My deceased father in law, bless him, contributed money to Hillsdale College when he was alive(he suffered from Alzheimer’s and had no idea.) We continue to receive solicitations addressed to him, though I’ve written them that he died in 2018. Hillsdale is shameless. And hardly “Christian.” DeSantis is no “Christian.” States on the receiving end of these so-called “immigrant dumps” by DeSantis, Abbott, et al. should see them for what they are: blessings for both the immigrants who get a free trip out of the God-forsaken states of Texas and Florida, and the people in Cali, DC, and Mass, among others, who have mostly hardworking Catholic people eager to contribute (and fill jobs in need). Good grief! We could solve our jobs problem by simply opening the borders! (As you know, I didn’t make that up). JVL - you keep on lighting up the hypocrites and heretics. You speak for me and my peeps - Catholics, Jews, Agnostics, and Athiests.
I hope Florida voters realize that DeSantis is using their taxpayer money for political stunts. What has he done to make the lives of Floridians better? Nothing as far as I can tell. He claims to be a Christian but his actions are completely opposed to the values espoused by Jesus.
Great article JVL. It is dismaying that self proclaimed Christians treat those in need like toxic waste. But those same people want no abortion access while cutting welfare and SNAP program funds at every turn. I’ve stopped expecting Christian behavior from those in power proclaiming it. It resembles no Christianity that I read in the New Testament.
Christian conservative politics is all about selfishness and power; very unChristian behaviors. They obviously have no clue about what Christ taught and lived.
After faithfully coming to The Bulwark for a couple of years I think I’m about to give up on the site. Over the last year or so some of the writers here (not naming any names!) appear to have moved from being Never Trump Conservatives (which is a good thing to be!) to being indistinguishable from a Progressive Democrat (of which I don’t sure need to pay to read, there’s thousands of free websites with the thoughts of progressive Democrat opinion writers). If you guys are going to always be taking the Left side on all the latest culture war issues, especially all the ones where Trump isn’t a main character, then you are no longer “Never Trump”, you’re just another of the hundreds of liberal opinion web sites.
What really baffles me is the fact that Mary plays such a large part in the Catholic faith, when she plays such a small part in the synoptic Gospels. Is she a vestigial God "transported" up from earlier/more ancient religions that had both male and female gods? That's the only explanation I've heard. Otherwise it's baffling. Except for the Magnificat in Luke, she has very few speaking parts.
There seems to be a huge difference between " political Christians " vs actual Christians, ie those who profess to know Jesus and to follow His teachings. Political Christians appear to have created their own Jesus and discarded the One in the Scriptures who teaches us to " welcome the foreigner", to treat them as family. Political Christians appear to believe that Jesus rejects these folks, same as He rejects liberals or anyone else who does not mock the people their Jesus mocks: the poor, the sick, LTBQ...I mean, Jesus would for sure never serve a gay person...the horrors!
Perverting the teachings of Christ is foremost what political Christians do. It's ok to be cruel, to lie, cheat, steal an election even. Just say it's in Jesus name.
The Bible does say homosexuality is sin, so is stealing, killing, lying, cheating, etc. We are not supposed to hate people who send because we would need to hate ourselves. Salvation is about love. We try to obey God because we love Him and want to be obedient. BUT, when we mess up, we confess and he forgives us. First John 1:8-9 8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Our relationship with God should be nurtured for us to become better people. God forgives all sin, when we ask. He does not forgive those that reject Him as God. People are not Christians because they say so. People should be able to notice things about us: Gal 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
We think there is a conflict, we should search the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth.
The same book of the Bible that calls homosexuality an abomination punishable by death also calls children showing disrespect for their parents an abomination and the children should be stoned to death. Historians believe the 7 times in the entire Bible that homosexuality was mentioned was not about caring same sex relationships at all. I am not a historian, but Jesus appears to talk far more about the things that you mentioned in your second paragraph than He ever did in mentioning those dastardly gays. I confess to not understanding why so much of the so called Christian right focuses on homosexuality , something never personally mentioned by Jesus. Appreciate especially your words that " our relationship with God should be nurtured for us to become better people."
We are in the Church Age, and God said the two most important commandments are 1) Love God and 2) love all people Matt 22:36-40. 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
When we learn about His love for us and realize what He went through to save us, what he wants us to do is not burdensome. We should not hate people because of sins they commit. That's making us hypocrits. We should love and encourage people.
They are confusing. I think it started out with 2 or 3 letters. I don't understand the difference between most of the letters. I don't have to agree in order to respect people.
Hey Jonathan, I can't think of anything to add but I wanted to say thanks for this. As it happens I made some of the same points (but less eloquently) when I was responding to MAGAs' gloating hateful comments on Glenn Beck's FB site, "White House Brief." I even quoted the same bible verses. Spending time interacting with fellow Americans who are MAGAs can be soul draining. Hearing from others like you who also see this kind of evil for what it is and are speaking up about it - is like taking a dose of good medicine.
The more I read about this, the angrier I get. Somehow the mealymouthed responses saying "welllll it may be bad but DeSantis has a point" are worse than the outright gleeful hatred. I needed to go for a walk after reading Douthat's tweet: https://twitter.com/DouthatNYT/status/1570795786669268997.
Sending illegals to Martha's Vineyard is obvious grandstanding, and using people as props -- not acceptable.
Sending illegals who want to go North and West to "sanctuary" cities and states is just spreading the pain to the people who insist that the pain should be tolerable, if it's borne by other people in other parts of the country. The elephant in the room that a lot of people refuse look at is that we KNOW that most of these people are economic migrants, not refugees eligible for asylum under international law. Perfectly acceptable to distribute the beneficiaries of open borders to the people who support open borders, if not in their own states and cities.
Sure, but be careful: who, exactly, actually supports *open borders*?
You may be able to find a handful of (non-crank) examples, but for the most part no significant Dems support it.
