#u.s. immigration 2025

[amitkakkareasyvisa]

(Amit Kakkar Easy Visa Tips)

[fandom-hoarder]

Often, rather than hiring people they have to pay an actual wage to, they just let the crops rot in the field and get subsidies on their loss. But project 2025 even wants to undercut and remove govt protections for family farms-- things that brought us out of the Depression-- so that only large corporate farms survive.

Truly idiotic voting. No thought for the consequences of their xenophobia.

But they won't be looking to actually pay non-immigrants a living wage. They will be looking to CHILD LABOR as they've already pushed into food manufacturing that was hit with similar deportations. And of course, they will still hire and underpay undocumented people, because the risk of getting caught removes the threat of workers reporting rights violations.

Farmers voting for Trump know they depend on cheap labor and know tariffs used by the US can be used against the US by other countries.

This level of whiteness is sociopathic.

Republican narratives destroy farms. White farmers who vote Republican because of racist and nativist hatred for immigrants/migrants deserve to suffer economically.

[nationallawreview]

USCIS Reaches FY 2025 H-1B Visa Cap

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that it has received enough petitions to meet the congressionally mandated caps for H-1B visas for fiscal year (FY) 2025. This includes the 65,000 regular cap and the 20,000 U.S. advanced degree exemption, commonly known as the master’s cap. Quick Hits USCIS has reached the FY 2025 H-1B visa cap, including the 65,000 regular cap…

[visaandimmigrations01]

Latest US Immigration News Highlights Potential Spike in 2024 Green Card Fees.

[robertreich]

How Trump is Following Hitler's Playbook

You’ve heard Trump’s promise:

TRUMP: I’m going to be a dictator for one day.

History shows there are no “one-day” dictatorships. When democracies fall, they typically fall completely.

In a previous video, I laid out the defining traits of fascism and how MAGA Republicans embody them. But how could Trump — or someone like him — actually turn America into a fascist state? Here’s how in five steps.

Step 1: Use threats of violence to gain power

Hitler and Mussolini relied on their vigilante militias to intimidate voters and local officials. We watched Trump try to do the same in 2020.

TRUMP: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.

Republican election officials testified to the threats they faced when they refused Trump’s demands to falsify the election results.

RAFFENSPERGER: My email, my cell phone was doxxed.

RUSTY BOWERS: They have had video panel trucks with videos of me proclaiming me to be a pedophile.

GABRIEL STERLING: A 20-something tech in Gwinnett County today has death threats and a noose put out saying he should be hung for treason.

If the next election is close, threats to voters and election officials could be enough to sabotage it.

Step 2: Consolidate power

After taking office, a would-be fascist must turn every arm of government into a tool of the party. One of Hitler’s first steps was to take over the civil service, purging it of non-Nazis.

In October of 2020, Trump issued his own executive order that would have enabled him to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists. He never got to act on it, but he’s now promising to apply it to the entire civil service.

That’s become the centerpiece of something called Project 2025, a presidential agenda assembled by MAGA Republicans, that would, as the AP put it, “dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision.”

Step 3: Establish a police state

Hitler used the imaginary threat of “the poison of foreign races” to justify taking control of the military and police, placing both under his top general, and granting law-enforcement powers to his civilian militias.

Now Trump is using the same language to claim he needs similar powers to deal with immigrants.

Trump plans to deploy troops within the U.S. to conduct immigration raids and round up what he estimates to be 18 million people who would be placed in mass-detention camps while their fate is decided.

And even though crime is actually down across the nation, Trump is citing an imaginary crime wave to justify sending troops into blue cities and states against the will of governors and mayors.

Trump insiders say he plans to invoke the Insurrection Act to have the military crush civilian protests. We saw a glimpse of that in 2020, when Trump deployed the National Guard against peaceful protesters outside the White House.

And with promises to pardon January 6 criminals and stop prosecutions of right-wing domestic terrorists, Trump would empower groups like the Proud Boys to act as MAGA enforcers.

Step 4: Jail the opposition

In classic dictatorial fashion, Trump is now openly threatening to prosecute his opponents.

TRUMP: if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business.

And he’s looking to remake the Justice Department into a tool for his personal vendettas.

TRUMP: As we completely overhaul the federal Department of Justice and FBI, we will also launch sweeping civil rights investigations into Marxist local district attorneys.

In the model of Hitler and Mussolini, Trump describes his opponents as subhuman.

TRUMP: …the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country…

Step 5: Undermine the free press

As Hitler well understood, a fascist needs to control the flow of information. Trump has been attacking the press for years.

