A few years back, there was a local election where a candidate (a Democratic one, actually) would go on the radio and say “Godless Chinese communists” all the time. It was his go-to line and it seemed to help him in the polls, though he ultimately lost, fortunately.
Jeb’s latest, along with Scott Walker’s recent stupidity about the Chinese market crash and the tense situation on the Korean obrder, makes me wonder if Asia-bashing is going to be a big part of this presidential election (or at least the Republican primary):
When asked if he thought his repeated use of the term “anchor babies” – a derogatory term for children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrant parents – Bush said: “What I was talking about was the specific case of fraud being committed where there’s organized efforts, and frankly, it’s more related to Asian people coming into our country and having children in that organized effort.”
Boots Day
Right, Scott. The Chinese made their economy fall apart just to be mean to the U.S.A., and we need to punish them for it.
It never ceases to amaze me how these alleged political thinkers assume that everything other countries do is directly related to how they feel about America. They can’t conceive of another nation taking actions solely in its own interest.
In other news, every time he opens his mouth, Scott Walker proves he’s not ready for prime time.
Peter VE
“Asian people” Does he mean Bobby Jindal’s and Michelle Malkin’s parents?
schrodinger's cat
Isn’t an anchor baby, a baby born to parents who are not US citizens? It doesn’t matter whether they are in status (INS/USCIS speak for being here legally but on a temporary visa) or not. Also, don’t know whether children of permanent residents are kosher or they too are deserving of some derisive term by nativist bigots.
Roger Moore
Well, the Chinese stock market seems to be going Straight to Hell right now.
OzarkHillbilly
@Peter VE: You forgot Nikki Haley.
CONGRATULATIONS!
In California, the only minority community that votes in any numbers for the GOP are Asians.
Probably not anymore, this is a group of folks that take a lot of pride in their ancestry. Thanks, JEB?, you clueless doddering fuck. Another unforced error. Not only will JEB? never be president, nobody from his party will be president.
Right now this is a contest for the Senate, because the presidential race is already over.
rikyrah
Obama feeling ‘feisty,’ ready to take on the ‘crazies’
Aug. 25, 2015 3:22 AM EDT
LAS VEGAS (AP) — President Barack Obama is putting people on notice: He’s back from vacation feeling “refreshed, renewed, recharged” — and “a little feisty.”
He immediately showed his feisty side.
At a Democratic fundraiser Monday night in Nevada, Obama declared himself ready for the challenges he faces this fall in dealing with a Republican Congress that disagrees with him on the budget, energy policy, education and much more.
Obama said that as he’d ridden to the fundraiser with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, they’d done some reminiscing and spent some time “figuring out how we are going to deal with the crazies in terms of managing some problems.”
He didn’t identify exactly who the two of them had defined as “crazies.”
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/5978afc821894f16b150981830accb32/obama-feeling-feisty-ready-take-crazies
Belafon
Maybe we can get Republicans to bash gingers next.
schrodinger's cat
@Peter VE: No, I think he means the Chinese. NYT had covered a story of wealthy Chinese women coming to California to give birth, so that their children can be US citizens.
rikyrah
Because insulting Asians is easier for them. They’re not afraid of their numbers…
sigh…
dmsilev
Organized effort? Would it be too much to ask that GOP candidates provide some evidence to back up their fever-dream conspiracy theories?
scav
A word means exactly what Humpty Dumpty says it does.
Choose your Humpty and watch if he falls.
Oatler.
@Boots Day: They’re confident the leash is long enough to bash the country they’ve outsourced whole industries to, for money.
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
As I understand it, the term has usually been applied to the citizen children of illegal immigrant children; the theory is that being parents of a child who is a citizen will help to keep them in the US. I suppose it could also apply to parents on a temporary visa who might think it would improve their green card chances, but it doesn’t make sense for green card holders, since they’re already stable here. It also makes no sense for birth tourism, since the parents in that case aren’t planning on staying in the US and don’t need an anchor.
Mark B.
Now that the stock market is recovering from the brief correction, I’m kind of wondering if all of the people who were spinning the downturn as an economic apocalypse and the reckoning for Obama are going to acknowledge that they were wrong.
Ha ha … I amuse myself sometimes.
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: As I pointed out yesterday, this is a cuckoo theory because to sponsor your parents you have to be at least 18 years old and be able to support your parents financially. So having babies to secure a green card makes zero logical sense.
Rathskeller
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
My sister keeps bringing up Pete Wilson, and how he torched California for Republicans for a generation with his fervent anti-immigration rhetoric for prop 187. I think that’s the right comparison. They might be done.
I cannot believe how bad JEB is at this. I usually think of presidential campaigning as the olympics for extroverts, and I could never ever compete. With JEB!, there’s finally a candidate who I think I could do better than.
JMG
It’s a simple equation. All countries where the population is not white pose a grave danger to the cherished American Way of Life.
Felonius Monk
@Belafon:
Please, please – let’s not start down that road again. :)
Barry
@Rathskeller: “I cannot believe how bad JEB is at this.”
Or as many were saying ‘I thought that Jeb was the *smarter* brother?’.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Heh. Awesome.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
There’s actually very good evidence of organized efforts at birth tourism. As a resident of the general area where this stuff is taking place, I’m more worried by all the other illegality involved- illegal hotels, medicaid fraud, etc.- than the attempt to get children US citizenship, but I can see why somebody would be upset about it from a citizenship standpoint, too. I would suggest some kind of residency requirement, but that might just result in more parachute children.
