Category: Migration, Refugees, and Asylum

A Maskachusetts Immigration Success Story

by philg

A story from our former suburb of Boston… (not quoting it because it would be tough to read in italics)

Sally is the mother of four kids – lives in Chelsea.
She is beautiful and speaks well but cannot read and has a 2nd grade education.
Her husband, small gentleman with a major speech issues, hit her over the head with a hammer when her boyfriend came over to the house. The father went to jail.
There was a lot of stress in the house. Both parents during the pandemic lost one of two jobs. The father was experiencing major mental health issues. The kids were “learning at home” The kids at the time where 3, 8, 10 and 11…..learning? How? Both parents were working their one job and desperately trying to find a second job.
The father worked for 18 years at Bed Bath and Beyond making $15.50 an hour. The mother continues to work at Whole Foods making $17 an hour.
Because the father is in jail the mother is responsible for all the bills which she cannot handle. Feb 1 she was evicted and went to stay in a hotel because all shelters were filled. She and the kids will stay there until housing becomes available- maybe 2 years? There is nowhere to cook or do laundry.
The father is in jail and has been for three years without bail or a trial.
Just another day at work.
What is [South Sudanese Enrichment for Families]’s response?
We are writing letters to the fathers’ public defender to try to get him a trial and bail in March. We have facilitated the father instead of the Nashua Street Jail to be at the Recovery Center in Worcester. He gets therapy and tutoring.
A volunteer is working with the mother to try to have some stability in their life. Many Sudanese are helping getting the kids to school etc.
We have another woman with two kids going into a shelter in March and we have one child taken away from her mother. Very very sad. Two Sudanese families are going to take the child in.
….
We have 8 families that are in our Financial Fitness Program where we assess where they are financially and what they need to do to meet their financial goals. There is a waiting list.
We are getting there ……all with your help. Thank you…the need is huge.

(Although my heart is warmed by the above, I’m confused by the story. The mom of 4 had a boyfriend (perfect adaption of a migrant to the American lifestyle, despite having only a 2nd grade education!) and the father went to jail. But also the story implies that the father was at home during the coronapanic lockdowns in Maskachusetts. Yet he has been “in jail” for three years and the lockdown began three years ago. Maybe the boyfriend is the new “father” who has the Bed Bath & Beyond job and was at home during the lockdowns and pretend-learn-from-home-scheme? Also, why do the nonprofit say-gooders (maybe even do-gooders?) want to get the hammer-wielding father out of jail? So that he can attack the mom with a hammer again? So that he can copy the undocumented immigrant David DePape and attack Paul Pelosi? Isn’t jail the safest place for anyone who cannot be trusted with a hammer?)

Full post, including comments

Are we in Year 14 of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants?

by philg

“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program,” said Milton Friedman. Let’s check in with the Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants to the U.S. A 2011 DHS press release:

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano today announced the extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti beneficiaries. This extension will be effective July 23, 2011 and is for an additional 18 months. It will allow these TPS beneficiaries to remain in the United States through Jan. 22, 2013. The designation of TPS for eligible Haitian nationals who had continuously resided in the United States since Jan. 12, 2010 was originally announced by Secretary Napolitano on Jan. 15, 2010 and became effective on Jan. 21, 2010. Currently, approximately 48,000 Haitian nationals with TPS reside in the United States.

(I was almost there in January 2010: Personal Haitian Relief Operation.

).

And one from December 2022:

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas today announced the extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti for an additional 18 months, from February 4, 2023, through August 3, 2024, due to extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti.

Are we in Year 14 of “temporary”?

Related:

Some photos from a 2018 trip to Haiti (the authentic Haiti, not the touristy part):

Full post, including comments

Great Replacement Theory for Black Americans (from the NYT)

by philg

The proven-false Great Replacement Theory:

The Great Replacement … is a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory disseminated by French author Renaud Camus. The original theory states that, with the complicity or cooperation of “replacist” elites, the ethnic French and white European populations at large are being demographically and culturally replaced with non-white peoples—especially from Muslim-majority countries—through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans.

