Entering the contemporary art space located just a few minutes’ walk from my home in the Hudson Valley last fall, I had no idea what to expect. Gallerist Jack Shainman had just opened an exhibition by the Botswana-born artist Meleko Mokgosi. Entitled “Democratic Intuition,” Mokgosi’s opus fills all three floors of the stunning 30,000-square-foot building called The School. The artist’s massive paintings feature jarring mash-ups of people, places, objects, and animals that draw from the lives of the people of southern Africa. To write that the exhibition fills the space barely captures how the paintings burst off of the walls, confronting viewers with image overload and leaving the visitor with the challenge of coping with the unexpected discomfort the images conjure.

Mokgosi’s paintings are gorgeous, with saturated colors that sting the eyes. At least one of the pictorial pieces is paired with a canvas covered with dense, hand-written verbiage that maps the artist’s philosophical explorations. In that piece and others, Mokgosi makes visible his desire to reveal in painstaking detail his underlying thought process. But unlike the work of many other contemporary artists, Mokgosi’s powerful imagery requires no verbal explanation. In truth, Mokgosi gives the game away in a modestly scaled, straight-on self-portrait that the gallery’s curators had the wisdom to hang in a light-filled back-hall space that allows the achingly honest and unsparing self-image to stand on its own.

It is there, in the quiet of that space, that Mokgosi’s intention is laid bare. The artist’s eyes, staring straight ahead, burn into the viewers’ eyes with unblinking confrontation. Mokgosi’s expression seems to hide a complex mixture of tightly held messages. A polite invitation is not one of them. Instead, his expression signals a demand to those of us who take for granted our place in a predominantly white, privileged, first-world society to step outside our self-imposed indifference to the lives of minorities, people of color, the poor, and the disadvantaged. Mokgosi implores us to open our eyes. “We are here,” he demands. “Look at us. See us.”

Mokgosi’s paintings were still churning around in my brain when I happened upon reporting and devastating video footage from ProPublica about the tragic death of Carlos Gregoria Hernandez Vasquez. Carlos, a sixteen-year-old Guatemalan taken into custody by ICE, died of flu-related complications in the bathroom of a quarantine cell at a border station in Weslaco, Texas, in the early hours of May 20, 2019. The crime — and the shame — is that Carlos didn’t die because he was ill with a 103-degree fever. He died because he was denied proper care. He died because the guards at the facility acted as if his life was of so little value that they ignored instructions to check on his condition every few hours. He died because the border-patrol station lacked the proper facilities, personnel, and adequate funds to care for sick, quarantined children. He died because the Trump administration made the cynical and cruel decision to punish children like Carlos whose parents’ only crime was to make the heart-rending decision to send their loved ones alone on a dangerous journey to the U.S. border in a desperate bid to find a safer life.

Carlos is one of twenty-three immigrants – including two children under the age of ten — who have died in custody since the Trump administration came into office. In the end, the sad truth is that Carlos Gregoria Hernandez Vasquez and the others died because we just didn’t bother to see them.

Meleko Mokgosi’s “Democratic Intuition.” Saturdays, 11am to 6pm, until Spring 2020 at The School I Jack Shainman Gallery, 25 Broad Street, Kinderhook, New York.

The post A powerful art exhibit, a death in Texas appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It’s been a long and contentious eighteen years since the first Dream Act was introduced in Congress in 2001. The issue of providing a path to legal status for the undocumented youth who were brought to this country as children and grew up here has become one of Washington’s most enduring stalemates. For some of the 1.8 million Dreamers, who have grown up in the shadow of uncertainty and the emotional strain of often over-heated—and sometimes ugly—political sparring, the waiting and hoping has become a burden too heavy to bear.

Many have given up hope. One of the untold stories of this failure to acknowledge the value of these young people and their contribution to American society is that it’s estimated that, since 2005, as many as 500,000 Dreamers between the ages of 18 to 35 have given up, left their families, their homes, and their American dream and returned to Mexico. Remember presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s musings about “self-deportation”? Sadly, those musings seem to be coming true.

To understand the pressures of living with the uncertainties of the vagaries of this political game of now-you-have-it-now-you-don’t, it’s important to take a look back to recall how hopes have been buoyed and then shattered in an unending cycle of dashed dreams. In 2001, even with the support of then-president George W. Bush, the Republican majority in Congress blocked relief for the Dreamers. In 2006, Democrats took back control of the House and Senate. Even with the support of George W. Bush, the Dream Act came up short. In 2010, a version of the Dream Act passed in the House of Representatives but failed in the Senate, with just five votes short of the necessary sixty votes to allow the bill to proceed to a vote.

In 2012, President Obama, his hopes dashed for a bill he could sign to definitively end the burden these young people had been forced to live with, created the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program. DACA granted qualifying undocumented youth temporary permission—for renewable two-year periods—to remain legally in the U.S. and to legally be employed. 800,000 young people came out of the shadows and signed on.

