Category: Migration, Refugees, and Asylum

Attitudes toward immigration in the mid-1970s

by philg

An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford describes a vigorous debate about whether approximately 50,000 Vietnamese refugees should be admitted to the U.S. This was a non-representative group containing the professional and managerial elite of South Vietnam. Nonetheless, opposition was intense, including among liberal Democrats who today would be demanding more immigration. George McGovern, for example, and California governor Jerry Brown (he sought to make it illegal for private groups with California to help Vietnamese immigrants settle).

Other countries, such as the Philippines, were even more hostile to taking in these educated migrants.

Ultimately, closer to 125,000 refugees arrived in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War. That’s comparable to the number who walk across the southern border and introduce themselves to our border patrol agents every 12 days (300,000+ per month).

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How are Democrats able to see the border as closed when migrants continue to stream in?

by philg

It’s the third anniversary of the Greatest Administration in American history. From a conservative point of view, a defining feature of the Biden administration has been rapid acceleration of population growth via low-skill immigration (native-born Americans aren’t being replaced; it is just that the immigrant percentage of the population is at an all-time high). What do Democrats perceive?

Republicans and Democrats these days often seem to express agreement on philosophy but then disagree on facts. With respect to coronapanic, for example, Americans from both parties agree that schools for 10-year-olds shouldn’t be closed when a virus is circulating that kills people at a median age of 82. The disagreement on the school front is now around a fact: Were any American public schools closed in 2020-2021? Democrats say “No. All schools were open all the time.” while Republicans say that big urban school districts, e.g., NYC, Boston, SF, LA, et al., were closed for 12-18 months (and various suburban districts were either closed or half-open on an ineffective “hybrid” schedule).

A similar disagreement seems to be happening right now with the border. Here’s a tweet from the Democrats and my reply:

The U.S. has never enjoyed better border security, as far as the Democrats are concerned. Having seen videos of people walking through the fence and seen statistics on roughly 2.5 million encounters with migrants per year (on the U.S. side of the border, meaning that people got here somehow!), I ask whether the Biden administration has simply decided to leave the border open. Democrats respond that the border isn’t open:

It’s a conspiracy spread by Fox, in fact, that there is any openness to the U.S. border.

The question for today is how Democrats sustain their belief in the fact of a closed border with official U.S. government statistics on the hundreds of thousands of migrants who come through the closed border every month.

Background from Fox:

The Haitian man first arrived at a port of entry in Brownsville, TX in December 2022, where he was deemed inadmissible & released into the U.S. with a future court date.
In September 2023, Boston police arrested him for rape and indecent assault and battery on a disabled person. ICE filed a detainer request with local authorities in Dorchester, seeking his custody, but the request was ignored, and the alleged rapist was released into the community in November. ICE found & rearrested him a little over a week ago.

The Haitian gentleman was “inadmissible” and therefore was admitted. Paging Dr. Orwell?

The Daily Mail features photos of migrants who’ve somehow appeared on the U.S. side of what is, from a Democrat point of view, an entirely closed border:

CNN shows “More than 1,000 migrants wait in line to be processed by US Border Patrol agents after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico on December 18 in Eagle Pass, Texas.”:

From the a righteous perspective, anything in CNN is true, no? How is a border through which more than 1,000 people cross in one day in one location not “open”?

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Washington Post says Replacement Theory is false, as proved by your Muslim neighbors

by philg

A Christmas tale from the Washington Post… “Young U.S. Muslims are rising up against Israel in unlikely places”:

As she watched the conflict in Israel and Gaza unfold this fall, 17-year-old Asmmaa Zaitar finally had enough. She decided to organize a protest in support of the Palestinian cause in a very unlikely place — a courthouse in Huntsville, Ala.

Initially, Zaitar, a second-generation Palestinian American, was terrified that no one would show up. Zaitar knew it was a conservative town better known for divisive debates over Confederate monuments than for protests against a war overseas.

But as the rally began, dozens of fellow Muslims, including women wearing headscarves, trickled into the town square in late October carrying signs decrying Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip. Local media showed up, and Zaitar knew she had succeeded in connecting her city — and its growing Muslim population — to a conflict halfway around the globe.

