Franchesca Ramsey of MTV’s Decoded breaks down America’s incredibly complex immigration process. Read the rest
“I was threatened with arrest for filming this 3 minute short documentary film about @nobanjfk lawyers at NYC JFK airport on Sunday,” says filmmaker Aaron Stewart-Ahn.
Aaron wasn't the only one to report harassment, intimidation, and threat of arrest for photographing, filming or recording audio of the massive protests at this airport and others, as travelers officials scrambled to come to grips with Trump's sneak attack executive order.
Have just been ejected from JFK Terminal 4!while trying to interview families waiting for loved ones
— Jon Campbell (@j0ncampbell) January 30, 2017
[Vimeo]
Donald Trump says he will fly to Mexico City Wednesday to meet with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, hours before the GOP presidential nominee is to deliver a speech in Arizona on immigration.
Austrian designer Moriz Büsing created this grim interactive map of migrant and refugee deaths on the way to Europe, or trying to stay in Europe; over 32,000 deaths in 15 years. Read the rest
It looks like Wargames but with Skittles: colored balls representing immigrants arcing through low orbit to land somewhere within the United States of America—Oklahoma, by the looks of it. Creator Max Galka writes that it covers 1820 to 2013 and that each dot represents 10,000 people. Read the rest
Two crazy liberals, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush talk ab...This video is shocking. The way that Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush talked about immigration and the US/Mexico border in 1980 -- during a presidential debate -- you would think that they were Democrats. What has become of the Republican Party?
Posted by Gavin Newsom on Sunday, February 28, 2016
Gavin Newsom posted this video to Facebook, saying "This video is shocking. The way that Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush talked about immigration and the US/Mexico border in 1980 -- during a presidential debate -- you would think that they were Democrats. What has become of the Republican Party?"
I like Vernon Reed's suggestion: "I think that the Democratic Convention should open with a montage of things that St Ronald Reagan said - that the Republican'ts would now take as the signs of a traitor to the Republican 'cause,' such as it is..... This would get INCREDIBLE press coverage - and be hilarious!!!" Read the rest
The New York prisoners team is composed of people convicted of violent felonies who have gone on to take continuing education classes in prison through Bard College. They debated the proposition that public schools should be allowed to refuse education to undocumented students, arguing for the proposition. Read the rest
"We have a name for locking people up and forcing them to do real work without wages. It's called slavery." Read the rest
The UK Home Secretary Theresa May wasted £95,000- £110,000 in a failed attempt to deport a dying Nigerian asylum seeker named Ifa Muaza. Muaza sought asylum from Nigeria, and believes his family were murdered after his departure; the UK denied his application. He embarked on a 100-day hunger strike, prepared to die in a high-security detention centre rather than go back to Nigeria. Muaza was an embarrassment to Theresa May, whose Conservative party has declared war on migrants and asylum seekers in a bid to appeal to xenophobic voters who defected to the racist UK Independence Party.
May secretly chartered a private jet to deport the frail and failing Muaza, whom government doctors had declared to be too ill to travel and in danger of "imminent death." The plane was refused entry to Nigerian airspace; it later landed in Malta (which objected to use of its airstrip). Finally, the plane returned to the UK, landing at Luton airport with Muaza still aboard, and the British taxpayer out £95,000- £110,000, in addition to the £180,000 already spent on legal bills, thanks to May's vanity and determination to appear "tough on immigration." Read the rest
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is one of the key figures in the political wrangle over whether undocumented immigrants in the USA will be legalized or deported. He's also the recipient of over $100,000 in campaign contributions from the private prison industry, whose profits would skyrocket if his push for prison for all those people is successful.
Chuck Schumer is the lead Senate Democrat working on immigration reform--he gets to decide whether millions of undocumented immigrants will be imprisoned or legalized. Yet he’s also taken over $100,000 in campaign contributions from the private prison industry. Is it any surprise he’s pushing for billions more dollars spent on increased enforcement and detention of immigrants?
We can’t trust Sen. Schumer to push for fair legislation when he’s accepting money from private prison companies that have a strong interest in jailing as many immigrants as possible. How much of an interest? The two corporations from which Sen. Schumer took money, GEO Group and CCA, made $296.9 million in profits from the jailing of immigrants last year.
Tell Sen. Schumer to return this money immediately.
If 15,000 people sign, we'll personally deliver your petitions to Sen. Schumer and demand a response.
Sen. Schumer: Give back the money (via Making Light) Read the rest
* Clockwork fairy. Steampunk! Steampunk! Set aside the impulse to tedious kvetching about nonfunctional gears and sit agog with me. (via)
* Stop Pretending Art Is Hard. From botched art restoration to manifesto in one t-shirt.
