14 years and counting...

Merkin Baller

Halifax2TheMax said:

Merkin Baller said:

"They're poisoning the blood of the nation."

Your boy is literally echoing Adolf Hitler. 

As well as having had anchor babies with two different immigrants. But you know, Hunter’s laptop. Maybe you’ve heard about it? If not, here’s a link:

https://community.pearljam.com/discussion/292176/hunter-biden-laptop-controversy/p19

I'm sure trump won't inspire any (more) mass murders w/ this rhetoric. 

This is fine... proly. 

josevolution

mace1229 said:

josevolution said:

It’s funny how the Republicans & MAGA cult want the Spanish immigrants from central & South American countries out of here and stop the flow I can understand the need to stopping the overflow, but they never ever mention immigrants from the Eastern European immigrants! I was coming out of shopping store I saw a man with sign stating no job no money need to eat, I stopped gave him 10$ and asked where are you from he answered in broken Spanish he was from Romania he couldn’t get no work no papers he said he learned Spanish from his brother in law. Yet the immigrants from Central America come here and get to work somehow they just do! 

I think it's obvious why Eastern European immigrants aren't a target. They make up a small fraction of immigration. 

from: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/15/us/where-immigrants-come-from-cec/index.html

And according to https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/european-immigrants-united-states-2010 , only 12% of immigrants are European, and only 44% of those are from Eastern Europe. So of all the Eastern Europe countries combined, they make up about 5% of the immigration.
If anyone wants to slow immigration down, why focus on the 5% and ignore the much bigger contributing factors? 

Yes it’s a small amount but still illegal so I guess they get a pass and they don’t work they beg! 

mickeyrat

josevolution said:

mace1229 said:

josevolution said:

It’s funny how the Republicans & MAGA cult want the Spanish immigrants from central & South American countries out of here and stop the flow I can understand the need to stopping the overflow, but they never ever mention immigrants from the Eastern European immigrants! I was coming out of shopping store I saw a man with sign stating no job no money need to eat, I stopped gave him 10$ and asked where are you from he answered in broken Spanish he was from Romania he couldn’t get no work no papers he said he learned Spanish from his brother in law. Yet the immigrants from Central America come here and get to work somehow they just do! 

I think it's obvious why Eastern European immigrants aren't a target. They make up a small fraction of immigration. 

from: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/15/us/where-immigrants-come-from-cec/index.html

And according to https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/european-immigrants-united-states-2010 , only 12% of immigrants are European, and only 44% of those are from Eastern Europe. So of all the Eastern Europe countries combined, they make up about 5% of the immigration.
If anyone wants to slow immigration down, why focus on the 5% and ignore the much bigger contributing factors? 

Yes it’s a small amount but still illegal so I guess they get a pass and they don’t work they beg! 

https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1737238316100235311?t=uLWyyoEyfp7CU67tvO0JWA&s=19

Halifax2TheMax

The racism and ahistoricism of Trump’s ‘poison the blood’ rhetoric

Donald Trump doesn’t hate immigrants. He married two women who immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe. Nor is he particularly insistent about immigrants having children in the United States. His three oldest children were born to Ivana Trump, who at the time had not yet become a citizen. His youngest child was born in March of the year that Melania Trump got her citizenship.

So when Trump talks about how immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country, as he did over the weekend, we don’t need to pretend that he is offering a sober observation about shifts in the country’s population. He is, instead, making a demagogic appeal to Americans who — like so many Americans before them — view newcomers with fear or anger.

Despite their almost uniformly being descendants of immigrants themselves.

The country is experiencing unusually high levels of immigration, which exacerbates those fears (and increases Trump’s ability to leverage them for political purposes). These figures are often misinterpreted, it’s worth noting, with only a percentage of those stopped at the border (many of whom are seeking asylum) being released until legal hearings that will determine if they are granted the right to remain in the country. Many of those apprehended are deported; this was particularly true under the pandemic-triggered policy that allowed law enforcement to deport immigrants quickly. (Many tried to reenter soon after, driving up the number of apprehensions.)

The country in recent years, though, has not experienced unusually high levels of immigrants — that is, foreign-born residents of the United States. Historical comparisons are tricky, given the spottiness of records over the country’s history. But it seems safe to say (using separate historical assessments compiled by Pew Research Center and the Migration Policy Institute) that the percentage of the population that was born outside the United States has increased since immigration laws were loosened in the late 1960s but are not at the highs seen a century ago.

