#benefits of immigration reform

[aniket12345]

Navigating the Immigration Process: Dos and Don’ts

Regarding the immigration realm, the procedure can be intricate and multifaceted. It's crucial to understand the ins and outs of the immigration process to avoid unpleasant surprises, whether you're doing it for school, family reunion, or simply the desire to start over in a new nation. The following Dos and Don'ts are advised by Reform Immigration Consulting and Visa Services. In Toronto, we are the top immigration consultants. As Mississauga's immigration consultants, we advise adhering to these dos and don'ts so that the individual has the knowledge and comprehension needed to make their immigration journey less of a blind alley and more of a well-lit one.

[anistarrose]

I think when a lot of queer people who aspire to marriage, and remember (rightly) fighting for the right to marriage, see queer people who don't want marriage, talking about not entering or even reforming or abolishing marriage, there's an assumption I can't fault anyone for having — because it's an assumption borne of trauma — that queers who aren't big on marriage are inadvertently or purposefully going to either foolishly deprive themselves of rights, or dangerously deprive everyone of the rights associated with marriage. But that's markedly untrue. We only want rights to stop being locked behind marriages. We want an end to discrimination against the unmarried.

We want a multitude of rights for polyamorous relationships. We want ways to fully recognize and extend rights to non-romantic and/or non-sexual unions, including but not limited to QPRs, in a setting distinct from the one that (modern) history has spent so long conflating with romance and sex in a way that makes many of us so deeply uncomfortable. And many of us are also disabled queers who are furious about marriage stripping the disabled of all benefits.

We want options to co-parent, and retain legal rights to see children, that extends to more than two people, and by necessity, to non-biological parents (which, by the way, hasn't always automatically followed from same-gender marriage equality even in places where said equality nominally exists. Our struggles are not as different as you think). We would like for (found or biological) family members and siblings to co-habitate as equal members of a household, perhaps even with pooled finances or engaging in aforementioned co-parenting, without anyone trying to fit the dynamic into a "marriage-shaped box" and assume it's incestuous. We want options to leave either marriages, or alternative agreements, that are less onerous than divorce proceedings have historically been.

I can't speak for every person who does not want to marry, but on average, spurning marriage is not a choice we make lightly. We are deeply, deeply aware of the benefits that only marriage can currently provide. And we do not take that information lightly. We demand better.

Now, talking about the benefits of marriage in respective countries' current legal frameworks, so that all people can make choices from an informed place, is all well and good — but is not an appropriate response to someone saying they are uncomfortable with marriage. There are people for whom entering a marriage, with all its associated norms, expectations, and baggage, would feel like a betrayal of one's self and authenticity that would shake them to their core — and every day, I struggle to unpack if I'm one of them or not. If I want to marry for tax benefits, or not. If that's worth the risk of losing disability benefits, in the (very plausible) possibility that I have to apply for them later in life. If that's worth the emotional burden of having to explain over and over, to both well-meaning and deeply conservative family members, that this relationship is not one of romance or sex. (Because, god, trying just to explain aromanticism or asexuality in a world that broadly thinks they're "fake" is emotional labor enough.)

Marriage is a fundamental alteration to who I am, to what rights an ableist government grants me, and to how I am perceived. I don't criticize the institution just because I enjoy a "free spirit" aesthetic or think the wedding industry is annoying, or whatever.

[metamatar]

some of you are being outflanked from the left by the jacobin. lol.

For many loyal Democrats, this will not compute. The Biden economy, party-loyal pundits have said over and over again, is tremendous — low unemployment, strong GDP growth, slowing inflation, a booming stock market — and anyone unhappy about it must simply be brainwashed. Out of view in this self-congratulatory hall of mirrors were the constant statistics that said otherwise: evictions up past pre-pandemic levels, record-high homelessness, cost-burdened renters at an all-time high, median household income lower than the last pre-pandemic year, inequality returning to pre-pandemic levels, and food insecurity and poverty growing by large double digits since 2021, including a historic spike in child poverty. Here’s another thing you might not have heard. Largely due to a trick of history, including the COVID-19 pandemic and a Democratic-controlled Congress, Trump was partly responsible for the creation of what the New York Times called “something akin to a European-style welfare state” in 2020 that reduced inequality and even helped some Americans improve their finances for a short spell — and under Biden, all of it went away. Sometimes that happened due to factors outside Biden’s control and sometimes because of his own decisions, but it always took place with little fight from the president, and it contributed to the ominous rise in hardship under his tenure. That meant not only adding to people’s already onerous monthly expenses — in one case in a self-imposed October surprise that made student loan repayment much more unforgiving for tens of millions of borrowers just before voting. It also saw twenty-five million people being thrown off their public health insurance, many of them in some of the battleground states Harris lost last night. Recall that one of Biden’s attack lines against Trump four years ago was that Trump was going to strip twenty million people of their health insurance. This might have been mitigated had the president passed the flagship policies on his agenda, helping people weather the storm of rising living costs. Those that he did enact he sometimes self-sabotaged. (...)