Also, one must keep in mind that the BOrdER CRisIS!!! is largely a right-wing fabrication. Migration patterns and causes are complex. Spikes are often the result of things that happened years before and many factors are not under the control of the gov't. Decades ago there were tons of crossings (or so it's estimated). The recent apprehension rate is similar to a spike in 1986 (when the apprehension % was much lower).
First of all, the border crisis is real, it'a not a fabrication of anybody, although the Right uses it for their own ends, and the Left just closes their eyes and denies it. I'm only aware of one country in the world that is not a failed state that has numbers of illegal immigrants comparable to ours. That country is Mexico, and it only allows them there because of the certainty that they're passing through -- to us. That is NOT a normal situation or, in my view, a stable one, or an acceptable one.
Second, when I talk about someone believing in "open borders", I mean something extremely specific: the belief that anyone who wants to migrate to the United States should be permitted to enter and settle, probably after a background check, and perhaps after passing a health screening (although that, I expect, would be highly debatable and hotly debated), but with no quotas, no language requirements, no pre-existing connection to the country, no screening for desired skills, and no exclusions for lack of them. In other words, the immigration policy we had in 1870, computerized and minus the racism of that era. I think that I've just described the immigration policy desired by a large proportion of Democrats, and by an even larger proportion of the Left in general
That's a perfectly valid position for purposes of debate, and I would be genuinely interested in knowing how your views diverge for it. What's not valid is obfuscation on the point: people who believe in what I've outlined should own it, not evade it. Intellectual dishonesty will not move the debate forward to any useful place.
The Republican Party has become the party of Trump - characterized by a combination of ignorance, racism, and bigotry. There is no way to hold rational policy discussions with such people. I have no problem with expanding the criteria for refugee status to include humanitarian reasons. People coming from countries other than Mexico more often than not are fleeing not only dire poverty but life threatening poverty due to natural disasters and also violence, although the violence may be related to many factors in addition to politics or war.
I agree with you on the uselessness of negotiating with what the Republican Party has become. It's not salvageable, and needs to be replaced with a new Center-Right party that believes in democracy and the Constitution for the health, and quite possibly the survival, of the country.
I'm not necessarily opposed to expanding overall immigration once we fix our legal immigration system, and can understand what our economic needs really are. I am opposed to using immigration as a form of international social work. We no longer need armies of the unskilled to staff factories that no longer exist. We should be helping people solve their problems at home; we have no obligation and it makes no sense to move them and their problems here.
“I think that I've just described the immigration policy desired by a large proportion of Democrats, and by an even larger proportion of the Left in general.” I don’t think the proportions who hold such views are “large,” although the left flank that does think that way has outsize influence. It would be interesting to conduct a massive poll on the issue. I’d guess that 80%+ of the public wants immigration controls.
From my perspective, the larger problem is that the Right refuses to propose reasonable solutions because immigration is a strong, effective and convenient wedge issue.
We do, in fact, need the armies of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, virtually all of whom are employed under the table if they’re willing to work. Ironically, the biggest consumers of their labor are MAGA contractors and farmers. Strip out illegal immigrants, and GDP would drop several percentage points.
Sorry for the delay in responding -- I had a mountain of housework to get through. But it did give me a chance to get my thoughts in order. I'm highly skeptical that we need "armies of unskilled and semi-skilled workers", certainly not at 19th Century levels. We are going to need a certain, probably rather large, number of unskilled workers in certain areas going forward, but it's essential to ensure that they're not being brought in so that we can keep doing things that we shouldn't be doing anyway, like underpaying food service employees as a matter of policy, or growing strawberries and almonds in the desert.
My biggest frustration with immigration reform is that it's frozen in the neverending culture war. My next biggest frustration is that objectively, it's not a hard problem: most of our peer democratic nations, not only rich ones but middle-income ones as well, have solved it to the satisfaction of their citizens, usually years ago. (Sweden, we learned last week, is a partial exception to this but not in their specific "best practice" that appeals to me.) That means that we're a huge outlier, which is bad, but it also means that we don't have to invent much, because there are lots of best practices out there that we can adopt and adapt. I'll be calling out Australia, Brazil, Canada, and Sweden, because there are aspects of all of their systems that I think can teach us something.
One last introductory point that neither side never gets around to discussing: real, effective immigration reform is going to cost A LOT OF MONEY. Some of it will come from funds that are misspent now, but Congress has been starving the immigration services for a long time, and any new system is going to need a lot of additional funding.
I think that our Immigration System should comprise four Immigration Channels: An Ordinary Immigration Channel, a Humanitarian Immigration Channel, a Family Unification Immigration Channel, and a Special Immigration Channel. Basic ground rule: annual admission to the Family Unification Channel is everyone who qualifies; annual admissions in the other channels can be set by policymakers, and can be redistributed within a Channel if necessary, but annual admissions in each Channel will only consider the policies for that Channel, and not affect the numbers permitted to the other Channels. So for example, a surge in asylum grants in the Humanitarian Channel may mean fewer slots available for refugees, because asylum status and refugee status are elements of that Channel, but it won't affect numbers in the other three Channels.
The State Department, in consultation with Defense and Homeland Security, should place the nations of the world on one of four lists, that should be universally publicized and reviewed every six months. More politically correct names may be found, but effectively the lists will be: 1. Authoritarian States that limit or forbid movement of their citizens and/or contact with foreigners; 2. Failed States where there is no effective civil authority or diplomatic activity; 3. States suffering major natural disasters, where normal civil and diplomatic services are disrupted in the judgement of the State Department, and 4. Normal States. Residents of States on Lists 1 and 2, and any on List 3 specifically qualified by the State Department, may apply for admission to the United States in the Humanitarian Channel at a port of entry, i.e., at the border. Anyone from a country other than those MUST apply for admission at a US diplomatic mission in their country of residence, and will be denied admission if they present themselves at a port of entry without that pre-clearance.