And he’s threatening to punish news outlets whose coverage he dislikes.

He has helped to reduce trust in the media to such a historic low that his supporters now view him as their most trusted source of information.

Within a democracy, we may often have leaders we don’t like. But we have the power to change them — at the ballot box and through public pressure. Once fascism takes hold, those freedoms are gone and can’t easily be won back.

We must recognize the threat of fascism when it appears, and do everything in our power to stop it.

[imagitory]

I've never been more heartbroken in my life.

I was gobsmacked in 2016, don't get me wrong. I was devastated and frightened and shaken beyond words. I even had to go behind a wall and collect myself at one point that horrible November 9th, 2016, after colliding with a man wearing a red MAGA hat at work. A good chunk of us at work talked amongst ourselves about it, offering each other comfort.

But this? This is different. I could imagine dumb people making excuses for voting for Trump in 2016 -- saying that they thought a businessman would be good for the economy, saying that they wanted someone who wasn't a "Washington insider" like Hilary Clinton. Sure, it was stupid, but people can be stupid. Quite frankly, a lot of people are stupid, in this country and otherwise.

But now? Anyone who voted for Trump now has voted for a man who not only rounded up immigrants and put them in concentration camps separated from their families; bungled the response to COVID-19 so badly that the American death toll easily surpassed every other country on Earth; has poisoned the Supreme Court to the extent that they overturned years of precedence with Roe V. Wade and has basically given Trump cart-blanche to do whatever he wants while he's president; was the first president in history to refuse to concede on election day; was impeached for crimes in office not once but TWICE; was instrumental to and passionately supportive of the full-on attempted coup at the U.S. capitol on January 6, 2021 that could've very easily resulted in the deaths of his own Vice President and multiple members of Congress; has spoken glowingly of despots like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un and even said he will be "a dictator on day one" if elected again; has both used slogans originally used by modern American Neo-Nazis ("America First") and purportedly told one of his ex-subordinates that he wanted generals like Adolf Hitler's...but also has by the day proven more and more just how mentally inept, vindictive, and mean-spirited he truly is.

And unlike in his previous races, Trump is ahead in the popular vote too. We can't just blame this on the electoral college being antiquated and gerrymandered AF like in the Trump-Clinton or Bush-Gore elections. Even if all of the third-party voters in this country had grown a bloody brain cell and voted for Harris so as to show solidarity against Trump and his form of American fascism, it still somehow wouldn't be enough. We could potentially blame this on lower voter turn-out -- according to what I'm seeing so far, even with all the votes not counted in this race yet, it looks like there were far less votes cast this election than in the last one, though likely still more than the 2016 race. But even so, I don't think that's the only problem. I truly think there were just a lot of people who turned out en-masse to vote for Trump. And all I can think in regards to those people is...

This is beyond stupidity or even selfishness. This is cruelty. This is large swaths of people deciding that they want fellow American citizens to suffer -- because in their minds, if those people suffer, that'll somehow make them happy. This is a large chunk of America saying, "yeah, you know all that crap about 'liberty and justice for all'? Screw that, I want a 'strong man' to bully people different from me for my own amusement." And -- perhaps -- there's also an element of feeling like their vote doesn't really have any consequences for them, so why should they care if the man they voted for is a god-awful person? It's not like that man will hurt them.

I had hoped. I had hoped, seeing the outpouring of support from liberals, independents, and conservatives for Harris/Walz. I'd hoped, seeing how many ex-Trump appointees were standing up against him, how much people were shouting their disdain for Project 2025 from the rooftops, and how many women were protesting in the face of Roe V. Wade being overturned. I truly had started to hope that America would prove we'd grown beyond our country's own original sin -- how our United States preached freedom for all while still being built on the backs of slaves and refusing to grant a vote to over half their population -- by electing a smart, successful, charismatic woman of color who sees our country as great in potential and wants us to pursue that potential as our first female president, rather than backtracking all the slow progress we've made over the last 200+ years.

But now...my hope has faded. My heart is in pieces and the world is so dark. I hardly know how I'll function at work tomorrow, even if I know somehow, I have to try. We'll all have to stand somehow. Somehow, someway...we'll have to find the strength. We'll have to stand, and we'll have to keep moving forward, even when it feels like we're a Little Mermaid walking on knives.

We'll have to stand.

[yourlocalmeta1head]

I hate seeing these fucking videos of people who voted for Donald Trump regretting voting for him. If they had just done more research and didn't vote for him just because then the can "afford gas and groceries" they would've learned that if you are the average American your taxes will be higher and you will have larger bills. Donald Trump's tax plan does include a few cuts for the middle class but 83% of tax cuts that are included in Donald Trumps tax plan go to the people that are making over half a million dollars a year. Kamala Harris's tax plan would've been better because 100% of the tax cuts in her plan would go to members of the middle and low class.