As a result, Harris’s run was a major downgrade from the 2020 Democratic effort. Biden’s never-passed ambitions to historically expand the social safety net became firmly relegated to distant memory, never to be revived; only the child tax credit and a modest expansion of Medicare benefits survived. The campaign combined a sharp rightward lurch on foreign policy and immigration with a handful of laudable populist proposals to ban price gouging and help out first-time homebuyers (while largely avoiding the national 5 percent rent cap that Biden desperately took on before dropping out and that had earlier made its way into the Democratic platform). Beyond the Medicare proposal and vague promises to protect and strengthen Obamacare, the idea of reforming the broken US health care system — one of Americans’ biggest and most anxiety-inducing costs — was almost entirely absent from the campaign. When voters in a Univision town hall came to Harris with their bleak personal stories of suffering under the health care system and asked how she would solve them, she could give them nothing, because her only real major health care policy was for those over sixty-five and already insured under Medicare.

[xhxhxhx]

Eli got his ballot the other day.

I didn't get one.

I am not a citizen of the United States, or any of them. But that's not what keeps me from the ballot.

The States may extend the franchise to mere residents, and to persons who, like me, are not citizens of the United States. It just happens that California has not done so.

The Constitution requires that the members of its Congress, the Representatives and Senators of the United States, and the Presidents of the United States, be citizens of the United States, for terms of years or from birth. U.S. Const. art. I, § 2, cl. 2; id. § 3, cl. 3; id. art. II, § 1, cl. 5.

But the Constitution does not require that electors for the House and Senate be citizens of the United States. It only asks that they be part of the People of the State and have the same qualifications as the electors for more numerous branch of the State legislature. Id. art. I, § 2, cl. 1; id. amend. XVII.

The Constitution denies Congress any power to set elector qualifications. Congress has power to prescribe the time, place, and manner of holding elections, id. art. I, § 4, cl. 1, but not qualifications of electors. That was a matter for the States.

The supporters of the Constitution pledged that it would tie Congress's hands. Congress could not manipulate the franchise. But the Constitution likewise denied to States a share of the electoral power. The States would not be able to manipulate the federal franchise without changing their own.

But the material here is that Constitution tied the federal franchise to the States, denying Congress any power manipulate the franchise for the benefit of its current members. "To have left it open for the occasional regulation of the Congress would have been improper," James Madison observed in Federalist No. 52.

But in 1996, Congress regulated it.

In a little provision of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-208, div. C, § 216(a), 110 Stat. 3009-546, 3009-572, Congress made it a federal crime for any alien to vote in any election for member of Congress or for Presidential electors. 18 U.S.C. § 611.

Congress didn't adopt the State qualifications. Congress didn't make an exemption the aliens expressly authorized by State law. Congress made its own law, its own franchise, for its own elections. It left the State franchise, for State elections, as it had been.

The one Senator who spoke on this provision, Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, said he thought that that limitation, to elections to Congress and for President, was what made it alright, rather than a patent violation of the Constitutional design.

No, Congress did precisely what the Constitution prohibits: It made an occasional regulation of the qualifications of electors for the House, the Senate, and electors of the President.

Today, if a State qualifies aliens to elect the more numerous branch of the State legislature, Congress has made it a federal crime to let vote for members of the House, despite the Constitution's plain command to the contrary.

Congress made following the Constitution a federal crime. No matter what the States might say about it. No matter what the Constitution might say about it. That's the law, they say.

That isn't what keeps me from the ballot. No, I'm kept from the ballot for the right reason: California doesn't let me.

In California, resident aliens like me can't vote for the more numerous branch of the State legislature. The State Constitution says that "a United States citizen 18 years of age and resident in this State may vote." Cal. Const. art. II, § 2(a). And no one else.

But the federal criminal prohibition? The little occasional regulation of electors for Congress and the President of the United States that we've put at 18 U.S.C. § 611?

That's an act that we shouldn't dignify with the name of "law."

[beauty-funny-trippy]

It looks like House Republicans are giving up on trying to impeach Joe Biden.

Republicans started this impeachment inquiry, not because they were aware of a crime, but because they were hoping, if they looked hard enough, maybe they would find one. They desperately wanted to find a crime not for the sake of justice, but rather, to satisfy some petty need for revenge.

It's been almost a year now of intensive investigations and they haven't found any evidence of any crimes. It turned out to be a huge waste of time and a huge waste of taxpayers' dollars. It's no surprise to anyone that this Republican controlled Congress is widely considered to be among the least productive in all of American history.