Admission to the Ordinary Channel would be via a point system. In Canada and Australia, points are given for such things as youth, level of education, field of study, ability to speak the national language, professional and/or artistic accomplishments, etc. We should also grant points for non-academic skills, like toolmaking, plumbing and hydraulics, electrical, repair of large industrial equipment, and so on. The Labor and Commerce Departments have statisticians who can provide invaluable information and analysis on what the volume and distribution of this Channel should be; they can also estimate our need for unskilled labor, and a way could be found to fill that need through the point system also.
Admission to the Humanitarian Channel would be either through the asylum process as defined by International Law -- which would apply mostly but not entirely to citizens of the countries on the first list above -- and refugees from wars or natural disasters. In Brazil, these people are housed near their point of entry for processing, and are released in a week or two with working papers already in hand. Our aim should be to do the same. In Sweden, they are provided with housing and a living allowance, enrolled in language training if they don't speak Swedish, and have a case worker who works on job placement for them, including training if necessary, and checks in with them on their progress regularly. If they blow off their language training and/or consistently refuse the jobs that are offered, they may lose their government benefits, or suffer additional sanctions. Again, I think that this is a model worth emulating. I would also eliminate Temporary Protective Status: if a person is admitted, s/he is admitted, and it makes no sense to put that person in continuous anxiety, or spend government resources trying to enforce this half in/half out status.
The Family Unification Channel would be for spouses, children, parents, and grandparents (and grandchildren, if dependent on the above) of citizens and permanent residents. This is the model that Brazil follows, in support of a constitutional right that all Brazilians have to live in their own country with their immediate family. This policy allows them to process residence visas for qualified individuals basically on demand, as long as the degree of relationship is proven. Proxy marriages are not allowed, to prevent marriage fraud. Adult siblings are only allowed if they are disabled and fully dependent on the applicant for support. In this way, Brazil strikes a good balance between encouraging family migration, and discouraging chain migration.
Brazil also administers its version of the Green Card in a way worth copying. There's nothing to prevent permanent residents from becoming naturalized, but no pressure to do so, either. Unlike the US, a permanent resident can stay out of the country as long as he or she wants; if they're absent for over two continuous years they lose their residency, but returning for even a day before the two years pass starts the clock again.
The Special Immigration Channel would be reserved for foreigners who make meaningful, and especially those who make self-sacrificing contributions to the United States of America. This would normally be an individual, not a group honor, with one notable exception. All non-citizens who enlist in the Regular (i.e., not Reserve) Armed Forces of the United States (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard) should receive (unless they choose to decline) their citizenship papers with their Honorable Discharge or, if they choose to make the military their career, at the successful completion of their first enlistment. Anyone who swears to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States" and then puts his or her life on the line to do it has conclusively proven his or her worthiness. Republics are notoriously ungrateful; in this we should make an exception.
Thanks for the response and clarifications. Agree that getting clear on definitions is going to be vital in the immigration debate. To your points in rough order...
Well, if it's an actual *crisis* it's been a crisis (on and off) for decades. Typically, when I see that word used it means something drastic and that something has changed, a turning point has been reached, and so on. In particular, a substantial sudden change for the worse. But if you want to use it to mean "a problem", I guess I can live with that. E.g. we've had a nuclear weapons *crisis* for 70 years.
Having said that, to be sure, I agree with you: it *is* a significant problem. Not one to be dismissed. I'll note, as an aside, it unfortunately has gotten swept up into the culture war agenda. So, whereas once upon a time Dems and the GOP could actually work on comprehensive immigration legislation, they no longer can. And, I'd assign something like 80% of the blame for the impasse on the GOP.
Next, OK, good, I understand your definition. I try to use the term "open immigration" policy to describe what you've stated (because "open borders" conveys the idea that there are literally no border controls - like pre-1924 - which is, of course, precisely why the right uses the term). From here it gets complicated. What, exactly, is the background check? Who is allowed in? What's the exact process? And so on.
Polling seems dependent on precise wording. For example, if I used your descriptions above, I expect you'd get a good chunk of the left to agree. However, the minute you start qualifying ("minimal background check, plenty of bad actors are likely to get in", "can come in for any reason at all, no hardships required", etc.) I'll bet you 100:1 you get a lot of backpedaling. Interestingly, I was reading a Cato Inst (not a friend of the left) analysis and polling on the subject and even they say a majority of Dems are *against* the policy you've described (well, at least as far as I can discern it - again, wording).
I'm glad you agree that good-faith discussion is a must. It's so hard to come by these days. (And, sorry, again I'd have to say the Trumpist right takes the cake in terms of bad faith.) My own views are surprisingly ambivalent on the subject. If I were Grand Poobah, I'd create a bi-partisan panel of immigration nerds and say "go figure it out". Should there be reasonably strong border controls? Yep. But should there be a rational process for immigration that's not ridiculously burdensome? Yep. Do we have to distinguish between economic refugees and political and other refugees? Yep. For the latter, I think we need to have a sensible and caring process; either, the US is a beacon of hope for the world or we're just talking crap. Anyhow, the over-the-top passion some folks have on the subject seems weird to me.
I guess I should stop there. Good chat; happy to keep going if you are.
You're so right about how horrible it is that this has fallen into the culture wars. That's one of my two big frustrations. The other one is that THIS AIN'T BRAIN SURGERY!!!!! Other countries have figured out how to do this: they have good ideas that we could just copy, if we would just climb down off our barricades and talk. " If I were Grand Poobah, I'd create a bi-partisan panel of immigration nerds and say "go figure it out"." You've absolute got my vote for that.
