#Undocumented immigrants

[destielmemenews]

source 1

source 2

source 3

[porterdavis]

As Lennon said - just gimme some truth

Finally the elephant in the room is addressed.

Business can't thrive or survive without undocumented labor.

[mcspocky]

JD Vance is lying regarding the criminality of migrants. Research has repeatedly shown that undocumented immigrants are involved in crimes at rates lower than those of native-born citizens.

#WinningWithWalz

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Rachel Leingang at The Guardian:

To hear Donald Trump tell it, America’s cities are in dire shape and in need of a federal intervention. “We’re going to rebuild our cities into beacons of hope, safety and beauty – better than they have ever been before,” he said during a recent speech to the National Rifle Association in what has become a common refrain on the campaign trail. “We will take over the horribly run capital of our nation, Washington DC.” Trump has for years railed against cities, particularly those run by Democratic officials, as hotbeds for crime and moral decay. He called Atlanta a “record setting Murder and Violent Crime War Zone” last year, a similar claim he makes frequently about various cities.

His allies have an idea of how to capitalize on that agenda and make cities in Trump’s image, detailed in the conservative Project 2025: unleash new police forces on cities like Washington DC, withhold federal disaster and emergency grants unless they follow immigration policies like detaining undocumented immigrants and share sensitive data with the federal government for immigration enforcement purposes.

Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, an extensive document breaking down each part of the federal government and recommending changes to be made to advance rightwing policy, was created by the Heritage Foundation, with dozens of conservative organizations and prominent names contributing chapters based on their backgrounds. This part of the project is another Republican attempt at a crackdown on so-called “sanctuary” cities, places around the country that don’t cooperate with the federal government on enforcing harsh immigration policies.

[...]

The threat of withholding federal funds

Republicans, cheered on by Trump, have worked to make immigration a key issue in cities across the country by busing migrants from the US-Mexico border inland, to places run by Democrats like New York, DC and Chicago, overwhelming the social safety net in these cities. The idea of using federal funds granted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) to force immigration changes are included in a chapter about the Department of Homeland Security, written by Ken Cuccinelli, Trump’s former deputy secretary of homeland security.

The chapter’s initial recommendation is to dismantle DHS entirely, create a border-focused agency comprised of other immigration-related organizations and farm out the rest of its components to existing agencies (or privatize them, in the case of the Transportation Security Administration). It’s not directly clear whether the aim is to use all Fema funds – including those that help cities and states in the immediate aftermath of an emergency like a tornado or flood – or large grant programs for things like emergency preparedness. One line in the chapter says “post-disaster or nonhumanitarian funding” could be exempt from the immigration policy requirements. The chapter also suggests that cities and states should take on more of the burden of financially responding to disasters.

[...]

One of the conditions Project 2025 suggests is requiring states or localities to share information with the federal government for law and immigration enforcement, and specifies that this would include both department of motor vehicle and voter registration databases. This is of particular interest in many cities because 19 states and Washington DC allow undocumented people to get drivers licenses, the Niskanen Center, a thinktank that delved into the project’s immigration aims, points out. These licenses help with public safety by decreasing the potential for hit-and-runs and increasing work hours, among other benefits, the center writes. If a city or state is forced to choose between issuing licenses and then sharing this information for use by immigration authorities, or accessing emergency funds for their whole population in a crisis, it’ll be tough for them to deny Fema money, said Cecilia Esterline, an immigration research analyst at the Niskanen Center.

Donald Trump’s war on urban cities is part of the wretched far-right Project 2025 plan, including crackdowns on sanctuary cities.

See Also:

The Guardian: What is Project 2025 and what does it have to do with a second Trump term?

[breakingfirst]

This "president" is a DISGRACE! 😡

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Ottawa has no plans to broadly give residential status to undocumented migrants working in Canada, Immigration Minister Marc Miller says. "As frustrating as that is to hear for people that are in a precarious position of being undocumented in Canada and are contributing to the economy — and perhaps kids that are Canadian — I think we have to be quite clear with Canadians and quite realistic about what's achievable," Miller told CBC News. "Despite the economic imperative, despite the very humanitarian imperative that a broad regularization program presents, it is clear to me that Canadians are not there and that's just reality."

Continue Reading

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[vallomll]

Dear hardworking undocumented immigrants, during this time I want to apologize to you for this unfathomable outcome. Im sorry for the Latinos that voted Trump who have been clearly blinded by his harmful narratives. It sucks realizing how easily Latino Trump supporters were manipulated to turn against you, someone who should have been able to understand and sympathize with you. I'm sorry people would rather criminalize and dehumanize you than acknowledge the hard work and back-breaking labor you guys do that run this country. I tried to be your voice, I really did but it was not enough. In this upcoming year all I can hope is Trump false rhetoric doesn't fuel hatred towards you guys, because you don't deserve that, not after everything you do. I will continue fighting for you guys as long as I have the privilege to do so.