Let’s check “Why Black Families Are Leaving New York, and What It Means for the City” (New York Times, last month):

Athenia Rodney is a product of the upward mobility New York City once promised Black Americans. She grew up in mostly Black neighborhoods in Brooklyn, graduated from public schools and attended a liberal arts college on a full scholarship. She went on to start her own event-planning business in the city.

But as Ms. Rodney’s own family grew, she found herself living in a cramped one-bedroom rental, where her three children shared a bunk bed in the living room. It was hard to get them into programs that exposed them to green spaces or swim classes. As she scrolled through friends’ social media posts showing off trampolines in spacious backyards in Georgia, the solution became clearer: Leave.

Last summer, the family bought a five-bedroom home in Snellville, Ga.

The Rodneys are part of an exodus of Black residents from New York City. From 2010 to 2020, a decade during which the city’s population showed a surprising increase led by a surge in Asian and Hispanic residents, the number of Black residents decreased.

Citywide, white residents now make up about 31 percent of the population, according to census data, Hispanic residents 28 percent and Asian residents nearly 16 percent. While the white population has stayed about the same, the Asian population grew by 34 percent and Hispanic population grew by 7 percent, according to the data.

Migrants will enjoy the diverse entertainment and cultural opportunities of New York City previously enjoyed by native-born Black Americans, who are being pushed out to places that elite New Yorkers wouldn’t consider visiting for a day, much less relocating to. However, it would be false to call this a “replacement.”

Related:

Full post, including comments

Honduran and Venezuelan coffee bad; Honduran and Venezuelan migrants good

by philg

Here’s a tweet in which a famous advocate of open borders for people says that he wants closed borders for commerce:

In other words: Honduran and Venezuelan coffee bad; Honduran and Venezuelan migrants good.

Is there any philosophical inconsistency in wanting to increase the tide of migrants washing into the U.S. while simultaneously refusing to buy goods and services from foreigners who’ve elected to stay in their home countries?

Full post, including comments

Why don’t the British withdraw from the asylum system?

by philg

“The Tory immigration failure” (UnHerd, 11/28/2022):

Over the past year, according to data released last week, net migration into Britain has soared to 504,000, the highest on record. This means half a million more people are coming into Britain than are leaving – that’s a city the size of Liverpool every year.

But not only are the Tories presiding over record amounts of legal migration, they are also overseeing a rapid rise in numbers of people arriving in the country unlawfully, in small boats across the Channel.

The number of people arriving in this manner has now rocketed from 300 to nearly 40,000 in five years. The largest single group of foreign nationals on the boats come not from a war-torn country but Albania, a country that is currently in talks to join the EU.

… the number of outstanding asylum claims has just reached its highest point on record, with 140,000 asylum-seekers waiting decisions and fewer than one in five being processed.

Who voted for this? Who wants this? If you look at the latest surveys, only 10% of Britain thinks immigration since the Brexit referendum has been “too low” and only 19% want it increased in the years ahead.

By pushing on with mass immigration, by failing to genuinely take back control of Britain’s borders, by refusing to reform modern slavery legislation and Britain’s relationship with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the only things that would enable the country to truly regain control of its borders, the Conservative Party is about to send British politics all the way back to the early 2010s, where a divided society gives rise to an ugly populism.

A majority of Brits voted for Brexit and, therefore, implicitly for a reduction in low-skill immigration. The UK is a sovereign nation. What stops the UK from saying “We withdraw from the The 1951 Refugee Convention and, therefore, asylum is no longer available”?

October 2022:

Full post, including comments

Will David DePape be deported to Canada?

by philg

Happy Thanksgiving week everyone! Except for Canadians, who celebrated on October 10. Speaking of Canadians, what’s the plan for David DePape, the undocumented immigrant who attacked Paul Pelosi? Will he be deported to Canada after completing a prison sentence?

From https://www.speaker.gov/issues/immigration-reform, November 5, 2022:

Our nation’s immigrants are the constant reinvigoration of America. Each wave of newcomers brings their patriotism, bravery and determination to succeed to our shores – and in doing so, makes America more American. As students and servicemembers, entrepreneurs and public servants, parents and neighbors, these new Americans affirm our country’s fundamental, founding truth: that in diversity, lies strength.