I live in Brazil. Left and Right reached consensus on immigration here long ago, and while Lula and Bolsonaro disagree on just about everything else, there's no light between them on immigration. It's a non-issue. This country has a more liberal policy than the US on asylum and admitting people on humanitarian grounds, with special concern for natural disasters and stateless people. There are a lot of Afghan and Syrian refugees, a lot of Haitian refugees, and, especially where I live, a LOT of Venezuelan refugees. They're processed quickly and respectfully, for the most part, and have labor cards for legal work within a couple of weeks, if they're determined to be eligible to stay. Brazil follows general international "first safe country" principles: people admitted on humanitarian grounds are free to move about the country and to engage in international travel if they clear it with the Federal Police, but if they leave without advising the Federal Police, they're assumed to be looking for a better deal somewhere else, and to have relinquished their humanitarian status. They can't come back.
People with a Brazilian parent, spouse, or child can request permanent residency. I married a Brazilian in July 2017, in the US. We registered our marriage at the Brazilian Consulate that month, I had my resident visa in August, and I moved to Brazil in November. While Brazil is very liberal with immediate family, it has built-in safeguards in the system to prevent chain migration: people entering the country this way can bring parents, grandparents, and minor children. They can only bring adult siblings who are disabled and totally dependent on the immigrant.
One of the worst aspects of the US system that doesn't get enough attention is the way it abuses LEGAL immigrants. A Brazilian marrying an American here and doing what I did in reverse would probably have to wait at least a year for the similar visa, and be treated with a great deal more suspicion.
Non-family based immigration is based strictly on skills. A potential immigrant needs to have a job offer in hand from a Brazilian employer. This skews non-family immigration strongly toward STEM and other technical fields, if in a rather heavyhanded way. Illegal immigration is controlled through stringently enforced employer penalties for hiring illegals, and does not seem to exist in any meaningful way.
A permanent resident foreigner in Brazil has all of the non-political rights of a citizen and is under no pressure to become a citizen, although s/he may, within one to four years. Unless from a Portuguese-speaking country, the candidate has to prove the ability to speak, read, and write Portuguese at about high school graduate level to be naturalized; the language requirement is lifted after a person has been a permanent resident for fifteen years.
Canada and Australia have a point-system based evaluation system for non-humanitarian immigration that I like more than Brazil's. It gives points for age, language ability in the national languages (Canada), level of education, field(s) of study, professional achievements, and other criteria.
My ideal immigration regime would include an asylum and humanitarian regime more like Brazil's, processing speed like Brazil's, family admission policies like Brazil's, treatment of long-term permanent residents like Brazil's. and a point system for all other immigration, like Canada's.
In the US, there WERE health checks before 1924, which were often applied in a discriminatory way, especially against what was explained as "feeblemindedness". My reference earlier to 1870 was to that pre-1924 system. Whether in 1870 (pop. 38.9 M) or 1920 (pop. 106 M), we were a rapidly industrializing country with a chronic labor shortage that needed vast armies of unskilled labor to staff new and growing factories. We're now a post-industrial country of 331.4 M, and I don't think that massive unskilled immigration is relevant to our current reality. If anything, I think it would tend to perpetuate abuses and inefficiencies that we should be fixing instead.
Wow, great info. I was somewhat aware of what Canada is doing, but know nothing about Brazil. Fascinating. To your point, these other countries can get this stuff done...why can't we? And, it's not just immigration. Other places don't get rabid when it comes to other issues, e.g. abortion. (Interesting aside: some polling in Canada shows that many Canadians are concerned that action on abortion in the US will spill over into Canada and cause unrest.) Now even health care is off limits to constructive reform. Just ask Chuck Grassley, if you can catch him in a moment of candor.
Well, we know why we can't get it done. Once something gets sucked into the culture war tornado, it ain't happening.
Also agree with your last point: policies can't be static. What made sense in 1922 doesn't necessarily work for 2022.
P.S. cool you're living in Brazil now. Whereabouts? Have a friend with relatives in Salvador. Got that election coming up...should be interesting. You'll have to tell us if Bolsonaro is as nuts as he is portrayed.
I live in Manaus, where the Solimões meets the Rio Negro to form the Amazon proper. It's a water world with a city of over 2 million in the middle of it, and no land connections to most of the rest of the country. A wonderful, fascinating, sometimes frustrating place.
Salvador's a lovely city. My husband is about to get his law degree and is jobhunting; the Northeast coast is a definite possibility for us.
Bolsonaro is worse than he's portrayed, hard as that may be to believe. This is the first election in which I get to vote, and I'm looking forward to voting against him. Manaus has been full of smoke for the past month, and I think it's because deforestation has picked up because the environmental criminals are afraid that he WILL lose, and are trying to destroy as much as they can, while they can. A second term for him would be an environmental, political, and moral disaster.
I don't mean to suggest that Australia, Canada, and Brazil have immigration solved: they still have problems (in Brazil, mainly resource-based), and there's the issue of scale. None of those countries are anything like the magnet for immigration that the US is. The US not only has to find the will to reform, it has to come up with the money. It won't be cheap, and the tendency ever since Bill Clinton left the Presidency for both parties has been to just issue debt for public services and let future generations worry about it rather than to ask people to pay their fair share. But that's a different discussion!
Thanks for the good conversation. Enjoy your weekend. 🤝
I want to nominate both of you as Grand Poobahs of the newly established revised U.S. Immigration Policy. I just don’t understand why the two of you have both come up with tangible ideas in a short amount of time but we can’t seem to elect people that have the ability and desire to do the same? You both give me hope.
Thanks for hanging with us! And here I thought the two of us were just yacking away. :-)
BTW, I found an interesting analysis on some aspects of the border issue. If nothing else, it has some choice data points and good insights, some of which are surprising. Their view is that some of our policies are doing the opposite of what was intended.
Re: the cruelty is the point: "One of Trump’s political innovations was to realize that his followers wanted cruelty...they had various subsets of Americans whom they hated. What they wanted was a strongman who would target these othered peoples and hurt them."