[barrydeutsch]

Appealing to Trump Voters by Getting Tough on Immigration!

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

For those looking to raise doubts about American elections, it's becoming clear that a key 2024 voting boogeyman will be immigration.

The false notion that undocumented immigrants are affecting federal elections has been floating around for over 100 years, experts say, but this year, due in part to an increase in migrants at the southern U.S. border, the idea could have new potency.

The narratives are being pushed by prominent right-wing figures including Cleta Mitchell, a former adviser to Donald Trump, along with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee himself.

NPR acquired a two-page memo Mitchell has been circulating laying out "the threat of non-citizen voting in 2024."

"I absolutely believe this is intentional, and one of the reasons the Biden administration is allowing all these illegals to flood the country," Mitchell said on a conservative radio show in Illinois last month. "They're taking them into counties across the country, so that they can get those people registered, they can vote them."

Trump has made the same claims on the campaign trail. And even Elon Musk, the Tesla founder and owner of X, has used his social media platform to push the baseless idea to millions of people.

"[Democrats] are importing voters," Musk wrote in a post about undocumented immigrants on March 5 that X claims has been seen more than 23 million times.

It's illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and numerous studies over the years have found that it almost never happens, but voting experts still worry the claims could take hold at a time when huge numbers of Republicans simultaneously don't trust elections and see immigration as the top problem facing the country.

"I think that's what it's meant to do — to freak people out over an issue. It's a continuation of this myth of voter fraud," said Gilda Daniels, an election law professor at the University of Baltimore. "It not only creates hysteria, but it [furthers] this idea that only certain people should be allowed to participate in the process."

A TALE AS OLD AS VOTER REGISTRATION

The idea that people are being shuttled into the U.S. to influence elections is a familiar tale for seasoned election officials.

"I've been hearing it my whole career," said Kim Wyman, a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and the former Republican secretary of state of Washington.

In fact, the myth started taking hold in the U.S. in the late 1800s.

A hundred years before, when the country was first founded, noncitizen voting was actually fairly common and uncontroversial, says Ron Hayduk, an expert on noncitizen voting at San Francisco State University. But after the Civil War and Reconstruction, a wave of migration from Europe of nonwhite, non-English-speakers led to xenophobic fears about what would happen to the U.S. if immigrants were allowed to exercise their power politically.

One by one, states began implementing voter registration systems specifically as a means to disenfranchise immigrants.

"Allegations of vote fraud were the main stated justification for imposing restrictive practices," Hayduk said.

And in the century since then, he said, every time the country has seen an influx of immigrants, a loosening of immigration policy or an expansion of voting access, accusations of voter fraud have followed.

Mitchell's memo about the risk of noncitizen voting touches on two of those things. Migrant encounters at the southern border hit an all-time high in December, and the document focuses mostly on the implementation of a 1993 law, the National Voter Registration Act, that made registering to vote easier.

The NVRA does not require proof of U.S. citizenship for people to register to vote, only that potential voters fill out a form and attest under penalty of perjury that they are citizens. A federal voting law passed in 2002 also required applicants to provide a unique identification number to register, like a driver's license or Social Security number, which election officials say effectively serves as a citizenship check since both of those forms of ID involve the government checking whether someone is a citizen or not.

But Mitchell's main hope, according to the document, is to spur Congress to require documentary proof of citizenship as part of registration.

Experts say that sort of change would have a drastic negative impact on many eligible voters, like naturalized citizens, without solving any real problem.

"If you make [registering] harder, there will be students, young people, elderly people, poor people and other groupings of people who would just not bother," said Daniels, of the University of Baltimore. "This whole document is [saying] we don't want the NVRA or any other piece of legislation to do what it's supposed to do, which is register people to vote."

Mitchell did not respond to an email from NPR requesting comment.

SOLUTION IN SEARCH OF A PROBLEM

The right's concerns about noncitizens voting have persisted despite there being no recent evidence that ineligible people are voting at anything other than microscopic numbers in American elections.

After the 2016 election, the Brennan Center for Justice, which advocates for expanded voting access, looked at 42 election jurisdictions including some of the jurisdictions with the largest noncitizen populations in the country, and found suspected noncitizen votes made up roughly 30 of the 23.5 million votes cast (0.0001%) in those places.

A recent study in Arizona (first reported by The Washington Post) found that less than 1% of noncitizens attempt to register to vote, and even in those cases, the vast majority are thought to be mistakes.

