vdare--2020-01-17--The Guest-Workers' President, Disparate Impact, Western VA, And Taiwan, Etc.

08m22s The Guest-Workers ' President .
( Cast down your bucket where you are , Sir . )
18m29s Taiwan @ @ @ @ @ poke in the eye for ChiComs . )
34m12s The utter uselessness of Republicans .
@ @ @ @ @ their own witness . )
36m51s Will western Virginia secede ?
( Into West Virginia @ @ @ @ @ 40m40s Ovicide in the New Forest .
( Satanists target sheep . )
41m23s Kiwi @ @ @ @ @ are they taking the right approach ? )
42m23s Signoff .
( With New Year @ @ @ @ @

01m04s Dull and diverse. (Democrats debate.)
08m22s The Guest-Workers' President. (Cast down your bucket where you are, Sir.)
18m29s Taiwan's election. (A poke in the eye for ChiComs.)
25m15s Disparate Impact Theory is poison. (A real litmus test.)
34m12s The utter uselessness of Republicans. (They don't question their own witness.)
36m51s Will western Virginia secede? (Into West Virginia, that is.)
40m40s Ovicide in the New Forest. (Satanists target sheep.)
41m23s Kiwi software development. (But are they taking the right approach?)
42m23s Signoff. (With New Year festivities from Turkmenistan.)
01 — Intro. And Radio Derb is on the air! That was a fragment of Haydn's Derbyshire March Number One, a change from the Number Two we usually play. I wouldn't have mentioned that except that we are still house-training Basil, our new puppy, so Number Ones and Number Twos are at the front of my mind right now.
So this is your hygienically genial host John Derbyshire with news from and commentary on the passing charivari. Let the bloviating commence!
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02 — Democrats debate. I keep getting asked by friends, neighbors, and listeners emailing in whether I've revised my prophecy of last June 21st that Trump will lose this year's election. Answer: No, I haven't. I still think he'll lose. All the factors I've laid out before still apply.
Trump won in 2016 by the merest whisker. Even very slight demographic shifts could doom him. Those shifts have happened. He did well among older white Americans; there are fewer of those now than four years ago. At the other end of the voter age pyramid, woke Millennials have come onto the voter rolls, their heads crammed by our schools, colleges, and social media manipulators with Diversity and Inclusion flapdoodle and anti-Trump propaganda.
The media, blindsided and confused by Trump's unexpected ascent in 2016, have had three years to get their act together. They'll be running a sophisticated and ruthless campaign against him this time.
And I'm still having trouble imagining that 2016 Hillary voter who'll be changing his vote to Trump this year. Does such a person actually exist, anywhere in the Republic? I just can't summon up an image …
After Tuesday's Democratic candidates debate in Iowa, I'm more sure than ever that we shall lose in November. Was that debate dull, or what? Even John Podhoretz, who has way more interest in retail politics than I have, declared it, quote: "the dullest major political event in years," end quote. If you don't mind, in fact, I can't resist quoting J-Pod's opening paragraph, slightly edited. Quote:
When the Democratic debate started Tuesday night, I was young, carefree, merry. Two hours later, when it ended, I was praying to the Almighty for a swift end to my suffering … All the life had been sucked out of my body.
End quote.
I found myself thinking that was kind of the point. It's we Republicans that are the Stupid Party, remember. The Democratic Party is not stupid. The people running things over there know what they have to do to win.
First thing they have to do is, purge the overt craziness out of their candidates bench. So no more Cory Booker with his weird swiveling eyeballs; no more Beto O'Rourke skateboarding onto the stage; no more Kamala Harris telling us we should empty out the jails; no more Marianne Williamson offering to meet us on the field of love.
Things on the Democratic side had gotten too weird. A two hour bore-a-thon was just the ticket to get their Presidential campaign back on course. So that's what we got.
The weirdness component of the Democratic field has been shrunk down to just Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the least weird of the weird. The party bosses are dealing with them one at a time: first Bernie, who with all his money and sturdy poll numbers is the bigger threat. Then, when Bernie has been seen off, they'll turn on Warren. You heard it here first.
The objective here is a Presidential ticket that looks like a safe pair of hands: capable, experienced, dull. It's Trump who's the crazy one, you see? Had enough of craziness? Vote Democrat, let's get things back to normal! That will be the pitch.
Hold on a minute: "safe pair of hands" — haven't I used that phrase before in this context? Hold on, let me check. [Keyboard clicking sound.] Yep, sure enough: March 29th last year, quote from self:
The 58-year-old Senator from Minnesota is being talked up, for example by The Economist, as a safe pair of hands with good electability. Quote from them [inner quote]: "In 2018, when she was re-elected as one of Minnesota's senators, she performed vastly better in the state than Hillary Clinton did two years earlier … Mrs Klobuchar is the opponent Mr Trump would least like to face." [End inner quote.]
End quote.
I think a Biden-Klobuchar ticket would be the sweet spot for the Democrats in November. It's dull as all get-out — the anti-weird ticket. And Senator Klobuchar is a gyno-American — diversity!
There is no way Trump can survive opposition as dull and diverse as that.
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03 — The Guest-Workers' President. And then there's Trump Disappointment Syndrome. I read the blogs, the comment threads and Twitter. It's not just me. A lot of Trump's 2016 voters, if not exactly disgruntled, are far from being gruntled.
Let's face it, our guy is soft as wet putty, easy meat for the Chamber of Commerce shills. A year ago this weekend he was tweeting out to reassure H-1B guest workers that, tweet:
Changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship.
End tweet.
My reaction to that at the time was: Yo, Mr President, those are not your voters, those are not your supporters. Those are the people being hired in as cheap labor to take your supporters' jobs. However long it took you to compose and send out that tweet, that's time away from what you should be doing: addressing American voters.
(That was my main reaction. My secondary reaction was weary dismay that Trump doesn't know where the hyphen goes in "H-1B." For crying out loud, man, you're the President. How are you going to control it if you can't even spell it?)
A great many other commentators reacted the same way to Trump's positioning himself as the Guest-Workers' President. Did he learn anything from those reactions?
Not a thing. Here he was a year later, just last Friday, talking to Laura Ingraham on the same topic. In case you didn't catch it, here's the relevant part.
[Clip.
LI: We don't have a tight labor market. If we had a tight labor market we'd be seeing real increases in wages. I hear that your team is planning on advocating more foreign workers coming in for some of these high-tech companies. I'm very concerned about that, as are a lot of your supporters.
DT: … concerned, and so is Mark Levin a little bit, and so is the great Lou Dobbs …
LI: Yeah, we're concerned, because Americans … You ran on America First.
DT: Lou Dobbs is concerned, too. But I'm saying: "Lou, here's the problem. I'm demanding that Japan and all these companies, countries that have these massive … we have trade deficits like nobody's ever seen before." I say, you've gotta open up. I call Prime Minister Abe, he's a friend of mine. I say, "Shinzo, you've gotta open up more plants in the United States," and they tell me, "We wanna do it, we wanna do it." They start opening, they can't get labor! We need help. Otherwise we could just say …
LI: If they couldn't get labor, wages would be going up. Wages aren't going up.
DT: Wages are going up.
LI: Not in the high-tech industry. We're seeing a plateauing of wages.
DT: They went up three percent and they went up two point nine percent. In the last two years wages have gone up more than they have in twenty-five years.
LI: But for Google! Why reward Google? Google's working against you in this campaign.
DT: I don't want to reward Google. I'm not a fan of Google [unintelligible] great companies, okay?
LI: Those guys … all they want is low-skilled workers, Mr President, low-paid immigrants. You didn't run on bringing more foreign workers into the Unites States.
DT: Some foreign workers … We have to allow smart people to stay in our country. You graduate Number One in your class at Harvard, you graduate from Wharton School of Finance …
LI: Yeah; that's a small percentage of what they want.
DT: No it's not. It's [unintelligible] …
LI: But you ran on people training their foreign replacements. You ran against that. For Americans it's humiliating for an American worker. Work for a company for thirty years; now he's told, "You've got to train your foreign replacement. He's going to live in Korea and they're going to pay him twenty percent.
DT: No, no, that's different, I would never do that. But we do need workers in our country, and I do want an immigration policy … Nobody's been better on immigration than me. By the way, we won the funding for the wall and the wall's been built, anyway, because I was taking it out of the military, and everything else, and now it's easier. We need people. I got Foxconn to go into Wisconsin. They have to get people. They spent a fortune, they've built the most incredible plant I've ever seen — in Wisconsin. Foxconn, they make all the Apple's …