Instead of tackling important issues that could actually benefit the American people (healthcare, immigration reform, gun violence, poverty, etc), Republicans decided to work on salvaging their own political careers. They longed for the publicity they would receive if they actually found some wrongdoing by the president.

Hey Republicans, I heard a rumor that once, back in 1957, Biden tried to buy an ice cream cone with an expired coupon. You guys should look into that.

P.S. – have you checked to see if he has any overdue library books?

[antidrumpfs]

In an op-ed published by the Arizona Republic on Monday, Giles made the case for Harris as president over his own party’s nominee, former President Donald Trump.

The Grand Canyon State is ground zero in the fight against repeated false claims to disrupt our electoral process — from fake presidential electors attempting to undermine Arizona’s election, to a sham “audit” by Arizona Senate Republicans that was spurred by conspiracy theories.

Significant reforms to immigration and border policies that would have addressed the crisis at our southern border were blocked by Trump because he didn’t want the problem solved. He wanted to exploit it for personal political gain.

Since 2014, I have had the honor of being mayor of Mesa, the nation’s 36th-largest city and one of the most conservative. Under Trump, American cities didn’t get the support they deserved. Infrastructure week was made into a joke.

But under the Biden-Harris administration, Mesa has seen historic federal funding for the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, along with investments to make sure our streets and public transit systems benefit from modern technology.

With the CHIPS Act, Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden are delivering thousands of new jobs to Arizonans and helping us grow critical industries.

Vice President Harris is fighting to make sure Americans can get ahead and be safe from gun violence and to restore and protect the rights of women. Donald Trump, on the other hand, could enact the extreme and dangerous Project 2025 agenda if elected, which would roll back our rights and freedoms.

We can choose a future for our children and grandchildren based on decency, respect and morality — or succumb to the crudeness and vulgarity of Trump and JD Vance and the far-right agenda they would champion.

Arizona leaders like McCain and Sen. Mark Kelly have embodied the commitment to country over party. And it’s that same high caliber of character and leadership I see in Vice President Harris.

*********************************************************************

Giles is not the only border state politician endorsing Harris. Her campaign told the Associated Press that a slew of mayors from Arizona border cities — “Bisbee, Nogales, Somerton, and San Luis, as well as by Yuma County Supervisors Martin Porchas and Tony Reyes” — “backed” Harris for president. Somerton Mayor Gerardo Anaya said of Harris in a statement: “I trust her to meet the needs of border cities and towns without taking advantage of us for her own political gain, like her opponent.”

[odinsblog]

It was something that really began to happen when the United States decided that it would interlock the immigration system with the criminal legal system. So some people call it the criminal immigration system, which is not a term that I coined. It's something that immigration law experts coined.

But when Congress passed a certain series of laws in the 1980s and 90s, what they wanted to do was create a system in which people who were accused of crimes, particularly at the time, drug crimes, would be able to be immediately deported in a way that was basically faster. So they didn't have to be convicted. So normally, if you're accused of a crime, you have a right to a trial, then you might be convicted or acquitted, or you might plea out.

But if you are determined to be undocumented, you can actually be put into deportation proceedings before anyone brings you to trial. So you just are arrested and charged, and you can go immediately into deportation proceedings. And it turned out that this was a pretty effective way for police to interact with the immigration system.

And sheriffs became a lynch point originally because they run county jails.

So county jails are kind of the first stop if you're arrested. If you are unfortunate enough to be arrested, you will go through the county jail, at which point they take your ID, your fingerprints, right?

They take a variety of information. And sheriffs kind of became really useful because they were in the jail already, so they could interview people, ask them where they were from, ask them if they had proof of citizenship, and then help ICE put them into deportation proceedings. And alongside that, sheriffs were also able to make some money by housing people awaiting deportation in their jails.

That's also the benefit for them. The federal government houses about 25% of immigrants in detention in county jails right now. And they pay these sheriffs a per diem.

So they get paid sort of per day to keep people in their jails. And it's one of the ways that sheriffs are able to use that jail kind of as a political tool, right, to make money for their county.

So under Trump, two things happened. One was that anti-immigration groups, so I mentioned the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR. That was a group that was already in existence.

They are an anti-immigrant group. And they began to email sheriffs, especially sheriffs that they knew were kind of constitutional sheriffs or in the far right sheriff atmosphere and say, hey, would you like to help the Trump administration deport more people? And many of them said, sure.

And so using this anti-immigrant group, the Trump administration recruited more sheriffs to join a program called 287G. And 287G is a federal program that essentially deputizes sheriffs and their deputies to act as immigration agents. So under Trump, many, many more sheriffs joined this 287G program.

Now, the 287G program is a bit interesting because it doesn't include any funding for the sheriffs, but it is something that sheriffs used to say that they were tough on immigration.