In July 2017, another version of the Dream Act was introduced in the Senate by Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) and in the House by Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) and Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). Let’s be clear. The reason the Dream Act and its various versions have been introduced as legislation so many times over the years is because the concept of granting legal status to Dreamers is supported by the overwhelming majority of American voters. Still, in September of 2017, Donald Trump—in yet another gut punch to majority opinion—announced that his administration was ending the DACA program.

Obama speaks out

Former President Obama couldn’t remain silent in the face of this latest in a long line of cruel reversals. Obama issued a stark and passionate rebuke to Trump’s spurious targeting of young people—young people who contribute to their communities, serve in the military, and prove through the lives they’re living that they have earned a path to legal status.

Here was Obama’s plea:

“These Dreamers are Americans in their hearts, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper. They were brought to this country by their parents, sometimes even as infants. They may not know a country besides ours. They may not even know a language besides English. They often have no idea they’re undocumented until they apply for a job, or college, or a driver’s license.

Over the years, politicians of both parties have worked together to write legislation that would have told these young people—our young people—that if your parents brought you here as a child, if you’ve been here a certain number of years, and if you’re willing to go to college or serve in our military, then you’ll get a chance to stay and earn your citizenship. And for years while I was President, I asked Congress to send me such a bill.

That bill never came. And because it made no sense to expel talented, driven, patriotic young people from the only country they know solely because of the actions of their parents, my administration acted to lift the shadow of deportation from these young people, so that they could continue to contribute to our communities and our country. . . Some 800,000 young people stepped forward, met rigorous requirements, and went through background checks. And America grew stronger as a result.

But today, that shadow has been cast over some of our best and brightest young people once again. To target these young people is wrong — because they have done nothing wrong. It is self-defeating—because they want to start new businesses, staff our labs, serve in our military, and otherwise contribute to the country we love.”

Reflecting the views of the majority of Americans toward the Dreamers, Obama called on Americans to reaffirm their patriotic sense of decency:

“Ultimately, this is about basic decency. This is about whether we are a people who kick hopeful young strivers out of America, or whether we treat them the way we’d want our own kids to be treated. It’s about who we are as a people — and who we want to be.”

What Dreamers say

In the video below, we meet Dreamers who speak honestly about their sense of loss, their frustration, and their deep reluctance to give up on their American dreams. You’ll meet Joshua Casillas, an accomplished student who dreamed of becoming a doctor in his hometown of Houston, Texas, but instead left home to study medicine at a university in Mexico. For Joshua, the constant stress of the threat of deportation had become too much to bear. As he says, “the future I dreamed of was over.”

We also meet Daniel Arenas, who grew up in South Carolina but, at the age of eighteen, returned to Mexico and founded a non-profit to help other Dreamers pursue their education and find job opportunities.

We also meet Paola Morales, an honors student who reluctantly left her friends and family to go to college in Mexico.

When Dreamers like Joshua, Daniel, and Paola—young people with extraordinary talent, intelligence, drive, and ambition—leave America behind, they are not the losers. America is.

The post Going Back: The Untold Story of Dreamers Returning to Mexico appeared first on Occasional Planet.

On December 8, 2018, seven-year-old Jakeli Caal, a Guatemalan refugee who endured a grueling journey with her father to seek asylum in the U.S., died at a children’s hospital in El Paso after awaiting transport by bus to a border-patrol station in New Mexico.  Sixteen days later, on Christmas eve, eight-year-old Felipe Gomez Alonzo died while in U.S. custody after displaying flu-like symptoms and being held for observation for just ninety minutes at a local hospital. Jakeli and Felipe—and the unimaginable grief and trauma their families have suffered–have become tragic symbols for the legions of refugees who continue every day to suffer the indignities and cruelty of Donald Trump’s morally indefensible zero-tolerance immigration policy.

Does anyone believe that the deaths of Jakeli and Felipe were inevitable? I certainly do not. I have no doubt that their deaths could have been prevented—if only. If only the system had not been stretched to the limit by a policy designed to punish rather than aid. If only there had been better training of border employees or more medical staff on the ground. If only there had been more empathy among those charged with the daily management of the facilities where refugees are being held. If only there had been more respect for the humanity of desperate families unfairly maligned and demonized as criminals by government officials at the highest levels.

There may be uncertainty and unanswered questions about the deaths of Jakeli and Felipe. There should be no uncertainty about who is responsible for the tragedy. It is certainly not the families, whom Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had the audacity to blame for embarking on their desperate journeys to save the lives of their children from violence and poverty. The blame lies squarely on the shoulders of the cynical architects of the policy—Donald Trump, former attorney general Jeff Sessions, and Trump whisperer Stephen Miller.