LI: So why shouldn't we have American graduates of colleges and universities taking those jobs?
DT: We do. No, we do, we do. But we don't have enough of them. We're not … We don't have enough of them, and we have to be competitive with the rest of the world, too. The companies want to hire these people, and they can't …
LI: They want to hire people they can hire for the cheapest amount, because … that's what they want.
DT: I'm not talking about cheap, I'm talking about brainpower. I wanna hire smart people, and those people are thrown out of the country … can't do that.
LI: You ran on America First. I'm gonna [unintelligible] …
DT: No, no, this is America First …
LI: All right …
DT: Excuse me, I just have to finish now. If we tell smart people to get the hell out …
LI: That's not what we're saying. They always … There's a never-ending appetite on the part of corporate America to bring in as much cheap labor as possible, to drive down wages.
DT: Laura, I have so many companies coming into this country, you're not going to have to worry about it. It's always going to be a shortage. If somebody smart, sitting in this position … We have so many companies coming in. From Japan — Japan's doing many car companies. China, now, is going to start building a lot of things here. You know, they haven't been doing it too much. We have so many companies wanting to come in, and they don't have the labor. But …
LI: All right …
DT: … they're coming in. We're doing great. Our country's doing great, our economy's doing great …]
A couple of things to be said about that. There's a chicken-and-egg issue with the supply of tech workers. If we bring in a great mass of foreigners to do software development, that zone of employment becomes foreignized. That has two negative consequences:
As blogger Half Sigma observed in the classic text on this back in 2007, foreignization on that scale reinforces the idea of IT work as a low-prestige occupation. To quote Half Sigma: "Americans see an industry full of brown people speaking barely intelligible English, and this further lowers the industry's prestige." End quote. You may say that's deplorable, and you may be right, but it's how human nature works.
As foreignization advances and early entrants rise to middle-management positions, they will preferentially hire their fellow-countrymen over Americans. This effect is magnified by some large multiple when the foreignization is sourced mainly from just one or two countries, as it currently is.
Those two points mean that smart, ambitious young Americans don't find a career in IT appealing. They go for the law degree or the MBA — lines of work that have some prestige. Foreignization isn't the solution to a shortage of willing American IT workers; it's the cause of it.
And yes, it keeps salaries depressed. Laura hit the main point: If companies were as desperate for tech workers as the President claimed, salaries would be soaring. They're not.
Even if a politician like Trump was aware of these niceties, the thought of a complete moratorium on guest workers might deter him. Suppose it went into effect: No more H visas or OPTs, current holders of guest-worker visas to return home when their visas expire. Wouldn't that be like cutting off the oxygen supply, leaving IT gasping as its stored reservoirs of talent dwindle?
Sure, it might be just a short-term effect that would correct itself. A short-term negative effect can lose you an election, though.
I'd urge the President to try thinking long-term for a change. It wouldn't have to be that long-term. Young Americans would soon rise to the challenge, as they saw salaries going through the roof. Most IT work is not that difficult; a smart kid can learn IT skills in a few weeks. There are twentysomethings out in Silicon Valley right now making six-digit salaries who never went to college. Our skills economy is a lot more flexible than Trump seems to think.
Cast down your bucket where you are, Mr President.
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04 — Taiwan's election. Last Saturday, January 11th, there was an election in Taiwan.
This looms a bit larger for me than for the average pundit just because my first-ever full-length column for an internet magazine was about a previous Taiwan election. That was in March 2000, almost twenty years ago. I'd been publishing in print outlets for many years before that, but the Taiwan election piece was my first for the internet.
Well, that's just personal. How did last week's election go, and what does it mean for them, for China, and for us?
In a nutshell: it was a triumph for representative democracy, a poke in the eye for the ChiComs, and nothing much to us unless President Trump decides to pull Taiwan into his larger project of overhauling our China trade policy, which he might.
Winner of the election, and so going into another term as President of Taiwan, was 63-year-old Ms Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party, the DPP. I explained the positions of the two big Taiwan political parties back in July of 2016, after returning from a trip to the place. Quote from myself:
The young Saint Augustine asked the Lord to give him chastity and continence, "but not yet" (sed noli modo). Taiwan's approach to its National Question is Augustinian in that sense.
One of the big two political parties, the KMT, favors union with the mainland — but not yet! The other, the DPP, favors Taiwan becoming an independent nation — but not yet!
Thus the island floats forward in a happy cloud of ambiguity: self-governing, with its own laws, historical narrative, parliament, and military, yet recognized as a nation by almost nobody at all.
(Taiwan even has its own calendar, counting years from the overthrow of the imperial system in 1912 — Year One. In public documents and inscriptions, this is Year 105.)
End quote.
That was 2016, so this year on Taiwan's calendar is Year 109.
So Ms Tsai's party is the one favoring independence — but not yet!
Her victory on Saturday was something close to a landslide. She got more than eight million votes, the most any candidate has achieved since direct presidential elections began in 1996. That was 57 percent of the vote against 39 percent for her opponent.
Turnout was 75 percent, which I believe was also a record. Not only a record for Taiwan, in fact, but a figure that American politicians can only dream of. Turnout in our Presidential elections runs 50-60 percent. The last U.S. President to break 70 percent was Bill McKinley in 1900.
And not only did Ms Tsai hold on to the presidency, her party kept control of Taiwan's parliament, in defiance of pollsters' forecasts.
So this was a fired-up electorate who knew what they wanted. What had fired them up, and why did they so want the DPP?
What had fired them up was, in short, Hong Kong. Ever since the British handed over Hong Kong in 1997, the ChiComs have been courting Taiwan with the promise of "One country, two systems," the formula they'd declared for Hong Kong. Seeing how unhappy Hong Kongers are with the way that formula turned out for them, the Taiwanese are more than ever determined not to be seduced.
The DPP is their choice just because it's the less likely of the two main parties to buckle under to ChiCom threats. Also, in fairness to Ms Tsai, about whom I said unflattering things in 2016, because she's done a pretty good job. The economy's picked up, social welfare's improved, and ties with America have been strengthened.
The ChiComs have to be mad as hell about all this. Goodness knows what Xi Jinping's generals are telling him. At a conference in Peking last month organized by one of the ChiCom newspapers, a retired general, Wang Hongguang, opined ominously that, quote: "The window for peaceful reunification is closing." End quote.
Let's hope Xi Jinping puts up stiffer resistance to his Joint Chiefs than Donald Trump does to his.
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05 — Disparate Impact Theory is poison. Last week's item about jaywalkers in New York City brought in some emails.
In case you missed it, the item referred to complaints that city cops issue jaywalking tickets disproportionately to Sun People, i.e. blacks and Latinos. Sun People are only 55 percent of New Yorkers, but they get 90 percent of tickets for jaywalking. Obviously New York cops are practicing flagrant racial discrimination.
A listener with long experience working in the city's courtrooms tells me that summonses are only issued to those who run but can be caught in a foot pursuit. So the statistics factor in the obedience of perps and the relative athleticism of perps and cops. Not sure how that plays out.
Another listener notes that the hateful racism on display in the issuance of jaywalking tickets is also seen in summonses for fare evasion in the city subway system. New York State's Attorney General, a black female radical, wants police to stop enforcing the law on fare-beating.
Meanwhile there have been ructions in one of the city's school districts. The New York City Schools Chancellor is another far-left radical, a Gringo-hating Latino supremacist named Richard Carranza. Noticing that students being disciplined for misbehavior in city schools were disproportionately Sun People, Carranza has ordered principals to stop traditional disciplinary procedures in favor of "restorative justice."
Just a word about that. If you haven't heard this phrase "restorative justice," it's the name of a trendy, feminized approach to dealing with misbehavior, not just in schools but in any kind of institutionalized setting — courts and prisons, for example. The main idea is that instead of the misbehaving person being slapped with some penalty, they sit around in a group with their victim, witnesses to the misbehavior, authority figures, and psychologists, and everyone talks at length about their feelings, wo wo wo feelings.