-Jessica Pishko, The Unchecked Power Of Sheriffs

[dirtyriver]

Arnold Schwarzenegger:

I don’t really do endorsements. I’m not shy about sharing my views, but I hate politics and don’t trust most politicians.

I also understand that people want to hear from me because I am not just a celebrity, I am a former Republican Governor.

My time as Governor taught me to love policy and ignore politics. I’m proud of the work I did to help clean up our air, create jobs, balance the budget, make the biggest infrastructure investment in state history, and take power from the politicians and give it back to the people when it comes to our redistricting process and our primaries in California.

That’s policy. It requires working with the other side, not insulting them to win your next election, and I know it isn’t sexy to most people, but I love it when I can help make people’s lives better with policies, like I still do through my institute at USC, where we fight for clean air and stripping the power from the politicians who rig the system against the people.

Let me be honest with you: I don’t like either party right now. My Republicans have forgotten the beauty of the free market, driven up deficits, and rejected election results. Democrats aren’t any better at dealing with deficits, and I worry about their local policies hurting our cities with increased crime.

It is probably not a surprise that I hate politics more than ever, which, if you are a normal person who isn’t addicted to this crap, you probably understand.

I want to tune out.

But I can’t. Because rejecting the results of an election is as un-American as it gets. To someone like me who talks to people all over the world and still knows America is the shining city on a hill, calling America is a trash can for the world is so unpatriotic, it makes me furious.

And I will always be an American before I am a Republican.

That’s why, this week, I am voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

I’m sharing it with all of you because I think there are a lot of you who feel like I do. You don’t recognize our country. And you are right to be furious.

For decades, we’ve talked about the national debt. For decades, we’ve talked about comprehensive immigration reform that secures the border while fixing our broken immigration system. And Washington does nothing.

The problems just keep rolling, and we all keep getting angrier, because the only people that benefit from problems aren’t you, the people. The only people that benefit from this crap are the politicians who prefer having talking points to win elections to the public service that will make Americans’ lives better.

It is a just game to them. But it is life for my fellow Americans. We should be pissed!

But a candidate who won’t respect your vote unless it is for him, a candidate who will send his followers to storm the Capitol while he watches with a Diet Coke, a candidate who has shown no ability to work to pass any policy besides a tax cut that helped his donors and other rich people like me but helped no one else else, a candidate who thinks Americans who disagree with him are the bigger enemies than China, Russia, or North Korea - that won’t solve our problems.

It will just be four more years of bullshit with no results that makes us angrier and angrier, more divided, and more hateful.

We need to close the door on this chapter of American history, and I know that former President Trump won’t do that. He will divide, he will insult, he will find new ways to be more un-American than he already has been, and we, the people, will get nothing but more anger.

That’s enough reason for me to share my vote with all of you. I want to move forward as a country, and even though I have plenty of disagreements with their platform, I think the only way to do that is with Harris and Walz.

Vote this week. Turn the page and put this junk behind us.

And even if you disagree with me, vote, because that’s what we do as Americans. http://vote.org

[llyfrenfys]

I know the news about JK Rowling and Labour is bleak - but for those of you who didn't watch, yesterday I watched the BBC Wales leaders debate and the Tory (David T.C. Davies) said something about 'protecting women's rights from trans ideology'. To which members of the studio audience audibly groaned and a few shouted shame on you.

Yes, it's massively disappointing that Starmer is yet again trying to pander to the transphobes. But the debate last night was about cost of living, the NHS, the housing ladder, immigration and benefit reform. Most of the electorate (in the nicest possible way) don't care about trans people. Most people are fine with trans people and care more about being able to feed their kids than culture war policies.

Of course, if a Labour government gets in in Westminster we need to continue to hold them to account if they try and pursue any transphobic policy. But for now, pay it no mind and look after yourself.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Wallace White

A top Democrat fundraising platform hosts donations for an activist group linked to a Palestinian terrorist-tied non-profit, the Washington Examiner reported on Thursday.

ActBlue, a Democrat fundraising platform, hosts a portal for donors to give money to the Colorado Freedom Fund (CFF), a bail reform non-profit that is fiscally sponsored and managed by the Alliance For Global Justice (AFGJ), the Examiner reported. The Examiner revealed the AFGJ was aiding fundraising efforts for French non-profit Collectif Palestine Vaincra (CPV), a partner of the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

In response, Zachor Legal Institute pressed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in January 2023 to investigate the AFGJ’s seeming support for terrorist organizations, the Examiner reported. Zachor attorney Marc Greendorfer said to the Examiner the AFGJ’s lack of due diligence was “surprising.”

“Alliance for Global Justice has a track record of funding terror,” Greendorfer told the Examiner. He noted that AFGJ has a duty to donors to “do a better job of vetting those who use its platforms, especially when the user has a long, documented history of supporting terror.” 

