According to NBC News, human whitening strip Stephen Miller will shortly roll out phase two of the plan to extend white hegemony in America in perpetuity:
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is expected to issue a proposal in coming weeks that would make it harder for legal immigrants to become citizens or get green cards if they have ever used a range of popular public welfare programs, including Obamacare, four sources with knowledge of the plan told NBC News.
The move, which would not need Congressional approval, is part of White House senior adviser Stephen Miller’s plan to limit the number of migrants who obtain legal status in the U.S. each year.
Details of the rulemaking proposal are still being finalized, but based on a recent draft seen last week and described to NBC News, immigrants living legally in the U.S. who have ever used or whose household members have ever used Obamacare, children’s health insurance, food stamps and other benefits could be hindered from obtaining legal status in the U.S.
There’s no financial crisis linked to legal (or undocumented) immigrants overrunning the paltry public assistance available in this country. The opposite, in fact, is true; the looming financial crisis was caused by shoveling a trillion borrowed dollars to people like Betsy DeVos, the Mercers, the Kochs, the Walton family, etc., in the form of an unneeded massive tax cut.
Sponsors for legal immigrants who want to obtain a green card and move toward citizenship have to commit to being on the hook for any public benefits for which their legal immigrant might qualify for a decade. The Miller plan is transparently about blocking legal immigrants from gaining voting rights.
“Keep, ancient lands, your poor huddled masses!” cries he
With sneering lips. “Give me your whites, your revanchist boor,
Your B-list underwear models yearning to go clothing-free,
The oligarchs and bigots of your scheming shore.
Send these, the fascists, the Nazi-curious to me,
I lift my lamp beside the gold-veneer Trump Tower door!”
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Yeah. So we have that to look forward to. Lucky us.
Bruce K
Fair trials, traffic lights, piano-wire nooses.
Not for the people seeking citizenship, but for the monsters in power who are intent on inflicting pain and hardship on the less fortunate.
schrodingers_cat
They have floated this plan from the get go, since T’s first week in office. The changes aren’t yet in place. What it does is spread fear among the green card holders who are eligible to apply for citizenship. It dissuades them from applying. The numbers of applications processed speaks for themselves. This change will be litigated.
If you are GC holder, apply for citizenship but consult an immigration lawyer before you send in your application. Also, send in your application using certified mail.
MobiusKlein
This some racist shit.
Come over as a refugee, get government help? Sorry, no rights for you ever.
And yes, I am thinking about Americans I know who were WWII refugees as well as boat people, USSR emigrees, folks fleeing Iran, and 10,000 other kind.
ruemara
Just read through that & I’m racking my brain for anything I can do because I survived due to the ACA & have been on food stamps & welfare. I worked my way through college & nearly died a couple of times from the moldy apartment combined with NYC winters. Instead, I get to fret that I might get the racist douchebag in cubicle 17 who gains the extra .25 inches he’s missing in his pants by fucking with them. I’m wondering if I should have some legal representation, just in case. This is infuriating. Thanks for the neonazi administration, 3rd party lefties!
?BillinGlendaleCA
Somebody mention Colossus?
cope
To quote the inimitable Mr. Pierce, these really are the mole people.
Felanius Kootea
As I commented to Peale in Anne Laurie’s thread downstairs, it doesn’t stop with legal immigrants. This administration also is looking into revoking the citizenship of naturalized citizens if they are found to have “broken the law.” As Masha Gessen pointed out, there’s no specificity on what country’s laws – by being gay, she “broke the law” in Russia before setting foot in the US. Can this admin decide to revoke her citizenship because of that? I know who the Supreme Court would side with in a 5-4 decision.
As a naturalized citizen, I have a sick feeling about where this is all heading. Thing is right now, this can’t pass in the Senate. All those moron visa holders who were previously snarling about how they did all the right things and came here legally and why should they care about the undocumented must be wondering what on earth is going on.
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: I don’t think this rule has gone into effect, yet. My friend who passed her interview last week gets subsidies on the exchange, since she owns her own business. I would say send in your application ASAP.
CliosFanBoy
Ellis Island had a hospital and if you arrived and were sick, you were treated for free. Those with some conditions, such as heart disease, were generally turned back, as were those with developmental issues or mental illness. But if you the measles, or the flu, were about to give birth, broke an arm on the ship, etc, they treated you. They were smart enough to appreciate that a small bit of help now would mean a healthy, productive member of society later.
CliosFanBoy
@cope: “I may be beneath you, but nothing is beneath me!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkhwlcVAClk
schrodingers_cat
If this rule goes into effect than it will also affect those who have children since they are eligible for WIC benefits.
Felanius Kootea
@Felanius Kootea: Shit – I misread the part about “would not need congressional approval.” Shit, shit, shit. Not good at all. Lots of H-1B and other visa holders affected by the financial meltdown, however briefly, would be screwed.
schrodingers_cat
In addition to the nyms now the edit window is broken too.
schrodingers_cat
@Felanius Kootea: Something has held them back from pursuing this, because they have floated this idea since week one of T’s tenure. I have read a version of this report since January 2017.
MisterForkbeard
The fact that they’re even characterizing Obamacare as “welfare” is kind of offensive. It’s not welfare – it’s just literally the best way to get insurance if you’re getting insurance through your employer or medicare. It’s a public service – you might as well put up roadblocks for citizenship if you’ve ever called the cops or the fire department.
This administration (and Stephen Miller in particular) needs to go. The damage they’re doing to our basic humanity (let alone our government) is incalculable.
