Big: Sessions orders review of all police consent decrees – potentially imperiling Obama era police reforms https://t.co/QCOIZso4im
— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) April 4, 2017
Worth remembering: Sessions has admitted he hasn't read policing probes (Chi/Ferguson) he's now ordered reviewed https://t.co/00rWQGu4bt
— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) April 4, 2017
Via commentor LAMH. Malevolent racist leprechaun, Attorney-General by the grace of the President-Asterisk, does what he was hired to do:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered Justice Department officials to review reform agreements with troubled police forces nationwide, saying it was necessary to ensure these pacts do not work against the Trump administration’s goals of promoting officer safety and morale while fighting violent crime.
In a two-page memo released Monday, Sessions said agreements reached previously between the department’s civil rights division and local police departments — a key legacy of the Obama administration — will be subject to review by his two top deputies, throwing into question whether all of the agreements will stay in place.
The memo was released not long before the department’s civil rights lawyers asked a federal judge to postpone until at least the end of June a hearing on a sweeping police reform agreement, known as a consent decree, with the Baltimore police department that was announced just days before President Trump took office…
If “we” were truly interested in the preventive removal of criminal recidivists, somebody would already have had his ability to impede the wheels of justice removed…
*Timeline of Jeff Sessions’ connections with the Russian ambassador
SiubhanDuinne
Excellent cartoon.
lollipopguild
The only good thing about sessions is that he will be so ham fisted that it will blow back in his and trump’s faces very quickly.
schrodingers_cat
Jeff S is also making H1-B’s very hard to get and in particular targeting Indian tech companies (some of which are awful in their own way, like Infosys), that should make BJers happy.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat:
???
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: I have been informed that they (H1- B visas) are the greatest evil evah in the comments on this very blog, more than once.
Kryptik
@lollipopguild:
Politically? Maybe. How many people will end up imprisoned, assaulted by police, killed by police, etc in the interim, because Sessions essentially gave carte blanche for the worst of enforcement in this country?
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
As currently configured, H1-B visas are basically indentured servitude and the employers who use them frequently exploit their employees. That doesn’t mean that the employees are bad — it means we need to reform the H1-B system so employers can’t abuse it.
ETA: Obviously, the only thing Sessions is going to do is make the system worse for employees and easier for employers to abuse and exploit.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Hyperbole alert. Seriously, I am a bit worried about you. You seem so bitter and quick to take offense these days. You weren’t like this before the election. Do you need to take some time away?
Mike J
@Mnemosyne: I was lead developer, and only US born programmer, of a company that used H1-Bs almost exclusively because those employees couldn’t ask for more money or complain about hours. Ironically, I left there to move to Europe.
hellslittlestangel
This rotten little man should always be referred to by his full name.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: You are painting with broad brush here. H1-Bs are a bridge long term visa, they are not just used in tech. Not all employers abuse the visa. Not everyone on an H1-B is an indentured servant as you put it.
Mnemosyne
So, interesting tidbit somebody spotted in the ABC News story about Carter Page: Page’s Russian contact, who was sentenced to 30 months in prison for spying, was released over the weekend to be deported back to Russia.
I’m sure it’s just another totally unrelated coincidence.
chopper
@schrodingers_cat:
wait, she’s painting with a broad brush?
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: And my former s-i-l and her husband got H1-B jobs at MS with competitive wages and benefits. the husband moved on to Google with no trouble. Maybe they were at a talent level that guarantied good treatment. Anecdata.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
The friend I had who was here on an H1-B was definitely exploited by her employer, and they let her go when she complained, so she had to return to Singapore.
This was 20+ years ago, so it’s not a recent development. And she was in journalism, not tech, so the exploitation is definitely not just something that happens to tech visa holders.
The current system leaves WAY too much room for abuse by unscrupulous employers.
randy khan
He is everything I expected him to be.
danielx
@Omnes Omnibus:
In all seriousness, there’s a lot of that going around. My dearly beloved auntie had to get off the computer for weeks because her doctor said it was affecting her health, and she said it was all due to reading about the Malignant Mango. Granted that she’s 85 and an FDR Democrat, but I’ve talked to a lot of people who have been seriously fucked up since 9/9/16.
lollipopguild
@Kryptik: You are correct. I wish Hildebeast was in the white house but she’s not. So far pretty much everything trump touches turns to fertilizer. Sessions will continue the streak and get immediate blowback for what he does.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I am guessing that sc is at least as aware of the potential for abuse within the H1-B process as any of us. No?