Sadly, zero-tolerance and the separation of refugee children from their families are not one-off examples of the cruelty and harm this administration is inflicting. There are a host of other Trump-era policies that seem intentionally designed to create a climate of uncertainty and fear across the country—and even across the world. Consider these:

• the partial Muslim travel ban that denies the reunification of families and prevents deserving students, business people, and artists from contributing their talents and experience to enrich our society
• the reinstatement of the global gag rule that denies the neediest women in developing nations the reproductive health services they so desperately need, resulting in unnecessary injury and death
• the signing of a law that weakens the firearms background- check system and undermines enforcement of the law that prohibits individuals with serious mental illness from possessing firearms
• the reinterpretation of a law that now makes it easier for fugitives to purchase and possess firearms
• the blocking of commonsense policy for legalizing the status of 800,000 Dreamers
• the thirty-five-day federal government shut down that caused untold financial hardship for 800,000 federal workers
• the cancellation of support for the United Nations Palestinian fund, which provided funds for secular education
• the holding back of funds specifically intended to publicize the Affordable Care Act and the resulting decrease in the numbers of insured.
• the halting of rules limiting power plants from dumping toxins in waterways and the resultant health risks
• the threat of immigration enforcement in Latino communities and the dissemination of anti-immigrant rhetoric that make immigrant survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault fearful of contacting law enforcement for help. 

As citizens of what we hope is a just society, isn’t it our duty to speak out and to declare zero tolerance for the policies and conditions that led to the deaths of Jakeli and Felipe? When will we say “no more” to the suffering inflicted on so many nameless and innocent people by a host of Trump-era policies and executive orders?

We are better than this. It is time to declare that we will no longer be silent as our government perpetrates trauma and fear in our name.

When Cruelty Is the Message

In this video, reporter Adam Serwer posits that for Donald Trump and his base “cruelty is the point” and that it’s Trump’s penchant for reveling in insults and cruelty toward those his supporters hate and fear that sustains the unbreakable bond between the president and his most ardent supporters.

“Trump Thrives on Cruelty” is part of The Atlantic’s ongoing, provocative video series called “The Atlantic Argument.”

The post Zero tolerance for Trump’s cruel immigration policies appeared first on Occasional Planet.

At a recent town hall meeting in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took a tough question about Canada’s immigration policies. Trudeau’s low-key and respectful reply to the obvious anti-Muslim bias of the questioner’s comments was a deeply depressing lesson in the contrast between the hysterical and factually deprived rantings of the Trump administration on immigrants and immigration and the intelligent tenor of the discussion by our neighbors to the north.

To say that Trudeau’s off-the-cuff erudition and informed grasp of the nuances of immigration policy are light years away from the dumbed-down, factual deprivation of Donald Trump would be a gross understatement. Frankly, it’s hard to believe that these two heads of state even exist in the same space or time. One is thoughtful and informed, broadcasting a message of tolerance and shared interests. The other is factually challenged and blustering, cynically playing on our worst instincts of bias, prejudice, and fear.

After listening to Trudeau school his audience about the social, cultural, and economic benefits of welcoming immigrants, and his pride in Canada’s making good on its humanitarian goal of integrating 40,000 Syrian refugees, I could feel a familiar sense of anger and shame welling up inside of me. Anger because Trump has cynically steered American discourse, particularly on immigrants, toward a dark, ugly, and dangerous place. Shame because nearly 50% of my fellow Americans continue to be either silent or complicit in this march toward xenophobia and racial scapegoating.

Frankly, it all makes me wish I could join a caravan and beat a path to the northern border—and beyond. But if that’s not realistic—and it’s not—then, please, just offer me an American politician in 2020 who can muster even just a little bit of what Justin’s got.

The post Justin Trudeau trumps Trump’s dumbed-down view of immigration appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The misinformation about legal immigration peddled by the Trump administration is going to get up close and personal for many of us rather quickly. Unfortunately, Trump and the anti-immigrant faction in the White House, led by Stephen Miller and the former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has prevailed in their nativist project to grant fewer visas and approve fewer numbers of refugees. These mostly under-the-radar measures ultimately will trickle down to our health care system’s ability to provide adequate staffing and timely access to medical care.

We know that the Trump administration is, to put it mildly, fact challenged. But no matter what Trump and his merry band of alternate-reality enablers claim, objective facts about immigrants and their essential role in keeping the American health care system staffed is right before our eyes. You don’t have to go looking online, or search for the data, or Google the facts. Just take a moment to look around your local hospital, your local doctors’ offices, or your local walk-in clinics, dental offices, or urgent-care facilities. You’ll find foreign-born and educated doctors, surgeons, technicians, dentists and dental assistants, nurses, nurses’ assistants, and home health aids from across the globe who are laboring on the frontlines of delivering quality care across the country.

Facts

The numbers belie the claims that foreign-born workers, particularly in the health care industry, are taking away jobs from Americans.

• Foreign-born and foreign-educated health care professionals have actually become an essential part of America’s health care delivery system, particularly in smaller cities, rural areas, and underserved low-income communities shunned by American-educated health care workers chasing the highest wages in specialty practices in urban centers.