B.B.A.
I’m in Austria at the moment. I visited a concentration camp last week, a harrowing experience for any human being, and especially for a Jew.
Miller, who I loathe to admit shares my ethnicity – hell, my species – never figured out that the kapos got sent to the gas chambers too. Or maybe he thinks, like Netanyahu, that it’s okay if he gets to be the master race.
Brachiator
What the fucking fuckity fuck fuck? Aside from the reprehensible cruelty of these proposals, what the fuck is this guilt by association bullshit?
How does using Obamacare become some stain, like a Scarlet O?
It is sickening to think that Miller and staff stay up late at night to come up with this stuff. Sadder still that any citizens support this, or believe that America is so short of resources that it has to resort to rationing out citizenship and benefits.
Every decent person needs to push back, hard, against these mean-spirited proposals.
Ah, well. It’s only Tuesday. What fresh outrages await the rest of the week?
Gravenstone
@Bruce K: I’d settle for repeated high speed collisions with a softball bat. Titanium so it doesn’t break.
Matt McIrvin
It’s Lou Reed’s “Statue of Bigotry”. Your poor huddled masses, club ’em on the head, get it over with, and dump ’em on the boulevard.
Martin
Here’s something new sneaking up on us.
Forbes, not exactly a gossip rag.
zhena gogolia
Every bit of news coming out of this regime is causing me severe anxiety, and I’m not even one of the people directly affected. This whole thing is such a goddamned tragedy and disaster. They have seized power illegitimately and are wielding it mercilessly.
Brachiator
New citizenship question. Are you now, or have you ever been, poor and undeserving? Yes? No citizenship for you.
CliosFanBoy
@schrodingers_cat: hungry kids?? BONUS!!!!!
Gravenstone
@Martin: I’m surprised that he and Trump don’t view each other as mutual threats to each other’s grift.
Peale
@schrodingers_cat: Yep. That’s the key to the “anyone in your household”. It blocks citizenship to anyone who signed up for CHIP. I’m surprised they didn’t add unemployment benefits to the list – so if you lost your job at any time during the past, you’re out of luck now.
Martin
Honestly, I welcome this.
Look, none of these things are passing legal scrutiny. The courts are blocking all of it, and even Congress is starting to step up against a few things (their supporting resolution for NATO). Every one of these things that the GOP fails to speak out against simply undermines the GOP. GWB saw that hispanics were in many ways a better fit for the GOP than the Dems. If the party could just stop this racist shit, I could see a demographic that is generally pretty religious, hard working, and family oriented (eg, small ‘c’ conservative) being swayed to the GOP. And I know a number of 2nd and later generation hispanics that are at the very least annoyed by undocumented immigration, but that does not mean that by extension you can assume they would be opposed to legal immigration. The only party that sees that as a logical extension are the race puritans.
So yeah, push more people to the Democratic party. Push more non voters into outrage so they turn out.
rikyrah
Nothing but a racist azz demon.
rikyrah
@ruemara:
Send in your application, ASAP, but make sure that all the ‘t’s’ are crossed, and all the ‘ i’s’ are dotted. And, the suggestion from up above using certified mail for your application is a very good idea. Of course, have copies of everything.
Martin
@Gravenstone: Given that Ross was VP at one of the Cyprus banks that is widely assumed to be used for Russian money laundering, I think it’s premature to assume that these guys haven’t been connected for some time.
donnah
I met up with a friend this past week who came to the States 33 years ago from Denmark. She just became a US citizen three months ago. She said she felt wary about citizenship changing so much that she would run into issues with it and wanted to be an American citizen finally. She’s as Caucasian as can be and successful in her own right, so she probably wouldn’t face any difficulties, but she wanted to be certain.
That’s what this administration has done. It has sullied and ruined every good thing we’ve stood for.
rikyrah
@Martin:
This can’t be a surprise. Muthaphucka was involved with the Bank of Cypruse- A Money Launderer’s paradise.
rikyrah
@rikyrah:
Can’t edit.
Bank of CYPRUS.
Martin
@Brachiator: This crew would word it as ‘Are you tired, poor, or part of a huddled mass? Do you yearn to breathe free?’ Subtlety is not in their toolkit.
Mary G
@ruemara: I think the fact that they use the word “proposal” is a bit of a tell that they are bluffing to juice up the midterm turnout. You know the ACLU is probably firing up the lawsuit machine already (remember the courts just ordered DACA reinstated) and California representatives will put up a brave fight too. Even Republicans as stupid as Nunes know it’s deadly for them .
When my housemate’s green card wasn’t renewed and expired, we all feared the worst. He had a bunch of speeding tickets and when he was directed to report to ICE with his passport, the family, me, and everyone here screamed “Don’t do it! It’s a tarp!” Since he’s a cockeyed optimist, he went right in, was given a year’s visa in his passport and the green card came in the mail a few weeks later.
A Ghost To Most
“We’re gonna give you a fair trial, followed by a first class hangin'”.
– Sheriff Cobb
“We’re gonna need more hemp farms for the rope”.
– AGTM
gene108
@Brachiator:
Look at how Republicans run things, cut taxes for the rich, and therefore don’t have money to provide basic services. Therefore Joe Average looks around and sees his kids schools cutting programs, or potholes not being fixed, and so assumes we got no money. Add this into right-wing media propaganda, the size of the Federal deficit, and state budget shortfalls, and the feeling that we’re broke just gets reinforced.