The assessment offered by Pew suggests that more than one-fifth of the country was born outside the United States 100 years ago. According to 2023 numbers from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey even adding 10 million immigrants to the population wouldn’t result in 20 percent of the population being born outside the country.

A central difference, of course, is the places of origin for those immigrants. Until immigration laws were loosened in the 1960s, the vast majority of immigrants to the United States came from Europe. In recent decades, they have come from Latin America (particularly Mexico) and Asia. Immigration from Europe is relatively low.

But, 100 years ago, that did not mean that immigrants from Europe were welcome. There was a huge backlash against immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe in particular; the arrival of large numbers of Italians triggered anti-Catholic rhetoric and even violence. (You could have asked Tucker Carlson’s ancestors about that.)

Race is intertwined here. Those new arrivals a century ago weren’t seen as non-White, exactly, but were seen as “racially inferior,” as researchers Cybelle Fox and Thomas Guglielmo wrote in 2012 — unclean, dangerous. Those Eastern European immigrants were often seen as physically distinct from “White” Americans in a similar way to how Hispanic and Asian immigrants are viewed as distinct today.

Trump is typically unsubtle about this. In 2018, The Washington Post reported on his disparaging of immigrants from Africa and other places with large non-White populations as unwelcome, and he lamented that more people weren’t coming from northern Europe.

The most obvious and immediate response to the idea that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country is to point out that the United States is inextricably constituted of immigrants and their children. We don’t live in Finland; we live in a country where the only native resident population is Native Americans and no other family can claim to have been here longer than about 400 years. Trump’s rhetoric is a bit like complaining about someone pouring tap water into the pond behind a dam.

It’s particularly hollow given how immigrants are underrepresented in positions of power. In Congress, for example, only about 3 percent of members were born outside the United States, according to Pew, compared with 16 percent of the population. Only about 15 percent of the members of Congress are immigrants or children of immigrants, about half the rate of the population overall.

A 2017 report looking at the effects of immigrants on the economy nonetheless found that the country is increasingly dependent on immigrants and the children of immigrants to fill jobs. The chart below, from my book about generational change in the country, shows how the share of workers who are third-generation Americans or higher has plunged since the baby boom. Increases in the workforce come from immigrants and their children.

The American population is growing because of immigration. It’s a signal advantage we enjoy, the reason that our population — unlike, say, China’s — isn’t contracting, exacerbating economic problems.

This article has extrapolated a lot of information about immigration from Trump’s comments when, again, his intent is less complicated. He’s simply amplifying his base’s fears of the perceived decline of traditional White Christian America. That he is the child and the grandchild of immigrants, married two immigrant women, and has four kids with immigrant parents — a by-no-means-uncommon situation — is simply waved away.

It’s useful to remember, though: Had he married a Catholic from Eastern Europe a century ago, he might have been the target of similar demagoguery.

The racism and ahistoricism of Trump’s ‘poison the blood’ rhetoric - The Washington Post

josevolution

https://www.threads.net/@blueinredal/post/C1GULfLNcdt/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Good stats rundown! 

josevolution

https://www.threads.net/@bilquessmith/post/C1GZAz5rxLq/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

They work their asses off and pay taxes 

Gern Blansten

If Dems played on a level playing field they would be attacking Melania's immigration journey on a daily basis, dragging her before committees, etc.

We don't get nasty enough. Unfortunately that is what works now in dumbassmerikkka

josevolution

Gern Blansten said:

If Dems played on a level playing field they would be attacking Melania's immigration journey on a daily basis, dragging her before committees, etc.

We don't get nasty enough. Unfortunately that is what works now in dumbassmerikkka

Yeah MObama’s mantra they go low we go high ain’t working for Democrats! They should take the kids gloves off 

mickeyrat

josevolution said:

Gern Blansten said:

If Dems played on a level playing field they would be attacking Melania's immigration journey on a daily basis, dragging her before committees, etc.