The usefulness of "restorative justice" as a way of preserving order has not stood up to rigorous research, and by comparison with traditional punitive approaches it wastes enormous amounts of everyone's time; but Progressives love it anyway.
New York City public-school parents, not so much. When Chancellor Carranza held a town hall meeting at a New York middle school on Thursday last, he was jeered off the stage by parents furious at the lack of discipline in their kids' schools. Quote from the New York Post report, quote:
After several unsuccessful attempts to quiet the crowd, Carranza rose and exited the stage as the hooting continued.
End quote.
The common thread to all these stories is the phrase "disparate impact." If Sun People are disproportionately being given tickets for jaywalking, or subway fare-beating, or Sun People schoolkids are being disproportionately punished for misbehavior, our ruling ideology insists that the only possible explanation can be malice on the part of Ice People — that's whites and Asians — towards Sun People. The malice might be conscious or unconscious; but it is what causes the disproportion in punishments.
This is all in accord with the larger notion of Disparate Impact. Wherever there is a disproportion of Sun People or other favored groups suffering negative outcomes in any situation — mortgage lending, for example — a wrong has been done, and action must be taken to right that wrong.
Disparate Impact Theory is a key principle in our ruling ideology. It has the authority of, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court.
Going back to my original examples; you might think that these disproportions could possibly be caused by Sun People actually jaywalking, turnstile-jumping, or acting up in class more than Ice People. If you do think that, you'd be wise to keep quiet about it. That's crimethink.
And please note that it's still crimethink even if you are a race denialist. Speaking as a race realist, I assume that Sun People do misbehave more than Ice People, and that the reasons are ultimately biological. You can disagree with me on that bit about reasons and still be a thought criminal, though. If you think that Sun People truly do misbehave more, but for non-biological reasons, you're still a thought criminal.
Heather Mac Donald, for example, who has written extensively and scathingly about Disparate Impact Theory is not a race realist. She's a race denialist. She puts the high levels of misbehavior among Sun People down to, quote from her, "family dysfunction and lack of socialization." That doesn't get her off the hook. Heather is a thought criminal anyway: ask any Progressive.
Disparate Impact Theory is one of the stupidest and least defensible components of our ruling ideology. In its application to mortgage lending, where lenders were forced to abandon rational credit standards so that Sun People applicants were not disproportionately rejected for home loans, it contributed mightily to the housing bust and the subsequent great recession of twelve years ago.
When some legal scholar is coming up for consideration as a Supreme Court justice, the phrase "litmus test" is usually heard at some point, most likely in relation to the abortion issue. Here would be my litmus test question for someone in that position. Question: "What part, if any, do you think the notion of Disparate Impact should play in our nation's jurisprudence?"
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06 — Miscellany. And now, our closing miscellany of brief items.
Imprimis: Just a footnote to the segment about Disparate Impact.
Looking up that quote from Heather Mac Donald, I got to reading some of her other pieces at the City Journal website. She's a very good writer; and her pieces are terrifically well-researched.
Well, I was reading an article Heather posted last September. The House Judiciary Committee had held a hearing on the policing of black neighborhoods. Heather has written a book with the title Are Cops Racist? so reasonably enough she was invited to address the Committee, one of the two witnesses called by the Republican minority on the Committee.
It was the penultimate paragraph of Heather's article that got my attention. Edited quote:
The Republicans on the committee failed to push back against this narrative of systemic police bias … The only way to dislodge the "endemic racism" argument is to challenge its factual basis directly. I was the only witness at the hearing with the ability to do so, but the Republicans asked me not one question. This is not a matter of personal ego but rather of the public battle of ideas.
End quote.
That, it seems to me, goes right to the heart of the utter uselessness of the Republican Party. In what Heather calls "the public battle of ideas," when hostilities get anywhere near the subject of race, Republicans throw down their weapons and scamper from the field as fast as they can scamper.
What gutless cowards Republicans are!
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Item: Paul Kersey over at The Unz Review has noted a neat little historical inversion that may be about to happen.
You'll recall from your history lessons that West Virginia broke away from the rest of Virginia at the very beginning of the Civil War and was actually admitted to the Union two years later. The rest of Virginia went with the Confederacy.
(Some impertinent people have wondered why, if it was lawful for West Virginia to secede from Virginia, it was not lawful for the Confederate States to secede from the Union … but we'll leave that discussion to another time.)
Now, 160 years later, West Virginia has changed much less than Virginia has. It's one of the whitest states in the Union: only 3.4 percent black, 1.2 percent Latino at the last census. On Second Amendment issues it is one of the freest states, with almost no special permits required for any kind of firearm.
Virginia, though, has changed a lot. The northern part has been swallowed up in Greater Washington, D.C. — filled with government people and Hispanic immigrants to mow their lawns, clean their pools, and mind their kids. The southeastern part is heavily black — up to 57 percent in Sussex County, south of Richmond. The government folk are all gentry liberals, of course, and the rest of these parts are Democratic by default.
Meanwhile the western counties of Virginia, up against the border with West Virginia, remain conservative and white. Highland County, up there in the Appalachians, is 99.6 percent white … although that's in a total population of only 2,300, which means there are just nine blacks in Highland County.
Now, Paul Kersey tells us, with all those liberals, blacks, and immigrants in eastern Virginia turning the state blue and pushing for gun control, those western counties are declaring themselves Second Amendment sanctuary jurisdictions, where gun laws applying to the rest of Virginia will not be enforced.
That has prompted some legislators in the state of West Virginia to suggest that these counties secede and join their state.
I don't know if anything will come of this, but I love the idea. I don't see why the borders of our states should be cast in stone. Adjustments here and there would make a lot of sense. This particular one certainly would.
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Item: Some sheep news. In the New Forest national park in southern England, sheep have been found ritually killed, left in the road, their bodies marked with Satanic symbols. Police suspect some kind of cult. They have stepped up patrols in the forest.
The Daily Mail reports that one sheep had been slit right open and its entrails removed. Ewe!
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Item: Yet more sheep news. A company in New Zealand will soon release facial recognition software for sheep. The software has been developed by a company in Dunedin, in the South Island of New Zealand, and will be ready as a prototype sometime this year, we are told.
There is of course no species of humor as low and juvenile as jokes about New Zealanders and their sheep. Rest assured, listeners; Radio Derb does not traffic in such deplorable smut. I can't help wondering, though, whether facial recognition is really the big market opportunity down there …
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07 — Signoff. That's all for this week, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for listening, and be sure to tune in next week for Radio Derb's Sino-Caledonian special. Yes: Next Saturday, January 25th, is Chinese New Year and also Burns Night. And you thought the holiday season was over …
Some of it, of course, is over. New Year — our New Year — is dwindling fast in the rear-view mirror. People had a lot of fun welcoming in 2020, though, nowhere more so than in Ashgabat, capital of Turkmenistan. That nation's state TV network broadcast a showbiz spectacular that had feet tapping and booties shaking all over Central Asia.
Here to play us out is just the merest snippet from the fun. Playing the keyboard here is none other than Turkmenistan's fun-loving leader and longtime friend of Radio Derb, the infinitely talented President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. His voice is also one of those joining in the chorus at the end. Long live President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov! Long live the noble republic of Turkmenistan!
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[Music clip: Turkmenistan TV New Year special.]