… protests in support of the plight of Palestinians are springing up, showcasing the continued spread of the U.S. Muslim population into the country’s heartland. Children of refugees from Muslim nations organized many of the demonstrations, evidence of a political awakening among a new generation of young Americans who are helping to shape U.S. public opinion in support of a cease-fire in the Middle East.

How long has the Great Replacement not been happening?

The burst of activism — which Muslim scholars said would have been unthinkable just a decade or so ago — is rooted in the broad spread of Muslim families throughout the United States.

From the first major waves of migrants to the United States in the 1970s through the 1990s, Muslims tended to cluster in just a handful of states, including New York, California and Michigan.

Like many immigrant groups, over time some moved elsewhere in search of jobs and opportunities. More recently, many new refugees from Muslim-majority nations have settled directly into states in the South or Midwest in hopes of finding more affordable housing.

A 2017 analysis from Pew Research Center estimated that 3.45 million Americans are Muslim, three-quarters of whom are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Overall, the nation’s Muslim population is far younger than the overall U.S. population, with Pew finding 35 percent of Muslims were 18 to 29 that year, compared to 21 percent of the overall population.

Using data on religious institutions gathered by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, a Washington Post analysis found that 234 U.S. counties have seen an increase in the number of Muslim congregations since 2000, representing around 7 percent of counties nationwide. In 217 counties, mosque membership doubled between 2000 and 2020. And across the nation, the number of mosques has more than doubled since 2000, according to the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a research firm that studies Muslim communities.

Was it smart for Democrats to have passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, without which only Muslims with very high levels of education and earning power would have been admitted as immigrants?

Muslim voters overwhelmingly supported Biden, and helped the Democrat carry several states including Michigan and Virginia.

Ole Miss:

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Georgia Meloni fails to stop the undocumented from migrating to/through Italy

by philg

“How Italy’s far-right leader learned to stop worrying and love migration” (Politico, August 2023):

Giorgia Meloni is presiding over a sharp spike in regular and irregular arrivals.

While Meloni has continued to take a hard line on irregular arrivals, there’s little sign it’s being effective. The number of people arriving by boat after crossing the Mediterranean has more than doubled this year, to 106,000 so far this year, compared to 53,000 over the same period last year, according to government data.

“UK migration soars to record high despite Tory Brexit promises” (Politico, November 2023):

Net migration to the U.K. has hit a new record high of 672,000, four years after the Conservatives pledged to cut it to a third of that level.

The latest figures, published by the Office for National Statistics on Thursday morning, show a significant increase on what was already a record-high of 602,000 people back in May.

The latest release — covering the 12 months to June 2023 — piles further pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has promised to drastically decrease the numbers of people moving to the U.K. each year.

I can’t figure out these politicians’ strategy. They promise to reduce immigration, but then continue to offer asylum to any of 8 billion humans who choose to show up. Finally, they express surprise when some of those 8 billion humans actually do show up to claim the offer.

We are informed that Replacement Theory is a lie and also….

Meloni is presiding over a country that is economically stagnant and in demographic decline. Over the last decade, Italy has shrunk by some 1.5 million people (more than the population of Milan). In 39 of its 107 provinces, there are more retirees than workers.

It’s numbers like these that prompted Italy’s Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti to warn earlier this month that no reform of the pension system would “hold up in the medium-to-long term with the birth rate numbers we have today in this country.”

There will be no replacement of Italians in Italy. It is just that the number of Italians will be reduced while the number of non-Italians will increase.

Donald Trump, of course, famously failed to eliminate “irregular crossings” of our southern border. The Trump years did not feature the completely open border that Joe Biden runs, but the number of encounters weren’t reduced compared to the Obama administration’s record:

The European politicians can’t claim a lack of cooperation from parliament, as a U.S. president can say about Congress refusing to do his/her/zir/their bidding.

Going forward, should voters around the world simply ignore any politician who promises to reduce low-skill immigration unless the politician says “We will stop offering asylum”?

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Intersection of low-skill migration and school closure

by philg

Loyal readers are aware of my interests in the effect of low-skill immigration on American society and the passion of government bureaucrats for closing public schools in favor of an online school fraud. These intersected today in the Sanctuary City of New York. “NYC students forced to go remote as city houses nearly 2K migrants displaced by storm at their school” (New York Post):

Students at a Brooklyn high school were kicked out of the classroom to make room for nearly 2,000 migrants who were evacuated from a controversial tent shelter due to a monster storm closed in on the Big Apple.