Donald Trump has also reported "not being associated with project 2025" and "having nothing to do with project 2025" which is obviously false seeing that many people who are involved in project 2025 have served Donald Trump in one way or another. For example; Paul Dans, who is a former chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personal Management under Trump is leading the project. In addition, Trumps campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt has appeared in Project 2025 promotion videos.

Here are ways project 2025 could affect you and your personal life. Project 2025 would stop people from earning overtime pay. He wants to undo recent policy that made over 4 million people newly eligible for overtime. Project 2025 also wants to weaken child labor protections. In quote "The young people should be able to work inherently dangerous jobs" and work in rolls that are not allowed thanks to protections from the department of labor.

Project 2025 also says that they will quote "Secure the border, finish building the wall, and deport illegal aliens" Donald Trump is planing on doing mass deportations. He declared that once he takes office that he will use military to do mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

They want to make it harder for women to get abortions by removing it from laws and taking away approval for abortion pills. They want to stop some services that give out birth control and instead suggest less reliable methods. That might take away funding from clinics that provide abortions which could also affect other services those clinics offer. They want to promote traditional roles for men and women. They will take away protections and programs that help gay people, thus making it harder for them to be treated fairly and get the support they need. They might cut back on programs that help poor people get healthcare and other support meaning it could be harder for poor families to get the help they need.

These are some of the ways project 2025 will affect the climate. Project 2025 would rewrite the most legal tool we have for protecting wildlife in ways that would harm imperilled species. For example, it specifically calls for removing protections from gray wolves and Yellowstone grizzlies. They also propose to repeal the Antiquities Act, which would strip the president of the ability to protect the public land and waters of national monuments. Project 2025 would have agencies that manage the federal lands and waters to maximise corporate oil and gas extraction. Speaking of oil, the agenda directly aims to expand the Willow Project which the largest proposed oil and gas undertaking on the U.S. public land. This also calls for drilling into Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and mining into Minnesota’s Boundary Waters wilderness.

If you go to a public school congratulations. You are now required to take the military entrance exam. Page 134/ 135, "Improve military recruiters’ access to secondary schools and require completion of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery—the military entrance examination—by all students in schools that receive federal funding." "Increase the number of Junior ROTC programs in secondary schools"

If you voted for Trump I promise you will regret it in the next 4 years.

[runawaymarbles]

The 30 chapters are a daunting read. Project 2025 proposes, among a host of things, eliminating the Department of Education, eliminating the Department of Commerce, deploying the U.S. military whenever protests erupt, dismantling the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, removing protections against sexual and gender discrimination, and terminating diversity, equity, inclusion and affirmative action.

Additional mandates include: siphoning off billions of public school funding, funding private school choice vouchers, phasing out public education’s Title 1 program, gutting the nation’s free school meals program, eliminating the Head Start program, banning books and suppressing any curriculum that discusses the evils of slavery.

Project 2025 also calls for banning abortion (which makes women second-class citizens), restricting access to contraception, forcing would-be immigrants to be detained in concentration camps, eliminating Title VII and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, recruiting 54,000 loyal MAGA Republicans to replace existing federal civil servants, and ending America’s bedrock principle that separates church from state.

Anyway anyone telling you that Biden is the same as Trump is either so deep in the sauce they don't know how to find a toilet, or actively lying to you because this is the outcome they want.

Project 2025 isn't going to kickstart the glorious revolution. It's going to make people exhausted, and scared, and dead.

[mariacallous]

A decade ago, the U.S. Congress was on the cusp of passing a bill that would have legalized most of the nearly 11 million unauthorized migrants living in the United States and put them on a path to citizenship. Now, come Jan. 20, the country is set to launch what will likely be the largest mass deportation effort in its history.

“We know who you are, and we’re going to come and find you,” said Thomas Homan one day after President-elect Donald Trump named him as the incoming administration’s “border czar,” responsible for border security and the removal of unauthorized migrants. Homan has promised to carry out “the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”

If he succeeds, it will reshape migration for a generation or longer—not just in the United States but in much of the world.

This moment has been building slowly. Since roughly the 1960s, most of the advanced economies—with the notable exception of Japan—gradually opened themselves to larger flows of migrants. In the United States, the foreign-born share of the population rose from less than 5 percent in 1970 to nearly 15 percent today; in Britain, that share rose from a little more than 6 percent to more than 16 percent.