In a letter written to the Department of Homeland Security in 2017—during the time when the fever of executive orders banning individuals from Muslim countries was at its highest—the American Medical Association sounded the alarm about the negative impacts to America’s health care system of limiting or curtailing immigration numbers.

“To date, one our of every four physicians practicing in the United States is an international medical graduate. . . .They are more likely to practice in underserved and poor communities, and to fill training positions in primary care and other specialties that face significant workforce shortages [editor’s emphasis].”

• Internationally trained health care workers’ role in U.S. health care has steadily grown over recent decades. The foreign-born share of health care workers jumped as high as 30 percent in the 1990s, up from 5 percent in the 1960s, according to a 2014 study from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. Studies have found that the health care industry now has the largest percentage of foreign-born and foreign-trained workers of any industry in the country – beating out even the tech industry.
• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, between 2006 and 2010, the number of foreign-born health care workers increased from 1.5 million to 1.8 million. Those numbers are staggering and should be setting off alarm bells for what might happen to the health care industry and Americans’ health if the Trump/Miller immigration model prevails.
• More than one-quarter of physicians and surgeons, or 27%, were born outside the U.S. and more than one out of every five, or 22%, of individuals working in support jobs like nursing, psychiatric, home health, and janitorial services also are foreign born.

Facts are facts. Contrary to Trump and his administration’s claims that the U.S. would be better off with fewer legal immigrants, in the health care sector the reality is that Americans’ access to medical care depends on immigrants.

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The Trump administration is employing a new weapon in its war on immigrants: de-naturalization.

Yes, that’s a real word. It’s exactly what it sounds like—a process in which a naturalized citizen is stripped of his or her citizenship. In June 2018, Trump’s director of U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services [USCIS] issued a policy memo outlining his plan to ramp up efforts to revoke American citizenship from people whose applications may contain irregularities. The plan is to examine thousands of old fingerprint records and files “to determine whether foreigners made false or fraudulent statements in their attempts to obtain legal residency in the United States.”

To be fair, Trump did not invent de-naturalization. It’s been on the books for decades. And, indeed, there’s a legitimate government reason to be able to revoke citizenship from people who got in using, for example, false identities in order to avoid deportation and claim a green card. [Early on, de-naturalization procedures targeted actual post World War II Nazis and suspected war criminals trying to escape prosecution under assumed identities.]

But, for the most part, de-naturalization has been a rare occurrence. The Justice Department has filed an estimated 300 civil de-naturalization cases since 1990. In contrast, USCIS Director L. Francis Cissna has said that he hopes to identify and de-naturalize several thousand.

Undoubtedly, in his quest to purge America of immigrants, whom he has called “invaders” and “infesters”—and in his need to boast about being biggest and most powerful—Trump will gleefully seize upon this policy and push USCIS to be the harshest enforcer and to beat all of the old numbers. And, judging from Cissna’s own announcements, we’re already moving in the direction of bigger and badder: USCIS is reportedly hiring several dozen lawyers and immigration officers to review cases of suspected fraud.

Identifying targets for de-naturalization

The Chicago Tribune reports:

According to USCIS officials and documents reviewed by The Washington Post, Homeland Security investigators are digitizing fingerprints collected in the 1990s and comparing them to more recent prints provided by foreigners who apply for legal residency and American citizenship. If decades-old fingerprints gathered during a deportation matches those of someone who did not disclose that deportation on their naturalization application or used a different name, that individual could be targeted by a new Los Angeles-based investigative division. Violators will be referred to federal courts where they can be stripped of citizenship and potentially deported.

According to the latest USCIS data, 2,536 naturalization cases have prompted an in-depth review so far, and of those, 95 cases have been referred to the Justice Department. Those numbers are expected to rise as additional fingerprints are digitized by ICE, but only an immigration judge – not USCIS – has the authority to revoke citizenship.

How de-naturalization works

In a recent article in the Intercept, a Texas immigration attorney explained that de-naturalization can take two forms: civil and criminal:

Criminal de-naturalization is usually reserved for those who committed fraud to obtain citizenship for criminal activity — crimes involving terror, drugs, and the like — and carry jail terms of up to 25 years. Civil de-naturalization is based on a lower standard of proof and doesn’t result in incarceration. “They’re different methods,” said Curtright, who added that he had noticed that the government pursuing more civil cases in recent months.

…Civil cases often end with the defendant giving in against the power of the federal government. Contesting the cases can cause a defendant to rack up tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars of legal bills — forcing those without means to capitulate early in the legal process. The rich and powerful hardly ever get de-naturalized.