We don't get nasty enough. Unfortunately that is what works now in dumbassmerikkka

Yeah MObama’s mantra they go low we go high ain’t working for Democrats! They should take the kids gloves off 

nope. in my view its right and proper. to devolve to play as they do means this great experiment fails. no thank you.

Merkin Baller

Weird that republicans went home instead of negotiating w/ Biden on the border… it’s almost as if they have zero interest in working on a solution….  I wonder why. 

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-21-2023?publication_id=20533&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&r=1e604

“Biden has asked Congress for new legislation to address migration at the border since his first week in office, but Trump and his loyalists have demanded extreme measures that Democrats have, in the past, refused. With Republican refusal to fund Ukraine, Biden has said he is eager enough to get funding to Ukraine that he is willing to negotiate, but Johnson sent the House home until January 9 without a deal. 

Now it seems Republicans don’t want their own names on any such deal, likely recognizing that such an outcome would take away an issue they hope to exploit  in 2024. They want Biden’s name alone on any new policies or, failing that, to be able to blame him for not taking unilateral action.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre today reminded reporters that the White House has been negotiating with senators to come up with a bipartisan deal despite the absence of House members, and that Biden has been negotiating with the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to address the border situation. 

In the next few days, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, and White House Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall will all travel to Mexico to meet with President López Obrador to discuss border challenges, all in the spirit of the 2022 Los Angeles Declaration for Migration and Protection, an agreement between 21 Caribbean and Latin American nations, including the United States, to strengthen international frameworks to make migration safe, orderly, and humane.”

Halifax2TheMax

Merkin Baller said:

Weird that republicans went home instead of negotiating w/ Biden on the border… it’s almost as if they have zero interest in working on a solution….  I wonder why. 

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-21-2023?publication_id=20533&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&r=1e604

“Biden has asked Congress for new legislation to address migration at the border since his first week in office, but Trump and his loyalists have demanded extreme measures that Democrats have, in the past, refused. With Republican refusal to fund Ukraine, Biden has said he is eager enough to get funding to Ukraine that he is willing to negotiate, but Johnson sent the House home until January 9 without a deal. 

Now it seems Republicans don’t want their own names on any such deal, likely recognizing that such an outcome would take away an issue they hope to exploit  in 2024. They want Biden’s name alone on any new policies or, failing that, to be able to blame him for not taking unilateral action.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre today reminded reporters that the White House has been negotiating with senators to come up with a bipartisan deal despite the absence of House members, and that Biden has been negotiating with the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to address the border situation. 

In the next few days, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, and White House Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall will all travel to Mexico to meet with President López Obrador to discuss border challenges, all in the spirit of the 2022 Los Angeles Declaration for Migration and Protection, an agreement between 21 Caribbean and Latin American nations, including the United States, to strengthen international frameworks to make migration safe, orderly, and humane.”

We know “why.” It’s not rocket science. But hey, nothings being done.

josevolution

mickeyrat said:

josevolution said:

Gern Blansten said:

If Dems played on a level playing field they would be attacking Melania's immigration journey on a daily basis, dragging her before committees, etc.

We don't get nasty enough. Unfortunately that is what works now in dumbassmerikkka

Yeah MObama’s mantra they go low we go high ain’t working for Democrats! They should take the kids gloves off 

nope. in my view its right and proper. to devolve to play as they do means this great experiment fails. no thank you.

I can agree! I’m a pessimist by nature so I’m always thinking with glass half empty 

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/migrants-small-towns-fort-morgan-colorado-c452a587f92c5f1b9dc9a6decc6cf8fb   New migrants face fear and loneliness. A town on the Great Plains has a storied support network

 

New migrants face fear and loneliness. A town on the Great Plains has a storied support network

By JESSE BEDAYN

Today

FORT MORGAN, Colo. (AP) — Magdalena Simon's only consolation after immigration officers handcuffed and led her husband away was the contents of his wallet, a few bills.

The hopes that had pushed her to trudge thousands of miles from Guatemala in 2019, her son’s small frame clutched to her chest, ceded to despair and loneliness in Fort Morgan, a ranching outpost on Colorado’s eastern plains, where some locals stared at her too long and the wind howls so fiercely it once blew the doors half off a hotel.

The pregnant Simon tried to mask the despair every morning when her toddlers asked, “Where’s papa?”