We sure don’t feel like the richest country on the planet, if you aren’t super rich.
And Joe Average will keep voting Republican because of his/her concern over abortion, guns, gays, and the best e-mail practices for government officials.
I don’t see a way to fix it. When we are prosperous, like in 2000 or 2016, people start thinking they want to “shake things up” or vote for the guy, you’d like to have a beer with and we get back into bad times.
low-tech cyclist
The one thing that has limited the damage the Trump Administration has done so far is that Trump’s henchmen are mostly as incompetent as they are evil. Stephen Miller’s the unfortunate exception.
cope
@CliosFanBoy: Indeed.
The Midnight Lurker
For crying’ out loud, why do every one of these fuckers come off like the bad guy in a B spy thriller from the fifties?!
ruemara
@schrodingers_cat: The rule is not in effect. The prejudices behind it are. People are already being screwed over by that. The rules change just codifies it.
@Mary G: I’ve never been disappointed in planning for the worst & hoping for the best. As the past not even 2 years have shown, things change, rapidly. Things are going to move quickly, so you need to have the resources to pivot.
Betty Cracker
@Mary G: That’s a great point — the GOP will certainly need to flush out every single bigot to vote in the midterms, despite having gerrymandered in a 7-point advantage. We’ve known all along TrumpCo would double-down on racism and xenophobia. Maybe this is a symbolic feint.
HeleninEire
Very excited. Better Call Saul starts season 4 here tonight. Has it begun in the US yet? NO SPOILERS!
My “spoiler” is that at the end of the last season everyone was talking about “what happened.” Oh no, we think it happened, they made it look like it happened, but we didn’t actually see it happen. Or did we??
Looking forward to finding out tonight.
FlipYrWhig
@MisterForkbeard:
They think, or want their idiot followers to think (slim difference, that), that Obamacare is free healthcare for black and brown people. This is what opposition to Obamacare has always been, except for the tiny percentage of purity bleaters on the “left” who think it sucks because neoliberalism or whatever their stupid shibboleth du jour happens to be.
PJ
@Martin: Wilbur Ross, who was Vice-Chair for the Bank of Cyprus (where Russian oligarchs and mafia stash a lot of their money), and who hired Josef Ackerman, former head of Deutsche Bank US, who laundered billions of Russian money and was the only major bank to loan to Trump while he was there, to be its Chairman.
https://www.ft.com/content/d0100c00-4d76-11e4-9683-00144feab7de More at the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/23/wilbur-ross-russian-deal-bank-of-cyprus-donald-trump-commerce-secretary
FlipYrWhig
@HeleninEire: It aired last night here. Lips sealed.
gene108
@Peale:
What if the kids are natural born U.S. citizens? You get denied citizenship?
I just wonder, when they start floating out the proposal to do away with birthright citizenship, because you know they want to.
Uncle Cosmo
I note the Recent Comments list has reappeared in the starboard sidebar. Can the Recent Posts list be far behind? One hopes not…
Now to restore the czechbox & the retention of name/email for the comments themselves. Not to mention the Edit function…
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Yes, you should probably at least know of a lawyer you can call. There are a lot of Bay Area legal types on this here site — I bet that one of them could make a referral. And there are a ton of immigrants rights groups that can help with cheap or even free representation.
As s_c is advising, get your application in ASAP and send it with a tracking number so you can see when it’s delivered.
StringOnAStick
@FlipYrWhig: Speaking of Obamacare being free care for the non-white population, that was what my dementia-addled mom tried to pick a fight with me about at every interaction the last time I saw her 3 years ago. She was obsessed, because FOX was obsessed and that was her only human interaction other than my dad. I posted the following below on David’s HC thread but that’s long past so I want to post it again here:
I was talking with my newly widowed 86 yo RW father this Sunday, like I always do now since he agreed to stop with his ranting politics if he wants me and my younger sister to stay in his life or not. Until our mom passed this June, he had been getting his health insurance through her federal retiree benefits, all of which ended when she died. He’s had to go on Medicare and got Part D and a supplemental policy (“That company recommended by that lefty retiree group”, meaning AARP). So here’s the question he asked me: “What is everyone complaining about with not getting Medicare, is it because they aren’t paying for it?” I explained that you aren’t eligible for Medicare until you turn 65, which was news to him; HE HAD NO IDEA YOU HAD TO BE 65 OR OLDER TO GET MEDICARE. He thought anyone at any age could sign up for it. All his life he had a white collar job (mining engineer) and insurance through those, or through my mom’s job with Social Security Administration. THANKS FOX NEWS, GOOD JOB!
nymofnyms
@Felanius Kootea:
It’s simple: The face-eating leopard continues to eat faces.
Betty Cracker
@HeleninEire: It premieres here in the States too — even though the UK won’t share all episodes of the Great British Bake-Off with us. I am also a HUGE fan of Saul. Not only are the acting and writing consistently wonderful, the cinematography is among the best on TV, IMO.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
I’m deeply skeptical of this. Hispanics are much more likely to be working class than non-Hispanic whites, and the available evidence suggests it’s economic issues that keep them aligned with the Democrats. If the Republicans really want to woo Hispanics, they’re going to have to give up on the class warfare as well as the identity politics, and the Republican party doesn’t really have much left if you eliminate those things.
HeleninEire
@Betty Cracker: I actually think it is better than Breaking Bad. And that’s saying something, cuz I LOVED Breaking Bad.
Calouste
@Peale: It’s not been reported that unemployment benefits are on the list. But I doubt Miller would pass up on that opportunity.
