| Political Podcast & Blog | Asheville News & Sports

Immigration, Slave Patrols, and Voting Rights

Well, Joe Biden did the unthinkable. With the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021—and with the determined support of his Senate allies—President Joe Biden passed the most progressive piece of legislation that we have seen in the United States since the 1960s.

The whole thing was completely wrong for our time. Democrats are supposed to compromise and do whatever it takes to pass “bipartisan” legislation. And Joe Biden did call in the Republican leadership.

But after determining that they weren’t serious about negotiation or compromise, President Biden cut them loose. He passed a $1.9 trillion bill which helps the average American family. Americans are getting money in their pockets. Not Wall Street. Average Americans. If Joe Biden accomplishes nothing else, this was a major accomplishment.

Immigration

It seems that a “new” paradigm as taken hold in Washington, DC: Every day, in one way or another, the media has to be in a frenzy over something. So for a week the media was obsessing about this large tanker stuck in the Suez Canal. Reporters looked at this crisis from multiple different angles. Ships would now have to go around the Horn of Africa. They might possibly encounter pirates. Supply lines would be interrupted. Business would grind to a halt without the commerce going through the Canal. The underlying message seems to be, “Let’s All Panic!”

The other story that mainstream media was trying to get us all worked up about was immigration. Thousands of children are showing up at our southern border without parents. What are we going to do? What can we do? Whose fault is it? Everybody run for the hills, there are a gazillion Brown people at the border!

The media coverage of this ongoing tragedy has been abysmal. Why? Because keeping up the sense of frenzy means that nobody wants to take the time and the effort to put this in context.

Over the last 10 or 15 years, the United States has decided, quietly, that the best way to combat illegal immigration from Latin America is to actually make Latin American countries better places to live—safer and more desirable to stay in. We have poured millions of dollars into the economies of these countries. We tried to help stabilize their governments. We’ve tried to help decrease the random and organized violence in these countries. (more…)

By ecthompsonmd|2021-05-16T01:09:16-04:00April 13th, 2021|Civil Rights, Economy, Immigration, Mass Shooting, Newsletter|Comments Off

Donald Trump’s Muslim Ban – Update

In my opinion, the best lie is the one that is just a little bit tainted with truth. Those lies are the best lies. About two weeks ago, President Donald Trump (yeah, it still does not sound right) signed an executive order which asked for increased scrutiny of persons wanting to immigrate to this country from several lands. I say “several lands,” because if you actually read his executive order; first of all, it is kind of a headache, as it is long and nonspecific. The order does not actually specify Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. So, let us actually read what the order says – I hereby proclaim that the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12), would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order (excluding those foreign nationals traveling on diplomatic visas, North Atlantic Treaty Organization visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 visas).

Now, this whole thing quickly gets complicated. It appears that President Trump’s executive order refers to the “Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015.” This bill was tacked onto the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016. So, it is kinda hard to say that this was an Obama administration initiative. The bill was actually written by former Congresswoman Candice Miller, a Republican. To make matters even more confusing, this bill, HR 158, simply canceled the Visa Waiver Program. So, essentially, what this did was force travelers from Syria and Iraq to get visas the old-fashioned way, through interviews at the American consulate. So, President Obama had the choice of signing this huge, omnibus spending bill into law, allowing our government to continue to operate (or to veto it), because of this bill’s being tacked on by Congresswoman Miller. You tell me, does this sound like an Obama program?

So, because this is not confusing enough, Donald Trump said, “My policy is similar to what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months.” Um, this is not exactly true either. So, in response to the May 2011 arrest of two Iraqi refugees on terrorism charges in Bowling Green, Kentucky, the Obama Administration decided that immigrants from Iraq warranted increased scrutiny. This was not a ban. It was increased scrutiny. So, on one hand, Donald Trump was right. President Obama did do something in 2011, and his policy was relatively similar… kind of, but not really.

This is not the kind of thing you should NOT be arguing over at the water cooler. It is simply not worth it. There are tons of details. For the most part, when you are arguing over at the office water cooler, nobody knows the details. The reason I bring this up is that I heard the argument in the emergency room. Two doctors were going at it. One was accusing the other of hypocrisy because “Obama did the same thing.” No, Obama did not. Go back and read. While it is important to engage our fellow Americans, it is not important to discuss the details of a ban that is an actual ban; verses Obama’s ban, which was not, in reality, a ban. Got it.

Finally, ~~I think that the President has the power to control who is coming into this country. I think that’s in the Constitution~~. ~~I don’t think we can argue that. Instead, the argument is what kind of convoluted nonsense Trump put in his executive order.~~ Oops. I just got an email from my (our) constitutional scholar Linda Monk. I was wrong!!! Article I gives the power of immigration to Congress and NOT the president. Article I, Section 8 – The Congress shall have Power to establish as uniform Rule of Naturalization. There it is in black and white. Article II deals with the President. It says in Section 2 – The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the United States. The president’s powers, with regard to immigration, are implied. So, Congress needs to pass a law restricting immigration from those 7 countries. That would be lawful!

By ecthompsonmd|2017-03-04T01:38:51-04:00February 9th, 2017|Immigration, Iran, Iraq, Obama administration, Trump administration|1 Comment

Immigration reform – DOA

Do you remember all the hoopla over the immigration bill getting to the Senate? This happened less than a month ago. The mainstream media went crazy. There was a lot of discussion about how many Republicans voted for the final bill. Would the final bill have only one or two Republicans to support it or would they have more like 10-15 Republicans? The number of Republicans who supported the bill somehow would have a huge influence on the House. As I recall, I really didn’t make much mention of this bill for a reason. I thought it was going to die in the House. As it turns out, I was right. Immigration reform is dead.

The House Republicans simply have little or no interest in immigration reform. Their position on immigration has been crystal clear. Send all illegal immigrants home. That’s it. There’s no further discussion. Sure, they probably want to build an electrified fence along our southern border. They’ll even go for electronic surveillance systems along our southern border. They may even go for increasing the number of border security personnel along our southern border, but as far as figuring out a path to citizenship is concerned, that is simply a nonstarter. You can poke. You can prod. You can jump up and down. You can present charts and graphs about the benefits of making millions of these economic refugees into real, honest-to-goodness American citizens, but they don’t care.

From my standpoint, the benefits of immigration reform are clear. First of all, I don’t believe that in the United States we should have two or three different classes of citizens. If you are here, you need to be here legally. Making immigrants pay a reasonable fine for breaking the law and then giving them a reasonable path to citizenship simply makes sense. It is fair. I also believe that we should work to close the border. When I say the border, I’m not just talking about our southern border. I’m talking about all of our borders. We have hundreds of thousands of miles that are simply unguarded. If you want to walk across the border with Canada, it is very easy in multiple places. If you want to come to the United States via boat, that is also easy in a number of places. Close the borders.

Let’s be clear. None of this is going to happen. There are powerful forces on both sides of this issue which create the stalemate. From a political standpoint, Republicans have to make a decision. They can either have pain now or they can have pain later. There is going to be some pain. If they pass some sort of immigration reform now, a large number of those immigrants will become Democrats. This will cause short-term pain at the polls. If they continue to resist immigration reform, as I suspect they will, they will have a lot of pain later as immigration reform will get passed at some point as this population of “new Americans” go to the polls and will invariably vote Democratic. Currently, this crop of Republicans have decided that they’re going to postpone the pain for as long as they can. I wish them luck with that strategy.

By ecthompsonmd|2013-07-11T21:59:42-04:00July 11th, 2013|Border Security, Immigration, Party Politics|Comments Off