Ryan
I’m starting to think that Jeb! isn’t so much as dumb, as that he’s playing to a rabid base, but he’s not a wingnut himself (though he believes in many wingnut ideas). His gaffes seem to me to be a lot like Romney’s, and their forced by having both the base and the general electorate in mind, and trying to thread the needle.
I’d like to think that this is a feature of the Republican primary system, not a bug. I’d like to think most of the candidates have already rendered themselves unelectable.
Mustang Bobby
@Belafon: Nah, they’ll go back to Teh Gayz. Be on the lookout for “low-hanging fruit” dog whistles.
SFAW
@Felonius Monk:
Why do you hate anything to do with gingers, even the road they’re on? (Just kidding, of course.)
slag
Headline brilliance.
Also, LOL JEB! If only he were less stupid, he could be offensive. But as it is, he’s just ridiculous.
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
It isn’t necessarily about getting a green card. There’s also a plausible belief that parents of citizen children will be a lower priority for deportation than people without such a strong tie to the country. But in any case, logic doesn’t necessarily have much to do with it. This is about what racist Republicans believe illegal immigrants are thinking, which is separated from the reality of immigration law by two steps of supposition.
ETA: Remember, these are the same people with elaborate theories about Barack Obama’s birth announcement in the Honolulu newspaper, so they are perfectly capable of spinning implausible ideas about what people are thinking when they have children.
rikyrah
APOLOGY ISSUED AFTER BOOK CLUB BOOTED OFF NAPA WINE TRAIN
The Napa Valley Wine Train is apologizing to a women’s book club after booting them from the train this weekend for allegedly being too loud. The incident has triggered its own hashtag — #LaughingWhileBlack.
In all the years this black woman’s book club has been together they say they’ve never been asked to leave an establishment.
“We are a group, we are respectful, we have been together for 17 years,” said book club member Lisa Rene Johnson. “We go to fine dining, which is what some people want to call the Napa Wine Train.”
She says they were as loud as any other group of 11 people would be if they were having fun on a Saturday.
So, they were shocked to be escorted off the train and met by police at the Saint Helena station.
And they were offended to see a Facebook post from the Wine Train, which has since been deleted. It read in part: “Following verbal and physical abuse towards other guests and staff, it was necessary to get our police involved.”
“That is absolutely untrue,” Johnson said. “We have never, we never touched anybody.”
PR consultant Sam Singer, has been hired as a spokesperson for the Napa Valley Wine Train, he says that post was a mistake.
He also says the police were never called in to make an arrest.
“I think the police were called to ensure that in case there had been liquor consumption that they were okay to drive home,” said Wine Train spokesperson Sam Singer. “That wasn’t the case, so it was unnecessary to have them there.”
Managers now want to make a personal apology.
“We’re trying to reach these book club members and these women so that we can apologize in person and set things straight,” Singer said. “We want to respect them and we want them to respect and enjoy the wine train as well.”
He said a guest is asked to leave the train at least once a month for being too loud or too intoxicated.
But this situation could have been handled better.
http://abc7news.com/news/apology-issued-after-book-club-booted-off-napa-wine-train/955712/
dedc79
@CONGRATULATIONS!: But California isn’t in play for a GOP presidential candidate anyway. The only way asian-bashing costs the GOP a single state that is actually in play is if this kind of talk chases away non-asians who would otherwise consider voting for the GOP.
SFAW
@dmsilev:
I was going to say “yes,” because when has any Rethug provided any credible evidence regarding ANY of the insane “Demon-rats gonna cill us because they support X!” talking points they’ve used in the past 20 years?
And then Roger Moore had to throw a monkey wrench into things.
magurakurin
@Roger Moore:
“no intention of living here” oh the horror. Her son might go to college here and get to pay in state tuition rates. Not seeing a big problem here honestly.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: I love Barack Obama so much, I am going to be in serious mourning when he is not our president anymore.
MattF
It’s possible that Jeb! is simply trapped. He has to appease the R base, he has to appease his donors, he has to appease his mom…. Any one of those things is relatively easy. Two of those things is threading the needle. But all three is impossible… and he has to keep trying.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah:
I actually snorted when I read this line. Always so attractive. It warms my heart to see that hashtags seem to have a power of their own.
Edit: all caps and bold are my additions to their formal statement.
Dupe70
Repub 1:”Hey, what are the two fastest growing demographic groups in the US?”
Repub 2: “Latinos and Asians. Why?”
Repub 1: “Let’s see if we can piss them both off and make so it we don’t win a Presidential election for the next 40 years.”
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: There are many parents of citizen children being deported as we speak. I used to follow a blog of an immigration lawyer, who highlighted a heart breaking case of a family that was broken up in an immigration dragnet. The father was deported to Mexico, the mother who was an American citizen was ill and could not support her children. The children ended up in the foster care system, even though the father was willing and able to take the custody of the children in Mexico. I don’t know how the case was concluded, it was still being litigated when the immigration attorney had blogged about it.
ETA: Moral of the story. Having an “anchor” baby does not necessarily spare you from deportation.
gvg
I don’t think birth tourism is actually illegal. They aren’t trying to get citizenship for themselves which is what the anchor baby idiots think. They are just looking out for their childs options. what it means is they think the future at home might be uncertain. They want a refuge option for the future. Good planning is good parenting.
My sister went to a good private school. The last few years in the 80’s there were quite a few students from Hong Kong just before the British gave up control when the future was so uncertain. The parents stayed in Hong Kong with their assets and livelihood but they sent their kids to relatives in the US to wait out the uncertainty. I was sad for the kids seperated for years from loved parents but I definitely understood.