I agree with the people here who notice this has been going around since day 1, but it is now a headline on NBC. That means it either gets close to completion or the resistance is cranking up.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: USCIS also lets you fill a form that will tell you when your application reaches the appropriate office. They will send it by snail mail and email both.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
It reflects their zero sum worldview. Less citizenship for you means more for me.
mr gravity
@The Midnight Lurker: Peer pressure?
MisterForkbeard
@Brachiator: Ack! I missed the “if anyone in your household was ever on Obamacare we’ll fuck with your citizenship”. Jesus H Christ, what a bunch of monsters.
schrodingers_cat
@Calouste: Having this “news” pop up also serves as a deterrent to GC holders who may be thinking of applying for citizenship, makes them pause and think twice. Should I, shouldn’t I?
Elizabelle
@zhena gogolia: That’s the thing.
They’re illegitimate, NO ONE elected Stephen Miller, and they’re still taking a wrecking ball to the place. Prison sentences for corruption, and for the abuses that occurred due to their actions. Long ones. And severest of penalties for treason.
Happy Birthday, Robert Mueller. Keep working, Team Mueller.
Roger Moore
@gene108:
The idea has been floated for quite a while. There are a variety of inane arguments for why the clear-cut definition of citizenship in the 14th Amendment doesn’t really mean what the obvious reading of the text says. Funny that these people are from the same party that touts originalism as the right way to interpret the Constitution.
MisterForkbeard
@Martin: The sad thing is that this isn’t surprising for anyone in Trump’s cabinet, and most people probably won’t really care. Because the entire administration is just that awful – it’s like finding out that instead of murdering 20 people, somebody murdered 21 people. It’s bad, but not shocking and it doesn’t change the overall opinion of the murderer.
Kay
Charming. Such nice people, the MAGA hat wearers.
The “voting location manager” is a civic-minded person who makes about 100 dollars for a 14 hour day. The voting location manager is also correct- voters aren’t supposed to wear campaign signs.
Trump voters are special- they (and only they) get to break the rules.
schrodingers_cat
@gene108: Yes, it would affect those parents too.
MisterForkbeard
@Roger Moore:
I could actually agree with this. The problem is that while the stereotypical hispanic isn’t a bad fit for the GOP in “many” ways such as relatively religious conservatism, they’re a good fit for the Democrats in many more ways (such as family/community support, support for lower-classes, relative lack of racism, etc.)
What it means overall is that if Republicans got their shit together and stop being amazingly racist assholes, they could probably snag some percentage of the hispanic vote. Not the majority, but enough to cause issues. Of course, not being openly racist assholes would probably also lose them the support of their most fervent white dudes, so I don’t think they can do that even if they themselves weren’t racist assholes.
ARoomWithAMoose
@StringOnAStick:
One of the real impressive bits of multi-generational propaganda the right wing and anti-taxers have really succeeded on is to conflate Social Security and Medicare with the various Social Security Disability programs and Medicaid respectively. There really needs to be education about how the former two work in conjunction with their trust funds and those two line items on your paycheck (the actuarial bean counters think that’s the share you’ll receive back if you live as long as they think you will).
Mike in DC
Is a single elected Hispanic Republican going to even clear their throat about this bs? Nikki Haley?
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
That’s why they voted for him — they started losing their special VIP privileges and they were pissed at being treated like any other US citizen instead of a special snowflake.
To these people, saying, “Respect is something you earn, not something inherent to your social position,” is a declaration of war against them personally.
Kay
So funny. They wouldn’t have known to vote at all were it not for the anti-O’Connor ads.
schrodingers_cat
@Mike in DC: Nikki Haley has Sikh heritage and her parents are from India, She is not Hispanic.
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
“Sir, can you remove your candidate hat?”
“No. You’ll have to rip it off my head”
No one treats poll workers like this. People bring you food (a lot of food- you eat all day) and you get thanked constantly.
Most people are embarrassed that they don’t know the rules and rush to comply, thinking everyone else knows what to do except them :)
StringOnAStick
@ARoomWithAMoose: Yes, my dad has always been very right wing and until he started his own one man company he got health insurance through the corporation he worked for. Once he started his own firm, he and my mother used her federal employee health insurance, without which they would have been entirely screwed over the last 2 decades when his business was feast or famine. The fact that he didn’t know that Medicare is for people 65 plus shocked me, but then again since he was an early Limbaugh adopter and lives entirely inside the FOX bubble, why would he know anything about anything, especially health care? As my husband said when I told him of this conversation: “he has no idea what Medicare is but he’s more than willing to vote for eliminating it for his children”. Yep.
rikyrah
@Roger Moore:
GWB got 41% of the Hispanic Vote in 2004.
41%
There was a reason for that.
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
Polling places are to me like courthouses- there’s a kind of civic religion going on in there and people intuitively get that they have to behave. It’s funny because you can’t wear your ballcap in a courtroom either.
Who raises these people? Why don’t they know how to act?
chris
@Betty Cracker: Totally OT. You’re a Boxer person and you live in Florida, is it true that they can’t stand the heat?
I ask because my neighbour is mad at me. He asked me to look after his dog for a day so I took the Absolute Unit (that’s my size 11 boot for scale) for an hour walk. Dog and I had a great time but owner is quite huffy even though he never mentioned and I didn’t see the beast’s aversion to the heat. They do baby the beast more than a little.
Also, “human whitening strip.” You’re a treasure!