Villago Delenda Est
@hellslittlestangel: Jefferson Fucking Beauregard Fucking Sessions the Fucking Third.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ve dealt with a bunch of them on the employer side, almost all for techies and lawyers. Struck me as a bit of a scam (there were usually plenty of qualified US applicants, not that we really looked) and it was indentured servitude. May have changed in the last few years since I outsourced it to our (American) counsel on the west coast.
amk
David Frum Verified account @davidfrum 2h2 hours ago
Shocking that Americans can’t expect privacy when they talk with hostile foreign spy agencies about how to sway US policy in their interest
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
Odin, Zeus, and Vishnu know that there are plenty of unscrupulous employers in this fucked up country.
mainmata
@Mnemosyne: There a lot of American businesses that are all about using employees as commodities, whether foreign or domestic born. It’s a core part of this country’s historical legacy in which both slavery and white working class economic and political oppression were both central to the American capitalist model. Nowadays, we’ve simply scaled up the exploitation to include the entire middle class (in the consumer market) as well as continuing worker exploitation and (in some cases) continued slavery of immigrant farm workers. This country is fundamentally screwed up, frankly.
Kryptik
Also, regarding the H1-B stuff, I think the big problem is that the decree regarding them clearly isn’t as a means to reform the process or protect the visa holders, but as just another way to ensure those scary brown folk have less and less ways to get into God Fearing White America.
Ian
@schrodingers_cat:
It is more nuanced than you give our collective pile of outrage attribution for. Those HB-1 visas may not be the greatest in terms of treating workers fairly, but they are a godsend to the recipients. Jeff Sessions may think he is protecting ‘Murican’ workers, but in reality he is both hurting the US economy and the people and economy of India. Do these tech industries need tighter worker regulations? Absolutely, but I think few liberals see the answer as ‘cut them off and let them live in the slums’.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
She probably knows more successful H1-B stories than I do. There’s a reason the program has a terrible reputation here in CA, and it’s because tech companies and others have been very exploitative in how they use it. Hell, there was the big Disney scandal last year where they used contractor H1-Bs from an outside agency to try and get around the regulations.
But, again, the problem is not the WORKERS. They just want to come here, work, and have a path to citizenship. Employers should not be allowed to fuck around with that.
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus: There are plenty of good legitimate uses for dynamite and arsenic too. Doesn’t mean I want every loon out there using them willy-nilly.
Mnemosyne
@Kryptik:
Totally agree. And, frankly, that decree is probably going to be used to put pressure on current H1-B holders by unscrupulous employers. Don’t like that we’re not paying you the overtime that’s in your contract? How would you like us to tell the INS that, oops, we didn’t do your paperwork quite right?
Lyrebird
@Villago Delenda Est: It still makes me sick that he was approved with more votes than the merely avaricious, hypocritical, and incompetent DeVos.
Over at the true and original and still very useful Great Orange Satan they have quoted MLK Jr’s Beyond Vietnam speech.
Bolding mine.
I so hope that the new and genuinely dangerous Orange Menace is peaceably removed from power (impeachment would be fine, preferably followed by gazillion other lawsuits), and I hope that when he does, so many of these opportunistic racist granny starvers and prison profiteers have their fortunes ruined with his.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: @Mike J: If you could point out where I called them an unadulterated good thing, I would be much obliged.
Chet Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: @schrodingers_cat: [setting aside -completely- any question of labor market saturation and whether these visa classes effectively undercut native-born workers simply by increasing the labor pool, b/c that’s a complicated argument]
IANAL, but from what I’ve read (and talking with a friend who was on an H1-B), the process really was very exploitative until recently:
https://www.hooyou.com/h-1b/h1b_portability.html
but it’s changed — a worker can change jobs while within the time window of the visa. The main reason that H1-B was a problem, was that workers could be brought from overseas, paid a lot less, and couldn’t change jobs; the foreign-born workers were exploited, and this was effectively undercutting native-born workers. This seems to be much less the case now, with portability.
That said, there are other classes of visa that are -still- very exploitative, and more relevantly, are abused to take jobs from native workers. Specifically, there’s a class of “business visitor visa” that the consultant shops have used to rotate in workers for 60day stints. I worked a gig back in 2001 in NYC with Humongo Bank, where they were doing that in spades, and I understand that that sort of thing continues to this day. Those workers, needless to say, have no ability to set the terms of their employment, other than deciding to quit and go back to their countries of origin.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Thankfully Susan Sarandon and her socialite children will not be affected.
Mnemosyne
Anyhoo, I’m already 10 minutes past the time when I’m supposed to be working on my novel for Camp NaNoWriMo, so I must wander away from the argument now. TTFN!
Lyrebird
@Omnes Omnibus:
I myself need to follow up more on learning that the biggest key to getting my kid off to preschool in a decent mood is me getting enough sleep so I do not become a stress basket in the attempt. Therefore I should close down my machine earlier in the evening.