To millions of migrants who have crossed the U.S. southern border in the past few years, stepping off greyhound buses in places across America, such feelings can be constant companions. What Simon would find in this unassuming city of a little more than 11,400, however, was a community that pulled her in, connecting her with legal council, charities, schools and soon friends, a unique support network built by generations of immigrants.

---

POLITICS

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In this small town, migrants are building quiet lives, far from big cities like New York, Chicago and Denver that have struggled to house asylum-seekers and from the halls of Congress where their futures are bandied about in negotiations.

The Fort Morgan migrant community has become a boon for newcomers, nearly all of whom arrive from perilous journeys to new challenges: pursuing asylum cases; finding a paycheck big enough for food, an attorney and a roof; placing their kids in school; and navigating a language barrier, all while facing the threat of deportation.

The United Nations used the community, 80 miles (129 kilometers) northeast of Denver, as a case study for rural refugee integration after a thousand Somalis arrived to work in meatpacking plants in the late 2000s. In 2022, grassroots groups sent migrants living in mobile homes to Congress to tell their stories.

In the last year, hundreds more migrants have arrived in Morgan County. More than 30 languages are spoken in Fort Morgan’s only high school, which has translators for the most common languages and a phone service for others. On Sundays, Spanish is heard from the pulpits of six churches.

The demographic shift in recent decades has forced the community to adapt: Local organizations hold monthly support groups, train students and adults about their rights, teach others how to drive, ensure kids are in school and direct people to immigration attorneys.

Simon herself now tells her story to those stepping off buses. The community can't wave away the burdens, but they can make them lighter.

“It’s not like home where you have your parents and all of your family around you,” Simon tells those she meets in grocery stores and school pickup lines. “If you run into a problem, you need to find your own family.”

The work has grown amid negotiations in Washington, D.C., on a deal that could toughen asylum protocols and bolster border enforcement.

On a recent Sunday, advocacy groups organized a posada, a Mexican celebration of the biblical Joseph and Mary seeking shelter for Mary to give birth and being turned away until they were given the stable.

Before marching down the street singing a song adaption in which migrants are seeking shelter instead of Joseph and Mary, participants signed letters urging Colorado's two Democratic senators and Republican U.S. Rep. Ken Buck to reject stiffer asylum rules.

A century ago, it was sugar beet production that brought German and Russian migration to the area. Now, many migrants work inside dairy plants.

When area businesses were raided several times in the 2000s, friends disappeared overnight, seats sat empty in schools and gaps opened on factory lines.

"That really changed the the understanding of how deeply embedded migrants are in community," said Jennifer Piper of American Friends Service Committee, which organized the posada celebration.

Guadalupe “Lupe” Lopez Chavez, who arrived in the U.S. alone in 1998 from Guatemala at age 16, spends long hours working with migrants, including helping connect Simon to a lawyer after her husband was detained.

One recent Saturday, Lopez Chavez sat in the low-ceilinged office of One Morgan County, a nearly 20-year-old migration nonprofit. In a folding chair, Maria Ramirez sifted through manila folders dated November 2023, when she'd arrived in the U.S.

Ramirez fled central Mexico, where cartel violence claimed her younger brother's life, and asked Lopez Chavez how she could get health care. Ramirez's 4-year-old daughter — who pranced behind her mother, blowing bubbles and popping the ones that landed in her brown curls — has a lung condition.

Ramirez said she would work anywhere to move from the living room they sleep in, with just a blanket on the floor as cushioning.

In the offices resembling a hostel's well-loved communal space, Lopez Chavez cautioned Ramirez to consult a lawyer before applying for health care. Sitting aside Ramirez were two settled migrants offering support and advice.

“A lot of stuff that you heard in Mexico (about the U.S.) was you couldn’t walk on the streets, you had to live in the shadows, you’d be targeted,” said Ramirez. “It’s beautiful to come into a community that’s united."

Lopez Chavez works with new migrants because she remembers shackles snapping around her ankles after she was stopped for a traffic violation in 2012 and turned over to the U.S. immigration authorities.

“I just wanted to leave there because I’d never been in a cage before,” Lopez Chavez said in an interview, her eyes filling with tears.

At her first court hearing, Lopez Chavez and her husband stood alone. At her second hearing, after Lopez Chavez was connected to the community, she was flanked by new friends. That wall of support allowed her to keep her chin up as she fought her immigration case before being granted residency last year.