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: The real question: Why the fuck did they let him inside with a MAGA hat on in contravention of the law? Especially if he’s belligerent. Call the damn cops on the asshole snowflake.
Kay
@MisterForkbeard:
Oh, it’s hard. I’m sort of with you – I was a rule person as a “poll judge”- but they’re not cops and they do the job out of pure good will. A lot of them just aren’t aggressive enough to get into it with people.
I of course love a good fight so I was quite stern :)
Peae
@Mike in DC: The people most effected by this can’t vote. They aren’t citizens and many of them never intended to become citizens. Unfortunately, the people most impacted by this are also poor legal immigrants. There’s millions of those, but since they can’t vote and even if they became citizens, probably wouldn’t the hispanic GOP politicians have no reason to stand up. Much more to lose than to gain.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay:
Hyenas.
Kay
@MisterForkbeard:
It’s a nice thing- the voluntary compliance with the tenets of the civic religion. My favorite was when people would rush to turn a candidate t shirt inside out. Just take it off right there and put it back on, outside-in. It’s not angry or nasty. They’re following the rule.
Elizabelle
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I think hyenas are actually some of nature’s best parents.
Who raises these people?
Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.
terraformer
The sooner these people are relegated to the dustbin of history, the better.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: Right. I’m hesitant to escalate in situations like this, but I’m ALSO not going to lie down. So it starts off with a “Oh! No one’s allowed to wear or bring any political messaging near the polls. Can you remove your hat and put it in your pocket, please? Or you can give it to me and I’ll put it away and give it back to you when you’re finished.”
Followed by “Then you don’t get to enter the premises. Because that would be illegal.”
Followed by: “Sir, according to the law I have to block you from entering. If you insist on doing so including threatening poll workers, I’ll call the cops and tell them we’ve been physically threatened by someone who’s refusing to obey the law and is trying to coerce us.”
At which point, I’m either punched or the guy gives up. I’ve applied similar work when volunteering at large events with drunk people – you can get them to cooperate by letting them know you’re sort of on their side and willing to help them avoid consequences if they work with you.. but that you HAVE to call the authorities if they cause an issue. If you don’t, it’s both your asses.
shell
So, what was the rationale for pushing this new policy? Or dont they even bother with reasons anymore?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Kay:
If I had been the voting location manager I would have been like, “Ok” and ripped the hat off the fucker’s head.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: I really need to volunteer at the polls. I just haven’t been able to with my unpredictable work schedule, and in 2016 we had a baby arrive literally at 8PM PST on election night – no way was I going to volunteer when the baby was due.
But no reason not to volunteer NOW, if they’ll let me.
Roger Moore
@MisterForkbeard:
This was more or less what GWB did himself. He tried to tone down the racism* and actively courted Hispanic voters; unsurprisingly, he won a substantially larger share of the Hispanic vote than any Republican candidate in a long time. It was a key difference in helping him stay close enough to steal the 2000 election.
GWB and Trump represent opposite approaches to the way white people can deal with their approaching minority status. Trump represents the “stand aside history shouting ‘NO!'” school. He and his followers are trying to do everything they can to stop demographic change in its tracks and, if possible, roll it back. GWB represents the adaptation school. He and people like him are willing to expand our concept of whiteness to include light skinned Hispanics**, thereby expanding the “white” population to be big enough it won’t become a minority.
I’m not overly fond of either approach- we’d be better off giving up on the concept of race altogether- and they are both destructive in their own ways. Trump’s approach is obviously creating a crisis, but we have a better chance of really fixing the status of minorities in our society if we manage to overcome that crisis. GWB’s approach avoids the crisis, but only at the cost of continuing discrimination against those minorities who don’t eventually get reclassified as whites.
*And, to his credit, not just about Hispanics. He resisted the temptation to demonize Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11, which is one of the few areas where I think he did a good job.
**And, I think, Jews and Arabs. I’m not sure of their views of South and East Asians.
Ella in New Mexico
While this has been on their agenda from day one, it’s not been determined to be legal (once you’re here legally you are eligible for a few services–not many but some, and certainly your American citizen children have a right to public benefits–so they did nothing wrong by benefitting from them) and is why they’re saying “looking at” vs. just doing it. And the bull fucking shit about pulling naturalized citizen’s citizenships if they think they violated some law? Yeah, good luck with that losers. Melania will be first in line, so I don’t think that’ll please Orange Julius. And for what it’s worth, I don’t think Congress would go along with these two policy ideas for very long, either. So please, go ahead, Miller you fucktard, try it and brace yourself for the sound of deafening war screams of a thousand civil rights lawyers coming at you down Pennsylvania Avenue.
ANYWAY, given that, I’m just kinda wondering what reason the White House has for dragging this “make the libs look at the shiny new object” out today…
Jeffro
@Martin: @PJ: @Roger Moore: All of this and more.
It’s not hard to tie a narrative together – so easy, in fact, that even “Democrats In Disarray” could do it! ;)
Rick Gates, Wilbur Ross, and the lure of Trumpov Corruption:
AY-MEN
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: Well, possibly so, but I doubt they teach their young’ns about the finer point of etiquette.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
A year of learning the system of checks and balances they feared for so long has no actual teeth to stop them.
They’re going full Plaid with the Fascism.
Calouste
@terraformer: We thought that happened in ’45, but it turns out it was the recycle bin.
TenguPhule
@Jeffro:
Plenty of people around the country are falling into this sinkhole every day.
They see him getting away with everything up to and probably including murder and think to themselves “Me too!”