I respectfully refer you to Crystal Minton, Florida resident who, feeling the practical effects of the government shutdown in 2019, made the following complaint, live and on the TV: "...but he isn't hurting the people he's supposed to be hurting."
Cruel people view life as a zero-sum game. Should they be discommoded or disadvantaged in any regard, "someone" must pay dearly for that affront. Should "someone" be too powerful for them to pursue and punish, cruelty must be satisfied nevertheless, hence The Other, Them, Enemies of the People, etc. What's truly awful, though, is once these people taste performative cruelty--or more especially, normative cruelty--they quickly develop an appetite for it that cannot be satisfied merely by "hurting the people he's supposed to be hurting." No, their hunger for cruelty grows so immense, it can only be sated by the food of cruel gods everywhere, i.e. human sacrifice.
While I don't think Cruel America is quite there yet, we can't say Crystal Minton didn't give Not-Cruel America a big ol' heads-up.
The articles about Christianity and immigration were spot on. I enjoyed the short write up on Patagonia and was excited about watching the documentary. I just checked my Amazon Prime for 180 Degrees South and sadly it’s currently not free.
Thanks for pointing out some of the many contradictions most Christians display today between their positions on immigrants and what Christ taught and exampled. And, of course, their defense and support of Trump. I'm a Christian and was for 50 years a Republican. I find it appalling that people claiming to be Bible based believers can be so blind to how unChristian Trump and most conservatives' actions and policy desires are. Some even think Trump is a Christian. And DeSantis too. Sad. Somehow most Christians, including pastors, think that power and selfishness are ideals consistent with the teachings and life of Christ. Satan has surely twisted their minds.
JVL, you are absolutely right that more Christians ought to speak out. DeSantis’ stunt, and other Govs before him, are simply inhumane & shouldn’t be tolerated by our society. But they are. And we are supposed to tolerate that as “legitimate political differences.”
Here is a subject I would like the Bulwark to delve into. We all are upset about illegal immigrants but we fail to address the incentives. How many illegal employers face zero consequences, reap the profits and line their pockets employing all these illegal immigrants? If illegal employers were treated like drug dealers, their assets seized, arrested, imprisoned, wouldn't the incentive decrease?
How many plant raids, bus loads of illegal workers do we have to see before we demand E-Verify get passed? How many plant raids does it take before the ill gotten gains are seized? How many CEO's lining Wall Street's pockets walk away? We all know why they are coming here, they can get jobs! If they couldn't get jobs, they wouldn't keep coming in such numbers. No one wants to actually address the underlying problem.
Go after the employers. Period, full stop. Take their companies, their assets, their ill gotten gains and start putting them in prison for human trafficking because that is exactly what they are doing. But, no, no one wants to actually sink to the story that is causing it all.
I imagine that if you tried to get the right leaning US Chamber of Commerce to support a nationwide requirement for e-verify in every sector they’d refuse. They know that the workers are needed but our immigration system isn’t organized or developed enough to keep up with demand. So the unsaid part is illegal labor is needed. This isn’t about doing what is effective. It’s about notching points against Democrats. Bush wanted to resolve this 20 years ago and his own party smacked him down.
Did it ever occur to you that undocumented workers are filling a need. They work in restaurants hotels, meat packing plants, hospitals, for home builders - and right now the U.S. has a labor shortage that migrants could help fill. Instead of going after employers, why not make it easier for people -those who want to work - to come in, work, and have a road to citizenship.
There are an awful lot of meat-packing towns in the Midwest that would go under if we started prosecuting the cos responsible for illegal hiring. The elected officials who represent these towns, counties, & states are very aware of this fact.
Around Boston I know there are a large number of Brazilian undocumented immigrants who work in restaurant kitchens, as well as daily home cleaning help. Some have done well enough, learned English and earned enough to gain US Citizenship. When you think about how difficult and dangerous jobs involving quickly slicing meat 🥩 in cos & restaurant kitchens are, how many American citizens want the jobs??? IMHO what what truly needs our focus is identifying and separating out criminals & gang members from Immigrant Groups. Perhaps collecting DNA and giving each immigrant an official number entered into a robust database would be a good start. There are many good, hard working people who come in undocumented. To me the issue is how do we separate the good from the bad??
I live in Brazil, so as you can imagine, I like Brazilians. In fact, I'm a dual national -- US citizen by birth, Brazilian citizen by naturalization (and a Biden/Lula voter, if that matters to anyone). I'm a legal immigrant, so besides liking Brazilians, I like legal immigration, too.
I have a problem with importing poor people so that we can exploit them. Jobs in the US that American citizens won't take should be improved so that they will take them, and if they can't be, then that work should be re-evaluated to find another way to do it, or to stop doing it altogether.
I would be willing to bet money that NO Brazilian you know is a legitimate asylum seeker, meeting the requirements defined in US and international law. This is a free country, people can come and go as they please, and are free to seek a better life anywhere they please, as far as the Brazilian government is concerned. I'm sure that those Brazilians are very hard-working: they're the definition of economic migrants.
Another interesting thing about the Brazilians living illegally in Boston: they're almost all from or came through the same place, the city of Governador Valadares in the State of Minas Gerais. Valadares is the home of a thriving illegal immigration industry, exploiting the loopholes in US law and enforcement. Having a travel agency, of course, is not illegal in Brazil, and neither is having US dollars. And it's no accident that the rare US deportation flights to Brazil land in Belo Horizonte, rather than São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, or Brasília. Belo Horizonte is the capital of Minas Gerais, so the deportees are landed close to home.
A final point. Brazil has a liberal asylum policy that conforms strictly to international law. It's legal immigration policy is based on admitting immigrants who bring demonstrable skills that the Brazilian economy needs, or have family connections to the country, with safeguards to prevent chain migration. What it doesn't have is an illegal immigration problem. That's because employer sanctions against people or companies that hire illegals are strictly enforced, and its immigration policies have broad support across the political spectrum from Left to Right, who all recognize the right and the obligation of the government to safeguard the country's borders and provide for its orderly development.