Now I understand the US being officially against it and I am all for enforcing tax laws but I am not going to get upset about it and I don’t see any good coming from changing birthright laws. Its a compliment really. I sort of suspect many operations like this would be abusive and fraudulent though. Shady.
Jeremy
@CONGRATULATIONS!: The GOP have been losing Asian voters since the 90’s. They had a chart showing Asian voters in every election since 1992 voting more and more for democrats. And in 2012 President Obama won close to 75 % of the Asian vote.
Kropadope
@Mustang Bobby:
Hey, it’s none of your business where I put my fruit.
ET
I don’t know whether is right or wrong but I think that the anchor baby referencing Asians but for most people – including I suspect most if not all of the Trump supporters – applies to those coming up from south of the border.
I do remember reading something within the last year about how wealthy Chinese expectant parents were coming to the US for the express purpose of guaranteeing an advantage for this child which I wonder if is what he is referring to. CNN did something though I don’t know if this is what I read. Earlier this year there was a raid in California revolving around birth tourism. It definitely made the Brietbart rounds.
MattF
@rikyrah: But were they wearing hoodies? That would have required intervention by a mobile SWAT team.
TriassicSands
@schrodinger’s cat:
it’s the Republicans, so a derisive term is mandatory. Divide and conquer.
Luzy Anna
@Belafon:
Yeah, forget Asians, Hispanics, African-Americans, the GLTB+ community, children, elderly and the poor. The real victims of oppression in the US are people with red hair. Also, left-handed people and people who eat hamburgers upside down.
Roger Moore
@magurakurin:
As I said, I’m more worried about the unlicensed hotels, skipping out on hospital bills, etc. than I am by the attempt to get an American birth certificate. That said, I can understand how somebody might not want somebody who has no substantial ties to the US other than an American birth certificate to get all the rights and privileges of citizenship. The flip side is that the argument against birth tourism is an argument in favor of birthright citizenship for “anchor babies”. If a baby born here but raised in another country lacks enough ties to the US to deserve citizenship, then a baby born here and raised here lacks sufficient ties to whatever country their parents are from to be a citizen of their parents’ country. They need to be granted American citizenship or they’re effectively stateless.
Geeno
@MattF: Who? The gingers?
– sorry – I couldn’t resist
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: All of them, Katie….
CONGRATULATIONS!
@rikyrah: The wine train is for assholes. Full stop. I used to live up there, that fucking train is the worst thing to happen to the entire county. Doesn’t even keep the drunks off the road.
Roger Moore
@gvg:
It isn’t necessarily illegal, but people can commit various crimes in the process. The LA Times article points out that at least some of the women coming here were committing visa fraud by lying about their intentions. Of course, by the time the authorities found out it was too late, and it sounds as if the worst punishment is being reserved for the people who coached them to lie on their applications.
rikyrah
Sigh.
The Smart One.
Paul in KY
@schrodinger’s cat: The logic is that you the illegal alien are now the custodian of the minor American citizen & thus they cannot eject you from the country that the American citizen (the kid) cannot be ejected from.
boatboy_srq
@Kropadope: Just don’t leave it in the closet…
schrodinger's cat
@Paul in KY: See the example I quoted above. Having citizen children or a citizen spouse does not necessarily keep you from being deported if caught.
Another Holocene Human
OT and speaking of enemies within: I’m sure there’s something of value in today’s Diane Reim Show, but all I’m hearing is pseudoscience, sarcasm about people who are wrong on the
internetsocial media, and moral panic mongering.15 years ago it was helicopter parents calling the Dean. Now it’s helicopter students emailing the Dean? The horror. The horror.
Brachiator
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Bullshit.
And what do you mean by “Asians?” This is a fairly large and ethnically diverse group. On top of all this, the total numbers of all Asians is so small relative to other groups, that their numbers often do not appear at all in polling samples.
Jeb!’s attack on Chinese anchor babies is doubly odd because he is scapegoating wealthy Chinese people, a weird faux-populist pivot that is probably due to Trump. In Southern California there have been recent stories of wealthy Chinese taking well-financed maternity vacations in Southern California to have their babies, who then become US citizens. One group of mothers also claimed to be indigent in order to stiff the hospitals for the bills. But this is just a small number of people, despite the headline grabbing attention the story got recently.
Jeb! also seems to want to redirect heat away from Latinos and onto another group. It’s just wild watching Jeb! and Trump play “which group can be most scapegoated.”
But all this is a tiresome distraction from anything real related to immigration issues.
Steve from Antioch
dont worry about the Asia bashing… Saying slant eye or gook or zipperhead are just colorful American expressions, the same way that ginger is just a Britishism.
Carry on.
Steve from Antioch
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Spot on. That fucking thing is magnet for trashy shitheels.
Another Holocene Human
@gvg:
Nor I.
Another Holocene Human
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I kind of suspected the wine train was for assholes but I’m wondering what hell it wreaked on the county–more tourists? Go ahead, dish.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I kind of love California, I even like Los Angeles (which I was told I would hate) but I was not impressed by the Napa wine train. I got into this thing with my father where he was making fun of it and then we couldn’t stop. You can’t encourage him and I was laughing which just makes him worse. He was saying “is there an express?” – by the end he was telling me, loudly, that we needed to “get the hell off this train”. My poor aunt was with us- she lives there- she was just horrified by his behavior. No one said a word to us.
Another Holocene Human
@Steve from Antioch: <===== can we haz 24 hour ban please
Go ahead and take it personally, not-the-good Steve.
Mike in NC
As long as Trump has firm control of the steering wheel of the GOP klown kar, nothing is going to replace bashing Mexicans, who have been a conservative favorite boogeyman for at least a decade.
Oatler.