AFGJ has a history of fiscally sponsoring pro-Palestinian organizations, with credit card company Discover shutting down donations to the AFGJ in 2021 over ties to Samidoun, a non-profit with links to the PFLP, according to NGO Monitor.

Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters are gathering outside of the White House in Washington, D.C., USA, on June 8, 2024, to express distaste over how President Biden is handling the Israel-Hamas war. (Photo by AASHISH KIPHAYET/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

The CFF is a left-leaning criminal justice advocacy organization that posts bail for incarcerated people before trial and immigrant detention, according to Influence Watch. AFGJ gave the CFF $1.44 million in 2021 for “racial justice”, according to their 2021 tax filings.

“AFGJ fiscally sponsors and repeatedly defends Samidoun, a terror front that acts on behalf of Hamas and other terror organizations,”Greendorfer told the Examiner. “As a fiscal sponsor, AFGJ benefits from any funds it raises for its terror clients.”

ActBlue did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

[mightyflamethrower]

In a recent interview with Fox News Digital, Allen pointed to Executive Order 14019, which was issued in 2021, arguing the Biden administration’s broad interpretation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 “weaponizes and mobilizes the entire federal government apparatus to become voter registration agencies.”

The secretary said his office first began looking into the matter after receiving a complaint from a concerned voter who received a voter registration form in the mail from an Alabama state agency addressed to a deceased relative who had passed away two years ago. Investigating further, Allen said his office discovered that state agencies, including Medicaid and other welfare offices that receive funding from the federal government, are required to provide voter registration forms to anyone who comes into contact with that agency under the NVRA.

That includes illegal immigrants and non-citizens, Allen said, arguing how the 2021 executive order came without tools to verify the forms are sent to only U.S. citizens.

These individuals receive information on voter registration regardless of whether they are ultimately approved to receive the public benefits they applied for, he said.

“And that’s why it’s so vitally important that the federal government, Congress, reform the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and then allow the states to conduct their own voter registration, take it out of the hands of the federal government,” Allen said. “It’s through state agencies that are federally funded and, of course, mandated by federal law, which is the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. And it doesn’t matter how they come in contact through the mail or through in-person or through online, if they are applying for these public benefits, if they come in contact with that agency, they are receiving the voter registration form. And that’s very, very troubling that non-citizens, whether legal or illegal immigrants, are receiving those voter registration forms.”

[samueldays]

You said you don't believe in democracy. How do you believe society should work?

It should work well.

Ha ha only serious; I imagine one of the things going wrong is that targeting a form of governance as such wastes a lot of energy with 1) people trying to solve problems by doubling down on the form, 2) ruleslawyers hiding behind the form.

I don't have a fully worked out theory, I lean anarcho-monarchist, I don't think I need a fully worked out theory to observe that democracy on That Island 1) thoroughly failed to deliver on its repeated promise, 2) was unashamed by failing to deliver. It's on an island, damn it. Immigration control should be absolutely trivial there.

Labour promised reduced immigration, Labour didn't deliver, the people voted out Labour and voted in Conservative which promised reduced immigration, Conservative didn't deliver either, and so on, for five elections in a row.

"but what if the king was terrible" - what, are you suggesting the king might respond to repeated gang-rape slave-ring scandals by importing more stormtroopers from Rapeslaveland? 🙄

"but historical monarchies sucked" - yeah, they sucked because they were mostly pre-electricity. Metapolitical opinion: almost everything good of the past thousand years was produced by, putting it crudely, techbros. Electricity, petroleum, the steam engine, the cotton gin, the tractor, the Haber-Bosch process, the mechanical loom, the crane, and so on. We live well mostly because of automation machines and cheap energy, and government form is secondary.

Activists and reformers are sometimes redistributing the benefits of machines, sometimes they're making things worse, as we see today with "environmentalists" spending the last few decades blocking nuclear power that would be both clean and cheap. The batshit insane German Green Party even voted to shut down a nuclear power plant that was already running.

Then, because energy is fungible, winters are cold, and relying on Russian oil supply sucks, Germany had to re-open a previously closed coal power plant. Way to protect the planet, Greens! 🙄

[saddiedotdk]

Kamala Harris accomplishments as VP:

Cast tie-breaking vote for the American Rescue Plan of 2021.

Passed the American Rescue Plan, resulting in $1.9 trillion in economic stimulus.

Extended the Child Tax Credit through the American Rescue Plan.

Extended unemployment benefits through the American Rescue Plan.

Passed the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Secured funding for electric school buses in the infrastructure bill.

Secured funding to combat wildfires and droughts in the infrastructure bill.

Secured funding for replacing lead water service lines.

Engaged with lawmakers at least 150 times for infrastructure investment.

Led diplomatic mission to Guatemala and Mexico to address migration issues.

Launched the "Central America Forward" initiative.