Most Western countries saw immigration as an economic winner, bringing talent and ambition and helping fill labor shortages in occupations from farm work to health care. There was a strong humanitarian impulse as well: Horrified by the refusal of most countries to admit European Jews fleeing Nazi persecution before and during the Second World War, Western countries adopted generous refugee and asylum laws obligating them to admit many of those escaping persecution, torture, or death threats around the world.

But in the 21st century, that welcoming spirit has crumbled. In the 2000s, Congress tried several times to pass legislation to legalize unauthorized migrants who were longtime U.S. residents, as it had done during the administration of President Ronald Reagan in 1986. The most recent effort failed in the House of Representatives in 2014, despite support from more than two-thirds of senators, including 14 Republicans.

Then over the past decade, both the United States and Europe faced a series of migration crises, with displaced people arriving at their borders in far larger numbers than governments could handle or their populations were willing to accept. Tinkering with asylum processing and enlisting help from neighboring states such as Mexico or Turkey bought occasional breathing room—until the number of arrivals would inevitably soar again, creating a fresh crisis.

With the growing number of migrants fleeing conflict, violence, or economic collapse—the number of displaced persons worldwide has doubled over the past decade, to nearly 120 million today—immigration has become more politically charged across the world. In Europe, populist parties running on anti-immigrant platforms have made widespread gains. Even countries that have historically welcomed large numbers of migrants, such as Canada and Australia, have become warier and are reducing immigration quotas.

But no country faces an about-face as stark as that in the United States. Trump returns to the White House with what he believes is a mandate to sweep the country of unauthorized migrants, including millions who have been in the United States for decades and millions more who have arrived in the past four years and enjoy temporary legal status under the Biden administration’s more generous schemes.

Trump’s first appointments attest to his seriousness. Homan has four decades of experience on migration issues; as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Trump’s first term, he was the architect of the controversial policy of separating migrant parents from their children when they crossed the border from Mexico illegally.

Trump’s new deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, has spent the last 15 years schooling himself in the intricacies of U.S. immigration laws to wield them in the service of a xenophobic agenda. At Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in late October, Miller told the cheering crowd that “America is for Americans and Americans only.”

And the president-elect’s nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Gov. Kristi Noem, deployed National Guard troops from her state of South Dakota to help stop migrants at the Texas-Mexico border.

It is not at all clear, however, that Americans actually voted for this agenda. Immigration was a big issue in the campaign, but surveys indicate that it ran well behind the state of the economy and was a second-tier issue alongside health care, national security, the Supreme Court, and the future of democracy.

Polls on immigration are also all over the map. A September Pew Research poll found that nearly 9 in 10 Trump supporters, and 56 percent of registered voters overall, said that they favor “mass deportations of immigrants living in the country illegally,” suggesting strong support for the Trump agenda. But 58 percent also favor allowing undocumented immigrants to remain in the country if they are married to a U.S. citizen. And considerably higher majorities—including half or more of Trump supporters—want to admit more refugees, foreign college graduates, and immigrants who can fill labor shortages.

The new administration’s actions will be a test of which of these competing priorities Americans will actually support. In his first term, Trump did not push very hard. While he all but shut down refugee admissions from overseas, took steps to curb legal migration, and tightened the U.S. border with Mexico during the COVID-19 pandemic, his administration did little to remove migrants already present in the country. The total number of deportations during his first four years was 1.5 million—half as many as President Barack Obama’s first term and similar to the number in Obama’s second term and outgoing President Joe Biden’s four years.

Trump was more successful in reducing legal migration. Immigrant arrivals slowed significantly under Trump, though much of that came from the almost complete shutdown of U.S. borders and immigration processing during the pandemic year of 2020, the final year of his first term. What would a mass deportation look like? Unless Congress changes them, U.S. laws make a huge increase in removals unlikely.

Migrants targeted for deportation are permitted to appeal their removal to U.S. immigration courts, an arm of the Justice Department. The backlog in those courts is more than 3 million cases, a sixfold increase since 2016; wait times for hearings can stretch to two years or longer. U.S. detention capacity for all migrants—either recent arrivals or those awaiting removal—is roughly 40,000.

Miller has pushed for the government to create tent cities along the border to expand that capacity, but the costs would be high. The American Immigration Council has estimated that it would cost $88 billion annually to detain and deport 1 million migrants per year, which is nearly nine-tenths of the entire current DHS budget. And many countries are reluctant to take their own citizens back. Venezuela has at times refused entirely, and others, including Cuba and China, are considered “recalcitrant.”