I am really grateful for BJ commenters (and FPers!) keeping me sure that there are like-minded jackals out there, though.
Villago Delenda Est
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: That’s a relief.
trollhattan
Know how an eighth of the country tells Sessions to “Go fuck yourself”?
Millard Filmore
@Ian:
I work in the tech industry, and I suspect the response of companies will be similar to what I have seen. The whole project will be outsourced to India.
tobie
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Notice what the criterion is for the review of police consent decrees:
This is telling law enforcement that just about anything they do is a-okay.
Lyrebird
@Omnes Omnibus: Even at a very high talent level you can end up with a donkey’s sphincter of a boss, of course, but since I did spend too much of my life in graduate school, “H1B” mostly means (ETA: in my mind) “what most of my friends were hoping to get”.
@Chet Murthy: Thanks for filling in; I thought I remembered some of this (e.g. that there are far worse visas) and didn’t have the details.
Omnes Omnibus
@Lyrebird: I mentioned anecdata, didn’t I?
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus: And the same for where I called them an unadulterated bad thing.
Lyrebird
@Omnes Omnibus:
Absolutely! So I blathered out some more!
Have a good night Omnes Omni. & Omnes Other Commenters!
Redshift
That’ll definitely help with all that “economic anxiety.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: I didn’t suggest that you did.
jl
@trollhattan: The SacBee article doesn’t mention that there have been recent provocations. The creep fed immigration police have been going into courthouses and detaining people, including witnesses and family members of victims and accused. Disgusting. Chief Justice of CA Supreme Court wrote a letter to Sessions to tell him to knock it off.
Interesting sign of deep unpopularity of Trump immigration crackdown in CA, is that even some state GOPers are playing concern troll on the bill, and some of them from rural areas where agriculture and small businesses depend on immigrant labor may actually be concerned about the dishonest fed policy.
Millard Filmore
@tobie:
And if you have to testify, put your hand on the Bible, look your God in the eye, and lie. Neither God nor man will hold it against you.
Lizzy L
@Lyrebird: Thank you for that MLK Jr quote. He gave that speech on April 4th, 1967, a year exactly before he was murdered.
Too soon to say, she may also be malevolent. Sessions certainly is. He is — loathsome. I don’t recall who called him an evil leprechaun, but it so fits.
jl
@Millard Filmore: Thanks for reminding me that Sessions is a proven bald face and very knowing liar.
amk
Weaponizing the already armed to the teeth police with white supremacy power. It’s gonna be great.
Mike J
Does the Jambusters theme song sound like a weird choral Tears for Fears ripoff or am I crazy?
Mike J
@Mike J: Compare with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIuEo0cgLos
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
If I were he, I’d make sure my life insurance premiums were paid up.
Yarrow
I really hope he gets tossed out of office and into prison for his treasonous activities with Russia.
efgoldman
@lollipopguild:
From whom (besides some bloggers) pray, tell.
He doesn’t have to keep any voters happy except the mouth breathers, unless he does something indictable or in direct contempt of a court order.
amk
da kenyan strikes again. with his bracket.
sukabi
@Mnemosyne: doesn’t Drumpf organization use Hb1 visa holders as a large part of his service jobs work force? Thought there was something recently where they(Drumpf) requested more foreign workers.
Peale
@sukabi: he wouldn’t be using h1 for service workers for hotels. That’s h-2.
Peale
@Mnemosyne: you know, its not free for a company to hire an H1b and an employee and the lottery to see who wins their h1b allotment is just once per year. So a manger who ships workers back home is SOL for whatever project the H1b is working on with not much guarantee of relief. We aren’t yet locking up tech employees and nurses without pay like Omani construction workers.
bemused senior
I think those projects will actually be shipped to China. India has gotten too expensive, and has a tight tech job market.
Chet Murthy
@bemused senior: Heh, anecdote: my buddy at Mongo Computer Company confirms this: 10yr ago, tons of dev and ops work being shipped to India. Today? It’s going to China. In India it’s mostly consultants, traveling all over the world. But this is just anecdote.
Peale
@Millard Filmore: I’ve been in outsourcing for going on 15 years at this point. The era of easy outsourcing pretty much ended. The jobs that the h1bs have now are located in the US for a reason. Otherwise they would have been offshored ten years ago.
Yarrow
@Peale:
We’re now outsourcing our government to Russia. Maybe the outsourcing just moved to a different field?