@CONGRATULATIONS!: The wine train is the setting for a classic Bob’s Burgers episode.
“Regular Sized Rudy? Why do they call you that?”
“Just look at me.”
raven
@Mike in NC: A decade! The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting. . .
rikyrah
water is wet news
…………………………………
Racially Disparate Views of New Orleans’s Recovery After Hurricane Katrina
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
AUG. 24, 2015
NEW ORLEANS — As the 10th anniversary approaches of Hurricane Katrina and the catastrophic levee breaches in New Orleans, a new survey finds a stark racial divide in how residents here view the recovery.
Nearly four out of five white residents believe the city has mostly recovered, while nearly three out of five blacks say it has not, a division sustained over a variety of issues including the local economy, the state of schools and the quality of life.
The survey, which was conducted by the Public Policy Research Lab at Louisiana State University, was released on Monday. The hurricane and the failure of the New Orleans levees on Aug. 29, 2005, caused more than 1,800 deaths across the coast and damaged or destroyed more than a million houses and businesses.
………………………………..
But the uplifting narrative is not shared by many of those who live here, particularly African-Americans. The L.S.U. survey echoes both what has been quantified elsewhere — such as a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and NPR that also found a racial gap in attitudes — and what is apparent by simply spending time in different neighborhoods around the city.
While a plurality of New Orleans residents rate the quality of life as about the same as before Katrina, the L.S.U. survey reports, more than one-third of blacks say it has gotten worse. The percentage of whites who believe their quality of life has improved, at 41 percent, is more than double the percentage of blacks who say the same thing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/us/hurricane-katrina-new-orleans-recovery-ten-years-opinion.html
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
Asians are a large enough ethnic group in California that they matter, and they’ve been trending as Democratic as Latinos. It’s interesting to point out that we have more statewide elected officials who are Asian American (Kamala Harris, John Chiang, and Betty Yee) than Hispanic (Alex Padilla).
Kropadope
@rikyrah:
There’s probably a lesson here about how governments allocate resources.
Joe Shabadoo
Asians generally don’t have big protest groups like the minority groups typically demonized by Republicans and they come from multiple countries with different languages. Asian is catch all term for a hugely diverse group that often times want nothing to do with each other (see Japan and China). It is a new dog whistle that is relatively safe compared to attacking the increasingly powerful and electorally important Hispanic community.
Jeffro
Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham appears to have summed up Trumpmentum quite nicely:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/lindsey-graham-donald-trump-end-republican-party
The candidates from the kids’ table debate might just say some interesting things on their way back to their day jobs…
Marc
@dedc79: Not necessarily. Virginia and Nevada both have growing Asian populations (around 5% each). But yes, this tactic is just as likely to chase away non-Asians. (In much the same way that all the Latino-bashing from the GOP helped chase away Asian Americans. Thanks, GOP!)
Cain
@Ryan:
He needs to stop wanting the presidency so badly. Trying to please the rabid base is pure stupidity. All of them are screwed in the general election…
Roger Moore
@Joe Shabadoo:
Of course the same thing could be said for most of our large ethnic groupings. Whites combine plenty of groups who have hated each other since the good old days, and some of those hatreds are still there. Similarly, there’s a whole lot of national, ethnic, and cultural differences among Latinos. In a lot of ways, I think African Americans are our most culturally homogeneous group.
Paul in KY
@gvg: I cannot blame them at all for trying it.
Amir Khalid
@Jeffro:
Every word of this is also true of Lindsay Graham.
dmsilev
@Jeffro:
True only in the sense that Trump is blaring what the GOP usually prefers to whisper.
Bubblegum Tate
Jeb is Sam Sweet! “I saw someone, he looked Asian, and he…he was speaking another language. I’m pretty sure it was…Asian!”
Kropadope
@Amir Khalid:
Are they really on the same scale, though? Trump seems like a special sort of ignorant.
Timurid
“Don’t be too loud on the Booze Train” makes about as much sense as “No fighting in the War Room.”
boatboy_srq
@Kropadope: Trump at least might think about negotiating. Graham would be in the “nuke’em first and ask questions later” camp with Nat’l Security Advisor McNasty singing that On-The-Beach Boys’ tune in the background.
median
@dmsilev: Yes. Trump has replaced the dog whistle with a megaphone. That makes people uncomfortable.
Paul in KY
@Kropadope: Graham is a reserve Colonel, so I would hope he’s marginally more up-to-speed on military, etc. than The Donald.
Kropadope
@boatboy_srq: Negotiating what? How much they’ll pay us to take their oil off their hands?
Jeffro
@dmsilev: In regards to immigrants, sure. Last I checked he was actually ok (oh how magnanimous of him) with PP delivering women’s health care, just not abortions…I think that puts him at odds with about half of the GOP field.
Jeffro
@Kropadope:
You read my mind, lol
Lindsey is just a different type of shallow, a more refined breed of Middle East idiot. The important thing is that he’s joining Rick “Trump is a cancer on conservatism” Perry in defining Trump as the end of the GOP. Please please pleeeeeease Lindsey, help harden that 27%s hearts against the GOP establishment…please convince Trump he isn’t being treated “fairly” by The Powers That Be…
boatboy_srq
@rikyrah: The only thing the Reichwing seems to fear is that, by not going to war with everyone everywhere, they’ll somehow miss the Rapture and be stuck on Earth forever with the unWashed unSaved heathen masses.
Scott at least has the excuse that Real Ahmurrcans™ don’t know the rest of the planet exists (let alone have to worry about what happens to it so long as the Fifty Holy States Plus Israel are doing well). These are, after all, the ones that can’t even find their own state’s capital on a map, who think things are ugly on the Iraq/Libya border and who expect undocumented Chinese immigrants to arrive in California by swimming.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: As with “Hispanics”, the polls do try to lump them in probably dumb ways.