Secured $4.2 billion in private sector commitments for Central America.

Visited Paris to strengthen US-France relations.

Visited Singapore and Vietnam to bolster economic and strategic ties.

Visited Poland to support NATO allies during the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Visited Romania to support NATO allies during the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Launched the "Fight for Reproductive Freedoms" tour.

Visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota.

Passed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act.

Promoted racial equity in pandemic response through specific initiatives.

Chaired the National Space Council.

Visited NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to promote space policies.

Passed the Freedom to Vote Act in the House.

Passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in the House.

Built coalitions for voting rights protections.

Supported the Affordable Care Act through specific policy measures.

Expanded healthcare coverage through policy initiatives.

Passed initiatives for debt-free college education.

Hosted a STEM event for women and girls at the White House.

Championed criminal justice reform through specific legislation.

Secured passage of the bipartisan assault weapons ban.

Expanded background checks for gun purchases through legislation.

Increased the minimum wage through specific policy actions.

Implemented economic justice policies.

Expanded healthcare coverage through policy initiatives.

Secured funding for affordable housing.

Secured funding for affordable education initiatives.

Launched the "Justice is Coming Home" campaign for veterans' mental health.

Proposed legislation for easier legal actions against financial institutions.

Strengthened the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Secured investment in early childhood education.

Launched maternal health initiatives.

Launched the "Call to Action to Reduce Maternal Mortality and Morbidity".

Made Black maternal health a national priority through policy actions.

Increased diversity in government appointments.

Passed legislation for renewable energy production.

Secured funding for combating climate change.

Passed infrastructure development initiatives.

Secured transportation funding through the infrastructure bill.

Developed a plan to combat climate change.

Reduced illegal immigration through policy actions.

Equitable vaccine distribution through specific policy measures.

Supported small businesses through pandemic recovery funds.

Secured educational resources during the pandemic.

Promoted international cooperation on climate initiatives.

Secured international agreements on climate change.

Passed economic policies benefiting the middle class.

Criticized policies benefiting the wealthy at the expense of the working class.

Promoted racial equity in healthcare through specific actions.

Promoted racial equity in economic policies.

Reduced racial disparities in education through specific initiatives.

Increased mental health resources for underserved communities.

Secured funding for affordable childcare.

Secured federal funding for community colleges.

Increased funding for HBCUs.

Increased vaccinations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Secured policies for pandemic preparedness.

Ensured equitable vaccine distribution through policy actions.

Secured international cooperation for COVID-19 responses.

Reduced economic disparities exacerbated by the pandemic.

Passed digital equity initiatives for broadband access.

Expanded rural broadband through specific policies.

Secured cybersecurity policies through legislation.

Protected election integrity through specific actions.

Secured fair and secure elections through policy measures.

Strengthened international alliances through diplomacy.

Supported the Paris Climate Agreement through policy actions.

Led U.S. climate negotiations through international initiatives.

Passed initiatives for clean energy jobs.

Secured policies for energy efficiency.

Reduced carbon emissions through specific legislation.

Secured international climate finance.

Promoted public health policies through specific initiatives.

Passed reproductive health services policies.

Supported LGBTQ+ rights through specific actions.

Secured initiatives to reduce homelessness.

Increased veterans' benefits through legislation.

Secured affordable healthcare for veterans.

Passed policies to support military families.

Secured initiatives for veteran employment.

Increased mental health resources for veterans.

Passed disability rights legislation.

Secured policies for accessible infrastructure.

Increased funding for workforce development.

Implemented economic mobility policies.

Secured consumer protection policies through legislation.

Engaged in community outreach through public events.

Organized public engagement efforts.

Participated in over 720 official events, averaging three per day since taking office.

Supported efforts to modernize public health data systems.

[sjweminem]

if you STILL can't drag yourself out of your holier-than-thou anti-voting mindset then i'm sorry but i almost hope trump DOES win. of course i DON'T but like..DAMN would it feel good to see you reap the "benefits" of your ultra-enlightened decision. i hope you face the consequences of a trump presidency with that same self-righteous enthusiasm. i hope you can frame losing all hope, whether it be for gender equality, trans rights (and those of others in the LGBT community), immigration reform, racial justice, disability benefits, and so much else, in a palatable social justice manner that allows you to positively process the impact your decisions have had. i hope you can maintain this intellectual superiority you have over the rest of us in the face of losing everything (thanks in part to your (in)actions).

regardless of how the election turns out i want you to regret this absolutely fucking backwards stance for the rest of your life

[hallowburn-harlot]

reform voters after realising that Nigel farage is a millionaire who benefits off pushing the immigrant fear mongering (the same way he did for leaving the EU), and that his patriotic waffle only exists to appeal to working class people that has misdirected anger

[just-horrible-things]

On The Amnestic Issue

The issue of strong amnestic drugs is not a highly publicized one. It is not a polarizing topic of debate like immigration, reproductive rights, or the human pet industry. Most people do not even have a strong opinion on amnestics. They are not front and center in the public view. The pharmaceutical industry and its supporters have done an excellent job of suppressing debate.