Ladyraxterinok
Did Obama administration expand the definition òf rape? Is Trump gang unaware of this? Assume rollbàck will be added to their agenda at some point. Òr a complete elimination of rape as a crime. Immigrants, African Americans, LGBT, women, and ….Any and all protections rolled back at least to the situation in the ‘idyllic’
.50s.
jl
@Yarrow:
” We’re now outsourcing our government to Russia. ”
Been a little more pushback on that. Not sure whether it will make any difference.
laura
@sukabi: yes, the Trump family uses/exploits foreign workers because reasons. Jeez, leave those poor hard working Trump’s alooone! //
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat: Unfortunately, due to how the stories of Americans being forced to train their own H1-B replacements or lose their severance pay have circulated, supporting H1-Bs are one of those political deathwishes with average voters.
Not a hill to pick a fight on for Democrats, let alone die on. The Indian techies are going to have to keep their heads down and deal with it alone. They’re toxic to associate with now. And I don’t say that lightly.
TenguPhule
@Ladyraxterinok: Rape will be redefined as consent between two members of the same sex.
The penalty will be death and enforced by Trump supporters on an ad hoc basis depending on the victim’s looks and skin color.
TenguPhule
@Chet Murthy:
Uh no. The main problem with H1-Bs was that companies were exploiting it to replace American workers with cheaper foreign workers for jobs the H1-B was never intended for and to add insult to injury, force the American workers to train their own replacements.
Which is why that program is politically toxic and would be easy fodder to slam the GOP with as an abuse of the system that corporations are happy to take jobs from Americans.
gene108
@Mnemosyne:
The people I have known on H1-b visas made a good living. They got paid a bit above 100k per year.
I think the article focuses in the worst of the worst, plus they have done nothing to verify the statements of the anonymous sources they used. When one said the employer took 30% of a $60/hr bill rate for “taxes and expenses” does that mean he was supposed be paid $60/hr and was underpaid by 30% from what the employer promised or was the employer billing their customer $60/hr and 30% was their mark-up for the services? The anonymous source did not make that clear. If the latter that is how working for a consulting/contract firm works, they mark-up your services to the customer, whether you are a office temp, or an American citizen, with a Top Secret security clearance, working for Booz-Allen at the DoD. If the former, the employee has a pretty clear case against the employer for not paying the promised wage, assuming the offer of $60/hr was in writing.
Also, the reason so many H1-b visas get filed every year, I believe the figure they used was 1.3 million since 2008, is because of the employment based backlog in issuing Green Cards for people of Indian origin. A non-broken immigration system would have found a way to resolve this problem, but it is here and is there being exploited to deport “bad hombres”.
The overarching issue I have with articles like this is that it will be used as a club to kill immigration from Indian, and Asia, in general. Right now, the H1-b visa is the primary vehicle that allows people to immigrate from India, which used to be illegal from the late 19th century to the 1950’s. And people in India want to come to the U.S.A.
The H1-b visa program cannot be all doom and gloom, otherwise people would not use it to keep coming here.
gene108
@efgoldman:
Who is going to enforce the court order?
I think there maybe a reason for Trump’s fascination with Andy Jackson…
Aurora Equinox
Long time lurker – sometimes poster.
My experience with the H1-B visas seems to be pretty different from most here. I work in the medical field and most of the H1-B are for Foreign Medical Graduates coming to do residency in the U.S. These are highly qualified people who can expect the same level of treatment that their American counterparts receive. There is no difference in the way we treat our residents. Now, you can discuss the treatment of residents in general but that’s nor here nor there. Suffice it to say that H1-B visas are incredibly important and they are as beneficial to the holder as they are to the employer.
ET
I am from New Orleans though I haven’t lived there in years. I do keep up with the news somewhat and it seems that NOPD has been operating under a series of consent decrees for “forever”- but maybe it just seems that way because the FBI always seems to be investigating one officer or another. The one agreed to in 2012 was an outgrowth of Katrina and even in 2016 they seem to have a ways to go.
Lurking Canadian
I was watching an episode of Frequency last night. Main character (a cop) got in trouble for shooting a suspect, within minutes of the shooting.
I can suspend disbelief far enough to accept a HAM radio that allows communication across time.
But a US police force that rigorously investigates its own officers just for shooting civilians? Come on. There are limits.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: I am not bitter, I am angry. This comment will illustrate why.
The Moar You Know
I used to work for a company in SF back in the 1990s where the owner used H1-B’s to staff his accounting department. They were a lot easier to get, back then, as the tech thing hadn’t quite taken off yet.
I started dating one of the young ladies (they were all young ladies). It got kind of serious after a while.
Owner found out and was not pleased that I was messing with what he viewed as his property. He had her visa revoked and she was deported.
Don’t tell me that the folks with these visas aren’t indentured servants (at best and I would use a far less kind term). They are chattel, to be disposed of as the business owner pleases.
JoJo
@Kryptik: Based on what Jim Sensenbrenner said at one of his town halls, I would have to agree with this.