So, as Trump does everything he can to discourage immigration of all sorts, including punishing people legitimately seeking asylum, and kidnapping and jailing their children, this new emphasis on de-naturalization is a perfect fit. It’s a back-door way to expand upon the harsh policies at the border and broader policies to keep people from even trying to get in. Taken to the extreme—a distinct possibility given the Trump administration’s proven record of cruelty—de-naturalization “has the potential to be used as a means of intimidation and to find small discrepancies or errors in an individual’s naturalization paperwork.”  The Trump administration says it does not plan on pursuing deportations based on technicalities, but this is also an administration that is savagely separating families at the border as a form of deterrence to would-be undocumented immigrants

In a much broader sense, writes Masha Gessen, in The New Yorker: entitled ,”In America, Naturalized Citizens No Longer Have an Assumption of Permanence:”

… the creation of the task force itself is undoing the naturalization of the more than twenty million naturalized citizens in the American population by taking away their assumption of permanence. All of them—all of us—are second-class citizens now.

The post De-naturalization: Trump’s latest weapon in the war on immigrants appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The Trump administration is holding children hostage. They can call it “family separation.” They can say that it’s meant as a “deterrent” to illegal border crossings. But, bottom line, this is a hostage situation.

It’s ironic—but not funny–that ICE agents and border patrol agents are yanking young children from the protective arms of their parents, many of whom are coming to the U.S. seeking asylum to protect their children from the harsh policies of other governments. They thought they were bringing their families to safety. Instead, they and their children are treated like criminals. Their only crime is trying to find a better life for their families.

These deplorable actions, under the guise of “zero tolerance” initiated by the Trump administration, can’t help but trigger flashbacks to the brutal policies of regimes that the United States has condemned in the past:  The Iran hostage crisis in 1979, for example. The worst image of all, of course, is the one that nobody wants to talk about: the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. I’m not saying that it’s a perfect parallel or the moral equivalent. But, seeing footage of children at our Southern border being pulled from their parents makes me shudder and conjures up images of “Sophie’s Choice.”

This new, cruel American policy is certainly wrong from a moral standpoint. Anyone with a shred of common sense—or with young children or grandchildren of their own—would recognize the pain that family separation would cause for parents and the emotional upheaval and damage it can cause for the children, for whom this is unfair, gratuitous punishment for crimes not committed. [They’d recognize it if they bothered to think about it, that is. But thinking about the human consequences is not something that Donald Trump or, apparently, his political advisers and policymakers do.]

Indeed, it appears that Trump and Sessions put in place “zero tolerance” not to meet a real problem, but as an expression of Trump’s own xenophobia and as a promise-kept to the white supremacists and America-firsters of his political base. [That political ploy may or may not be working: One of Trump’s staunchest media supporters—right-wing Conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt—recently questioned the necessity of such inhumane treatment in an interview with Attorney General Jeff Sessions.]

It’s worth noting, too, that the United Nations human rights office  has issued a statement demanding the United States “immediately halt” the policy of separating children from their families when they cross the border without proper immigration documentation.” A spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ravina Shamdasani, said there is “nothing normal about detaining children,” and charged that “border control appears to take precedence over child protection and care in the U.S.,” according to the Associated Press. “The use of immigration detention and family separation as a deterrent runs counter to human rights standards and principles,” Shamdasani said during a press briefing in Geneva, Switzerland. “The child’s best interest should always come first.”

[The U.N. High Commission For Human Rights usually issues these kinds of statements to countries that are brutalizing their citizens, engaging in torture and/or violating areas of human rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a founding document of the United Nations. That is now the company the U.S. is keeping, as a result of Trump/Sessions’ family-separation policy.]

The moral depravity of family separation is clear. But what about its legality? I’m not a lawyer, but I’m wondering if family separation could be construed as a criminal act. To me, what is happening sounds a lot like kidnapping—you might even call it institutional kidnapping. The online Legal Dictionary  defines kidnapping as:

…the crime of unlawfully seizing and carrying away a person by force or fraud, or seizing and detaining a person against his or her will with an intent to carry that person away at a later time.

And what about false imprisonment? According to Wikipedia:

False imprisonment occurs when a person is restricted in their personal movement within any area without justification or consent. Actual physical restraint is not necessary for false imprisonment to occur. False imprisonment is a common-law felony and a tort. It applies to private as well as governmental detention.

I’ll leave further legal speculation and arguments to organizations who actually know the law. Earlier this year, the American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU] sued ICE for separating hundreds of migrant families. According to NPR:

“Whether or not the Trump administration wants to call this a ‘policy,’ it certainly is engaged in a widespread practice of tearing children away from their parents. A national class-action lawsuit is appropriate because this is a national practice,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement.

The ACLU said in its lawsuit that previous administrations “did not have a practice of forcibly separating fit parents from their young children.” It added that the parents involved in the lawsuit have never received negative accusations about how they care for their children.

Having observed how our Attorney General and his boss behave, I doubt that they’ve given any of these moral, legal or common-sense considerations a second [let alone a first, in the case of Trump] thought. Trump himself has been very public in his attempt to dehumanize people who try to enter the U.S. illegally—famously calling them “animals,” as well as “rapists and murders.”  That tactic—used by authoritarian and cruel regimes throughout history—has proven very effective in making inhumane treatment acceptable. And here we are.