But the statistics I’ve seen suggest that, nationally, Asian-Americans were majority Republican… back in the 1980s. And the Republicans totally blew it by embracing nativism and paranoia, and starting around 2004 Asians have been pretty much exactly as Democratic as Hispanics, which is to say, increasingly and very much so.
boatboy_srq
@Kropadope: Quite possibly; also quite possible that Trump would be negotiating for payments to not push the button so there’d be no nukes to vaporize Mecca, Medina, Mosul, Tehran and Islamabad, and the payments would be 50% oil and 50% cash.
Omnes Omnibus
@Paul in KY: He is a JAG officer.
Tommy
@Paul in KY: I will never really put down any service to this country, but I am about to question Lindsey. There is a person that will troll me and question me talking about myself. But my father might have written the manual on the use of air power for the Air Force. Dad is not a liberal. He thinks Lindsey has no clue what he is talking about.
jon
The Republican Presidential Suicide Pact is not a rock band, but it’s turning out to be quite a concept album.
A-side
1. Unsexy Seventeen
2. Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran
3. I’m Good at Military
4. Oppressed Majority Blues
5. Anchor Baby Cryin’
6. Yellow Peril Times Again
And that’s just one side of what will probably be a Sandinista!-length triple album with extensive liner notes by the time we get near the convention.
Peale
@Roger Moore: Yep. That’s actually a bigger issue I think than a few thousand rich Chinese and Korean women giving birth in the US so their children have a few more options if they want to come to the US later in life. Not certain how common the practice is, but I have met more than a few adults “parachute” children from Hong Kong and Korea who were “adopted” in their teens by their uncles and aunts in the US who then have a much easier time obtaining permanent residency and citizenship. I’m not certain how common that practice is in other immigrant groups.
Gravenstone
Well let’s see, African Americans are already scapegoated by Republicans, so they’re out. Women are pretty universally viewed as second class citizens by them as well. And of course their Hispanic outreach this cycle is reaching new lows (see a couple of threads down). Seems like it’s the Asians’ turn on the Republican Wheel-of-Hate.
Peale
@Matt McIrvin: I think if I remember right, their participation rates are actually lower than Hispanics, which is saying something. Although that could be because they skew younger.
Joel
@Matt McIrvin: Something like this?
http://images.onset.freedom.com/ocregister/mdjyfh-mdjyf3buzzasianvoters.gif
I think a lot of this is generational, for what it’s worth. Having gone to college in California during the nineties, that was a period when a lot of US-born asians came of age. There’s also been steady immigration over the past thirty years, too.
I don’t know if it’s the *same* people changing their voting patterns, or (more likely) an influx of differently-minded people of roughly similar ethnic heritage.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
What are you talking about? Chinese Americans, Vietnamese Americans, Japanese Americans, Indian Americans, Filipino Americans, Korean Americans do not think or act as a bloc or consistently perceive their interests to be the same, even if they tend to vote for Democrats. And for various reasons, Vietnamese Americans skewed more toward Republicans until recently.
Latinos are not necessarily a bloc either.
If you are a Californian, I do not understand why you are not aware of or downplay the possible distinctions.
ETA: and there are other Asian groups as well (Cambodians, etc)
raven
@Kropadope: He’s a fucking JAG officer. He doesn’t know dilly shit about the military.
Another Holocene Human
@Matt McIrvin: The US severely restricted East Asian immigration until, what? the 60s? 70s? So in the 80s, the majority of Asians were first gen immigrants. Well, their kids are voting age now, and they don’t vote the same way.
Reminds me of George Takei (if you are a lefty, take a couple hours and read his book, you won’t be disappointed). He’s arguably second gen (his mother had birthright citizenship but was educated in Japan and struggled with English; the authorities coerced her into giving up her citizenship during WWII), and as lefty-liberal as they come.
Kay
Donald Trump asks “who cares that Jeb Bush speaks Mexican?”
https://twitter.com/woodruffbets
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: After all, it’s the scam they’d try to get permanent residency.
These assholes are ALWAYS projecting. Always.
kc
According to an article I read a few days ago (I might have found it from a link here), there are wealthy Asians who arrange to be in the U.S. when their babies are born so that the children have US citizenship.
When most people talk about “anchor babies,” I’ve always thought they were referring to babies born to poor Mexican women, but apparently that’s not the extent of it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Paul in KY: He’s a Zoomie JAG officer. That means it’s extremely unlikely he knows anything about actual military operations.
Another Holocene Human
@Brachiator: The reason we talk about Asians and Latin@s as a bloc is because of shared interests, shared experiences and frame of reference vis a vis the dominant group, and because it was adopted back in the 70s as a way to attempt to organize and build political power along the lines that other oppressed and marginalized groups in America had.
Jews are by NO MEANS a homogeneous group, but that doesn’t stop major Jewish activist groups from wading in there over issues of representation, discrimination, religious persecution, etc. And, you know, if you’re getting anti-Semitic crap tossed at you, it doesn’t matter if you’re a leftist atheist who corrects anyone who calls you Jewish or the frummiest tzitzit-haver on the block who barely can string together a sentence in English, you’re pretty much going to have the same internal reaction.
I really don’t think it’s unfair to compare year over year apples to apples “Asian” voter preference surveys and talk about what that means, even while recognizing that, as has been stated on BJ a couple of times in the last 24 hours, the Vietnamese American community in California is wearing Team Republican shirts.
