Filings due today from the House impeachment managers and former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers will outline their cases ahead of his trial next week. Meanwhile, President Biden will sign executive orders on immigration.
— NYT: Top Stories
Tag: Immigration
The past four years have seen a steep reduction in immigration. But the country is becoming ever more diverse.
To grasp the impact of the latest great wave of immigration to the United States, consider the city of Grand Island, Neb.: More than 60 percent of public school students are nonwhite, and their families collectively speak 55 languages. During drop-off at Starr Elementary on a recent morning, parents bid their children goodbye in Spanish, Somali and Vietnamese.
“You wouldn’t expect to see so many languages spoken in a school district of 10,000,” said Tawana Grover, the school superintendent who arrived from Dallas four years ago. “When you hear Nebraska, you don’t think diversity. We’ve got the world right here in rural America.”
The students are the children of foreign-born workers who flocked to this town of 51,000 in the 1990s and 2000s to toil in the area’s meatpacking plants, where speaking English was less necessary than a willingness to do the grueling work.
They came to Nebraska from every corner of the globe: Mexicans, Guatemalans and Hondurans who floated across the Rio Grande on inner tubes, in search of a better life; refugees who fled famine in South Sudan and war in Iraq to find safe haven; Salvadorans and Cambodians who spent years scratching for work in California and heard that jobs in Nebraska were plentiful and the cost of living low.
The story of how millions of immigrants since the 1970s have put down lasting roots across the country is by now well-known. What is less understood about President Trump’s four-year-long push to shut the borders and put “America First” is that his quest may prove ultimately a futile one. Even with one of the most severe declines in immigration since the 1920s, the country is on an irreversible course to becoming ever more diverse, and more dependent on immigrants and their children.
The president since the moment he took office issued a torrent of orders that reduced refugee admissions; narrowed who is eligible for asylum; made it more difficult to qualify for permanent residency or citizenship; tightened scrutiny of applicants for high-skilled worker visas and sought to limit the length of stay for international students. His policies slashed the number of migrants arrested and then released into the country from nearly 500,000 in fiscal 2019 to 15,000 in fiscal 2020.
The measures worked: “We are going to end the decade with lower immigration than in any decade since the ’70s,” said William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who analyzed newly available census data.
The president-elect, Joseph R. Biden Jr. has pledged to reverse many of the measures. He has vowed to reinstate Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA, an Obama-era program that allowed young adults mainly brought to the United States illegally as children to remain, and to resume accepting refugees and asylum seekers in larger numbers.
He has also said he would introduce legislation to offer a path to citizenship for people in the country illegally.
The foreign-born population grew by 5.6 million in the ’80s, 8.8 million in the ’90s and 11.3 million in the 2000s.
By the time Mr. Trump took office, this contemporary wave of immigration had lifted the foreign-born population to 44.5 million, representing 13.7 percent of the population, the biggest share since 1910. Among them were about 11 million undocumented immigrants.
During his first week in office, the president introduced a travel ban to halt the entry of people from many Muslim countries and paused refugee resettlement, citing terrorist threats.
As Central American migrants fleeing violence and poverty showed up at the border by the busload, his administration introduced policies to deter them, including the separation of migrant children from their parents.
He was able to do it by bypassing a Congress that has long been deadlocked on immigration reform, issuing a series of executive orders and proclamations that rapidly shut the door on immigration despite a flurry of legal challenges.
“Trump has demonstrably proven that you don’t need a grand deal to tackle immigration and border security,” said James Carafano of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Average net migration shrank by 45 percent between 2017 and 2019 from an average of 953,000 during the previous seven years, as fewer immigrants arrived and more left, according to a Center for Immigration Studies analysis of census data.
There will be an even more precipitous decline recorded by the close of 2020 following visa restrictions imposed by the president amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“This year is truly unprecedented in how dramatic and fast this decline in immigration has been,” said David Bier, an immigration analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Outside of wars and the Great Depression, we have never seen a level of immigration like we are seeing right now.”
Mr. Trump put much of the focus on disparaging refugees and immigrants as drains on public coffers and championing a wall on the southwestern border.