If you’re old enough to remember the Iran hostage crisis in 1979, you’ll probably also remember that the crisis sparked the popularity of ABC News’ “Nightline.” Hosted by veteran journalist Ted Koppel, the show zeroed in on the hostage crisis, with daily updates, under the banner, “America Held Hostage,” and an accompanying tally of the number of days since Americans had been locked up in Tehran. We could use a show like that today, not just because children are being held hostage at our border, but also because we are all being held hostage to the lawlessness, the intentional chaos, the pervasive corruption and the erosion of democracy inflicted on America by the Trump administration.

The post The hostage crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Buried in the 90-minute smorgasbord of exaggerations, lies, false conflations and middle-school platitudes passed off as a State of the Union Address on Jan. 30, 2018, there was a phrase that should make everyone’s blood boil. Somewhere between the shameless exploitation of real peoples’ tragedies and the nuclear saber rattling, Trump [er, neo-Nazi speechwriter Stephen Miller] threw out this line:  “All Americans are Dreamers.”

What was the purpose of that line? At first, it might sound like an innocuous lyric from a Sesame-Street song [“the lovers, the dreamers, and me…”] But it was anything but a reflection of the innocent wishes of children or a testament to an American value. It was, in reality, a slam against people subject to DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.]

In fact, it’s just like the All Lives Matter meme used by retrograde thinkers like Trump and other white nationalists to counter the Black Lives Matter movement. By saying that “All Americans are Dreamers,” Trump/Miller are signaling that they don’t take the official Dreamers seriously and don’t support them.  Saying “All Americans are Dreamers” is saying that  DACA recipients don’t deserve special status or extra attention. They’re just a bunch of freeloaders, trying to get to the front of the line, ahead of the real Americans.

Trump’s speech made it clear that he and his allies/enablers in Congress clearly have no “intention” [the phrase used by Mitch McConnell] of resolving DACA. He conflated immigrants with terrorists and violent gang members. He applied the All Lives Matter approach to DACA—and his base knows what that means.

After hearing this, I can only conclude that DACA is dead, that 800,000 Dreamers are about to be betrayed by the Trump administration, and that another once-all-American value is about to be tossed aside.

The post Trump’s SOTU DACA dis: All Americans are Dreamers appeared first on Occasional Planet.

When Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on September 5 that the Trump administration would be terminating DACA, Trump and members of his  governing gang once again demonstrated their  propensity for spreading fear and confusion among the most vulnerable in the American population.

What did the Justice Department’s announcement mean in practical terms? During the Obama era, DACA status was granted for two years at a time and was renewable. Now, if Trump’s order stands, new applications for DACA will no longer be considered. Only those recipients with a permit set to expire before March 5, 2018, will be granted the opportunity to apply for a two-year renewal if they apply by October 5—with their status in limbo following that one-time renewal. DACA authorizations will be recognized until expiration at the end of their two-year period with the last authorization ending on March 5, 2020.

I ask you to ponder: Who in America right now is more vulnerable than the 800,000 Dreamers who have known no other lives than the ones they’ve lived in cities, towns, villages, and rural areas across America and whose future in the only country they’ve ever called home is now in doubt?

The outlook for the Dreamers is dim. They’re caught in a cycle of uncertainty. Can they stay in their homes? Can they apply for loans? Can they apply and receive work permits? Can they go to college? Will they be allowed to thrive or will they be deported to countries they’ve never known and to places where they have no family, no friends, no connections? In the days following this cruel and capricious announcement, how do Trump, Sessions, and their  acolytes imagine that the 800,000—who, after all, are our neighbors, our friends, our co-workers and employees, our fellow students, or our productive business women and men—plan for school, for work, for their families?

Imagine for a moment that the cities of Richmond, Virginia, or Hartford, Connecticut, or Charlotte, North Carolina, were emptied of their entire populations. Their inhabitants deported to parts unknown. That’s the magnitude of the population that Trump has targeted.

Let’s remind ourselves that DACA was a thoroughly practical Obama-era initiative that gave hope to undocumented immigrants who were brought as children by their parents to the U.S. Let’s remember too that the median age of entry into the U.S. of DACA recipients was six years old and that the most common age of entry was three. Those are ages not even close to the age of consent when a child can make a choice about his or her future. And, at a time when anti-Latino sentiment is being revved up by Donald Trump, it’s no coincidence that the majority of young people who will be affected by shutting down DACA are Latino. Fully seventy-nine percent of those in Trump’s cross-hairs came from Mexico.

 I wonder. Who did Donald Trump consult with when he decided to take what is being called one of the cruelest and most shameful presidential actions in modern times?

He certainly didn’t sit down to seek advise from the heads of many of America’s largest corporations—400 of whom have signed a petition calling on Congress and Trump to protect the Dreamers. CEOs of business giants like Amazon, AT&T, Wells Fargo, Best Buy, Ikea, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft can be counted among those who oppose ending DACA.