vdare--2020-01-17--Rhetorically, Trump Sounds Like Business First, But Practically, He’s America First. Which Is It?

A week ago , President Trump told Fox News ’ s Laura Ingraham that American companies need more foreign workers .
The remark not only concerned and even infuriated immigration patriots but also contravened the Administration ’ s crackdown on H-1B visas and tightened immigration rules .
In other words , in practice , the Trump Administration puts America first .
But rhetorically , Trump sounds like Jeb Bush .
It ’ s time to resolve this cognitive dissonance .
If Trump is to succeed in November , he must remember promises he ran on four years ago and quit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As for the talk with Ingraham , make no mistake : Trump was disappointing .
“ We don ’ t have a tight labor market , ” she insisted , refuting his claim .
“ If we had a tight labor market , we would be seeing real increases in wages ” [ In Immigration Debate , Trump Says We Don ’ t Have Enough American Workers to Fill Skilled Labor Jobs , by Neil Munro , Breitbart , January 12 , 2020 ] .
But Trump disagreed .
Businesses tell him they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and so it ’ s “ America First ” to reward college-educated foreigners with American jobs .
“ We have to allow smart people to stay in our country—if you graduate number one in your class at Harvard , [ if ] you graduate from the Wharton School of Finance , ” Trump said .
“ If we tell smart people to get the hell out , that ’ s not America first.
” To her great credit , Ingraham mockingly said that claim violated his America First campaign pledge .
Significantly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from January 2019 went viral on right-wing Twitter .
Some who tweeted it ( including the great John Derbyshire ) mistakenly thought it was from 2020 , but in any event it exemplifies escalating concern about Trump ’ s conflicting messages on immigration .
The tweet was symptomatic of Trump ’ s brief flirtation with an immigration increase last year .
“ I want people to come into our country in the largest numbers ever , but they have to come in legally , ” he said in February ’ s State of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few weeks , he repeated similar Chamber-of-Commerce talking points that more and more companies are coming to the U.S. and need more workers .
At CPAC , he called for a “ merit ” system that allows companies to get more immigrant workers .
Fortunately , Trump then dropped the subject—until the Ingraham interview .
But Jared Kushner ’ s immigration proposal , released last May , seemed to reinforce Trump ’ s imprudent turn from America First to Business First .
Kushner ’ s plan could have been worse .
Serious reform @ @ @ @ @ @ @ E-Verify , and making immigration to the U.S. more selective .
But the plan didn ’ t reduce immigration , which made it inferior to the RAISE Act , which would halve legal immigration ; Kushner would only increase standards for entry .
The higher standards would likely increase the number of H-1Bs to compensate for dramatically reduced visas in other areas .
Kushner seemed to confirm that in an interview with the Wall Street Journal last month [ Jared Kushner on Fixing the Immigration System , December 12 , 2019 ] .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ plan , Kushner said , would help heal the immigration divide in America .
But that won ’ t happen .
Good news is , Kushner ’ s plan will never pass the current Congress , which is fixated on impeachment and the next election .
Still , it ’ s quite concerning that the president and his most trusted adviser keep using this problematic language about corporate needs .
Curiously , more encouraging words are coming from a key Trump adviser .
Speaking at CES 2020 , the Consumer Technology Association ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s daughter , Ivanka—was more worker-focused than her father or her husband .
[ T ] he 38-year-old talked about her lack of sympathy for employers who lay off workers and then complain that they do n't have enough skilled workers .
They should have taken the time to “ reskill ” those workers , she argued .
She also advocated for employment opportunities for former prisoner inmates and the need to not over-peddle four-year college as the ticket to career success .
Her workforce portfolio also puts Trump shoulder to shoulder @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Benioff—to whom she gave a shout-out Tuesday—and Apple CEO Tim Cook , whose firms have signed the White House Pledge to American Workers .
Not a bad look for the Trump re-election campaign , even if this conservative misses the days when the right derided “ crony capitalism.
” There ’ s another 2020 angle here .
POTUS frequently says that he is a man of America ’ s “ forgotten ” workers—and there 's his raised-in-Manhattan daughter championing those who don ’ t have college educations .
[ Tech and Diversity of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Creators Syndicate , January 12 , 2020 ] But Ivanka Trump aside , corporate chieftains tell him they need more workers .
Given that he seems to be influenced by the last person he talked to , if that person is a Big Tech exec who wants more ( cheaper ) labor , then Trump ’ s support for more immigration is understandable [ Want to change Trump ’ s mind on policy ?
Be the last one who talks to him , by Amber Phillips , The Washington Post , April 28 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ degree , some Bidenesque self-dealing might be at work .
Trump ’ s businesses use guest workers and continue to apply for foreign labor .
Cheap labor benefits his bottom line [ The one place Trump wants more foreign workers : Mar-a-Lago , by Alexia Fernandez Campbell , Vox , July 9 , 2018 ] .
Still , the Administration has cracked down on the “ brainpower ” migrants Trump claims to want .
Denial rates for H-1B visas are at record highs and rising , thanks to new regulations that prioritize foreign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for companies to prove they need college-educated workers .
The impetus for the change was Trump ’ s 2017 “ Buy American , Hire American ” executive order , which demanded American companies prioritize American workers .
“ Widespread abuse in our immigration system is allowing American workers of all backgrounds to be replaced by workers brought in from other countries to fill the same job for sometimes less pay .
This will stop , ” Trump said when he signed it [ Remarks by President Trump on Buy American , Hire American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 2017 ] .
Liberals , of course , are enraged .
HuffPost has claimed Trump built an invisible wall against immigration [ Trump Got His Wall , After All , by Rachel Morris , HuffPost , November 24 , 2019 ] .
“ It ’ s really Make America White Again , ” Cornell Law Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr [ Email him ] said of the new rules [ Trump Has Built a Wall of Bureaucracy to Keep Out the Very Immigrants He Says He Wants , by Sinduja Rangarajan , Mother Jones @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Overall , the immigrant workforce population in the U.S. has begun to decline sharply .
Ken Cuccinelli , acting director of U.S .
Citizenship and Immigration Services , is proud of the administration ’ s efforts and touted the crackdown in October [ Ken Cuccinelli , U.S. Immigration Services Chief , Boasts Of Increasing Bureaucracy , by Stuart Anderson , Forbes , October 21 , 2019 ] .
And Stephen Miller , Trump ’ s top immigration adviser , said the White House opposes the displacement of American workers through H-1B visas .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ boss about his campaign promises .
Trump won ’ t win re-election by promoting the interests of corporate executives .
But he can win again with “ Buy American , Hire American , ” a policy supported by 61 percent of registered voters [ Buy , Hire American Practices Generally Supported by U.S .
Voters , by Ryan Rainey , Morning Consult , April 18 , 2017 ] .
The president isn ’ t the most consistent leader in American history .
He says one thing and does another , as with H-1B @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hasn ’ t eased its regulations and Kushner ’ s plan won ’ t pass Congress .
That means the administration is still protecting American workers .
To win on November 3 , Trump needs to talk about that , not lobby for ruling-class corporate elites .
Washington Watcher II [ Email him ] is an anonymous DC insider .

washingtonwatcherii@protonmail.com (Washington  Watcher II)