The city made the move amid concerns that a massive migrant tent at Floyd Bennett Field would collapse from torrential rains and gusting winds — packing them instead into the second-floor gym at James Madison High School five miles away.

“There’s 1,900 people getting thrown into my neighborhood, half a block from where I live and we don’t know who they are,” he said. “They’re not vetted. A lot of them have criminal records and backgrounds and we don’t even know.”

How would Americans “vet” migrants? What do we know about who did what in various foreign countries?

“They told us we had to get everything out by 5 [p.m.],” gym teacher Robyn Levy said outside the school. “They sent us the email at 6 in the morning. I don’t know when we’ll be able to back.

“What I want to know is why here?” Levy said. “Why not send them somewhere where students wouldn’t be disrupted, where students learning wouldn’t be disrupted?”

Why indeed? If there are only 1,900 migrants and the majority of New Yorkers wanted the city to be a sanctuary for the undocumented, why can’t 1,900 spare bedrooms be found among the righteous?

Here’s what used to be a convenient runway…

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No human is illegal, but some buses are

by philg

“In Bid to Slow Migrant Surge, Adams Restricts Bus Arrivals Into New York” (NYT):

Mayor Eric Adams placed limits for the first time on Wednesday on how migrants arrive in New York, pushing back against continuing efforts by the governor of Texas to send tens of thousands of asylum seekers to the city.

In an executive order, Mr. Adams required charter bus companies to provide 32 hours’ advance notice of the arrival of a busload of migrants in the city and limited the times of day at which migrants can be dropped off.

The change, a year and a half into a crisis that has consumed the Adams administration, comes after 14 busloads of migrants arrived from Texas in a single night last week, the highest total recorded since the spring of 2022.

“We cannot allow buses with people needing our help to arrive without warning at any hour of day and night,” Mr. Adams said during a virtual news conference with the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, and the mayor of Denver, Mike Johnston. “To be clear, this is not stopping people from coming, but about ensuring the safety of migrants and making sure they can arrive in a coordinated and orderly way.”

Companies that violate the executive order face class B misdemeanor charges, which could result in three months in jail and a $500 fine for individuals and a $2,000 fine for corporations. Buses violating the order may also be seized by the Police Department.

Under the terms of the executive order, buses can unload migrants only between 8:30 a.m. and 12 p.m., Monday through Friday. People must be dropped off at a specified location in the Times Square area or another location that city officials approve.

We are informed that low-skill migrants make us richer, but the article says that 10 percent of Denver’s budget is now devoted to housing migrants.

After the City of Chicago recently instituted similar regulations on bus companies, Texas responded by sending buses to the suburbs of Chicago instead, according to Mr. Johnson.

The buses have been “literally dropping families off in the middle of nowhere,” sowing “an incredible amount of chaos,” he said.

It is unclear if Mr. Abbott will follow a similar playbook by sending buses to places outside New York City. A spokesman for Mr. Abbott did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

If that happened, Mr. Goldfein said, “that would only highlight the recklessness and total disregard for the welfare of the people who are passengers on these buses.”

I continue to be fascinated by progressives who say that Texas is a place where nobody should live, e.g., because of restrictions on abortion care, and at the same time that migrants are harmed by being provided with free transportation to Massachusetts, New York, or Illinois. Isn’t it worth a few days of sleeping in a church basement in order to enjoy a lifetime of governance by Democrats rather than suffering tyrannical Republic rule?

The New York Times ends the article by referring to becoming wealthier and culturally richer as a “crisis”:

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New York Times: immigrants choke out the natives

by philg

Diversity is our strength until it arrives in the Northeast, say the elites. Eric Adams again? No. From the New York Times, November 28, 2023:

The Connecticut River faces a crisis: An aggressive invasive plant that grows in thick underwater mats is spreading swiftly.

It chokes out native plants, changes the water’s chemical balance and raises its temperature. It ensnares boaters and slows the river’s flow, which heightens flood risks and makes an ideal nursery for mosquitoes. And it is on the move: The plant, a new strain of hydrilla, was discovered in several other bodies of water in Connecticut this year.