I think allowing people who want to come here to work in restaurants or wherever can be structured in ways that are not automatically exploitive. Making them legal via work permits could prevent that - they would be subject to the same minimum wage and worker protection laws as anyone else. My grandfather came over from Sicily. He was poor. He drove a truck delivering bananas to grocery stores. My grandmother took in washing. One of their great grandchildren is a now a law school prof, their great great children are attending Boston Univ and the Univ of Chicago. Yes, I know there is a different economic situation today, but there are still ways to offer migrants a chance for better lives here.
Australia and New Zealand are able to staff restaurants without waves of unskilled immigration, by paying decent wages and charging prices that support them. We make massive use of underpaid labor to subsidize cheap food across the agricultural spectrum; it's important not to let a nostalgic view of a different time that required a different immigration policy blind us to that. We are entitled to have an immigration system that supports our own economic development and needs, and we should be willing to pay for it: we seem to be the only country in the world with an influential segment of its population that objects to that seemingly self-evident fact.
As far as the food industry is concerned, if we can't grow certain crops for a price that makes economic sense, then we should be importing them from countries that can, not importing people to do stoop labor and underpaying them. The same goes for restaurant work. And some of the things that we can do because of our broken immigration system, like growing strawberries, almonds, and lettuce in the desert, we shouldn't be doing at all, and won't be able to do much longer for lack of water, even if we continue to refuse to make hard decisions.
That said, we DO need more immigration to support non-food service industries. I honestly don't know how to square that circle in a way that doesn't exploit other people's desperation; I just know that a way has to be found.
“We should pay for it”. I agree with everything you’re saying, but just wait until you hear the reaction from “the average person” if we actually paid restaurant workers the right wage, and agricultural workers too. Prices would skyrocket because owners would have an easy out to increase prices to keep profits at their level. I don’t think it’s sustainable and again- agree with your take on this. I guess my point is that’s an astronomical cultural change in the USA.
I hope the realize that I Absolutely agree that importing people in order to exploit them is terribly wrong. My comments answering the person who referenced meat packing plants was just to acknowledge other places I’ve experienced hard working undocumented immigrants. The often come in on a temporary Green Card, stay on when the job/card expires to work for themselves and don’t procure another Green Card.
My deceased father in law, bless him, contributed money to Hillsdale College when he was alive(he suffered from Alzheimer’s and had no idea.) We continue to receive solicitations addressed to him, though I’ve written them that he died in 2018. Hillsdale is shameless. And hardly “Christian.” DeSantis is no “Christian.” States on the receiving end of these so-called “immigrant dumps” by DeSantis, Abbott, et al. should see them for what they are: blessings for both the immigrants who get a free trip out of the God-forsaken states of Texas and Florida, and the people in Cali, DC, and Mass, among others, who have mostly hardworking Catholic people eager to contribute (and fill jobs in need). Good grief! We could solve our jobs problem by simply opening the borders! (As you know, I didn’t make that up). JVL - you keep on lighting up the hypocrites and heretics. You speak for me and my peeps - Catholics, Jews, Agnostics, and Athiests.
I hope Florida voters realize that DeSantis is using their taxpayer money for political stunts. What has he done to make the lives of Floridians better? Nothing as far as I can tell. He claims to be a Christian but his actions are completely opposed to the values espoused by Jesus.
Great article JVL. It is dismaying that self proclaimed Christians treat those in need like toxic waste. But those same people want no abortion access while cutting welfare and SNAP program funds at every turn. I’ve stopped expecting Christian behavior from those in power proclaiming it. It resembles no Christianity that I read in the New Testament.
Christian conservative politics is all about selfishness and power; very unChristian behaviors. They obviously have no clue about what Christ taught and lived.
After faithfully coming to The Bulwark for a couple of years I think I’m about to give up on the site. Over the last year or so some of the writers here (not naming any names!) appear to have moved from being Never Trump Conservatives (which is a good thing to be!) to being indistinguishable from a Progressive Democrat (of which I don’t sure need to pay to read, there’s thousands of free websites with the thoughts of progressive Democrat opinion writers). If you guys are going to always be taking the Left side on all the latest culture war issues, especially all the ones where Trump isn’t a main character, then you are no longer “Never Trump”, you’re just another of the hundreds of liberal opinion web sites.
What really baffles me is the fact that Mary plays such a large part in the Catholic faith, when she plays such a small part in the synoptic Gospels. Is she a vestigial God "transported" up from earlier/more ancient religions that had both male and female gods? That's the only explanation I've heard. Otherwise it's baffling. Except for the Magnificat in Luke, she has very few speaking parts.
I’d say Mary is merely an avatar of the Roman Terra Mater, variations of which have existed for 10s of thousands of years.
No other way to explain DiSantis other than a complete stinking asshole !
Luke O’Brien
Foster City CA
There seems to be a huge difference between " political Christians " vs actual Christians, ie those who profess to know Jesus and to follow His teachings. Political Christians appear to have created their own Jesus and discarded the One in the Scriptures who teaches us to " welcome the foreigner", to treat them as family. Political Christians appear to believe that Jesus rejects these folks, same as He rejects liberals or anyone else who does not mock the people their Jesus mocks: the poor, the sick, LTBQ...I mean, Jesus would for sure never serve a gay person...the horrors!
Perverting the teachings of Christ is foremost what political Christians do. It's ok to be cruel, to lie, cheat, steal an election even. Just say it's in Jesus name.
sigh
The Bible does say homosexuality is sin, so is stealing, killing, lying, cheating, etc. We are not supposed to hate people who send because we would need to hate ourselves. Salvation is about love. We try to obey God because we love Him and want to be obedient. BUT, when we mess up, we confess and he forgives us. First John 1:8-9 8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Our relationship with God should be nurtured for us to become better people. God forgives all sin, when we ask. He does not forgive those that reject Him as God. People are not Christians because they say so. People should be able to notice things about us: Gal 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
We think there is a conflict, we should search the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth.