As Steve in Antioch so charmingly reminded us, just because their grandparents’ generation invaded your grandparents’ village doesn’t mean that to Whitey, you’re not just another *********.
And yes it’s relevant to the election, because a major US party is running on nativism and xenophobia.
dedc79
@Amir Khalid:
How’s that expression go? Takes one to know one? They’re all selling the same snake oil, some of them are just better at it than others.
Unrelatedly, I only just saw your comment at the end of the Monday open thread and responded.
Calouste
@Peale: Having US citizenship (in addition to another) is actually a disadvantage unless you live in the United States. The United States is one of the only two countries in the world (Eritrea is the other) that requires citizens to file a tax return and pay relevant taxes even if they aren’t resident in the country.
Another Holocene Human
@kc: Mainland Chinese people don’t trust their government, for reasons which should be obvious, and some of the wealthier ones are also cheating on their taxes or breaking the law in other ways. There’s a significant class of nouveau riche Chinese who are trying to get into Canada or the US for a variety of reasons.
Whatever was going on in the US (I share the concern that there’s probably a great deal of exploitation involved by the brokers), it really doesn’t lay a finger on the Canadian policy of letting people buy a citizenship. Like a neon sign saying “Come here, crooks! We love crooks in Canada!”
Cacti
@Joe Shabadoo:
Yep.
Asia is the largest, most diverse continent on earth, and is home to 59% of the human race.
It only makes sense that we should have a blanket term to cover people from Turkmenistan, to India, to China, to Myanmar, to Japan.
Another Holocene Human
@Peale: I’ll get riled up about family helping family when the US has a fair, transparent, rapid, functional immigration apparatus.
Until then….
Cacti
@Another Holocene Human:
Most people don’t realize that the US had open immigration for about the first 100 years of the Republic, and that the first restrictive immigration law was the wholly racist Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
I predicted this! Remember that crazy ass anti-sinitic political ad Pete Hoekstra aired during the 2012 Superbowl?
Here’s what I said then:
(Hey, I figure if Republicans are going to recycle the same bullshit over and over again, I can recycle the posts I wrote mocking them. I mean, why put in the effort to write new satirical material if the GOP won’t make the effort to come up with new ideas worth satirizing?)
piratedan
@Omnes Omnibus: perhaps that should be JAG-off, sir
Roger Moore
@Another Holocene Human:
The US has an immigration category for investors, so it’s possible in practice to buy a green card if you’re rich enough.
andy
You go to war with the Yellow Peril you have, not the Yellow peril you want.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@rikyrah:
Well, if there’s a group of Black ladies drinking wine and talking, they MUST be dangerously drunk and require police intervention, amirite?
Luckily, it sounds like the police reaction at the scene was, Why is the wine train wasting our time with this call?
Seanly
@Peale:
Back in ’92 or so, I briefly dated a Chinese woman from Hong Kong who was also an American citizen. Her parents must’ve had some idea that HK would be returned to China and she was born in the US in ’70. She had graduated from college in the US (Princeton maybe?). Anyway, she had an anglo first name, but that was not for family use. It was a little strange as she had no idea of American slang or culture or how baseball or football worked (you think she would’ve picked up some of the slang & culture after 4 years in college).
Keith G
It’s lunch time so I am really groovin’ to the fact that I was able to click on the Balloon-Juice bookmark, go into the kitchen and make a sandwich, grab a Diet Coke, and make it back to desktop just as the Balloon-Juice landing page opened. I clicked on this thread and was able to go back into the kitchen and pick up the chips and napkins that i forgot.
Life is good.
Joel
@Cacti: Worked for Africa and Central America.
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: Quick Google search tell me that quota is set to about 1000 Green Cards per year.
schrodinger's cat
@Keith G: Steve horked up a hairball and that’s clogging up the intertoobz that bring Balloon Juice to us.
Bitter Scribe
Jeb Exclamation Point was undoubtedly referring to a recent WSJ feature on “maternity tourism”–Chinese women who come to this country to give birth, so the kids can have U.S. passports. Nice try, but this amounts to a diversionary tactic, because the women who do this 1) are absurdly small in number compared to Latin American immigrants and 2) take the babies back to China for raising anyway. If anything, the Chinese who do this are complimenting us by using our country as a safety net.
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
You’re off by an order of magnitude; the limit is 10,000/year.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Brachiator:
If you’re going down that road, it’s equally ridiculous to talk about “Latinos” as a block without specifying the numbers for Mexican, Guatemalan Salvadoran, Cuban, etc.
Most Asian-American voters have been trending strongly Democratic. The only exception in So Cal has been Vietnamese-Americans, because some OC Republicans have been smart enough to brand themselves ethnically rather than by party ID. But even there, I suspect that in 2008 and 2012 a lot of Vietnamese-Americans in OC voted for “their” Republican rep and for Obama at the top of the ticket
Gex
@Jeremy: Yep. I read that too. The reemergence of the voice of the Bircher base has been largely directed at blacks and Hispanics, but we know that Model Minority status doesn’t protect us from anything. We’re only the “good” ones so long as we can be used as a cudgel. The second having us on the receiving end of the cudgel appears to help them with the right kind of people, we’ll be on the receiving end of that crap too.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Seanly:
It’s actually very common nowadays for people from China and Thailand to have “American” first names to do business in addition to their legal first name. We’ve been working with the Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong offices of the Giant Evil Corporation I work for and everyone uses an English first name. I think we only had one contact who didn’t, but he was very high up. So far, our contacts in Japan, India, and South Korea seem to keep their original names.