Rome is being sacked.
TenguPhule
@Ella in New Mexico:
They’ve already done it. They’re still doing it.
Its not a joke. They’ve started quietly purging whoever they can.
Mai Naem mobile
You can’t use welfare as a green card holder for the most part anyway. And it basically means you only use as an absolute last resort.
TenguPhule
@Roger Moore:
White enough to tolerate at social occasions, but too smart to be allowed into the Club.
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Hyenas at least have the decency to eat what they kill.
Domestic short hair tabby (fka vheidi)
@Mike in DC: I though she was indian-american?
TenguPhule
@Kay:
I have worked as a poll worker and I assure you this isn’t true nationally.
Mike in DC
@Domestic short hair tabby (fka vheidi): Yes. But the child of immigrants, as I recall. It’s not just latinos affected by these policies. It’s anyone who emigrated here in the past 20 years or so. This should be hugely unpopular with 1st and 2nd generation citizens.
TenguPhule
@Martin:
1) Hasn’t hit the SC yet. Once they do…..
2) Toothless. Republicans are only allowing non-binding measures of protest. So they can distance themselves from Trump to the media while actually not doing anything.
Brachiator
@Mike in DC:
Nikki Haley, not Hispanic.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: I would LOVE to have been invited to rip a stupid hat off a stupid ass’s head. I guess that’s why I don’t volunteer for stuff, because I would have totally fucking done it, and it would have been An Incident.
Mike in DC
@Brachiator: But a child of immigrants, see my response above. And someone with alleged presidential aspirations.
brettvk
@Mike in DC: Nikki is of South Asian extraction; birth name Nimrata, daughter of Ajit Singh Randhawa, and Raj Kaur Randhawa.
JAFD
It can get crazier. Was the Newark municipal elections, couple of months ago, I was working at polling place in firehouse. Minivan from the fireman’s union, festooned with campaign posters for candidate they were supporting, came and parked outside (NJ law – no electioneering within 100 feet of polling place), and the fire crew working at that firehouse came down to shoot the breeze…
And another candidate comes by and says “That shouldn’t be here”, and I say “How the heck am I going to kick the firemen out of their firehouse ???”
(This city was founded by a group of Scotsmen, and the best way I can think of to describe Newark politics is a transplantation of Highland clan feuds, extended over generations. Told us at the poll worker training sessions “You Newark people, municipal elections coming up – gotta know the rules and be on your toes – the races for governor and president ain’t nothing like them.”)
Kelly
Here’s my standard vote by mail solves many problems comment.
MisterForkbeard
@Jeffro: I think this gets summed up as “Trump promotes a culture or environment where corruption is accepted”, which is one of those true things that gets dismissed by a lot of people. “Trump didn’t perform corruption so he didn’t perform a crime. Created an ‘environment where corruption is accepted’ is just whiners who can’t prove anything.”
Millard Filmore
@MisterForkbeard:
[ … ] and then you say “Oh! So you want ME to break the law and let you in?”
JAFD
@MisterForkbeard: Drop by Board of Elections (or whatever they call it in your neighborhood) office, in county courthouse or municipal office building. If they don’t have notice posted “Election Day Workers Wanted”, I’ll eat my hat
Brachiator
@Mike in DC:
This policy, if it becomes law, pushes Republicans to embrace the idea that only rich immigrants matter. “Merit” based immigration is the closest that Trump and his people are coming to explicit race-based exclusion (for now). The presumption is that these rules will make drastically reduce the number of shitty people from shit hole countries. This in turn sets the standard policy position for any future presidential aspirant.
Not all Indian immigrants are poor. Those that are would be shit out of luck, along with any other group. Haley, Bobby Jindal, and Dinesha D’Souza also represent an assimilationist wing. All three are Christian, even if their parents were not.
Mnemosyne
@MisterForkbeard:
And yet the biggest reason a certain powerful guy at the Giant Evil Corporation was let go seems to be not that his personal actions were as bad as, say, Weinstein’s, but that his personal actions led others at the GEC to create a hostile work environment for women and minorities because they felt he had given tacit permission for them to do so by his personal actions.
This is why companies charged with sexual or racial harassment are held liable for what they allowed, either implicitly or explicitly, not just for what a specific person did.
But Her Emails!!!
@Kay:
Mwaa haaa haaa
But Her Emails!!!
@Roger Moore:
The stupid thing about this is given our rates for population growth and the size of our country, the exact opposite is almost certainly true. More citizens means more for everyone on average even with all the challenges posed.
JAFD
@TenguPhule: Thanked _constantly_, no.
Brought food – lawdy, back in ’90’s was working polls in Philly, in recreation center with polls for four precincts, enough goodies you could skip cooking for rest of week…
The custard tarts from the Portugese bakeries of the Ironbound, tho…. scrumptious!
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: From his name, I would venture a guess that Dinesh D’ Souza and his parents are Roman Catholic Goans.
aliasofwestgate
i’m an adopted child of an immigrant and a US citizen. My Dad was the US citizen, my mom is a canadian immigrant. The fun bit is i’m multiracial, born in Chicago before i was brought over to MI by my biological family for a private adoption. So yeah. One way or another those immigration declarations are going to effect Mom. What brunt she doesn’t bear, i’ll likely run into just by dint of being non-white and female. That i hate this administration intensely, goes without saying. Today, i vote in the MI primaries. Next step, Novembers ballot for the midterms. My mom immigrated here in the 70s, is a permanent resident and has no desire to be a US citizen. Thank all the gods she renewed her GC when Obama was still in office. It would be much riskier even now, even though she’s caucasian and has been here 40+ years.