And while we’re talking about business interests, consider this. The statistics for the full integration of Dreamers into the fabric of American society and business are indisputable. It’s estimated that 100 DACA recipients currently are attending medical schools in multiple states with hopes of serving underserved communities across the country. Of the top twenty-five Fortune 500 companies, more than 72 percent count Dreamers as employees, including Microsoft, which counts 27 Dreamers among its employees and Apple, which currently employs 250 Dreamers.

It appears that Trump didn’t even bother to pick up the telephone in the Oval Office to consult with the Evangelical community. Like the business community, the Evangelical community breaks with Trump on this decidedly heinous decision. In recent polls, 66% of American evangelicals favor granting work permits to Dreamers, while 57% indicate they favor a path to citizenship for DACA recipients.

Tellingly, Trump also ignored the overwhelming sentiment of the majority of voters of both political parties. According to a Politico/Morning Consult poll released on September 5, 58% of all voters responded that Dreamers should be allowed to stay and become citizens. And party affiliation was not a predictor. 84% of Democrats, 74% of Independents, and 69% of Republicans agreed that Dreamers should be allowed to stay.

Who could Trump have consulted with that might have pointed him in a more empathetic direction? Perhaps someone with the President’s ear might have suggested that he sit down and have a gentle grandfatherly talk with one or more of his eight grandchildren – five of whom are between the ages of three and nine. Joseph, Arabella, Kai, Donald III, Tristen, or Spencer would have been the perfect focus group to provide grandpa with a real-life perspective on the emotional toll of separating young children from their parents. Trump could have asked them how they might feel about being left behind when their parents travel to Aspen, or Mar-A-Lago, or any of the other destinations frequented by the Trump family. They might have given the commander-in-chief at least a glimpse into the delicate balance of a young child’s sense of emotional security.

Of course, I’m sure Trump never bothered to even consider asking the question. But if he had, would his grandchildren’s answers have made a difference? Would Trump have understood that the emotional ties that bind families together are the same — whether you’re a Trump or a Dreamer? I doubt it.

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The U.S-Mexico border wall may or may not be under construction, but it’s not the only contemporary attempt at a barrier between countries. According to some reports, there are currently 65 international border walls either completed or under construction. Compare that number to the 16 border fences in existence around the world when the most famous concrete barrier of the 20^th Century—the Berlin Wall—came down in 1989.

What’s going on? The Daily Mail explains it this way:

Globalisation was supposed to tear down barriers, but security fears and a widespread refusal to help migrants have fueled a new spate of wall-building across the world, with a third of the worlds’ countries constructing them along their borders.

While walls built in previous millennia aimed at keeping attacking armies out, and while the Berlin Wall was built to keep people in, modern-day walls have other purposes. Our current US President thinks that a wall on the US-Mexico border will keep out ostensible “drug dealers, rapists and murderers.” Some European countries are fencing themselves off to prevent migrants—mostly fleeing from the war in Syria—from entering their territory.

RadioFreeEurope has created an interactive depiction of the European immigration crisis and the razor-wire barriers and walls that began rising in 2013. You can see the presentation here.  The accompanying article details border-wall efforts in six countries:

Bulgaria: The country built a wall along the Turkish border, which was completed in August 2015. It marks the beginning of the walling off of Europe, as some are referring to it.

Hungary: Hungary completed its wall along the Serbian border on 14 September 2015, and the wall along the Croatian border a month later.

Slovenia: Slovenia built a razor sharp fence, cutting across the Croatian border in November 2015.

Macedonia: At the end of November 2015, Macedonia completed a wall along the Greek border topped with barb wire.

Austria: In April 2016, Austria began construction of a ‘fence’ along the Italian border.

France: Now France joins them, funded by the UK.

Beyond Europe

We’re all familiar with the wall between Israel and the West Bank. But there are many more that receive far less publicity. “A Brief History of Border Walls,” describes barriers between many other countries, such as:

Botswana-Zimbabwe border: Building began in 2003 of this electric fence, which is about 300 miles long.

The official reason Botswana began building a fence along its western border with Zimbabwe is purportedly to stop the spread of foot-and-mouth disease among livestock. However, Zimbabweans believe that it is really intended to keep people from migrating into Botswana since the 2000 land reform policy in Zimbabwe resulted in an economic crisis, leaving many desperate and in search of employment.

India-Bangladesh border: Building began in 2005. 12,116 miles of barbed wire and concrete

India is constructing a barrier to prevent illegal immigration and the smuggling of weapons and narcotics from Bangladesh to the Indian state of Assam. In recent years, it has been a site of particular focus for Human Rights Watch (HRW) because of the border patrol’s controversial shoot on sight policy. HRW reported in 2010 that over 900 Bangladeshi, including children, had been killed by both sides along the border in the last decade alone.

Kuwait-Iraq border: Building began 1991. Electrified fencing, concertina wire, trenches, dirt berms.