This is not an issue to take up lightly as a bit of collegiate activism to soothe the soul. Even to write about the topic is to invite lawsuit, defamation, and harassment. You probably haven’t heard much about anti-amnestic activists, not because we don’t exist but because that is how effectively we are silenced. I have friends who have been jailed for speaking out, and many more who have been publicly targeted, harassed, accused, and made into laughing stocks.

This is not an issue to take up unless you truly feel passionately about it.

But I am passionate, and I think you should be too. I think we all should be. 

Detractors will attempt to paint anti-amnestic discourse as radical left wing pet-lib propaganda. They will attempt to paint us as far right anti-vaxxer paranoids lashing out against the medical industry. But the amnestic issue ought to concern you regardless of your political alignment.#

Whatever your stance on the human pet industry, whatever your stance on pharmacological reform, the amnestic issue goes far further than either of those. This is not about criminals or contractees, although they form part of the picture. This is primarily about the effects of strong amnestic drugs in the general population, the failure of our government and regulators to protect us from unregulated use, and the complete lack of unbiased, verifiable information about amnestic safety even in a medical context.

Use of prescription amnestics has more than doubled in just the last three years, despite the complete lack of any independent studies demonstrating benefits in the vast majority of use cases. Un-monitored, un-reported “home use” is estimated at anywhere between half as many people again, and three times as many, and in many cases these unprescribed drugs are being used to “medicate” entirely non-medical issues such as domestic quarrels.

Crime involving the forced administration of strong amnestics to unconsenting victims is estimated to have increased twenty-fold since these substances were first approved for prescription. The volume of illegal amnestics circulating in the black market is completely unknown, and the lack of separation between the markets for aggressive criminal use and for unregulated “self-medication” is bringing naive would-be patients into contact with hardened drug dealers and organized crime.

In the context of our progressively failing criminal justice system, some victims are even administering the “cover up pills” to themselves rather than face the traumatic experience of trying to push a report through to court. In a recent survey, 20% of university students said that if they were victims of “date rape” they would rather take a pill and forget, than take the issue to the police. Cited reasons included shame, fear of stigmatization, fear that the police would do nothing, and, conversely, fear that the police would respond with excessive force.

Perhaps most troubling of all, the second most popular reason given was simply that taking an amnestic would be “less effort”. The same attitude is reflected in a growing media trend towards portraying drug-induced forgetting as the “easy option” : a quick, effortless, and effective solution to any and all of life’s problems. 

Needless to say there is no evidence to support the idea that amnestic abuse actually improves happiness, health, or any other measure of wellbeing. And it should be beyond obvious that choosing to forget certain problems such as unpaid bills, unsettled debts, or an angry spouse will not actually cause these problems to go away.

Even industry giants such as Santex Pharma and WRU have recently put out statements advising against unregulated, unsupervised home use. These statements describe the medical applications and the use in the pet industry (respectively) as highly controlled, carefully monitored use cases and not comparable to the growing trend of unlicensed use. Santex state, both in their recent statement and elsewhere, that every approved use of their strong amnestics has been rigorously safety tested and found both safe and effective. They cite a number of published studies, in addition to an undisclosed quantity of private, internal investigation.

Every single published study involving strong amnestics was either conducted or funded by a manufacturer of strong amnestics, a business that uses strong amnestics as a core part of their business model (i.e. the human pet industry), or a subsidiary of one of these businesses.

There are no published independent studies. All attempts at independent studies have been heavily suppressed by the above industries, or else taken over by these business interests long before completion. It has long been well known – if rarely successfully prosecuted – that pharmaceutical companies regularly misuse statistics, massage data, and even outright fabricate results to produce conclusions that are favorable to their bottom line.

Even those few independent investigators who have resisted the pressure exerted by the industry have found that no reputable publication – scientific or otherwise – will take on the risk of publishing their results if they fail to corroborate the claims of safety. When such studies are made publically available on the internet they are invariably taken down within weeks or even days, and the authors – if remotely identifiable – can expect a slew of life-ruining lawsuits. In many cases even criminal charges have been leveled against such investigators.