Kay
@TenguPhule:
Really? That’s too bad. I confess it never occurred to me when I was just voting to feed the poll workers, but people seem to do it. One year I got a huge bag of candy circus peanuts from an old man. Just me. Handed to me.
I was delighted! Candy made for 7 year olds is my favorite food.
SFAW
@TenguPhule:
HOWEVER!!!! Their brows are furrowed ever-so-much-more deeply when they say “Tsk tsk” now, so that shows they’re serious and they really mean it and this time will be different and LOOK OVER THERE AT THOSE ILLEGALS TAKING JOBS AWAY!!!!
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: Naturalized citizens vote D by large margins. So if you stop them before they can vote, its a win-win for Rs.
@Mai Naem mobile: Children and the elderly are an exception to that rule.
MisterForkbeard
@JAFD: The County Registrar is where I’d go. Unforunately, it’s about a 30 minute drive away. Luckily, I can call them and ask. :)
rikyrah
@Kay:
One of my favorite stories from 2008 was a couple of elderly White women who were standing in line, and they had on Obama t-shirts. They were told that they would have to get out of line, because, no campaign stuff was allowed. Some big guys took off their jackets so that the ladies could cover their t-shirts, and they could vote. The guys admitted that they were there for McCain, but they didn’t want to see the women turned away.
TenguPhule
@Kay: We had to bring our own bagged lunch. And water. The poll places had no AC because it was in the High School gym or old style classrooms. And this is in Hawaii. We were there for 14 hours from before the sun rose till after it had set.
People were polite, but no thanks and no snacks other then what we brought ourselves.
It was exhausting, but I thought it was worth it as part of helping people with their civic duty.
SFAW
@aliasofwestgate:
This is one of the more depressing comments I have read. Not so much because of the possible consequences your family faces — which is/are bad enough — but because Stephen Fucking Miller and his fucking Nazi henchmen are now instilling this level of fear in SO many people who should not have anything to fear.
Yet another step on the road to fascism. A Democratic Congress can’t come soon enough. Stephen Miller sent to a black site can’t happen soon enough. Shitgibbon and his crew tried for treason can’t happen soon enough.
kindness
Miller brings to mind Henry II:
Will someone not rid me of this turbulent priest? – so say we all.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Yep.
rikyrah
@SFAW:
Yep.
I just got an email from an old high school friend who wants to have lunch while in town. She and her family were among the last to get out of Saigon when it fell. Her family came with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Her husband’s family too.
I’ve known immigrants since I was in grammar school. They want a better life. Period.
aliasofwestgate
@SFAW: I keep doing what little i can for support of things. Voting is imperative, and my mom always asks me about the current elections even if she can’t vote here since she isn’t naturalized. My dad always voted when he was alive, and i do the same. I know for a fact that he’d hate Dolt 45 as much or more than i do, too. All this shit adds unnecessary stress on me, as mom’s caretaker. Otherwise, we’re okay. I’m just rebelling in the ways i can while keeping our safety in mind. I do not hesitate to say that my geekery and fandom keep me sane, in the meantime. Along with coming here to keep track of politics and hang out, and being online and talking to my various friends around the country who are just as angry and motivated.
Felony Govt
Most of the time the news makes me angry. This news makes me overwhelmingly sad. I’m the granddaughter of immigrants, my husband is a naturalized citizen. As rikyrah said, I’ve been around immigrants my whole life. How did we get here?
TenguPhule
@Felony Govt:
We didn’t throw Nixon in jail, or Reagan or Bush Sr. We didn’t convict and execute Bush Jr. Cheney and Rove for Crimes against Humanity. And so here we are. The final stop at the bottom of a mountain of shit.
Brachiator
A recent Axios story on Trump’s poll numbers and immigration
Yutsano
@rikyrah: I have a similar story. My grandparents sponsored a Vietnamese family who were also one of the last to get out. They were under even more persecution risk because they were Catholic. We were raised around all six of their kids to the point my brother and I were starting to pick up Vietnamese. They wanted nothing more than a better existence. What Miller and the Dolt45 administration is doing is beyond a shanda.
A Ghost To Most
@TenguPhule:
This, plus the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine.
EBT
@TenguPhule: There is always more, and it is always worse.
Roger Moore
@TenguPhule:
And we’ve done a terrible job of prosecuting tax cheats, business hucksters, money launderers, and white collar criminals more generally. Trump and a substantial portion of his cabinet would be in prison if we had and enforced reasonable laws about financial crimes.
JAFD
@TenguPhule: If at some point I am working at another Election Day like last November…
where the weather had gone from 70 F the previous Friday to 30 on Tuesday morn, and I still needed to get winter clothes out, and was wearing every sweater I could find…
the firehouse door was open for the voters at 6, but the radiant heaters in the firehouse hadn’t been on since March, weren’t working, and the repairman wouldn’t be around till noon…
I will be thinking of you poor folk in Hawaii with heartfelt sympathy ;-)
Aloha from these Atlantic shores !
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore: I think (and hope) the corrupteers have brought about their own doom by elevating themselves to government positions.
And yes, we need to fund the IRS and court systems and really go after these corrupt and criminal types. Make the tax code work for the average American, not just those wealthy enough to purchase the government.