Our cat’s sister was adopted by a friend of G’a who was originally from Taiwan and the cat had both an English and a Chinese name, too, mostly because we all thought it was funny.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks for info. Still should know/understand a bit more than El Trumpo on military, etc.
Bobby Thomson
@boatboy_srq: nah, the problem with Trump is he hears only what he wants to hear and can’t be corrected. A common failing but magnified in him to an absurdly ridiculous degree.
Turgidson
@Mark B.:
GOPers and their shills will probably still be talking about yesterday’s drop next October as if it happened last week – just like people kept talking about the Obamacare website for over a year after it was fixed and the ACA had been succeeding beyond expectations.
Ruckus
@MattF:
Could also be that for all of his education, Jeb is still just stupid. And for proof I give you his record and any speech he’s given or questions he’s answered live in the past 6 months. There is a reason the stories of him being the smart brother have been circulated for the last few years. To cover up the truth.
Paul in KY
@Tommy: I think he’s a piece of crap boob myself. As a freaking O-6, one would hope he would know an eeensy bit more about it than Der Trumper.
Paul in KY
@raven: Compared to The Donald, he oughta.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: If he doesn’t know a tad more than Tribble Boy, then he’s been stealing that salary.
Bobby Thomson
@Another Holocene Human: growing up in a camp after whites “bought” your property for a song will tend to do that.
Paul in KY
@Seanly: Shit. She was in the library, studying all the time.
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: Good catch, that’s what I meant to type, dropped the zero somewhere.
KithKanan
@Bobby Thomson: Lie la lie
Mike in NC
A very good, recent WaPo article pointed out that prior to retiring from the USAFR, Colonel Graham hardly wore a uniform during the years he was a congressman and then senator. He pressured the DoD to let him go on a couple of brief trips to the Middle East for what was basically a publicity stunt for his reelection campaign.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
And you and I have the same rep in the house, who is Asian American. It is, as a group a reasonably large one, diverse as pretty much any group it’s size. My doc is, and a number of people who work at the VA. So are a number of kids I went to school with 50-60 yrs ago.
I’m actually a little puzzled here. Since when has the US been made up of only one group of immigrants? Yes some were brought here as slaves or indentured servants rather than finding their own way but as we had a discussion not that long ago on BJ we are almost all either immigrants or children of immigrants, no matter what country/countries or arbitrary racial/ethnic grouping we “belong” to. I know of at least 4 groupings that I belong to, I’m sure there are more. And groupings like Asian is way inclusive, being made up of people from many countries, some of which were at war with each other for centuries. And depending on your grouping do people from India have to be included with people from Japan, both being considered part of Asia?
And more important, why the hell do we care?
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
These are terrible stories, but compassion only goes so far.
What do Democrats have to offer besides de facto open borders and amnesty?
And it is fine to accuse Republicans of simply being bigoted or nativist, but you know it isn’t the whole story. What do you say to immigrants who patiently wait for their applications to be processed and who don’t seek to live or to work here, or who have temporary visas?
What substantive response do you have when people express fears that illegal immigrants increase demand for services and resources, especially health care, social services and education?
Even if you have a magical solution for current immigrants, what, if anything, do you suggest be done for future illegal immigrants?
Ruckus
@Paul in KY:
You can hope but that won’t make it true.
Paul in KY
@Ruckus: That’s what I would hope, as someone who’s helped pay that fucker’s salary. Does Trump even know how many services we have?
Ruckus
@Paul in KY:
T Rump’s knowledge being greater or lessor than Graham’s is always suspect, on any subject, as he pontificates so loudly and crudely that it’s impossible to actually ascertain what he really knows. Of course knowing more or less than Graham is a relative thing, sort of like knowing more or less than a flat rock.
Tokyokie
@schrodinger’s cat: Except pretty much any foreigner with a substantial sum of money to invest in the U.S. can gain permanent resident status, and, eventually, citizenship. (I believe that’s how Rupert Murdoch became a U.S. citizen.) The Chinese women to whom Jeb! is referring not only do not want to reside in the United States, they probably have the means to buy their way in legally anytime they choose.
pseudonymous in nc
@Roger Moore:
And there are lots of proud patriotic Murkins making a shitload of money from it, which is the test of whether something is truly American.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator:
Republicans are bigoted and nativist. What whole story are you talking about?
This sounds like a quote from one of the “saner” Republican candidates quoted verbatim. You are conflating several issues. Immigrants who entered without papers, ones who have overstayed their visas. People waiting for their green cards here and in their countries of origin and so on.
If people don’t seek to live or work here why do they want to immigrate? That doesn’t make sense.
My solution to the current immigration mess would be to allow more immigrants in the economic category to be able to self-sponsor. Make the EB permanent resident regime less employer focused. Make the same changes for long term temporary visas too.
Allow temporary work visas to rise and fall with the cycles of the economy. In many cases there aren’t many paths to being a legal permanent resident if you are not related to a US citizen by either marriage or birth.
Immigration is a not a one way street, the United States economy and we as consumers benefit from the labors of the so called illegal immigrants.
Brachiator
@Another Holocene Human:
Who is “we,” kemosabe?
Asians and Latinos don’t view themselves as an undifferentiated bloc, and the problems with gabachos lumping Latinos together is that you obviously misunderstand and underestimate issues that are important to various peoples. The original poster wrongly asserted that Asian Americans tended to vote for Republicans. It’s not the 70s, and you cannot organize and build much of anything if you do not understand the groups you are talking about. And do you honestly believe that Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans are, or have been oppressed in the same way?
The problem is you have no idea what Asian or Latino voter preference might be since you neither know nor care what issues animate them. You might find that what is important to Latinos in Southern California is not the same as what is important to Latinos in Southern Texas or to Dominicans in the South Bronx.