Hydrilla, many strains of which originated in Asia, first appeared in the American South decades ago before spreading through much of the country.

The Huntington Library in Pasadena, California was keeping kids (snail kids) in cages:

Speaking of the Huntington, their cactus garden (November 16, 2023):

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Californians: assorted humans with nothing in common

by philg

Readers will be familiar with repeated questions of how our asylum-based immigration system is supposed to work. People are invited to become U.S. residents and then citizens based on a fear of violence in their country of birth. Thus, immigrants to the U.S. may have no affinity for the U.S. and nothing in common with other immigrants or natives other than a desire to avoid being killed.

Let’s see how this is playing out in California, the U.S. leader in diversity via immigration (stats below). A native-born Jew disagreed with a Muslim immigrant and the Jew ended up dead (Wikipedia).

Paul Kessler was an instrument-rated Private pilot. I couldn’t find much else that was authoritative about him.

Loay Alnaji (from a memory-holed web page at Ventura County Community College; pulled from the Google cache):

Note that “surahmeaning.com”, listed as part of his personal contact info, may relate to chapters in the Koran (“Surah“).

Are these the only two Californians who’ve been fighting recently? Let’s check this ironic headline from ABC:

Some detail on the event from the Paper of the Deplorables… “Gal Gadot’s screening [in Los Angeles] of Hamas terror attack film ends in mass brawls between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters” (New York Post, November 9, 2023):

Police officers were already out in force around the ironically named Museum of Tolerance for the “Wonder Woman” actress’s screening of “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre,” which uses Israel Defense Forces footage.

Even so, wild videos posted online showed people waving Israeli flags and brawling in the streets with pro-Palestinian protesters — kicking and punching one another.

Police formed a skirmish line in an effort to control the unruly crowd — and ultimately used pepper spray, according to ABC 7.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass decried the violence in the aftermath.

“We’re not antisemitic, we’re anti-Zionist,” the unidentified protester told Rolling Stone.

UCLA:

At a decolonization rally in Los Angeles: the crowd chants “we are all Palestinians” and promises to “globalize the intifada”. Nobody wants to go to Gaza (via Egypt/tunnels) or the West Bank (easy) and fight on the side of virtue (see Why won’t the people who say that Israel is committing genocide go to Gaza and fight?). So “globalize the intifada” has to mean something that can be done in the U.S. and, likely, in California. Is it fighting with Jews in the streets? Fighting against Jewish-owned businesses? Fighting against fellow residents of California who support continued ties with Israel? Preventing fellow Californians from using the Bay Bridge (cost $6.5 billion in pre-Biden money to repair earthquake damage, up from an original budget of $250 million)?

A well-coordinated group of hundreds of Pro-Palestine protesters shut down the Bay Bridge on Thursday morning, tying up traffic during rush hour and calling out to world leaders to end the war in Gaza during the APEC summit.

The four-hour chaotic event, which started around 7:45 a.m., ended with at least 70 arrests and 29 towed cars. All lanes finally reopened just before noon, but not after at least 200 protesters had chained themselves together and purposefully tossed their car keys into the bay, stalling efforts to reopen the span to frustrated drivers.

Is it fair to say that the conflict in and around Gaza has exposed the fact that Californias have little or nothing in common?

And on the other coast… “Two women arrested in NYC attack on Jewish victim who confronted them for tearing down hostage posters: cops” (New York Post):

Mehwish Omer, 26, surrendered to police Monday morning and was charged with assault and criminal mischief — both as hate crimes — in connection to the attack on the 41-year-old woman at the corner of Riverside Drive and West 82nd Street just before 10 p.m. Nov. 9, authorities said.

Her alleged accomplice, Stephanie Gonzalez, 25, was cuffed a week earlier and also faces a hate crime assault rap, as well as an attempted robbery charge, cops said.

The duo allegedly assaulted the victim — ripping off her Star of David necklace and knocking a cellphone out of her hand — after she challenged them for ripping the “Missing Persons” posters from a light pole at the intersection, according to police.

“Mehwish” is an Islamic first name, according to The Google. “Gonzalez” suggests a Latinx individual. The victim was, presumably, Jewish. Diversity was supposed to be New York’s strength, but these three did not have enough shared values to avoid a physical fight.