Yet all the attention on the border ignored the much more significant growth in immigration that was happening elsewhere in the country.
The number of immigrants of Asian origin grew by 2.8 million in the nine years ending 2019, more than from any other region. The biggest gains were among Indians and Chinese; the number of Mexicans dropped by 779,000.
Many of the recent immigrants have settled in parts of the country where there is a low concentration of foreign-born people, including in states that voted for Mr. Trump in both 2016 and 2020.
Among them are Shikha Jaiswal, a nephrologist, and her husband, Nihit Gupta, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, who came to the United States from India to complete their residencies and are building their careers in a medically underserved area of West Virginia.
Small-town America has come to rely on a pipeline of foreign doctors. “People have been very kind and grateful at the same time, making it a very rewarding experience,” Dr. Jaiswal said.
The children of immigrants who are already here will continue to make the United States more diverse: The 2020 census is expected to show that more than half of people under 18 are people of color.
“The mainstream now increasingly includes people who are nonwhite, particularly from immigrant backgrounds,” said Richard Alba, a sociology professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
The movement of the baby boom generation out of the labor force amid a plummeting birthrate is accelerating the trend and intensifying the need for new immigrant labor to pay the Social Security and Medicare bills for retiring Americans.
“It’s not that native-born kids can’t take the boomers’ jobs; it’s that there are not enough of these kids to take them,” said Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California who researches the subject.
That diversity is already being reflected in the higher rungs of the work force.
For much of the second half of the 20th century, white workers held a virtual monopoly on the best-paying positions. But by 2015, among top-earning workers under 50, about a third were nonwhite, mainly Latinos or Asians of immigrant origin, according to research by Mr. Alba, who predicts that their share will only grow.
A study released last month found that nearly 30 percent of all students enrolled in colleges and universities in 2018 hailed from immigrant families, up from 20 percent in 2000.
“When you start having cohorts of college graduates that are so diverse, it’s going to change the work force, which means more people from diverse backgrounds moving into positions of authority and high remuneration,” Mr. Alba said. “There’s no going back.”
— NYT: Top Stories
An immigration detention center in Georgia performed questionable hysterectomies, refused to test detainees for COVID-19 and shredded medical records, according to a nurse quoted in a complaint filed Monday.
— FOX News
— Provided photo
WAYNE, N.J. – Titilayo Majoyeogbe is the director and choreographer of a fairly new dance company — T. MAJ Dance – that recently demonstrated its mission to address sociopolitical issues and encourage activism through dance performances.
T. MAJ Dance company presented its premiere performance called “Plight,” by implementing text, audio, props, visual and innovative movements to depict one of the world’s largest humanitarian crisis – immigration.
Majoyeogbe believes “Plight” dance show is culturally relevant.
“As a choreographer, I always want to create a dance that seeks to bring the unspoken, neglected, rejected and under-told histories and stories of marginalized people to light through movement,” Majoyeogbe states.
According to Majoyeogbe, “Plight” is culturally relevant because it reveals the sacrifices of family divisions among immigrants.
She said the performers explore their sacrifices by creating moments of dependency and independency, and security and disconnection.
The dancers demonstrate the issues of immigrants through “small yet intense vernacular gestures that speak of dignity, power, determination and desperation,” Majoyeogbe states.
The dance movements create a surreal experience charged with mystery and analogy that invite viewers to feel empowered, self-reflect and take action, she explains.
As a choreographer, she pushes the boundaries of creative movements while she tries to inspire viewers by creating a sense of hope in the midst of worldwide sociopolitical issues, she says.
In general, “Plight” performance revolves around immigration, culture resilience, humanity and community.
Her choreography is meant “to initiate conversations among people and to help keep the channels open to humanity and the realms of social inclusion,” she infers.
History teaches us that America thrived for decades with appropriate, controlled approach to immigration that allowed for ethnic diversity of cultures, literature, art, foods, music and other contributions from immigrants who assimilated into America’s common culture and institutions.
However, unless we preserve the values of a “melting pot’’ culture that makes America great, we stand to lose the successes of a country that brings people together, and America will change its appeal to the world.