The same book of the Bible that calls homosexuality an abomination punishable by death also calls children showing disrespect for their parents an abomination and the children should be stoned to death. Historians believe the 7 times in the entire Bible that homosexuality was mentioned was not about caring same sex relationships at all. I am not a historian, but Jesus appears to talk far more about the things that you mentioned in your second paragraph than He ever did in mentioning those dastardly gays. I confess to not understanding why so much of the so called Christian right focuses on homosexuality , something never personally mentioned by Jesus. Appreciate especially your words that " our relationship with God should be nurtured for us to become better people."
Lev 20:9 I believe. The OT was Jewish law. There were 613 laws in the OT. Jesus came to take punshment for our sins and offer us the gift of salvation. Those 613 laws have absolutey nothing to do with us. https://www.jmu.edu/dukehallgallery/exhibitions-past-2018-2019/the-613-mitzvot.shtml
We are in the Church Age, and God said the two most important commandments are 1) Love God and 2) love all people Matt 22:36-40. 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
When we learn about His love for us and realize what He went through to save us, what he wants us to do is not burdensome. We should not hate people because of sins they commit. That's making us hypocrits. We should love and encourage people.
oops, i did mix up the LGBTQ letters.....apologies.
They are confusing. I think it started out with 2 or 3 letters. I don't understand the difference between most of the letters. I don't have to agree in order to respect people.
Hey Jonathan, I can't think of anything to add but I wanted to say thanks for this. As it happens I made some of the same points (but less eloquently) when I was responding to MAGAs' gloating hateful comments on Glenn Beck's FB site, "White House Brief." I even quoted the same bible verses. Spending time interacting with fellow Americans who are MAGAs can be soul draining. Hearing from others like you who also see this kind of evil for what it is and are speaking up about it - is like taking a dose of good medicine.
The more I read about this, the angrier I get. Somehow the mealymouthed responses saying "welllll it may be bad but DeSantis has a point" are worse than the outright gleeful hatred. I needed to go for a walk after reading Douthat's tweet: https://twitter.com/DouthatNYT/status/1570795786669268997.
Sending illegals to Martha's Vineyard is obvious grandstanding, and using people as props -- not acceptable.
Sending illegals who want to go North and West to "sanctuary" cities and states is just spreading the pain to the people who insist that the pain should be tolerable, if it's borne by other people in other parts of the country. The elephant in the room that a lot of people refuse look at is that we KNOW that most of these people are economic migrants, not refugees eligible for asylum under international law. Perfectly acceptable to distribute the beneficiaries of open borders to the people who support open borders, if not in their own states and cities.
Sure, but be careful: who, exactly, actually supports *open borders*?
You may be able to find a handful of (non-crank) examples, but for the most part no significant Dems support it.
Also, one must keep in mind that the BOrdER CRisIS!!! is largely a right-wing fabrication. Migration patterns and causes are complex. Spikes are often the result of things that happened years before and many factors are not under the control of the gov't. Decades ago there were tons of crossings (or so it's estimated). The recent apprehension rate is similar to a spike in 1986 (when the apprehension % was much lower).
First of all, the border crisis is real, it'a not a fabrication of anybody, although the Right uses it for their own ends, and the Left just closes their eyes and denies it. I'm only aware of one country in the world that is not a failed state that has numbers of illegal immigrants comparable to ours. That country is Mexico, and it only allows them there because of the certainty that they're passing through -- to us. That is NOT a normal situation or, in my view, a stable one, or an acceptable one.
Second, when I talk about someone believing in "open borders", I mean something extremely specific: the belief that anyone who wants to migrate to the United States should be permitted to enter and settle, probably after a background check, and perhaps after passing a health screening (although that, I expect, would be highly debatable and hotly debated), but with no quotas, no language requirements, no pre-existing connection to the country, no screening for desired skills, and no exclusions for lack of them. In other words, the immigration policy we had in 1870, computerized and minus the racism of that era. I think that I've just described the immigration policy desired by a large proportion of Democrats, and by an even larger proportion of the Left in general
That's a perfectly valid position for purposes of debate, and I would be genuinely interested in knowing how your views diverge for it. What's not valid is obfuscation on the point: people who believe in what I've outlined should own it, not evade it. Intellectual dishonesty will not move the debate forward to any useful place.
The Republican Party has become the party of Trump - characterized by a combination of ignorance, racism, and bigotry. There is no way to hold rational policy discussions with such people. I have no problem with expanding the criteria for refugee status to include humanitarian reasons. People coming from countries other than Mexico more often than not are fleeing not only dire poverty but life threatening poverty due to natural disasters and also violence, although the violence may be related to many factors in addition to politics or war.
I agree with you on the uselessness of negotiating with what the Republican Party has become. It's not salvageable, and needs to be replaced with a new Center-Right party that believes in democracy and the Constitution for the health, and quite possibly the survival, of the country.
I'm not necessarily opposed to expanding overall immigration once we fix our legal immigration system, and can understand what our economic needs really are. I am opposed to using immigration as a form of international social work. We no longer need armies of the unskilled to staff factories that no longer exist. We should be helping people solve their problems at home; we have no obligation and it makes no sense to move them and their problems here.
“I think that I've just described the immigration policy desired by a large proportion of Democrats, and by an even larger proportion of the Left in general.” I don’t think the proportions who hold such views are “large,” although the left flank that does think that way has outsize influence. It would be interesting to conduct a massive poll on the issue. I’d guess that 80%+ of the public wants immigration controls.
From my perspective, the larger problem is that the Right refuses to propose reasonable solutions because immigration is a strong, effective and convenient wedge issue.