After the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, international military intervention and the defeat of Iraq, the Kuwait-Iraq barrier was constructed by the United Nations Security Council to prevent future invasion by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The separation barrier extends six miles into Iraq, three miles into Kuwait, across the full length of their mutual border from Saudi Arabia to the Persian Gulf and is guarded by hundreds of soldiers, several patrol boats, and helicopters.

Iran:

In July 2010, the Iranian Interior Minister…announced that the country would be building walls along its entire border with Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The government has purportedly allocated 150 million dollars for this purpose.

Pakistan-Iran barrier: Building began in 2007. Reinforced concrete, earth and stone embankments, deep ditches, observation towers and garrisons.

The Iran-Pakistan barrier is a separation barrier which Iran in the process of reconstructing and fortifying along its border with Pakistan. The Pakistani Foreign Ministry has said that Iran has the right to erect border fencing in its territory to deter drug smuggling and illegal crossings. However, the Provincial Assembly of Balochistan (Pakistan) opposes the wall. They maintain that it will create problems for the Baloch people, whose lands straddle the border region, dividing them politically and impeding trade and social activities.

Iran-Iraq barrier: Construction began in 2007

The Iranian government has built a long wall on its border with Iraq to stop drug and weapons smuggling. However, according to Iraqis and Iranians living near the border, the wall has created employment problems for the Iraqis. It is also reported that Iran has issued IDs to Iranian smugglers to regulate their activities.

Saudi Arabia-Yemen barrier: Construction, by Saudi Arabia, began in 2003, but stopped in 2004, when Yemen objected , stating that it violated a border treaty signed in 2000.

The border-wall movement continues

Other European countries appear to be climbing on the border-wall bandwagon. In 2015, the Baltic nation of Latvia was reported to be building a large-scale fence along its Russian border to keep out migrants who attempt to illegally cross the border.

Recent reporting indicates that Lithuania also plans to build an 81-mile border fence, along its Russian border.

…Such a fence would provide little defense against a full-blown military assault but said it underscored Lithuanians’ concerns about a more assertive Russia and could also help prevent lesser cross-border incursions.

In addition, Estonia says it wants to build a 70-mile-long fence along its eastern border with Russia, “to boost security and protect the EU’s passport-free Schengen zone.” Construction reportedly will begin in 2018.

When is a border wall not a border wall?

The barriers we’re most familiar with are those that exist on official borders between nations. But you can also create a “green line” or a territory wall to separate your country from occupied territories or lands that are claimed by one and disputed by another. Israel’s “West Bank Separator” is a prime example. But there are others, as well:

The Indian Line of Control Fencing: A double-row of electrified fencing and concertina wire 8-12 feet high, landmines and surveillance systems. 340 miles along the disputed border. The Line of Control separates Indian and Pakistani states that both countries would like to claim as their own.

The Berm: Constructed in 1980. 10-ft.-high sand walls, landmines.

The Moroccan Wall, or The Berm, divides the entire area of Western Sahara. Morocco built the wall in response to  efforts to establish Western Sahara’s independence. The wall initially contained just a small northwestern part of the territory, but by building a succession of six different walls, the Moroccans expanded their occupation to the majority of the contested land.

Ceuta and Melilla Borders [Spain-Morocco]: Built around 2000. Three rows of high wire barricades ranging from 16 to 20 ft high. Six miles, surrounding both cities.

Ceuta and Melilla are free port cities on the northern tip of Africa under Spanish control since 1986. Both cities are surrounded by Morocco, which disputes Spanish sovereignty over them. Spain built the fences to deter Africans from migrating to Iberia through these ports. In 2005, fifteen people were killed trying to cross over the barrier. Still many try to make it over, some getting caught in the process or drowning while attempting to make the sea crossing. Human trafficking is common.

Those are just examples of a burgeoning trend. One enterprising researcher at World Atlas has compiled a very helpful chart listing every country with a border wall, the country it is trying to keep out, and the status of the wall, as of 2017. I found it surprising and informative. For example, I didn’t know that Kazakhstan has a border wall with Uzbekistan.

Why all these border walls? Why now?

Nations—even cities—have attempted to wall themselves off from marauders, migrants and criminals for thousands of years. Sometimes the walls worked, but usually not forever. If you grew up in America in the Post World War II era, you may have thought that walls were quaint relics of an ancient past, and that we lived in a more enlightened, more connected world than one that could be fenced off.

Unfortunately, we were wrong—as we learned when the Berlin Wall went up in the 1960s. But even that didn’t last forever. And when that wall came down, many of us thought that the era of walls was finally over.

Wrong again. We now live in a world in which countries, nationalities, ethnic groups, religions, and political parties are retreating into a defensive, some might say paranoid, crouch. New border walls are a physical, institutionalized manifestation—on a grand scale—of that attitude, even if the new walls are more theater than they are true barriers.  But self-preservation is a powerful motivator, and building a wall is a primal reaction. Maybe peaceful co-existence behind an electrified, razor-wire-festooned, concrete barrier is a good solution. But I hope not.

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