Consequently it is extremely difficult to form an accurate picture of the extent and form of the risks posed by the use of strong amnestics. However, certain themes come up over and over in these vanished studies. The use of strong amnestics, especially but not exclusively long term or at high doses, has been associated with any or all of the following:

cognitive decline or impairment

anterograde amnesia (loss of the ability to reliably form new long term memories)

anxiety and depression

emotional instability and dysregulation

intrusive thoughts

increased rates of suicide

increased mortality (all causes)

false recall (remembering fictive events as if they were real, or events that happened to other people as if they happened to oneself)

nightmares, night terrors, insomnia and other sleep disturbances

migraines, cluster headaches, and other forms of headache

increased impulsivity

increases vulnerability to addiction

impaired executive function (difficulty making and adhering to plans, reduced decision-making ability)

While none of the above symptoms have been conclusively linked to amnestics on account of the industry stranglehold on data, it is worth noting that the incidence of all of the above problems in the general population has increased sharply over the last few years, with no other obvious explanation for the increase.

Some of the most striking evidence has come from the study of parents who made the choice to forget a child when that child entered into the human pet industry. The fact that WRU discontinued this as an official service after only a year and a half speaks volumes. But small numbers of parents (and an unknown number of other friends and relatives of new human pets) continue to seek out this option either under the supervision of a medical professional or independently “at home” with illicitly procured amnestics.

While the desire to forget is perhaps an understandable response to the loss of a child or loved one, the outcomes of such a choice are rarely happy. Suicide rates in this group are extremely high, as are rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses. 

Testimonials can be found on parenting boards across the web urging other parents not to make the same decision. They describe intense feelings of guilt, crushing anxiety, dread and/or a sense of “impending doom”, and a constant, gnawing awareness of the period of “lost time”. Feelings of hopelessness, futility and lack of purpose or fulfillment are extremely common.

One mother described the feeling as not only having lost her now-unremembered child, but also having lost herself.

The wider societal impact of amnestic abuse is also making itself felt as the prevalence rises year on year. Courts have already agreed that forgetting a crime or other offense does not absolve the perpetrator of any guilt or responsibility, but how exactly to handle such cases is far from settled. 

Detractors of pharmacological reform are quick to point out the double standard here. Amnesia can be enforced by the state in the name of correcting entrenched behavioral patterns and preventing reoffense, but those who have already self-administered this treatment are still considered just as guilty and just as likely to reoffend as if they had not forgotten.

Neither is it clear how to help or compensate victims of amnestic-related crimes. The use of amnestics to cover up crimes – most commonly date rape – is nothing new. Even prior to the invention of the modern drug class, weak amnestics such as alcohol and benzodiazepines have long been used for this purpose. However, the rise of the strong amnestic has both expanded the criminal’s toolkit for cover-ups and opened entire new spheres of crime.

Every month it seems that allegations of a new kind of crime hit the courts, from corporate espionage cases in which corporate agents are accused of using amnestics to wipe ideas, trade secrets, or experience in the field from their competitors, to domestic abuse allegations involving the long term use of amnestics to keep the victim ignorant of their own abuse. While some of these cases are clearly less plausible than others, there can be no doubt that criminal elements are hard at work finding new ways to abuse these substances.

If you follow the mainstream news cycle, you are also doubtless already aware of the rise of “perpetual amnesiacs” – a small but highly visible minority of amnestic “addicts” who take the drugs repeatedly in high doses to forget practically everything. 

(While strong amnestics are not physiologically addictive drugs like heroin or cocaine, phenomena such as gambling addiction and pornography addiction have long taught us that people can become addicted to all manner of things that are not physiologically addictive drugs.)

These “perpetual amnesiacs” usually have substantial problems before the amnestic abuse. They may be homeless, in debt, stuck in abusive relationships, or addicted to other substances. They begin taking the amnestics to forget their very real troubles. What separates the addict from other “home users” is the very high doses involved, and the taking of additional doses as soon as further difficulties arise. 

These afflicted individuals become increasingly disengaged from life, drifting from one short term pleasure (often other substances of abuse) to another, and taking additional amnestics whenever consequences threaten to disrupt their existence in the moment.

Most become homeless if they were not already, and over time almost all develop severe symptoms from the list above. Reporting has focused particularly on impulsivity, cognitive decline, and anterograde amnesia. We hear of the violent deaths of addicts killed attempting the wildly ill-conceived crimes that their impulsivity leads them into.

Eventually the “perpetual amnesiac” needs no further doses of the amnestics, because their ability to form new memories has been completely destroyed. 

Despite industry insistence that these sobering results are only a result of the extremely high doses taken by the addicts, the recent news coverage has awoken public fears regarding the safety of strong amnestics. 

However, reporting of these concerns has been notably muted and seems to have almost ceased as I write these words. All major news agencies seem to now prefer to parrot the company line that it is the quantity and the frequency that is the problem, not the drugs themselves. One can only imagine that money or favors have changed hands to facilitate this shift in focus.

One can only hope that the public will remember nonetheless, and that the plight of these most severely affected “perpetual amnesiacs” will prompt at least a few to look into the effect that amnestic drugs are having on us as individuals and as a society, and that we might start to look beyond the horizon of the company line.

-- A. Correspondent