What about the next stop south on I-95? “Philadelphia Jewish Restaurant Targeted With ‘Genocide’ Chants” (Newsweek):

Philadelphia lawmakers and Jewish commentators have hit out at demonstrators who targeted a falafel restaurant in Philadelphia owned by an Israeli Jewish chef, chanting slogans accusing it of “genocide.”

On Sunday, footage emerged of a group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathering outside Goldie on midtown Sansom Street who were chanting “Goldie, Goldie you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”

According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the march was organized by the Philly Palestine Coalition, which in October called for a boycott of “Zionist”-owned businesses in the city, including Goldie outlets and others owned by Michael Solomonov.

At the same time, other video footage of a demonstration near the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia showed protestors chanting “intifada revolution” and “long live the intifada,” though it is unclear if it is the same group that congregated outside Goldie.

Same question: How is diversity Philadelphia’s strength if the motley assemblage has nothing in common other than mutual animosity?

Circling back to California, it is the state with the highest percentage of immigrants, around 27 percent of the total population. How does that compare to the nation as a whole? “In October 2023, the Foreign-Born Share Was the Highest in History” (from the haters):

The Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) shows that the total foreign-born or immigrant population (legal and illegal) was 49.5 million in October 2023 — a 4.5 million increase since President Biden took office and a new record high. At 15 percent, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population is also the highest ever recorded in American history. … The scale of immigration is so high that it appears to have made the new Census Bureau population projections, published on November 9 of this year, obsolete. The bureau projected that the foreign-born share was not supposed to hit 15 percent until 2033. … While a large share of the recent foreign-born growth is due to illegal immigration, legal immigrants still account for three-fourths of the total foreign-born population.

So… California shows us what the U.S. will be like if present trends continue. It wasn’t a great place for either Paul Kessler (now dead) or Loay Alnaji (the immigrant now embroiled in the criminal justice system; he couldn’t have killed a Jew if he’d hadn’t emigrated because Islamic countries have been almost entirely free of Jews since the late 1940s (900,000 Jews were forced out by Muslim neighbors or emigrated to Israel voluntarily)).

Previous posts regarding immigrants who did not enjoy diversity in the U.S.:

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Why does a young Jordanian qualify for asylum in the U.S.?

by philg

Jordan is a popular country for tourists to visit, e.g., retracing the steps of Indiana Jones at Petra. Yet, apparently, U.S. bureaucrats are happy to entertain the idea that it is too dangerous for Jordanians. CNN says “Jordanian arrested in Houston made statements supporting killing individuals of particular faiths, judge’s order says” (what kind of individuals?). The suspect is referred to as a “domestic violent extremist” by the FBI director. But if he is “Jordanian”, how did he end up becoming “domestic”? (If you search “Sohaib Abuayyash” there are some sources that identify him as Palestinian rather than merely Jordanian.)

“Jordanian national arrested in Houston allegedly planned attack on Jews” (New York Post, November 3, 2023) gives the background:

A “radical” Jordanian national living in Texas was allegedly plotting an attack on Houston’s Jewish community before he was arrested on gun charges.

Sohaib Abuayyash, 20, had been studying how to build bombs and posted about his support for killing Jews, federal officials claim.

Abuayyash is behind bars on charges of unlawful possession of a firearm by someone with a non-immigrant visa, and US Magistrate Judge Christina Bryan has ruled he should remain detained pending trial.

She wrote in court documents that Abuayyash spoke of committing martyrdom in support of a religious cause and made statements “that he wants to go to Gaza to fight,” according to documents also obtained by CBS News.

“He has viewed specific and detailed content posted by radical organizations on the Internet, including lessons on how to construct bombs or explosive devices,” she wrote.

An affidavit filed Oct. 19 in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas also says Abuayyash “has been in direct contact with others who share a radical mindset, has been conducting physical training and has trained with weapons to possibly commit an attack.”

Here’s where the story becomes interesting (to me):

Abuayyash entered the US on a non-immigrant visa, which expired in 2019, but has since applied for asylum and obtained work authorization in the United States until 2025, according to court documents.