Homan promised in a Nov. 8 interview with Fox News to start by focusing on “public security threats and national security threats,” which is pretty much what the Biden administration and others have done; more than 40 percent of those arrested and targeted for removal by ICE in 2023 had some sort of criminal conviction or pending charge.

Beyond that, things get harder. Homan has promised to revive “worksite enforcement” in which ICE targets workplaces such as slaughterhouses and farms that are suspected of employing large numbers of undocumented migrants. The history of such raids suggests that they will be difficult.

Only one large-scale raid—against chicken processing plants in Mississippi—was conducted during Trump’s first term. Some 700 migrants were arrested and some deported, but the employers got off with a slap on the wrist. The Mississippi plants continue to face large labor shortages and continue to hire unauthorized migrants.

Many of Trump’s wealthy donors rely on foreign workers, including unauthorized migrants, and are likely to push back against the resumption of workplace raids.

Reaching deep into American communities will be harder still. To start, it is challenging simply to find undocumented migrants; unlike some countries, U.S. residents are not required to carry documents that prove their right to be in the country. Many states, including California, Oregon, and Washington, as well as cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, also have “sanctuary” laws that prevent local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE agents, making arrests and detentions more difficult.

Homan has promised to ignore such obstacles in deploying ICE agents: “If sanctuary cities don’t want to help us, then get out of the way, because we’re coming,” he said on Fox & Friends. Miller has also talked about getting friendly red states to call up state-level National Guard forces and sending them to assist ICE agents in blue states. This could set up unprecedented clashes across state borders.

The public reaction is hard to predict. Most immigration enforcement takes place near the border or quietly, when unauthorized migrants are detained on criminal charges and turned over to ICE. Sending agents into neighborhoods to arrest individual migrants will be far more explosive; nearly 14 million U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents live in households where are least one member is unauthorized. Nearly 1 in 3 Latino families—a group that voted  more strongly for Trump in this election than in the previous two—is faced with the threat of removal or family separation in the event of a mass deportation.

All of this assumes, of course, that the new administration chooses to be constrained by existing laws and norms. But other options may exist. With Republican control of both the House and the Senate, Trump may be able to push through laws not only to boost funding for removal operations, but also to weaken legal protections for unauthorized migrants.

His officials are likely to expand the use of expedited removal—a provision that permits removal without a court hearing for recent arrivals. Previous administrations have used the power almost exclusively to remove unauthorized border crossers shortly after their arrival, but Trump tried late in his first term to extend that power to migrants who had lived anywhere in the country for less than two years. The increasingly pro-Trump courts may help such an effort pass muster.

This week, Trump suggested he may go farther still and declare a national emergency—using broad powers granted by Congress to the president—in order to deploy the U.S. military to expedite deportations.

Even if his deportation plans fall short, a large-scale attempt of the sort being promised will mark a revolution in the U.S. approach to migration. Until now, conservative critics of immigration, including Trump himself during his first term, have focused largely on securing borders and reducing new arrivals. Right-wing parties in Europe, too, have focused on tightening borders.

But if the United States starts mass removal, populist governments in other parts of the world will likely be emboldened to take more draconian measures as well. Despite the political controversies, the United States has long been something of a model for embracing immigration—more than one-fifth of all the world’s migrants reside in the United States. Mass deportation will send a far uglier message.

If the effort proves too difficult, and Trump buckles to the inevitable backlash, the political debate in the United States may revert to where it has been for decades: how to provide a reasonable level of security at the border while continuing to admit new immigrants who benefit the economy—and looking the other way at the millions of unauthorized migrants who have settled and built lives in the country.

For decades now, that has been a messy and uncomfortable compromise. But the alternative promises to be much worse.

[amitkakkareasyvisa]

(via USCIS Announces Second H-1B Visa Lottery for FY 2025)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Nick Visser at HuffPost:

Tom Homan, President-elect Donald Trump’s new “border czar,” told Democratic governors to “get the hell out of the way” as the upcoming administration prepares its mass deportation plans — or face unnamed consequences.

“There will be a massive deportation operation because we have a massive, never-seen-before illegal immigration [wave],” Homan said during a Fox News appearance on Friday. “It’s not about hate, it’s not about discrimination, it’s not about being racist — it’s about those people entering the country illegally, which is a crime.” “If [Democratic governors] are not wiling to help, then get the hell out of the way, because ICE is going to do the job,” Homan added. Homan served as the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during part of Trump’s first administration. He was a key figure in the effort to separate migrant children from their parents at the southern border with Mexico and a contributor to Project 2025. Trump tapped him to be border czar — a position that does not need Senate confirmation — on Sunday as the president-elect unveiled the first slate of aides and confidants to key positions in his upcoming second administration.