A week ago, President Trump told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham that American companies need more foreign workers. The remark not only concerned and even infuriated immigration patriots but also contravened the Administration’s crackdown on H-1B visas and tightening of immigration rules. In other words, in practice, the Trump Administration puts America first. But rhetorically, Trump sounds like Jeb Bush. It’s time to resolve this cognitive dissonance. If Trump is to succeed in November, he must remember promises he ran on four years ago and quit appealing to corporations who hate him.
As for the talk with Ingraham, make no mistake: Trump was disappointing. “We don’t have a tight labor market,” she insisted, refuting his claim. “If we had a tight labor market, we would be seeing real increases in wages” [In Immigration Debate, Trump Says We Don’t Have Enough American Workers to Fill Skilled Labor Jobs, by Neil Munro, Breitbart, January 12, 2020].
But Trump disagreed. Businesses tell him they need more workers, and so it’s “America First” to reward college-educated foreigners with American jobs. “We have to allow smart people to stay in our country—if you graduate number one in your class at Harvard, [if] you graduate from the Wharton School of Finance,” Trump said. “If we tell smart people to get the hell out, that’s not America first.”
To her great credit, Ingraham mockingly said that claim violated his America First campaign pledge.
Significantly, after the interview a pro-H-1B Trump tweet from January 2019 went viral on right-wing Twitter. Some who tweeted it (including the great John Derbyshire) mistakenly thought it was from 2020, but in any event it exemplifies escalating concern about Trump’s conflicting messages on immigration.
The tweet was symptomatic of Trump’s brief flirtation with an immigration increase last year. “I want people to come into our country in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally,” he said in February’s State of the Union address. During the next few weeks, he repeated similar Chamber-of-Commerce talking points that more and more companies are coming to the U.S. and need more workers. At CPAC, he called for a “merit” system that allows companies to get more immigrant workers.
Fortunately, Trump then dropped the subject—until the Ingraham interview. But Jared Kushner’s immigration proposal, released last May, seemed to reinforce Trump’s imprudent turn from America First to Business First.
Kushner’s plan could have been worse. Serious reform proposals included eliminating chain migration and mandatory E-Verify, and making immigration to the U.S. more selective. But the plan didn’t reduce immigration, which made it inferior to the RAISE Act, which would halve legal immigration; Kushner would only increase standards for entry. The higher standards would likely increase the number of H-1Bs to compensate for dramatically reduced visas in other areas.
Kushner seemed to confirm that in an interview with the Wall Street Journal last month [Jared Kushner on Fixing the Immigration System, December 12, 2019].
A lot of these companies that we meet with in the high-tech industry, they want to bring people into this country. They’re opening offices in other places because they can’t get some of their most skilled people who are high wage earners, GDP creators, job creators into the country. We need a fundamental change to our immigration system. Not just for the high-tech companies, but also for a lot of the different industries in the country.
The “merit-based” aspect of the plan, Kushner said, would help heal the immigration divide in America. But that won’t happen.
Good news is, Kushner’s plan will never pass the current Congress, which is fixated on impeachment and the next election. Still, it’s quite concerning that the president and his most trusted adviser keep using this problematic language about corporate needs.
Curiously, more encouraging words are coming from a key Trump adviser. Speaking at CES 2020, the Consumer Technology Association’s annual conference, Mrs. Jared Kushner—Trump’s daughter, Ivanka—was more worker-focused than her father or her husband.
[T]he 38-year-old talked about her lack of sympathy for employers who lay off workers and then complain that they don't have enough skilled workers. They should have taken the time to “reskill” those workers, she argued. She also advocated for employment opportunities for former prisoner inmates and the need to not over-peddle four-year college as the ticket to career success. Her workforce portfolio also puts Trump shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff—to whom she gave a shout-out Tuesday—and Apple CEO Tim Cook, whose firms have signed the White House Pledge to American Workers. Not a bad look for the Trump re-election campaign, even if this conservative misses the days when the right derided “crony capitalism.” There’s another 2020 angle here. POTUS frequently says that he is a man of America’s “forgotten” workers—and there's his raised-in-Manhattan daughter championing those who don’t have college educations. [Tech and Diversity of Thought, by Debra J. Saunders, Creators Syndicate, January 12, 2020]
But Ivanka Trump aside, corporate chieftains tell him they need more workers. Given that he seems to be influenced by the last person he talked to, if that person is a Big Tech exec who wants more (cheaper) labor, then Trump’s support for more immigration is understandable [Want to change Trump’s mind on policy? Be the last one who talks to him, by Amber Phillips, Washington Post, April 28, 2017].
And to some degree, some Bidenesque self-dealing might be at work. Trump’s businesses use guest workers and continue to apply for foreign labor. Cheap labor benefits his bottom line [The one place Trump wants more foreign workers: Mar-a-Lago, by Alexia Fernandez Campbell, Vox, July 9, 2018].
Still, the Administration has cracked down on the “brainpower” migrants Trump claims to want. Denial rates for H-1B visas are at record highs and rising, thanks to new regulations that prioritize foreign graduates from American universities and increase standards for companies to prove they need college-educated workers.
The impetus for the change was Trump’s 2017 “Buy American, Hire American” executive order, which demanded American companies prioritize American workers. “Widespread abuse in our immigration system is allowing American workers of all backgrounds to be replaced by workers brought in from other countries to fill the same job for sometimes less pay. This will stop,” Trump said when he signed it [Remarks by President Trump on Buy American, Hire American Executive Order, WhiteHouse.gov, April 18, 2017].
Liberals, of course, are enraged. HuffPost has claimed Trump built an invisible wall against immigration [Trump Got His Wall, After All, by Rachel Morris, HuffPost, November 24, 2019]. “It’s really Make America White Again,” Cornell Law Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr [Email him] said of the new rules [Trump Has Built a Wall of Bureaucracy to Keep Out the Very Immigrants He Says He Wants, by Sinduja Rangarajan, Mother Jones, December 2, 2019]. Overall, the immigrant workforce population in the U.S. has begun to decline sharply.
Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is proud of the administration’s efforts and touted the crackdown in October [Ken Cuccinelli, U.S. Immigration Services Chief, Boasts Of Increasing Bureaucracy, by Stuart Anderson, Forbes, October 21, 2019]. And Stephen Miller, Trump’s top immigration adviser, said the White House opposes the displacement of American workers through H-1B visas.
Maybe Miller and Cuccinelli should remind the boss about his campaign promises.
Trump won’t win re-election by promoting the interests of corporate executives. But he can win again with “Buy American, Hire American,” a policy supported by 61 percent of registered voters [Buy, Hire American Practices Generally Supported by U.S. Voters, by Ryan Rainey, Morning Consult, April 18, 2017].
The president isn’t the most consistent leader in American history. He says one thing and does another, as with H-1B visas. But at least the administration hasn’t eased its regulations and Kushner’s plan won’t pass Congress. That means the administration is still protecting American workers.
To win on November 3, Trump needs to talk about that, not lobby for ruling-class corporate elites.
Washington Watcher II [Email him] is an anonymous DC insider.


vdare--2020-01-17--Between 2016-2018 In 45% White/35% Black Charlotte, NC, Blacks Were 85% Of Known Homicide Suspects

A 45 percent white/35 percent black city ( the rest of the racial breakdown largely Mexican illegal immigrants helping build new homes , high rise condos , strip malls and commercial real estate for white people escaping areas of the city overwhelmed by black crime ) .
2019 was a particularly violent year in the city , fueled by individual blacks collectively trying hard to live up to every negative stereotype surrounding Africans in America and violence .
A deadly year : 2019 murder rate was Charlotte ’ s worst in more than a decade , Charlotte Post , January @ @ @ @ @ @ @ highest murder rate in more than a decade , prompting city leaders to say the violence should be treated as a public health crisis .
The city ’ s rate — 11.6 homicides per 100,000 people — is the highest since 2005 and more than double the rate from just six years ago .
That year , 2014 , remains Charlotte ’ s lowest on record .
The rate takes into account population growth and is one way to look at deadly violence in Charlotte over time .
This month , city leaders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ increase in the number of homicides in 2019 — 107 — compared with 57 in 2018 .
Although only 35 % of the city ’ s population is black , according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates , the majority — 80 % — of 2019 homicide victims were black , according to the Observer ’ s analysis of data provided by CMPD .
Of those killed , 80 % were men .
Half of the victims , both men and women , were under 30 years old .
Arrests have not been made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases .
Of the 107 homicides , officers have closed about 78 cases .
Because investigations are ongoing , complete demographic information on people charged with murder is not available .
Statistics from homicide cases from 2016 to 2018 , however , indicate some trends , CMPD says .
• 41 % were between 18 and 24 years old , a segment which makes up just 10 percent of the population • Victims were usually killed by someone they knew .
10 % of homicide victims were killed by a stranger • 26 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a previous felony and 41 % had a past felony charge The demographics of those killed and those arrested are similar to the national trend , UNC Charlotte ’ s Kuhns said .
Poverty , unemployment rates and unstable housing contribute to higher crime rates , he said .
“ It ’ s part of the nationwide pattern … There ’ s disproportionate victimization among minorities , ” he said .
City leaders believe the city can interrupt the violence .
According to CMPD , one-fourth of homicides from 2017 to 2019 were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ domestic violence between family members or romantic partners .
In the first meeting of the Charlotte City Council this year , members said the surge in homicides is a public health crisis and that youth diversion and community-based mediation programs could be part of the solution .
“ It can ’ t just be about policing anymore , ” Lyles said .
“ It ’ s just not possible .
… We want to actually figure out how to make change sustainable.
” Reversing the “ cycle of violence ” is possible , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years .
“ I think we ’ re doing fantastic work that will pay dividends five and ten years down the road , ” he said .
[ More ]