Republicans assumed that Asians were wealthy and success, more like “them,” and got their asses handed to them. You seem to assume that all Asians are oppressed and marginalized, replacing one stereotype with another. This is not helpful.
By the way, 61% of Vietnamese voted for Obama in 2012. No Republican lock there.
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
There are some Balloon Juicers who think that there are “Latinos” and “Cubans.” It’s ridiculous. And even people who should know better do always understand the degree to which some Mexican-American immigration is driven by Yucatecos and other Indian (or American aboriginal) peoples.
There are many reasons that the local Vietnamese community vote Republican, and very little of it has to do with branding.
This is a good point. In 2012, every Asian American group voted strongly for Obama. Vietnamese voted 61% Obama over Romney. But this is not the same thing as sustainable loyalty to Democrats. And I don’t know how the Vietnamese vote broke down for state and local representatives.
Also, there was no Asian gender gap. Asian men, overall, 68% for Obama; Asian women 69% for Obama.
But overall we are also talking about 2.8% of the electorate.
Still, Asian Americans voted more strongly for Obama in 2012 than they did in 2008 (73% vs 62% overall). By contrast in 1992 only 31% of Asians voted for Bill Clinton.
The Asian vote has become more Democratic. A smart political analyst would want to find out why, instead of assuming a loyalty which has not always been there.
Paul in KY
@Ruckus: Good point.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
If Republicans were angels, there would still be an immigration problem. Can you defend a policy which is de facto open border?
RE: What do you say to immigrants who patiently wait for their applications to be processed and who don’t seek to live or to work here, or who have temporary visas?
You talk about immigrants without papers as though they just forgot and left their papers at home. You are ignoring the fact of people who do not have the legal right to be in the United States and who entered the country illegally. This is not even close to being the same thing as people waiting for their green cards.
What does the desire to immigrate have to do with the legal right to immigrate?
Is this open borders?Anybody who wants to come here, comes here. How are you going to process all of this, and how much will it cost?
And how would you meaningfully enforce this when there is a fall in the economy?
People say this. It might even be true (and I think it is), but this does not answer the question that people ask when they talk about wanting to slow or halt illegal immigration.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: One sure way to decrease illegal immigration would be to criminally prosecute employers who employ workers who employ workers without the necessary work visas.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: Not open borders, an immigration regime more like that of Canada, where you can apply for your own work visa or the Canadian equivalent of the GC. Unlike the US you don’t have to depend on your employer to do so.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
Have you seen the August 24 issue of The New Yorker? Some very good, and sad, articles about New Orleans.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
This is funny. In Southern California, almost everybody who can employ an illegal immigrant does so. Republican and Democrat. And not only does nobody care about the work visa thing, illegal immigrants are desirable. You would just end up with more people being paid under the table.
So even though this would be one possible solution, ain’t it amazing that neither Democrats nor Republicans can agree to something so simple and easily doable? It’s almost as though both sides really want large numbers of illegal immigrants here, even if for different reasons.
But you would also have to do more than check for proper work visas. You would have to screen for bogus Social Security cards.
Also, anything close to improved handling of immigrants would also involve increasing the budget and staffing of INS.
Don’t you also have to pay a $1,500 fee or something?
However, what little I know about the Canadian plan sounds humane. I will have to look more into it. But this is what I was asking for, something close to a solution as opposed to the standard (if sometimes warranted) demonization of Republicans, or the almost meaningless boilerplate of “comprehensive immigration reform.”
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: I don’t know what the fees are but USCIS applications over here aren’t free either.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Brachiator:
People I know think I’m crazy for paying $150 to have my apartment cleaned, but I do it to avoid hiring illegal workers. So, no, not everyone is A-OK with exploiting illegal labor just because everyone else does it.
As with prostitution, trying to cut things off at the supply end is useless — you have to go after the johns to make any progress. Similarly, we will never “solve” the problem of illegal labor as long as people and companies are willing to hire illegal workers. Trying to cut off supply without simultaneously cutting off demand doesn’t do anything but make it even easier for employers to exploit desperate people.
We also need to stop fucking over Central America. The reason for the flood of child immigrants last year was the ongoing human rights disaster in Guatemala, not because they were looking to take our jobs.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Good for you. You’re right, some people are fair. But I am amused when I hear Orange County callers to talk radio stations rail against illegal immigrants even as their friends and neighbors hire them to do all kinds of jobs, to such a degree that some businesses and cities have what are in effect illegal immigrant hiring zones.
Well, no. With drugs and sex, persistently high demand means you will also have supply to satisfy that demand.
It is absurd to expect people from Mexico, Guatemala and other countries to sit on the ground and starve when they could try for work here. And it is not just poor people, it is middle class Mexicans and others tired of corruption and venal practices that sap those nations’ economies.
Also, illegal immigrants are not just exploited. Construction pays good wages and reliable and skilled workers are highly prized.
But you are right that bad employers should be hit, and this might have some impact on illegal immigration. But if home countries are very bad compared to the US, waves of immigration will continue.
That’s part of it, but many of these countries also fuck themselves over pretty good. And that’s the tragedy.
gwangung
@Joe Shabadoo: This, of course, only applies to first generation.
Second and later generations (who invented the term) behave differently.
dirk
I was just listening to that Clash song earlier today. Weird coincidence.
Cain
@Brachiator: @Ryan:
You’ve been arguing this pretty impressively. It’s easy to have conversations that demonize Republicans, but as you say we aren’t really addressing the concerns a lot of Americans have about illegal immigration.