[...] “We have a mandate,” he said. “I think the American people just gave President Trump a mandate, that’s why he was elected. To secure the border, save lives.” “If you’re not going to help us, step aside,” Homan added. “But don’t get in our way, because there will be consequences.”

STFU, Thomas Homan!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 26, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 27, 2024

Today presented a good example of the difference between governance by social media and governance by policy.

Although incoming presidents traditionally stay out of the way of the administration currently in office, last night, Trump announced on his social media site that he intends to impose a 25% tariff on all products coming into the U.S. from Mexico and Canada “until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” Trump claimed that they could solve the problem “easily” and that until they do, “it is time for them to pay a very big price!”

In a separate post, he held China to account for fentanyl and said he would impose a 10% tariff on all Chinese products on top of the tariffs already levied on those goods. “Thank you for your attention to this matter,” he added.

In fact, since 2023 there has been a drop of 14.5% in deaths from drug overdose, the first such decrease since the epidemic began, and border patrol apprehensions of people crossing the southern border illegally have fallen to the lowest number since August 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. In any case, a study by the libertarian Cato Institute shows that from 2019 to 2024, more than 80% of the people caught with fentanyl at ports of entry—where the vast majority of fentanyl is seized—were U.S. citizens.

Very few undocumented immigrants and very little illegal fentanyl come into the U.S. from Canada.

Washington Post economics reporter Catherine Rampell noted that Mexico and Canada are the biggest trading partners of the United States. Mexico sends cars, machinery, electrical equipment, and beer to the U.S., along with about $19 billion worth of fruits and vegetables. About half of U.S. fresh fruit imports come from Mexico, including about two thirds of our fresh tomatoes and about 90% of our avocados.

Transferring that production to the U.S. would be difficult, especially since about half of the 2 million agricultural workers in the U.S. are undocumented and Trump has vowed to deport them all. Rampell points out as well that Project 2025 calls for getting rid of the visa system that gives legal status to agricultural workers. U.S. farm industry groups have asked Trump to spare the agricultural sector, which contributed about $1.5 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product in 2023, from his mass deportations.

Canada exports a wide range of products to the U.S., including significant amounts of oil. Rampell quotes GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, Patrick De Haan, as saying that a 25% tax on Canadian crude oil would increase gas prices in the Midwest and the Rockies by 25 cents to 75 cents a gallon, costing U.S. consumers about $6 billion to $10 billion more per year.

Canada is also the source of about a quarter of the lumber builders use in the U.S., as well as other home building materials. Tariffs would raise prices there, too, while construction is another industry that will be crushed by Trump’s threatened deportations. According to NPR’s Julian Aguilar, in 2022, nearly 60% of the more than half a million construction workers in Texas were undocumented.

Construction company officials are begging Trump to leave their workers alone. Deporting them “would devastate our industry, we wouldn’t finish our highways, we wouldn’t finish our schools,” the chief executive officer of a major Houston-based construction company told Aguilar. “Housing would disappear. I think they’d lose half their labor.”

Former trade negotiator under George W. Bush John Veroneau said Trump’s plans would violate U.S. trade agreements, including the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) that replaced the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement that Trump killed. The USMCA was negotiated during Trump’s own first term, and although it was based on NAFTA, he praised it as “the fairest, most balanced, and beneficial trade agreement we have ever signed into law. It’s the best agreement we’ve ever made.”

Trump apologists immediately began to assure investors that he really didn’t mean it. Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman posted that Trump wouldn’t impose the tariffs if “Mexico and Canada stop the flow of illegal immigrants and fentanyl into the U.S.” Trump’s threat simply meant that Trump “is going to use tariffs as a weapon to achieve economic and political outcomes which are in the best interest of America,” Ackman wrote.

Iowa Republican lawmaker Senator Chuck Grassley, who represents a farm state that was badly burned by Trump’s tariffs in his first term, told reporters that he sees the tariff threats as a “negotiating tool.”

Foreign leaders had no choice but to respond. Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum issued an open letter to Trump pointing out that Mexico has developed a comprehensive immigration system that has reduced border encounters by 75% since December 2023, and that the U.S. CBP One program has ended the “caravans” he talks about. She noted that it is imperative for the U.S. and Mexico jointly to “arrive at another model of labor mobility that is necessary for your country and to address the causes that lead families to leave their places of origin out of necessity.”