During Black History Month, leaders and organizers of events hope that Americans at large and African-Americans will remember our history, our struggles, and the black males and females who have contributed to American society and thus makes it a better place to live for future generations.
Likewise, many other cultures and minority groups in America share a similar sentiment of wanting inclusion and recognition for their contributions to making America great.
But with illegal immigration, a struggling economy and declining real wages, terrorism and national security, government spending and taxation, record-high political partisanship, America has been changing its tune on immigration.
Times have been tense in America for years, with the double-whammies of the Great Recession and the roll-out of Obamacare pitting the left against the right. With dollars seeming scarcer, America’s diverse groups may feel more competitive than cooperative, anxious about access to jobs, housing, and government influence.
The election of billionaire real estate mogul, Donald Trump, to the White House has exacerbated the already wide gulf between the left and right. As perhaps the most controversial major party presidential nominee in history, Trump’s aggressive and unchecked rhetoric had already incensed women, minorities, and the LGBTQ community long before Election Day. His election upset, coming despite losing the popular vote by a record 2.9 million votes, was seen by many as a signal that a wide swath of the electorate no longer appreciated diversity or inclusiveness.
Trump’s inaugural address, in which he declared “America first,” further alarmed the left by taunting the Washington establishment and declaring that America had been taken advantage of by other countries. The property tycoon blamed foreigners for the United States’ economic malaise, both illegal immigrants allegedly taking jobs and globalized competitors allegedly taking America’s business.
Immediately after taking office on Jan. 20, Donald Trump continued raising eyebrows by seeking to keep all of his campaign promises. While politicians are ordinarily lauded for such practice, Trump’s supporters had actually tried to make the billionaire more palatable to the public by insisting that he should not be taken literally. Literally is what we have gotten from the Oval Office: Trump’s most controversial acts in his two weeks in office have been signing executive orders to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and ban any immigrants or refugees from seven predominantly-Islamic nations in the Middle East.
These two executive orders hammer home that the White House no longer considers the United States to be a genuine melting pot. Immigrants were once accepted as part of the powerful blend of America, but no more. In Trump’s America, immigrants are seen as statistics that must be monitored: Examined for crime, economic contribution, birth rate, use of welfare. While the president has not publicly suggested that immigration be discontinued, he has gone further than any modern-day predecessor in insisting that immigration has been a bust rather than a boon.
By portraying immigrants from Latin America as criminals, rapists, and drug dealers, Trump has actively sought to turn his supporters, and all citizens, against the idea of America as a melting pot. He wants us to see Mexicans as dangerous job-stealers and Muslims as budding proto-terrorists. If he can destroy the age-old idea of the U.S. as a melting pot, he can successfully pit societal groups against each other and enhance his own power. Once we become a society of us-versus-them, each group will constantly seek the favor of the White House…and guarantee Trump a second term.
— Calvin Wolf contributed to this report
Wolf is his pen name and he has published over 2,000 articles on sites like the Yahoo! ContributorNetwork, Examiner, Helium, DigitalJournal, The News Hub, and Hubpages, as well as for his local newspaper. He has also published eight political thriller novels and is an AP teacher.
Manuel vs. The Statue of Liberty, an award-winning musical comedy by a Princeton playwright, Noemi de la Puente, addresses the issue of illegal immigration and the “absurdities” brilliant students usually face in America’s schools, given the absence of the DREAM Act.
A Princeton University undergraduate who was an illegal immigrant, and could not accept a scholarship to Oxford University, UK, because he could not leave the United States to travel — considering he was undocumented, fights with the Statue of Liberty in the show. His story inspired the musical comedy. The character Manuel in the play represents this student.
Manuel vs Statue of Liberty from Michelle Dryden on Vimeo.
The Statue of Liberty depicts the “diva democracy’’ on immigration in the United States. De la Puente said that a musical comedy was the best vehicle to drive home the messages of the play. She said that the music is multicultural and the comedy lightens notions on the very serious reality of immigration in America.
Manuel vs. The Statue of Liberty play has won awards, including NYMF in 2014. The Statue of Liberty herself has won an individual award. This comedy has been shown at theaters in New York and at local theaters in New Jersey. This play was also at a Princeton University theater earlier this weekend.