by Clinton would do more to control our borders than Trump’s phony tough talk because they’re thought-out and unambiguous on enforcement. I suspect Trump doesn’t care one way or another about the issue except as a means to inflame his crowds. Being ugly doesn’t make one serious.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached atfharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo: Chief National Guard Bureau

The Fact — And The Case For Immigration Amnesty

The Fact — And The Case For Immigration Amnesty

Nov. 20 (Bloomberg View) — To understand the case for or against immigration amnesty, you have to start with The Fact: There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Almost all of them came here under President George W. Bush, President Bill Clinton or even before.

Stating The Fact is important because you won’t hear it uttered by Republican politicians preparing to mount the barricades against President Barack Obama’s impending executive action. They love to talk about “border security.” Depending on the rhetorical needs of the moment, they relish tales either of the tyranny of a president who crushes opponents without remorse or of the weakness of a president who cowers in fear.

However, you will find it very difficult to get any of these politicians to discuss The Fact. Ohio governor John Kasich sort of did this week, and even sort of mentioning The Fact counts as courage. Indeed, it’s difficult to find a House or Senate Republican today who will even acknowledge The Fact, let alone propose to deal with it.

Yet even Republican hardliners won’t articulate support for deporting The Fact, regardless of what they or their constituents might secretly desire. By default, that leaves two choices: some form of the status quo or some form of amnesty.

The status quo has little to recommend it. If you are worried about The Fact driving down wages or hurting taxpayers, as some opponents of immigration reform are, the status quo is your enemy. It leaves millions without legal protection from labor exploitation. It also restricts economic mobility and access to credit. It makes investing in personal capital — education, skills — risky, and investing in a home or business even more so. The threat of deportation — keep in mind that the Obama administration has deported roughly two million individuals — also entails the threat of personal financial ruin.

Amnesty is offensive to Americans who view The Fact as a collection of lawbreakers. But making immigrants suffer in legal limbo, with the constant threat of deportation hanging over them and their loved ones, serves no practical or moral purpose. Will they become better people as they wait? Or, in lieu of deportation, is suffering itself the point?

Most Americans support an earned path to legalization and citizenship. That is precisely the course that the Senate endorsed in 2013 and the House rejected. If House Republicans had been willing to pass an earned path to citizenship, this controversy would have ended in 2013. Instead, the only legislation they passed was an attempt to strip young immigrants who had arrived as children — “DREAMers” — of the right to study and work here. That’s a very effective way to punish. Does it serve some other useful goal?

If the purpose of leaving The Fact unresolved is to condemn the lax immigration policies that preceded the Obama administration, then by all means wail away. But it won’t change the past. If the idea is to set an example to deter future immigrants, it’s a pointless exercise. A secure border can deter them. So can prospects for a better life at home. The enmity of U.S. politicians, however, is not terribly daunting to a Guatemalan mother fleeing a murderous gang that controls her neighborhood. In any case, focusing on the past or the future is just one more way of avoiding dealing with The Fact that is here and now.

So the question is whether illegal immigrants should remain in legal limbo, with their economic prospects blunted, their ambitions stunted — all for no gain whatsoever to the nation at large. (By contrast, citizenship for The Fact would lower the deficit and aid the economy).

In the U.S., of all places on earth, condemnation of The Fact on moral grounds is especially difficult to sustain. Illegal immigration isn’t exactly alien to these shores; it preceded the nation’s founding. In 1763, King George III drew a border along the Allegheny Mountains and prohibited settlement west of it. George Washington was among those who violated the law, speculating in land on the other side.

Our national character was forged in no small degree by our scrappy determined ancestors who risked their lives to get here and exhibited enormous grit to make it. Many were hated by those already here. No one is proposing open borders or amnesty for all forever. But The Fact isn’t going away. If amnesty is unacceptable, what do immigration opponents propose?

Photo: About 200 people gather on Aliso Street to watch a jumbo screen of President Obama’s speech on executive action on immigration during a rally outside the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2014, in Los Angeles. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

Why Is Eric Cantor Afraid Of Immigration Reform?

Why Is Eric Cantor Afraid Of Immigration Reform?

UPDATE: Apparently, Cantor had plenty of reason to be worried. Shortly after 8pm EST, the Associated Press called Tuesday’s primary for Brat.

When House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) faces college professor David Brat in Tuesday’s Republican primary, the results will widely be viewed as a signal of how dangerous immigration politics can be for Republican candidates.

Cantor is almost certain to win Tuesday’s primary, given his superior name recognition and overwhelming financial advantage. But the Majority Leader is taking Brat’s challenge seriously. Brat has focused his campaign on immigration-based attacks — frequently blasting Cantor for “working in cahoots” with Democrats in an “amnesty drive” — and Cantor is clearly worried that the attacks could stick.

Although he often speaks publicly of the need to reform the system, Cantor has been sending out strongly anti-immigration direct mail in his district, boasting that “Conservative Republican Eric Cantor is stopping the Obama-Reid plan to give illegal aliens amnesty,” and proudly quoting an article that labels Cantor as the “the No. 1 guy standing between the American people and immigration reform.”