Yet President Trump and Congressional Republicans continue to push a hateful, harmful anti-immigrant agenda that instills fear in our communities and weakens our country. Instead of respecting the hard-working men and women who want to contribute to our nation, Republicans are trying to make American taxpayers pay for an immoral, ineffective and expensive border wall. At the same time, the Trump Administration is unleashing a cruel deportation force that is tearing apart families across America.

It’s interesting that Trump was still president, as far as Pelosi’s official web site was concerned, nearly two years after leaving office. Separately, since Nancy Pelosi assures us that immigrants are superior overall to native-born Americans, what did David DePape do prior to the unfortunate incident of October 28, 2022 to exhibit “patriotism, bravery and determination to succeed”?

What are we thankful for this year? I’m thankful that I don’t live in San Francisco where even the elite are not safe in their homes and where children of the non-elite are always one Scientist’s email away from having their schools closed.

Full post, including comments

Car wash owner on immigration

by philg

A text message exchange with a friend who owns a car wash in a Democrat-run sanctuary city. I asked whether Governors Abbott and DeSantis were sending him a good supply of migrants.

Him: Not yet!

Me: Would be good for your labor costs. What are you paying now?

Him: Average wage is about $22 per hour.

Me: We are informed that $15 is fair.

Him: I can’t get high school kids for $15. I don’t understand how people afford life.

Me: What do they make after tips? I always tip 20% at car wash.

Him: $22 is the average wage with tips. It’s all reported income because 90 percent of tips are credit card. I pay employment taxes on the tip wages. So if you tipped him, I owe taxes on that amount.

Me: Is there a variation in wage depending on skill?

Him: Most people that are full time make $25-29 per hour. High school kids make $19, which is insane. They are useless. College kids even worse. Entitled and can’t solve problems on any level. Wish we had more legal migrants. I would hire them all. White [local] kids = not good workers. We need more migrants. Just legal ones who are willing to work.

Me: I am seeing a good blog post here.

Him: I think another 50 million legal migrants would solve all our issues. The government could continue to pay the elite natives to stay home and print money to pay migrants to do all the work. Of course it would cause housing inflation, but that’s the Ponzi scheme we all benefit from. [“we all” being those rich enough to own homes!]

Related… a tastefully understated vehicle at the local car wash (entire crew from Latinx America):

Also, in the Department of Diversity is Our Strength, “Diversity is important in all industries, but perhaps especially so in supercomputing,” from my former employer Hewlett-Packard:

What did I do for HP, you might ask? Helped in 1982-83 with the first implementation of the Precision Architecture, a RISC processor that eventually morphed into the Intel Itanium server chips (final shipments in July 2021, nearly 40 years after my efforts on a wire wrap prototype).

Full post, including comments

New York Times: replacement theory is false; it is just that white Americans are becoming a minority

by philg

“Their America Is Vanishing. Like Trump, They Insist They Were Cheated.” (New York Times, October 23, 2022) is on the evergreen topic of the remarkable stupidity of people who don’t live in New York. The main subject of election fraud is not what struck me, though.

The newspaper that assures us that replacement theory is false, like other “fringe right-wing conspiracy theories”, gleefully points out the Dämmerung der Weißen (the twilight of the whites; see also Götterdämmerung):

The county in recent years has become one of the nation’s most diverse, where the former white majority has fallen to just 30 percent of the population.

A shrinking white share of the population is a hallmark of the congressional districts held by the House Republicans who voted to challenge Mr. Trump’s defeat…

Because they are more vulnerable, disadvantaged or less educated white voters can feel especially endangered by the trend toward a minority majority,…

… the white population of the United States expected within about two decades to lose its majority.

Maybe there could be an opera about this. I would love to see Donald Trump portrayed as a character by the Metropolitan Opera.

Related:

Full post, including comments

Massachusetts Migrant Welcome

by philg

“Battenfeld: Charlie Baker quietly sends migrants to Methuen hotel with no warning” (Boston Herald):

the Baker administration quietly bused scores of immigrant families to a questionable Methuen hotel last Friday without even telling local authorities.

The lack of transparency is shocking enough but what about the ethics of sending these hungry and confused immigrants, including more than 100 children, to a hotel without any initial support.

“Eight days later, there’s still no concrete plan on how to deal with it,” said Methuen Mayor Neil Perry after meeting with the state Department of Housing and Community Development on Thursday. “They didn’t even present, you know, how many of these school-aged children are what age, whether they would be going to Methuen (schools) or not.”