@TenguPhule: I know death and violence is your usual schtick, but I think executing George W. Bush would have torn the country apart. Seriously. I am good with The Hague, and a long sentence for lying us into a war that resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, military and civilians alike. GW Bush would have had plenty of time for painting; only question is where.
It pains me that Cheney still walks this earth, although I’d be good with him in prison for a long time too. We never hear of him traveling, though. Is he still in the US? Maybe he’s in some compound in Paraguay. Who cares.
Jeffro
@MisterForkbeard: Maybe. I think most people get “the fish rots from the head” or “birds of a feather flock together” or “lie down with dogs, get Scott Pruit and Wilbur Ross”. We’ll see.
Mike in DC
@Brachiator: It all cycles back to the 2012 RNC post-mortem, which exhorted the GOP to embrace diversity and soften its line on immigration, among other things. Trump 2016 shitcanned all that and doubled down. He won, but with 46% of the vote. The nativists(read: white supremacists) currently have a stranglehold on the Republican party, and it will take a series of 2-3 consecutive losses by wide margins to change that. They’ve got to lose badly in 2018, 2020, and, this is the challenging part, 2022(it’s sufficient that they fail to retake either chamber of congress). If you have this outcome, the odds of a candidate who doesn’t genuflect to white supremacists succeeding in the primaries improves considerably.
If we beat them by narrow margins, I think they will double down and try to max out on voter suppression (more than they are already).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The Washington Post just did a survey of the Trump base and the typical Trump supportor is white, male, middle class and over 60. Not exactly Steel Mill workers, is it?
The subtext to “illegals are taking our jobs” is “people I don’t approve of – immigrants, hipsters, women, AAs, liberals, intellectuals, atheists are taking me and friends jobs when we retire” and that something to keep in mind with child confiscation and now citizenship revocation – the immigrants are the just gateway but their real target is US citizens they don’t like.
SFAW
@Brachiator:
Interesting. I thought I had heard somewhere — long ago — that the Jesuits were the more-educated, intelligent branch of Christianity/Catholicism. I guess D’Felon D’Fuckwad disproves that idea.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Fixed it for ya.
Tokyokie
Back in the early 1970s, I had the pleasure of working with an Irishman who was a Protestant living in the Republic. He had nothing but unbridled contempt for his co-religionists in Ulster. “Doncha see, they’re afraid that if they lose power, what they’ve been doin for hundreds of years to the Catholics will be done to them.” He was quick to point out that no Irish Catholic had ever done him harm because of his religion and that he figured Ulster Protestants’ fears were completely baseless. His views have colored mine toward ethnic relations ever since.
Which brings us to Stephen Miller. He’s doing horrible things to those he considers Untermenschen, going far beyond what a death camp Sondercommando Kapo might have done. But no matter how cruel and extensive his actions are, they will never be enough for him to join the Übermenschen, it’ll just mean he’ll be the last one lynched. Maybe that’s all he hopes for in this life.
Mnemosyne
@Tokyokie:
IMO, there’s a definite element of self-loathing in all of Miller’s actions. I wish someone could have gotten him hooked up with a good dominatrix when he hit adolescence so he could have gotten all of the humiliation and degradation his little heart desired without publicly inflicting his psychological problems on the rest of us.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
Everyone wants a better life. Even those who can afford to pay for several thousand better lives want better lives. Most immigrants don’t mind earning that better life. Most rich fuckers don’t mind stealing those several thousand lives to get what they already have.
The Moar You Know
@TenguPhule: It was the failure to jail Nixon that was the end. It really was. All the rest comes from that. Would have broken the back of the Southern Strategy as a side benefit.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Shitstick D’Stupid is the exception that proves the rule.
Teddys Person
@Mnemosyne: Your comment gave me a much needed chuckle this afternoon.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Brachiator:
So essentially the idiots who approve of him really only care about the nativism, is what I’m getting from those numbers. Is that right?
Gex
@Roger Moore: I think the area they intended to woo Hispanics was culture war stuff – abortion and gays. But alas they are too addicted to their racism to take advantage of whatever overlap there may be in these areas.
Elizabelle
TPM: WSJ: Cohen Under Investigation For Tax Fraud In New York
Since it’s kind of slow here, it’s fun reading the TPM reader comments. Among them:
Steeplejack (phone)
@Elizabelle:
They’re ordering conspiracy yarn in industrial quantities.
Brachiator
@SFAW:
Jesuits were also intended to be the most fanatical and devoted branch of Catholicism. But there have also always been Jesuits who were liberal and able to see beyond the narrow confines of their religion.
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
They are a strange, frightened bunch who see the bigotry that offers as their best hope of maintaining their status. But consider the irony. Trump’s merit based immigration favors elites who would look down on and despise the non college educated white rural Trump voter. Trump voters are the ultimate suckers.
Roger Moore
@Gex:
And I think they wouldn’t have done nearly as well with that as they expect. The whole culture war is tied up too closely with white conservative Christian identity to have the same appeal to people outside it. Yes, gays and abortion have some appeal to non-whites, but only whites who have undergone years or decades of conditioning will give the kind of Pavlovian response the Republicans are counting on.
Roger Moore
@Steeplejack (phone):
I’d bet the FBI has fancy software to track the connections rather than using conspiracy yarn. It helps keep track of the really convoluted cases.
The Lodger
@schrodingers_cat: Let me tell you about a friend of mine who was born near Goa. He was converted and baptized by a Portuguese priest and took his last name, keeping his Indian first name. I was always under the impression D’Souza had a similar story. His parents didn’t have to be Catholics.