The Queen City.
Charlotte, North Carolina.
A 45 percent white/35 percent black city (the rest of the racial breakdown largely Mexican illegal immigrants helping build new homes, high rise condos, strip malls and commercial real estate for white people escaping areas of the city overwhelmed by black crime).
2019 was a particularly violent year in the city, fueled by individual blacks collectively trying hard to live up to every negative stereotype surrounding Africans in America and violence.
A deadly year: 2019 murder rate was Charlotte’s worst in more than a decade, Charlotte Post, January 16, 2020
Charlotte just posted its highest murder rate in more than a decade, prompting city leaders to say the violence should be treated as a public health crisis.
The city’s rate — 11.6 homicides per 100,000 people — is the highest since 2005 and more than double the rate from just six years ago. That year, 2014, remains Charlotte’s lowest on record. The rate takes into account population growth and is one way to look at deadly violence in Charlotte over time.
This month, city leaders have raised concerns following the 88% increase in the number of homicides in 2019 — 107 — compared with 57 in 2018.
Although only 35% of the city’s population is black, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the majority — 80% — of 2019 homicide victims were black, according to the Observer’s analysis of data provided by CMPD. Of those killed, 80% were men.
Half of the victims, both men and women, were under 30 years old.
Arrests have not been made in around one-third of the 2019 murder cases. Of the 107 homicides, officers have closed about 78 cases.
Because investigations are ongoing, complete demographic information on people charged with murder is not available. Statistics from homicide cases from 2016 to 2018, however, indicate some trends, CMPD says.
90% of homicide suspects were male
85% were black
41% were between 18 and 24 years old, a segment which makes up just 10 percent of the population
Victims were usually killed by someone they knew. 10% of homicide victims were killed by a stranger
26% of suspects had been convicted of a previous felony and 41% had a past felony charge
The demographics of those killed and those arrested are similar to the national trend, UNC Charlotte’s Kuhns said. Poverty, unemployment rates and unstable housing contribute to higher crime rates, he said.
“It’s part of the nationwide pattern … There’s disproportionate victimization among minorities,” he said.
STOPPING THE ‘CYCLE’
City leaders believe the city can interrupt the violence.
According to CMPD, one-fourth of homicides from 2017 to 2019 were preceded by an argument and one-fifth were domestic violence between family members or romantic partners.
In the first meeting of the Charlotte City Council this year, members said the surge in homicides is a public health crisis and that youth diversion and community-based mediation programs could be part of the solution.
“It can’t just be about policing anymore,” Lyles said. “It’s just not possible. … We want to actually figure out how to make change sustainable.”
Reversing the “cycle of violence” is possible, Putney says, but results could take years.
“I think we’re doing fantastic work that will pay dividends five and ten years down the road,” he said. [More]


vdare--2020-01-17--ICE Attorneys Continue To Sabotage Enforcement

The Office of the Principal Legal Advisor ( OPLA ) in U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement ( ICE ) , are the attorneys who are supposed to represent the American people and nation , as well as ICE , in hearings before the Executive Office for Immigration Review ( EOIR ) , the immigration courts in the Department of Justice ( DOJ ) .
More often , though , OPLA attorneys work for the illegal aliens who are arrested by the enforcement components of the Department of Homeland Security ; ICE , Border Patrol , Customs and Border Protection ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( AMO ) , and even U.S .
Citizenship and Immigration Services ( USCIS ) , who while they don ’ t make arrests , do place aliens in removal proceedings .
ICE OPLA is headed by Tracy Short , long-time saboteur .
OPLA is the funnel through which all aliens placed in removal proceedings must pass .
Despite the best efforts of an officer or agent , all is naught if the OPLA attorney is lazy , or , more likely , a Deep State operative .
Your humble correspondent has long @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of their own little amnesty program that is run under the guise of their “ legal analysis ” of the facts of a particular case , which is usually just ignore the law , especially when it comes to the issue of waivers of grounds of inadmissibility for illegal aliens claiming residency in EOIR proceedings based on “ extreme hardship.
” Background on OPLA Deep State resistance and sabotage is here , here , here , and here .
There appear to be no changes at OPLA despite exposés of their sabotage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ courts shows OPLA is acquiescing to illegal aliens making false claims of “ extreme hardship ” and acquiescing to their fraud based on “ good behavior.
” Lopez tells the judge about his devout Christianity and Bible studies , his kids ’ education at a charter school and dreams of going to college , his fear of having to move his children to a dangerous place they ’ ve never been .
He ’ s hoping to stay in the country under a provision for immigrants who have lived in the country more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who would suffer if they were they gone .
After about an hour of questioning , Judge Lincoln Jalelian tells Lopez he ’ ll take the case under advisement .
The government attorney says she won ’ t oppose granting Lopez a visa due to his “ exemplary ” record and community service , which means he ’ ll likely be able to stay .
[ AP Visits Immigration Courts Across Us , Finds Nonstop Chaos , Kate Brumback , Deepti Hajela And Amy Taxin , Associated Press , January 16 , 2020 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an explanation of the above mentioned provision of immigration law that the illegal alien Lopez is seeking .
This is relief from removal and receiving legal permanent residency .
This provision is called the hardship waiver of grounds for inadmissibility .
This is based not on what will happen to the alien applying , but on what will happen to the dependent spouse , parent , or child .
This is not about whether income will be reduced , not about whether the U.S. Citizen spouse , child , or parent will move @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t have to leave , but if because of a loss of income , the spouse , child , or parent will be deprived of life dependent medical care .
Usually the only reasons are a long term medical condition that can not be treated overseas and would result in serious injury or death .
In the above case , none of that appears to be true , as nothing was mentioned about the legal basis for the waiver .
What was telling though was that the “ government attorney , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the government would not oppose a waiver based on extreme hardship , the legal standard , based on Lopez ’ “ ‘ exemplary ’ record and community service… ” Neither exemplary record nor community service are standards for waivers of grounds of inadmissibility .
This shows us that OPLA attorneys are allowing illegal aliens to claim waivers of grounds of inadmissibility without any basis in law , just because an illegal alien claims they are a good person and help the homeless .
None of which was actually shown to be true , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It is time for Ken Cuccinelli o get OPLA on a leash and under control .
These Deep State bureaucrats are sabotaging what enforcement is taken .
You can arrest millions of illegal aliens , but if OPLA keeps ignoring the law and conniving with illegal aliens , all is for nothing .
Time for Ken Cuccinelli to clean up ICE OPLA ; fire Tracy Short .

The Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA) in U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) are the attorneys who are supposed to represent the American people and nation, as well as ICE, in hearings before the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the immigration courts in the Department of Justice (DOJ).
More often, though, OPLA attorneys work for the illegal aliens who are arrested by the enforcement components of the Department of Homeland Security: ICE, Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Air and Marine Operations (AMO), and even U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), who while they don’t make arrests, do place aliens in removal proceedings. ICE OPLA is headed by Tracy Short, long-time saboteur.
OPLA is the funnel through which all aliens placed in removal proceedings must pass. Despite the best efforts of an officer or agent, all is naught if the OPLA attorney is lazy, or, more likely, a Deep State operative. Your humble correspondent has long written about the machinations of OPLA as part of their own little amnesty program that is run under the guise of their “legal analysis” of the facts of a particular case, which usually just ignores the law, especially when it comes to the issue of waivers of grounds of inadmissibility for illegal aliens claiming residency in EOIR proceedings based on “extreme hardship.” Background on OPLA Deep State resistance and sabotage is here, here, here, and here.
Tracy Short, Chief Saboteur At ICE OPLA
There appear to be no changes at OPLA despite exposés of their sabotage, and new information from the EOIR courts shows OPLA is acquiescing to illegal aliens making false claims of “extreme hardship” and acquiescing to their fraud based on “good behavior.”
Lopez tells the judge about his devout Christianity and Bible studies, his kids’ education at a charter school and dreams of going to college, his fear of having to move his children to a dangerous place they’ve never been. He’s hoping to stay in the country under a provision for immigrants who have lived in the country more than a decade and have American children who would suffer if they were they gone. After about an hour of questioning, Judge Lincoln Jalelian tells Lopez he’ll take the case under advisement. The government attorney says she won’t oppose granting Lopez a visa due to his “exemplary” record and community service, which means he’ll likely be able to stay. [AP Visits Immigration Courts Across US, Finds Nonstop Chaos, Kate Brumback, Deepti Hajela and Amy Taxin, Associated Press, January 16, 2020, emphasis added.]
First, an explanation of the above mentioned provision of immigration law that the illegal alien Lopez is seeking. This is relief from removal and receiving legal permanent residency. This provision is called the hardship waiver of grounds for inadmissibility. This is based not on what will happen to the alien applying, but on what will happen to the dependent spouse, parent, or child.
This is not about whether income will be reduced, not about whether the U.S. Citizen spouse, child, or parent will move to a dangerous country, as they don’t have to leave, but if because of a loss of income, the spouse, child, or parent will be deprived of life dependent medical care. Usually the only reasons are a long term medical-condition that cannot be treated overseas and would result in serious injury or death.
In the above case, none of that appears to be true, as nothing was mentioned about the legal basis for the waiver. What was telling though was that the “government attorney,” an OPLA attorney, stated that the government would not oppose a waiver based on extreme hardship, the legal standard, based on Lopez’ “‘exemplary’ record and community service…”
Neither exemplary record nor community service are standards for waivers of grounds of inadmissibility. This shows us that OPLA attorneys are allowing illegal aliens to claim waivers of grounds of inadmissibility without any basis in law, just because an illegal alien claims they are a good person and help the homeless. None of which was actually shown to be true, just a claim by the illegal alien.
It is time for Ken Cuccinelli to get OPLA on a leash and under control. These Deep State bureaucrats are sabotaging what enforcement is taken. You can arrest millions of illegal aliens, but if OPLA keeps ignoring the law and conniving with illegal aliens, all is for nothing. Time for Ken Cuccinelli to clean up ICE OPLA; fire Tracy Short.