She noted that the fentanyl problem in the U.S. is a public health problem and that Mexican authorities have this year “seized tons of different types of drugs, 10,340 weapons, and arrested 15,640 people for violence related to drug trafficking,” and added that “70% of the illegal weapons seized from criminals in Mexico come from your country.” She also suggested that Mexico would retaliate with tariffs of its own if the U.S. imposed tariffs on Mexico.

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau did not go that far but talked to Trump shortly after the social media post. The U.S. is Canada’s biggest trading partner, and a 25% tariff would devastate its economy. The premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, seemed to try to keep her province’s oil out of the line of fire by agreeing with Trump that the Canadian government should work with him and adding, “The vast majority of Alberta’s energy exports to the US are delivered through secure and safe pipelines which do not in any way contribute to these illegal activities at the border.”

Trudeau has called an emergency meeting with Canada’s provincial premiers tomorrow to discuss the threat.

Spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington Liu Pengyu simply said: “No one will win a trade war or a tariff war” and “the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality.”

In contrast to Trump’s sudden social media posts that threaten global trade and caused a frenzy today, President Joe Biden this evening announced that, after months of negotiations, Israel and Lebanon have agreed to a ceasefire brokered by the U.S. and France, to take effect at 4:00 a.m. local time on Wednesday. “This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities,” Biden said.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah attacked Israel shortly after Hamas’s attack of October 7, 2023. Fighting on the border between Israel and Lebanon has turned 300,000 Lebanese people and 70,000 Israelis into refugees, with Israel bombing southern Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah’s tunnel system and killing its leaders. According to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,000 people and injured more than 13,000, while CBS News reports that about 90 Israeli soldiers and nearly 50 Israeli civilians have been killed in the fighting. Under the agreement, Israel’s forces currently occupying southern Lebanon will withdraw over the next 60 days as Lebanon’s army moves in. Hezbollah will be kept from rebuilding.

According to Laura Rozen in her newsletter Diplomatic, before the agreement went into effect, Israel increased its airstrikes in Beirut and Tyre.

When he announced the deal, Biden pushed again for a ceasefire in Gaza, whose people, he said, “have been through hell. Their…world is absolutely shattered.” Biden called again for Hamas to release the more than 100 hostages it still holds and to negotiate a ceasefire. Biden said the U.S. will “make another push with Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Israel, and others to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza with the hostages released and the end to the war without Hamas in power.”

Today’s announcement, Biden said, brings closer the realization of his vision for a peaceful Middle East where both Israel and a Palestinian state are established and recognized, a plan he tried to push before October 7 by linking Saudi Arabia’s normalization of relations with Israel to a Palestinian state. Biden has argued that such a deal is key to Israel’s long-term security, and today he pressed Israel to “be bold in turning tactical gains against Iran and its proxies into a coherent strategy that secures Israel’s long-term…safety and advances a broader peace and prosperity in the region.”

“I believe this agenda remains possible,” Biden said. “And in my remaining time in office, I will work tirelessly to advance this vision of—for an integrated, secure, and prosperous region, all of which…strengthens America’s national security.”

“Today’s announcement is a critical step in advancing that vision,” Biden said. “It reminds us that peace is possible.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mimi-0007]

****†** EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS BEFORE YOU VOTE. ****Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is a collection of policy proposals to thoroughly reshape the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Established in 2022, the project aims to recruit tens of thousands of conservatives to the District of Columbia to replace existing federal civil servants—whom Republicans characterize as part of the "deep state"—and to further the objectives of the next Republican president. It adopts a maximalist version of the unitary executive theory—which asserts that the president has absolute power over the executive branch upon inauguration. Unitary executive theory is a disputed interpretation of Article II of the Constitution of the United States. Project 2025 envisions widespread changes across the entire government, particularly with regard to economic and social policies and the role of the federal government and its agencies. The plan proposes slashing funding for the Department of Justice (DOJ), dismantling the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sharply reducing environmental and climate change regulations to favor of fossil fuel production, eliminating the Department of Commerce, and ending the independence of various federal agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The blueprint seeks to institute tax cuts, though its writers disagree on the wisdom of protectionism. .