The guy wasn’t old or important enough, I don’t think, to have been a threat to the Jordanian government. How could he possibly have qualified for a 6-year asylum process? (that will be extended beyond 2025, presumably)

Speaking of Jordan, they had their own dispute with hostage-taking Palestinian freedom fighters. From the Wikipedia page on Black September:

Black September … was an armed conflict between Jordan, led by King Hussein, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), led by chairman Yasser Arafat. The main phase of the fighting took place between 16 and 27 September 1970, though certain aspects of the conflict continued until 17 July 1971.

The PLO’s strength grew, and by early 1970, groups within the PLO began calling for the overthrow of Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy, leading to violent clashes in June 1970. Hussein hesitated to oust them from the country, but continued PLO activities in Jordan culminated in the Dawson’s Field hijackings of 6 September 1970, when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) seized three civilian passenger flights and forced their landing in the Jordanian city of Zarqa, where they took foreign nationals as hostages and blew up the planes in front of international press. Hussein saw this as the last straw and ordered the Jordanian Army to take action.

Arafat claimed that the Jordanian Armed Forces killed 25,000 Palestinians … In the September fighting, the PLO lost its main base of operations. Fighters were driven to Southern Lebanon where they regrouped.

But this dispute is long settled and there are plenty of Palestinians living happily in Jordan today (some are descendants of those expelled by Kuwait; see “Palestinian exodus from Kuwait (1990–91)”: There were 357,000 Palestinians living in Kuwait before the country was invaded by neighbouring Iraq in August 1990. The policy which led to this exodus was a response to the alignment of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in favour of the Iraqi invasion as well as PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s support for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein… 287,000 Palestinians were forced to leave in March 1991 by the government”)

Circling back to the main question of this post… does the U.S. have any standard at all for who can claim asylum and then hang out here for a decade or more? If so, why wouldn’t that standard have prevented Sohaib Abuayyash from clogging up the asylum courts?

Related:

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Massachusetts governor: the border should be open, but migrants should not come to Massachusetts

by philg

“As Massachusetts shelters fill to capacity, Maura Healey says there are ‘a lot of places in the country where people can go’” (Boston Herald):

With the state’s shelter system at or approaching maximum capacity, the governor is suggesting new migrants could consider settling somewhere other than Massachusetts after they cross the U.S. border.

According to Gov. Maura Healey, there are 40 to 50 new families arriving in the state every day and seeking state assistance with housing, and the influx of people to Massachusetts — many without lawful presence in the U.S. — has pushed the state’s shelter system close to its 7,500-family limit.

“We expect to reach it soon,” Healey told WCVB. “We’ve just reached capacity here in terms of the physical space where we can house people, the number of service providers who are out there to provide services, and also the funds to pay for this.”

Healey did not directly say what happens to a family seeking Emergency Assistance shelter after the cap is reached, though she said she hoped it didn’t come to unhoused people sleeping at Logan Airport or in emergency rooms. She also suggested that there are other options available to new U.S. arrivals.

“There are a lot of places in the country where people can go once they cross into the United States,” she said.

“Mass. AG Joins Lawsuit Challenging Trump’s Emergency Declaration At Southern Border” (state-sponsored WBUR, 2019):

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey on Wednesday joined 19 other states in challenging President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The suit claims the Trump administration’s use of the emergency declaration in this instance is unconstitutional and unlawful.

The states are asking a federal court to block the emergency declaration in order to prevent construction of a border wall and stop the diversion of federal funds to pay for Trump’s proposed wall.

“Healey Among AGs Suing Trump Administration Over ‘Public Charge’ Immigration Rule” (AP 2019):

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is among those in 13 states that have filed a lawsuit challenging a Trump administration rule that’ll allow immigration officials to deny green cards to migrants who use public assistance, including food stamps or housing vouchers.

Under new rules unveiled this week, Citizenship and Immigration Services will consider whether applicants have received public assistance among other factors such as education to determine whether to grant legal status.

The attorneys general argue the expansion will cause “irreparable harm” and deter noncitizens from seeking “essential” public assistance.

“Massachusetts Becomes the Second State to Sue Trump Over Muslim Ban” (Slate 2017):

Massachusetts will become the second state to sue the federal government over President Trump’s executive order barring immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. In a press conference on Boston’s Beacon Hill, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey declared the order “harmful, discriminatory, and unconstitutional” and announced that her office will join a suit filed Saturday night by the Massachusetts ACLU and immigration lawyers seeking to have the order overturned.

Related:

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