vdare--2020-01-18--White Child Attacked By  Blacks In 65% Black Memphis: White Family More Upset With Reaction By White

White Child Attacked By  Blacks In 65% Black Memphis: White Family More Upset With Reaction By White Community To The Racial Attack, Than The Black Racial Attack On Their Child

Previously : Memphis Commercial Appeal APOLOGIZES for RUNNING Truthful Headline About Massacre of Five White Cops in Dallas and Even Though He Had Non-White Friends and Colleagues , John Palmer “ J.P. ” Shelley Is Still Dead ( Courtesy of Three Black Males ) If you want a glimpse of the future , where extreme white guilt is exacerbated with toxic levels of white privilege-rejecting white people , look no further than this insanity from 65 percent black Memphis .
A young white boy is attacked by a group of black kids over a $ 20 bill .
A white @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and describes the real crime as being “ insensitive ” Facebook posts from outraged neighbors noticing the racial angle of the assault on the young white child .
Calling these black attackers of their white child “ thugs ” and “ criminals ” is a far , far worse crime than the racial attack itself… MEMPHIS , Tenn. — One Memphis family is sending a surprising message to a group of teenagers that attacked their son .
The family is dealing with a traumatic event , but they do not want stereotypes or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the boys who attacked a member of their family .
A group of teens was spotted in a Cooper-Young neighborhood riding bikes Sunday afternoon .
They can be seen in a video following a pair down an empty street .
Less than two hours later , their actions took a violent turn .
One of them asked 16-year-old Leif Love-Cloys for a dollar .
He gave it to them .
But when he refused to hand over a $ 20 bill they saw in his wallet , the group attacked .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” mother Rev .
Edith Love said .
“ One of them held him from behind , while another one was punching him on the sides of his head.
” Though traumatic , the attack did not leave any permanent physical damage , but the family is hurting due to social media messages following the incident .
“ I am highly offended by people saying that this was stereotypical black children acting violently , ” Love said .
They ’ ve seen neighbors use terms like thugs and criminals to describe the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ online comments , they ’ re concerned about the futures of the attackers .
“ These boys , if they don ’ t alter the path that they ’ re going down , it ’ s not a good place for them to be , ” Love said .
A report has been filed with Memphis Police , and while no arrests have been made , there ’ s optimism the suspects will be caught .
Rather than a thirst for revenge or justice , the family has a simple wish once the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like to talk to them , ” Love said .
“ I would like to know what they were thinking ; what made them think that was okay.
” It ’ s a pretty powerful reaction to have such perspective after one of your own family members has been attacked .
Anyone with information about the Cooper-Young incident should call CrimeStoppers at 901-528-CASH .
White people in America are trained to never , ever take their own side in a racial fight .
From cradle-to-grave , whites are indoctrinated to reject their identity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when this aggression is against not only members of their own race , but their own family .
Perhaps we truly are irredeemable .

Previously: Memphis Commercial Appeal APOLOGIZES for RUNNING Truthful Headline About Massacre of Five White Cops in Dallas and Even Though He Had Non-White Friends and Colleagues, John Palmer “J.P.” Shelley Is Still Dead (Courtesy of Three Black Males)
If you want a glimpse of the future, where extreme white guilt is exacerbated with toxic levels of white privilege-rejecting white people, look no further than this insanity from 65 percent black Memphis.
A young white boy is attacked by a group of black kids over a $20 bill. A white Unitarian minister runs to the local media and describes the real crime as being “insensitive” Facebook posts from outraged neighbors noticing the racial angle of the assault on the young white child.
Calling these black attackers of their white child “thugs” and “criminals” is a far, far worse crime than the racial attack itself…
Memphis family hopes for perspective after attack, WREG.com, January 16, 2020 MEMPHIS, Tenn. — One Memphis family is sending a surprising message to a group of teenagers that attacked their son. The family is dealing with a traumatic event, but they do not want stereotypes or preconceived notions to paint an unfair picture about the boys who attacked a member of their family. A group of teens was spotted in a Cooper-Young neighborhood riding bikes Sunday afternoon. They can be seen in a video following a pair down an empty street. Less than two hours later, their actions took a violent turn. One of them asked 16-year-old Leif Love-Cloys for a dollar. He gave it to them. But when he refused to hand over a $20 bill they saw in his wallet, the group attacked. “That’s when they jumped him,” mother Rev. Edith Love said. “One of them held him from behind, while another one was punching him on the sides of his head.” Though traumatic, the attack did not leave any permanent physical damage, but the family is hurting due to social media messages following the incident. “I am highly offended by people saying that this was stereotypical black children acting violently,” Love said. They’ve seen neighbors use terms like thugs and criminals to describe the boys involved. But more so than online comments, they’re concerned about the futures of the attackers. “These boys, if they don’t alter the path that they’re going down, it’s not a good place for them to be,” Love said. A report has been filed with Memphis Police, and while no arrests have been made, there’s optimism the suspects will be caught. Rather than a thirst for revenge or justice, the family has a simple wish once the boys are identified. “I would like to talk to them,” Love said. “I would like to know what they were thinking; what made them think that was okay.” It’s a pretty powerful reaction to have such perspective after one of your own family members has been attacked. Anyone with information about the Cooper-Young incident should call CrimeStoppers at 901-528-CASH.
White people in America are trained to never, ever take their own side in a racial fight. From cradle to grave, whites are indoctrinated to reject their identity and side with racial aggressors, even when this aggression is against not only members of their own race, but their own family.
Perhaps we truly are irredeemable.
[Comment at Unz.com]


vdare--2020-01-18--NBC: Time to Make Voting Republican Illegal Because It's Racist

Noah Berlatsky Trump voters motivated by racism may be violating the Constitution .
Can they be stopped ?
Republicans and Democrats alike have been unwilling to reprimand voters or to hold them accountable .
But racist voting isn ’ t an accident .
Image : Donald Trump If the Trump era has taught us anything , it 's that large numbers of white people in the United States are motivated at least in part by racism in the voting booth .
… Terry Smith , a visiting professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law , offers a different @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Whitelash : Unmasking White Grievance at the Ballot Box . ''
Rather than excuse racist voters or try to figure out how to live with their choices , he argues that racist voting is not just immoral , but illegal .
The government , Smith says , has the ability , and the responsibility , to address it .
This sounds radical .
But Smith argues that it 's in line with the Constitution and with years of court rulings .
For example , Smith points out that racist appeals in union elections @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which one side uses racist appeals can be invalidated by the National Labor Relations Board .
Similarly , in the 2016 case Peña v. Rodriguez , the Supreme Court ruled that when a juror expresses overt bigotry , the jury 's verdict should be invalidated .
“ When voters go to the booth , they ’ re not expressing a mere personal preference , ” Smith told me .
According to Smith , voters who pull the levers to harm black people are violating the Constitution .
If the Constitution means that overt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elections , it stands to reason that they undermine the legality of other elections , as well .
So how can you tell when voters are acting out of prejudice ?
Again , Smith says , employment discrimination law provides a useful analogy .
In discrimination cases , courts look for pretexts .
If someone gives a reason for a hiring decision that is obviously false or makes little sense in context , the court has good reason to believe that prejudice or bias may have influenced the hiring decision .
Trump 's @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during the 2016 campaign made him an irrational choice .
It 's reasonable to conclude that voters were willing to swallow the falsehoods because they liked what they heard : overt racist appeals and incessant lies about rising crime rates .