* The Science News Cycle [PhD Comics]. Don't believe the hype. DING DING! (via)
* Talk on Beat SF, Turing and Burroughs. Rudy Rucker being as Ruckerian as is humanly possible, and we're all better for it.
* The Real Romney. Biography of the man before he became a quadrillionaire sovereign nation in a vat. (via)
* Spanish microcurrency boom. When the going gets tough, the tough issue fiat scrip. (via)
* Anarchist scaremongering at RNC. Black bloc bogeymen for everyone! They've got acid-filled eggs, you know. Because that would totally work. (via)
* Deporting parents of children born in America. No human is illegal*. If your family values demand that the mothers of American children should be sent abroad forever, you're doing it wrong. (via) Read the rest
Princeton's alumni magazine has an excellent profile of Douglas Massey, Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs and director of Princeton’s Office of Population Research. Massey studies patterns of US migration, particularly illegal immigration from Mexico. His research is the only rigorous census of Mexican-American illegal immigration flows, and its conclusions are that the US perception of Mexican migration is completely backwards, and that the major immigration problems are the result of bad policy, not changes in volume:
Read the restThe MMP’s reports are freely available to anyone through its website, http://mmp.opr.princeton.edu. But statistics can be sterile things. Get Massey going, and one gets an earful about the true state of affairs along the border. To wit:
* We are not being flooded with illegal Mexican migrants. The total number of migrants from Mexico has varied very little since the 1950s. The massive influx many have written about never happened.
* Net illegal migration has stopped almost completely.
* Illegal migration has not stopped because of stricter border enforcement, which Massey characterizes as a waste of money at best and counterproductive at worst.
* There are indeed more undocumented Mexicans living in the United States than there were 20 years ago, but that is because fewer migrants are returning home — not because more are sneaking into the country.
* And the reason that fewer Mexican citizens are returning home is because we have stepped up border enforcement so dramatically.
Mull over that last point for a minute. If Congress had done nothing to secure the border over the last two decades — if it had just left the border alone — there might be as many as 2 million fewer Mexicans living in the United States today, Massey believes.
The UK Home Secretary has announced changes to the "Life in the UK" immigrant test. Instead of containing information on human rights, the nature of the political structure of the UK and the EU, and who has the legitimate right to access benefits, the test will focus on useful things that everyone in Britain really cares about: Shakespeare, Christianity, the Duke of Wellington and the Battle of Trafalgar.
I sat this test before I established my UK residence (I later became a citizen) and a large part of it is about UK culture: the history of women's suffrage, the law and norms around childrearing and work and tax, and more. Much of it is a bit tedious. Is it necessary to be able to rattle off the number of seats in each regional assembly? The multiple choice answers for Scotland were something like: a) 131, b) 130, c) 120, d, 100 -- surely knowing the number plus or minus 20 percent is enough for daily life. The legendary difficulty of the test is largely down to this sort of fine-grained multiple choice answers; it's important to know that women got the universal franchise in the late 1920s and the tradition is firmly established in the UK, but being able to name the exact year is beside the point, something that the test-designers clearly missed.
Being able to name the plays of Shakespeare, or the dates of Trafalgar are also beside the point. As a naturalised immigrant, I'm here to tell you that this sort of thing is an ocean away from the sort of knowledge that one needs to become a part of UK society. Read the rest
Tennessee and Arizona have been locked in a race to see which state can past the worst, most invasive, least constitutional anti-woman and racist legislation. In case you've lost track of which state is winning the race to the bottom, Skepchick provides a helpful scorecard. Arizona makes a strong showing, but I think that, for the moment, Tennessee is in the lead for most barbaric state in the union.
Read the restAlso this week, Tennessee senators approved an update to the state’s abstinence-only education policy – which, I should add, doesn’t work seeing as the state has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the country – which would outlaw the teaching of “gateway sexual activity.” I know what you’re thinking: what is this “gateway sex” all the kids are talking about? Is it as awesome as oral?
According to Tennessee legislatures, “gateway sexual activities” are kissing and hand holding. You know, things that small children do. Joyous things that bring us closer together, as humans. Ways we express affection every day. Evil.
The bill would warn teens about the dangers of kissing and hand holding, and prohibit teachers from demonstrating such activities. I’m not really clear on whether that means a teacher would be fired for, say, kissing his wife when she picks him up at the end of the day. And what about the teachers of small children who need their hand held every now and again? Off limits? Again, unsure.
What I am sure about is that a bill effectively warning teens about affection is one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.