Project 2025 recommends abolishing the Department of Education, whose programs would be either transferred to other government agencies, or terminated. Scientific research would receive federal funding only if it suits conservative principles. The Project urges the government to explicitly reject abortion as health care and to restrict access to contraception. The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank that leads the development of Project 2025, asserted in April 2024 that "the radical Left hates families" and "wants to eliminate the family and replace it with the state" while driving the country to emulate totalitarian nations, such as North Korea. The Project seeks to infuse the government with elements of Christianity, stating in its Mandate that "freedom is defined by God, not man." Project 2025 proposes criminalizing pornography, removing protections against discrimination based on sexual or gender identity, and terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, as well as affirmative action. The Project advises the future president to immediately deploy the military for domestic law enforcement and to direct the DOJ to pursue Donald Trump's adversaries by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. It recommends the arrest, detention, and deportation of undocumented immigrants across the country. It promotes capital punishment and the speedy "finality" of such sentences. Project director Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official, explained that Project 2025 is "systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state." Dans admitted that it was "counterintuitive" to recruit so many people to join the government in order to shrink it, but pointed out the need for a future President to "regain control" of the federal government. Although the project does not promote a specific presidential candidate, many contributors have close ties to Donald Trump and his presidential campaign. The Heritage Foundation has developed Project 2025 in collaboration with over 100 partners including Turning Point USA, led by its executive director Charlie Kirk; the Conservative Partnership Institute including former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows as senior partner; the Center for Renewing America, led by former Trump Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought; and America First Legal, led by former Trump Senior Advisor Stephen Miller. The Project is detailed in Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, a version of which Heritage has written as transition plans for each prospective Republican president since 1980. Critics of Project 2025 have described it as an authoritarian Christian nationalist movement and a path for the United States to become an autocracy. Several experts in law have indicated that it would undermine the rule of law and the separation of powers. Some conservatives and Republicans also criticized the plan, for example in the contexts of centralizing power, climate change, and foreign trade.

[visaandimmigrations01]

Stay informed about US immigration, especially the U.S. Green Card. Expect policy changes in 2024, including updates to the U.S. Green Card Lottery 2025. Our platform delivers the Latest US Immigration News, keeping you ahead of regulatory shifts. Whether seeking residency or tracking immigration trends, rely on our insights for your Green Card journey.

[izooks]

Great news, fellow patriots. I’ve found another thing Democratic presidential nominee "Comrade Kamala Harris" is bad at: Communism.

As you’ve probably heard from GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and other wise leaders on the right, Harris is a communist, a socialist, a Marxist and probably a bunch of other -ists meant to scare you.

So why are economists saying Comrade Kamala's economic plan is good?

Look, if Trump, Musk AND Moms for Liberty are communicating to me that the sitting vice president of the United States is a communist, I’m going to believe them, because I’ve never known those folks to lie or be hypocritical.

And so I am appalled ‒ APPALLED, I tell you ‒ that an actual, dyed-in-the-wool communist is running for president.  

But what’s even more appalling is recent revelations from economists at investment giant Goldman Sachs that a Harris victory in November would boost the U.S. economy while a Trump victory would be a “hit to growth.”

That’s right, the economists wrote: "If Democrats sweep, new spending and expanded middle-income tax credits would slightly more than offset lower investment due to higher corporate tax rates, resulting in a very slight boost to GDP investment due to higher corporate tax rates, resulting in a very slight boost to GDP growth on average over 2025-2026.”

Goldman Sachs says Harris' economic plan leads to growth, Trump's plan doesn't

And if Trump beats Comrade Kamala the communist? The Goldman Sachs report said: “We estimate that if Trump wins in a sweep or with divided government, the hit to growth from tariffs and tighter immigration policy would outweigh the positive fiscal impulse” from continuing most corporate tax reductions.

Why are some of the biggest capitalists on the planet at Goldman Sachs telling us that a communist-dictator-in-waiting will be better for our economy?

This comes hot on the heels of a nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model report showing that Capitalist King Trump's economic plan would balloon the deficit nearly five times more than Communist Comrade Kamala's.

Why is a communist like Harris promising to help small businesses?

Just listen to what Comrade Kamala was spouting on the campaign trail Wednesday as she touted her communist economic policy aimed at helping small businesses: “We will expand the tax deduction for startups to $50,000. It's essentially a tax cut for starting a small business.

[projectreclaim]

Nearly half of Republicans support President Trump deploying U.S. military forces to detain undocumented immigrants in detention facilities until they can be deported, according to a new poll.

The findings suggest that Trump’s mass deportation program has the backing of his base even as the program is still unpopular with some Americans.

46 percent of Republicans support using the military to lock up immigrants in detention centers before their deportations. Nearly a fifth of independents said the same, while just 8 percent (no surprise here) of Democrats responded positively to the proposal.

On the bright side, 82 percent of “voters who score very high or high on the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale" report strongly supporting Trump deploying U.S. military forces to detain undocumented immigrants.

The majority of the American people support the upcoming mass deportations, some still need to understand that this must be done by any means necessary, including our military forces.

Happy 2025!