The state is providing no public explanation for why the migrants were sent to the Methuen motel, bypassing motels and hotels in more affluent areas like Andover and North Andover. It’s unclear whether the families and children are here legally or illegally.

“All families in the shelter program receive services through local service providers, including three meals a day, assistance with housing search, case management work, and DCHD is working closely with other state agencies, local entities, and service providers to address the needs of the families that are currently housed in Methuen,” a DCHD statement said.

The migrants are from Haiti, Colombia and Venezuela, according to Perry, and some came from outside Massachusetts.

Now they’re Methuen’s problem. Well done, Charlie.

Baker was among those who questioned Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for sending dozens of migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard last month.

“Sending people all over the country, many of whom have no idea why they’re being sent where they’re going, isn’t a solution to the very screwed up immigration system we have in the U.S.” Baker said.

Now Baker has essentially done the same thing DeSantis did, providing no warning or explanation to Methuen officials and no plan for assimilating the migrants into schools and housing. The hotel the migrants are staying in is known for having safety issues, according to local officials.

“If the plan is to find them housing in the Methuen community, I have to respectfully push back,” Mayor Perry said. “Not that I don’t want them to have housing, I have housing needs of my own community today I’m not satisfying.”

It’s the last line that I find interesting. The guy who runs Methuen is a Massachusetts Democrat and, therefore, presumably as welcoming to migrants as anyone in the U.S. And in fact he says that he wants migrants to have housing… but not in his city. Where exactly are the next few million migrants going to live then?

Full post, including comments

What’s an Indigenous Immigrant?

by philg

I’m back in our AirBnB in Paris where we live like the guys in La Boheme if they had 500 Mbit symmetric fiber Internet. No longer limited to 0.5 GB of mobile data per day at $10 (the Verizon Travel Pass; Google Maps by itself can consume close to this quota), it is time to check the New York Times. “Los Angeles City Council President Steps Down After Racist Comments”:

In a meeting last year, Nury Martinez mocked Indigenous immigrants and the Black child of a fellow council member. She will remain on the council but relinquished her leadership role.

The president of the Los Angeles City Council stepped down from her powerful leadership role on Monday after a leaked audio recording revealed racist and disparaging remarks that she had made about the Black child of a white council member, and about Indigenous immigrants in the city’s Koreatown neighborhood.

“I take responsibility for what I said, and there are no excuses for those comments. I’m so sorry,” Nury Martinez, the council president, said in a statement on Monday announcing that she would resign from the leadership role, but not from the council as some people had demanded. “As a mother, I know better and I am sorry. I am truly ashamed.”

In the profanity-laced recording, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times and which was first reported by The Los Angeles Times on Sunday, Ms. Martinez, who is Latina, compared the Black child of a white council member to a “changuito,” Spanish for little monkey. She also called Oaxacan immigrants living in Koreatown “short little dark people.”

There is much to ponder here. If this politician were not a mother, she would not “know better”? What is it about motherhood that gave her so much wisdom?

Second, how is it possible for someone to be both indigenous and an immigrant? From M-W:

indigenous: produced, growing, living, or occurring natively or naturally in a particular region or environment

immigrant : a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence or a plant or animal that becomes established in an area where it was previously unknown

Aren’t these opposite terms and concepts?

Finally, this politician is a racist and therefore cannot serve as leader of the 15-member City Council. At the same time, she is not a racist and therefore can serve as a member of the City Council?

Speaking of Los Angeles, Land of Lockdown in the Sun, here’s an except from In a Dry Season, a book that I read in prep for the UK trip:

[a Brit who returns from living in Los Angeles] smiled and patted his arm. “Thanks. You’re sweet.” She snatched a cigarette from his packet and lit up. “You don’t smoke,” Banks said. “I do now.” Jenny blew out a long plume. “I’ve just about had it up to here with those nico-Nazis out there. You can’t smoke anywhere. And to think California was a real hotbed of protest and innovation in the sixties. It’s like a fucking kindergarten run by fascists now.”

The book was published in 1999.

Speaking of immigrants and the UK, here’s a book that was for sale at the Tate Modern:

What else were they selling?

Full post, including comments