Cantor’s actions have matched his advertising; he has led the efforts to block even the most politically innocuous reforms from reaching the House floor for a vote.

There’s a very real reason to question what Cantor is afraid of, however. Although conservatives and pundits alike frequently warn that immigration reform is political suicide for Republican candidates, polling data does not support their concerns. The latest such survey, released on Election Day by the Public Religion Research Institute, exposes the futility of the GOP’s race to the right on the issue.

According to the poll, a 51 percent majority of self-identified Republicans support establishing a path to citizenship for immigrants living in the country illegally. Furthermore, the poll makes it clear that Cantor and his fellow Republicans should not expect an electoral boost from blocking reform measures. In fact, the opposite holds true:

Even among Republican voters, opposing immigration reform carries more political risk than benefit. Nearly half (46 percent) of Republican voters say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who opposes immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship, while 21 percent say they would be more likely to support such a candidate. Three in ten (30 percent) Republican voters say it would not make a difference to their vote either way.

Granted, Cantor’s district in the Richmond suburbs is extremely conservative. But the available polling of the race does not suggest that its right-leaning voters make Cantor more vulnerable to immigration attacks. According to a June 6 survey from GOP pollster Vox Populi, although a vast majority of Republican primary voters oppose a path to citizenship, just 9 percent rated immigration as the most important issue to them. That leaves immigration in third place behind government spending and debt (30 percent) and jobs and the economy (22 percent). In other words, Cantor does not stand to gain very much from his nativist-themed campaign.

His efforts could come with costs, though. Democrats have repeatedly warned that time is running out for House Republicans to act on immigration reform. If no progress is made by the end of the summer, then President Obama could choose to deal with the problem through executive action — resulting in more liberal reforms than Republicans would support, and exacerbating the GOP’s already serious problems with Hispanic voters.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

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World Execution Toll Rose In 2013: Amnesty

World Execution Toll Rose In 2013: Amnesty

By Robin Millard

London (AFP) – The number of known executions worldwide rose to at least 778 last year following a surge in Iraq and Iran, Amnesty International said Thursday, but China remains the world’s biggest state executioner by far.

Beijing is thought to have killed thousands of its own citizens, more than the rest of the world put together, the London-based human rights organisation said.

But the charity’s annual report on death sentences and executions worldwide said the Chinese authorities “continue to treat the figures on death sentences and executions as a state secret.”

“We need really to spotlight China’s secrecy around the death penalty,” Audrey Gaughran, Amnesty’s director of global issues told AFP.

“The authorities in China said that since 2007 they have reduced the use of the death penalty. So our challenge to them is if you have, publish the data and show us,” she said.

Although Beijing said in November it would reduce the number of crimes eligible for the death penalty from the current 55, it still led the top five countries using the death penalty in 2013, followed by Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.

The rise in the known judicial uses of the death penalty — from at least 682 in 2012 — was chiefly due to Iraq and Iran, the report said.

Iran put at least 369 people to death in 2013, up from at least 314 in 2012, and Amnesty said there was credible evidence from sources in the country that at least 335 further executions were carried out in secret.

Iraq executed at least 169 people in 2013, a sharp rise on the 40 given the death penalty in 2011 and 101 put to death in 2010, with death sentences there often passed after “grossly unfair trials,” the report said.

“The virtual killing sprees we saw in countries like Iran and Iraq were shameful,” said Amnesty Secretary General Salil Shetty.

“But those states who cling to the death penalty are on the wrong side of history and are, in fact, growing more and more isolated.”

“Only a small number of countries carried out the vast majority of these senseless state-sponsored killings. They can’t undo the overall progress already made towards abolition.”

People were executed in 22 countries in 2013, one more than the previous year, although Indonesia, Kuwait, Nigeria, and Vietnam all resumed use of the death penalty.

But Shetty said that despite this, “the long-term trend is clear — the death penalty is becoming a thing of the past.”

Outside China, almost 80 percent of executions worldwide were carried out by Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

Only five other countries have executed in each of the past five years: Bangladesh, North Korea, Sudan, the United States, and Yemen.

In the U.S. last year, Maryland became the 18th abolitionist state, with Texas now accounting for 41 percent of all executions in the Americas.

In a separate list of death sentences passed last year, Egypt was eighth, with at least 109, but that figure may swell in next year’s report after an Egyptian court Monday sentenced 529 supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi to death — the largest mass sentencing in modern Egyptian history.

Worldwide, people were executed for murder, drug-related offences, adultery, blasphemy, economic crimes, rape, “aggravated” robbery, treason, collaboration with foreign entities, acts against national security, and, in Iran, enmity against God.

The report said people were executed in Saudi Arabia for crimes committed while they were under 18, and possibly in Iran and Yemen too.

Methods of execution included hanging, beheading, electrocution, shooting, and lethal injection. Five Yemeni men were beheaded in Saudi Arabia before their corpses were hung from a pole between two cranes.

“We urge all governments who still kill in the name of justice to impose a moratorium on the death penalty immediately, with a view to abolishing it,” Shetty said.

©afp.com/Safin Hamed