"There are dire ramifications for those who register when they are not eligible—in the naturalization process applicants for citizenship must affirm that they have not registered to vote," wrote Tammy Patrick, a former local election official in Arizona who is now the CEO of the nonprofit Election Center, in an email. "The stakes are high and not something that most people would willingly, knowingly gamble away for the sake of casting a single ballot."

Hayduk, of San Francisco State, agreed.

"The last thing [migrants] want to do is put themselves at risk of being detained, deported, let alone put a wrench in their application for citizenship," he said.

In Georgia, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had his office perform a citizenship audit that found fewer than 2,000 suspected noncitizens registering to vote in the state over the past 25 years. None were actually able to cast a ballot.

"Noncitizens are not voting in Georgia," said Raffensperger, in an interview with NPR.

Still, in a sign that the issue has become a priority not just for the election denial wing of the Republican Party, Raffensperger has made noncitizens a key focus of his time in office even as he has fought against other conspiratorial election narratives.

Earlier this year, the secretary was pushing for a constitutional amendment in Georgia to explicitly ban noncitizen voting, something a number of other states, including neighboring Alabama and Florida, also passed recently.

"Perception is 9/10 of reality," said Hayduk. "Putting the solution on the table suggests there was a problem. And I think that's part of the point. [These laws] create a solution to a problem that doesn't exist."

Legislation tracking by the nonprofit Voting Rights Lab shows that in the first few months of 2024, 17 bills have been introduced in 12 different states that involve proof of citizenship provisions.

Federal law already bans noncitizens from voting in federal elections, but a few liberal U.S. cities, including Washington D.C., have begun allowing them to vote in local elections, adding to conservative fears that soon noncitizens will be voting en masse.

In Georgia the proposed amendment effort stalled in the legislature but Raffensperger said he plans to push for it next session.

That is almost certainly true. Both Ohio and Florida's constitutional amendments banning noncitizen voting passed with more than 75% statewide support.

But it's one thing to say noncitizens shouldn't vote. It's another to claim, as Mitchell and Trump have, that they already are in great numbers.

Raffensperger has directly refuted many similar election fraud claims over the past four years.

But when asked by NPR what he thought of the false idea that President Biden was shipping in undocumented immigrants to boost his reelection bid, Raffensperger declined to comment on it.

"What Joe Biden's up to, I don't really know. You'd have to ask him," Raffensperger said. "I'm going to make sure that we secure our elections: Now more than ever, American citizens are demanding this."

[porterdavis]

Awk-ward

[creativemedianews]

Trump’s foul-mouthed migrant diatribe in private donation pitch

Trump’s foul-mouthed migrant diatribe in private donation pitch #Aspendinner #bordersecurity #DonaldTrump #election

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Badash at NCRM:

Sixteen Republican-led states in partnership with former top Trump aide Stephen Miller have filed a lawsuit against the federal government to prevent President Joe Biden from implementing his plan that would protect half-a-million American families from being ripped apart, while providing a path to citizenship when one spouse married to a U.S. citizen does not have legal status. Currently, there are about 500,000 undocumented adults married to U.S citizens, who have been in the country for at least a decade, and would qualify to apply for President Biden’s program. Another 50,000 children believed to be subject to possible deportation would also be protected under the new Biden rule. The sixteen states, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton are claiming President Biden implemented the policy back in June for “blatant political purposes,” the Associated Press reports. “Under the policy, which started taking applications Monday, many spouses without legal status can apply for something called ‘parole in place,’ offering permission to stay in the U.S., apply for a green card and eventually get on a path to citizenship.” Miller is the architect of the Trump administration’s program to intentionally separate migrant children from their parents and even from their own siblings. NBC News reported that in a meeting with top officials, Miller said of his 2018 “zero tolerance” plan to break apart families: “If we don’t enforce this, it is the end of our country as we know it.” Now, Miller is the founder of the right-wing organization America First Legal. On social media, AFL claims they filed the lawsuit to “block a new Biden-Harris executive amnesty that provides a path to citizenship for over 1 million illegal aliens currently in the United States,” a number far-higher than the Associated Press’s. Paxton reposted AFL’s social media claim. Requirements for Biden’s program are strong and specific: applicants must have lived in the United States for at least ten years and present documents supporting their claim of having been in the U.S. for at least a decade, not pose a security threat “or have a disqualifying criminal history,” pay a $580 fee, “and fill out a lengthy application, including an explanation of why they deserve humanitarian parole,” the AP reports.

President Biden’s policy would allow applicants to avoid having to leave the country, and instead apply for “parole in place,” then “apply for a green card and eventually get on a path to citizenship.”

Stephen Miller and GOP AGs sue for the right to be cruel to multi-status families.

[emperornorton47]