From NBC News’ opinion section:
Noah Berlatsky Trump voters motivated by racism may be violating the Constitution. Can they be stopped?
Republicans and Democrats alike have been unwilling to reprimand voters or to hold them accountable. But racist voting isn’t an accident.
Image: Donald Trump
Jan. 17, 2020, 1:30 AM PST
By Noah Berlatsky
If the Trump era has taught us anything, it's that large numbers of white people in the United States are motivated at least in part by racism in the voting booth. …
Terry Smith, a visiting professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, offers a different response in his new book, "Whitelash: Unmasking White Grievance at the Ballot Box." Rather than excuse racist voters or try to figure out how to live with their choices, he argues that racist voting is not just immoral, but illegal. The government, Smith says, has the ability, and the responsibility, to address it.
This sounds radical. But Smith argues that it's in line with the Constitution and with years of court rulings. For example, Smith points out that racist appeals in union elections are illegal and that an election in which one side uses racist appeals can be invalidated by the National Labor Relations Board. Similarly, in the 2016 case Peña v. Rodriguez, the Supreme Court ruled that when a juror expresses overt bigotry, the jury's verdict should be invalidated.
“When voters go to the booth, they’re not expressing a mere personal preference,” Smith told me. According to Smith, voters who pull the levers to harm black people are violating the Constitution. If the Constitution means that overt racist appeals undermine the legality of union elections, it stands to reason that they undermine the legality of other elections, as well.
So how can you tell when voters are acting out of prejudice? Again, Smith says, employment discrimination law provides a useful analogy. In discrimination cases, courts look for pretexts. If someone gives a reason for a hiring decision that is obviously false or makes little sense in context, the court has good reason to believe that prejudice or bias may have influenced the hiring decision.
Trump's unprecedented, compulsive, easily documented lying during the 2016 campaign made him an irrational choice. It's reasonable to conclude that voters were willing to swallow the falsehoods because they liked what they heard: overt racist appeals and incessant lies about rising crime rates.


vdare--2020-01-18--Why Mexican-Americans Have Gotten Relatively Shorter and Less Athletic

Hispanics/Latinos are a diverse one group of admixed populations with African , European , and Native American ancestries .
They remain understudied , and thus little is known about the genetic architecture of phenotypic variation in these populations .
Using genome-wide genotype data from the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos , we find that Native American ancestry has increased over time across Hispanic/Latino populations , particularly in Mexican Americans where Native American ancestry increased by an average of ∼20 % over the 50-year period spanning 1940s-1990s .
We find similar patterns across American cities , and replicate our observations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
These dynamic ancestry patterns are a result of a complex interaction of several population and cultural factors , including strong ancestry-related assortative mating and subtle shifts in migration with differences in subcontinental Native American ancestry over time .
These factors have shaped patterns of genetic variation , including an increase in runs of homozygosity in Native American ancestral tracts , and also influenced the genetic architecture of complex traits within the Mexican American population .
We show for height , a trait correlated with ancestry , polygenic risk scores based on summary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perform poorly in Mexican Americans .
Our findings reveal temporal changes in population structure within Hispanics/Latinos that may influence biomedical traits , demonstrating a crucial need to improve our understanding of the genetic diversity of admixed populations .
T hey find that Mexican Americans born in the 1930s averaged 43 % Native Americans vs. 54 % Native American for Mexican Americans born in the 1990s , based on the smoothed graph above , although perhaps the peak Amerindian ancestral percentage was those born in the 1980s .
This helps explain the curious fact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the ranks of top athletes back when they were less numerous .
For example , consider Southern California-born Pancho Gonzales , the world ’ s top pro tennis player of the 1950s , and Anthony Munoz ( right ) , often ranked the best offensive lineman in NFL history .
San Diego ’ s Ted Williams , probably the best baseball hitter of all time , was half-Mexican .
( Tony Gonzalez of Southern California might be the best NFL tight end of all time but I don ’ t think he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still want to see a reality TV show where he hangs out at Jeff Bezos ’ s house to toss the football around with his son , Bezos ’ s new stepson ) .
I don ’ t know the specifics of the study of Hispanics ( sample size a little over 10k ) used in this study , but the U.S. government doesn ’ t let you pick more than one ethnicity the way you can pick more than one race on the Census .
You either pick Hispanic or Non-Hispanic , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that individuals of some but not high degree of Mexican descent don ’ t identify as Mexican-American .
For example , Ted Williams didn ’ t .
These days there are rewards for identifying as Latino , but I ’ m sure some people who are 1/4th or 1/8th don ’ t bother .
This would cause highly European people to tend to drop out of the Hispanic pool .
Another thing is that Mexican-Americans used to be Anthony Quinn-types from Northern Mexico , which was a desert largely unpopulated until irrigation techniques @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so it was populated by more European individuals .
In contrast , recent immigrants from Mexico have tended to be from ancient southern Mexican corn-growing villages disrupted by NAFTA .
And new Mexican immigrant women tend to have high fertility in , roughly , there first decade in the U.S. , only noticing after they ’ ve had a passel of kids here that raising children in the U.S. is very expensive .
It ’ s also likely that there is a height gradient among Native Americans .
The tallest , such as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ around the Canadian border with the shortest in North America down in Central America .

From BioRxiv:
Hispanics/Latinos are a diverse one group of admixed populations with African, European, and Native American ancestries. They remain understudied, and thus little is known about the genetic architecture of phenotypic variation in these populations. Using genome-wide genotype data from the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos, we find that Native American ancestry has increased over time across Hispanic/Latino populations, particularly in Mexican Americans where Native American ancestry increased by an average of ∼20% over the 50-year period spanning 1940s-1990s. We find similar patterns across American cities, and replicate our observations in an independent sample of Mexican Americans. These dynamic ancestry patterns are a result of a complex interaction of several population and cultural factors, including strong ancestry-related assortative mating and subtle shifts in migration with differences in subcontinental Native American ancestry over time. These factors have shaped patterns of genetic variation, including an increase in runs of homozygosity in Native American ancestral tracts, and also influenced the genetic architecture of complex traits within the Mexican American population. We show for height, a trait correlated with ancestry, polygenic risk scores based on summary statistics from a European-based genome-wide association study perform poorly in Mexican Americans. Our findings reveal temporal changes in population structure within Hispanics/Latinos that may influence biomedical traits, demonstrating a crucial need to improve our understanding of the genetic diversity of admixed populations.
T hey find that Mexican Americans born in the 1930s averaged 43% Native Americans vs. 54% Native American for Mexican Americans born in the 1990s, based on the smoothed graph above, although perhaps the peak Amerindian ancestral percentage was those born in the 1980s.
This helps explain the curious fact that Mexican-Americans used to be included more in the ranks of top athletes back when they were less numerous. For example, consider Southern California-born Pancho Gonzales, the world’s top pro tennis player of the 1950s, and Anthony Munoz (right), often ranked the best offensive lineman in NFL history. San Diego’s Ted Williams, probably the best baseball hitter of all time, was half-Mexican. (Tony Gonzalez of Southern California might be the best NFL tight end of all time but I don’t think he’s Mexican—but in any case I still want to see a reality TV show where he hangs out at Jeff Bezos’s house to toss the football around with his son, Bezos’s new stepson.)
I don’t know the specifics of the study of Hispanics (sample size a little over 10k) used in this study, but the U.S. government doesn’t let you pick more than one ethnicity the way you can pick more than one race on the Census. You either pick Hispanic or Non-Hispanic, not both. Presumably, this means that individuals of some but not high degree of Mexican descent don’t identify as Mexican-American. For example, Ted Williams didn’t. These days there are rewards for identifying as Latino, but I’m sure some people who are 1/4th or 1/8th don’t bother. This would cause highly European people to tend to drop out of the Hispanic pool.
Another thing is that Mexican-Americans used to be Anthony Quinn-types from Northern Mexico, which was a desert largely unpopulated until irrigation techniques developed in the later 19th Century, so it was populated by more European individuals. In contrast, recent immigrants from Mexico have tended to be from ancient southern Mexican corn-growing villages disrupted by NAFTA.
And new Mexican immigrant women tend to have high fertility in, roughly, their first decade in the U.S., only noticing after they’ve had a passel of kids here that raising children in the U.S. is very expensive.
It’s also likely that there is a height gradient among Native Americans. The tallest, such as the Blackfeet, appear to be up around the Canadian border, with the shortest in North America down in Central America.
[Comment at Unz.com]