Lopez Chavez now works to cultivate that strength across the community.

“I don’t want any more families to go through what we went through,” said Lopez Chavez, who also encourages others to tell their stories. "Those examples give people the idea: If they can manage their case and win, maybe I can too."

In Fort Morgan, train tracks divide a mobile home park, where many migrants live, and the city's older homes. Some older migrants see new arrivals as getting better treatment by the U.S. and feel that is unfair. The community can't solve every challenge, and hasn't laid the last brick on cultural bridges between the diverse communities.

But at the posada event, crowded in the One Morgan County offices, the assurances of community itself showed through the eyes of partygoers as children in cultural regalia danced traditional Mexican dances.

Among those bouncing around the long room was 7-year-old Francisco Mateo Simon. He doesn't remember the journey to the U.S., but his mother, Magdalena, does.

She remembers how ill he became as she carried him the last miles to the border. Now he spits out armadillo facts between the nubs of incoming front teeth in their mobile home, then points to his favorite ornament on their white, plastic Christmas tree.

“That's our brand new tree,” said his mother, as her eldest daughter practiced English with a kids' book.

“It's new,” she repeated, “It's our first new tree because in the past we've only had trees from the thrift store.”

___

Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/PoliticusSarah/status/1738946796846551132?t=kv3rukrU5IG4EZ_DofpQYg&s=19

tempo_n_groove

There's another huge wave coming in and no, it wasn't shown on fox news. I'm sure it is now though?
https://apnews.com/article/mexico-us-caravan-migration-5d0846e553799a0f4d9155ccefba89e0

Merkin Baller

tempo_n_groove said:

There's another huge wave coming in and no, it wasn't shown on fox news. I'm sure it is now though?
https://apnews.com/article/mexico-us-caravan-migration-5d0846e553799a0f4d9155ccefba89e0

The GOP held up funding for Ukraine, something 66% of Americans support to force Biden for stricter border measures, but when Biden offered to negotiate, the GOP went home for the holidays. 

I hate to break it to you, but the GOP doesn't want to solve the border crisis. They want it to fester so as to keep the base scared and angry. 

Halifax2TheMax

Merkin Baller said:

tempo_n_groove said:

There's another huge wave coming in and no, it wasn't shown on fox news. I'm sure it is now though?
https://apnews.com/article/mexico-us-caravan-migration-5d0846e553799a0f4d9155ccefba89e0

The GOP held up funding for Ukraine, something 66% of Americans support to force Biden for stricter border measures, but when Biden offered to negotiate, the GOP went home for the holidays. 

I hate to break it to you, but the GOP doesn't want to solve the border crisis. They want it to fester so as to keep the base scared and angry. 

Not to mention that the house repubs have repeatedly withheld a vote for greater funding for immigration judges to clear the current backlog as well as make quicker determinations in current time.

The repubs are not a serious party. Unless you want to know about Hunter’s laptop. Have you heard about it?

Merkin Baller

The immigration crisis is like gun violence... 

The former is too good a talking point at election time, and the latter is too good for their wallets, so why on earth would the GOP want to solve either? 

Halifax2TheMax

Merkin Baller said:

The immigration crisis is like gun violence... 

The former is too good a talking point at election time, and the latter is too good for their wallets, so why on earth would the GOP want to solve either? 

Maybe give every immigrant a gun as a welcome gift to ‘Murica? 

Merkin Baller

Merkin Baller said:

tempo_n_groove said:

There's another huge wave coming in and no, it wasn't shown on fox news. I'm sure it is now though?
https://apnews.com/article/mexico-us-caravan-migration-5d0846e553799a0f4d9155ccefba89e0

The GOP held up funding for Ukraine, something 66% of Americans support to force Biden for stricter border measures, but when Biden offered to negotiate, the GOP went home for the holidays. 

I hate to break it to you, but the GOP doesn't want to solve the border crisis. They want it to fester so as to keep the base scared and angry. 

I suppose in fairness, the GOP doesn't want to help the Ukraine against Putin either, so not negotiating w/ Biden on the border and Ukraine assistance is self serving on many levels. 

Everyone be sure to vote Republican next fall so this doesn't happen again.