We do, in fact, need the armies of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, virtually all of whom are employed under the table if they’re willing to work. Ironically, the biggest consumers of their labor are MAGA contractors and farmers. Strip out illegal immigrants, and GDP would drop several percentage points.
Sorry for the delay in responding -- I had a mountain of housework to get through. But it did give me a chance to get my thoughts in order. I'm highly skeptical that we need "armies of unskilled and semi-skilled workers", certainly not at 19th Century levels. We are going to need a certain, probably rather large, number of unskilled workers in certain areas going forward, but it's essential to ensure that they're not being brought in so that we can keep doing things that we shouldn't be doing anyway, like underpaying food service employees as a matter of policy, or growing strawberries and almonds in the desert.
My biggest frustration with immigration reform is that it's frozen in the neverending culture war. My next biggest frustration is that objectively, it's not a hard problem: most of our peer democratic nations, not only rich ones but middle-income ones as well, have solved it to the satisfaction of their citizens, usually years ago. (Sweden, we learned last week, is a partial exception to this but not in their specific "best practice" that appeals to me.) That means that we're a huge outlier, which is bad, but it also means that we don't have to invent much, because there are lots of best practices out there that we can adopt and adapt. I'll be calling out Australia, Brazil, Canada, and Sweden, because there are aspects of all of their systems that I think can teach us something.
One last introductory point that neither side never gets around to discussing: real, effective immigration reform is going to cost A LOT OF MONEY. Some of it will come from funds that are misspent now, but Congress has been starving the immigration services for a long time, and any new system is going to need a lot of additional funding.
I think that our Immigration System should comprise four Immigration Channels: An Ordinary Immigration Channel, a Humanitarian Immigration Channel, a Family Unification Immigration Channel, and a Special Immigration Channel. Basic ground rule: annual admission to the Family Unification Channel is everyone who qualifies; annual admissions in the other channels can be set by policymakers, and can be redistributed within a Channel if necessary, but annual admissions in each Channel will only consider the policies for that Channel, and not affect the numbers permitted to the other Channels. So for example, a surge in asylum grants in the Humanitarian Channel may mean fewer slots available for refugees, because asylum status and refugee status are elements of that Channel, but it won't affect numbers in the other three Channels.
The State Department, in consultation with Defense and Homeland Security, should place the nations of the world on one of four lists, that should be universally publicized and reviewed every six months. More politically correct names may be found, but effectively the lists will be: 1. Authoritarian States that limit or forbid movement of their citizens and/or contact with foreigners; 2. Failed States where there is no effective civil authority or diplomatic activity; 3. States suffering major natural disasters, where normal civil and diplomatic services are disrupted in the judgement of the State Department, and 4. Normal States. Residents of States on Lists 1 and 2, and any on List 3 specifically qualified by the State Department, may apply for admission to the United States in the Humanitarian Channel at a port of entry, i.e., at the border. Anyone from a country other than those MUST apply for admission at a US diplomatic mission in their country of residence, and will be denied admission if they present themselves at a port of entry without that pre-clearance.
Admission to the Ordinary Channel would be via a point system. In Canada and Australia, points are given for such things as youth, level of education, field of study, ability to speak the national language, professional and/or artistic accomplishments, etc. We should also grant points for non-academic skills, like toolmaking, plumbing and hydraulics, electrical, repair of large industrial equipment, and so on. The Labor and Commerce Departments have statisticians who can provide invaluable information and analysis on what the volume and distribution of this Channel should be; they can also estimate our need for unskilled labor, and a way could be found to fill that need through the point system also.
Admission to the Humanitarian Channel would be either through the asylum process as defined by International Law -- which would apply mostly but not entirely to citizens of the countries on the first list above -- and refugees from wars or natural disasters. In Brazil, these people are housed near their point of entry for processing, and are released in a week or two with working papers already in hand. Our aim should be to do the same. In Sweden, they are provided with housing and a living allowance, enrolled in language training if they don't speak Swedish, and have a case worker who works on job placement for them, including training if necessary, and checks in with them on their progress regularly. If they blow off their language training and/or consistently refuse the jobs that are offered, they may lose their government benefits, or suffer additional sanctions. Again, I think that this is a model worth emulating. I would also eliminate Temporary Protective Status: if a person is admitted, s/he is admitted, and it makes no sense to put that person in continuous anxiety, or spend government resources trying to enforce this half in/half out status.
The Family Unification Channel would be for spouses, children, parents, and grandparents (and grandchildren, if dependent on the above) of citizens and permanent residents. This is the model that Brazil follows, in support of a constitutional right that all Brazilians have to live in their own country with their immediate family. This policy allows them to process residence visas for qualified individuals basically on demand, as long as the degree of relationship is proven. Proxy marriages are not allowed, to prevent marriage fraud. Adult siblings are only allowed if they are disabled and fully dependent on the applicant for support. In this way, Brazil strikes a good balance between encouraging family migration, and discouraging chain migration.
Brazil also administers its version of the Green Card in a way worth copying. There's nothing to prevent permanent residents from becoming naturalized, but no pressure to do so, either. Unlike the US, a permanent resident can stay out of the country as long as he or she wants; if they're absent for over two continuous years they lose their residency, but returning for even a day before the two years pass starts the clock again.
The Special Immigration Channel would be reserved for foreigners who make meaningful, and especially those who make self-sacrificing contributions to the United States of America. This would normally be an individual, not a group honor, with one notable exception. All non-citizens who enlist in the Regular (i.e., not Reserve) Armed Forces of the United States (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard) should receive (unless they choose to decline) their citizenship papers with their Honorable Discharge or, if they choose to make the military their career, at the successful completion of their first enlistment. Anyone who swears to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States" and then puts his or her life on the line to do it has conclusively proven his or her worthiness. Republics are notoriously ungrateful; in this we should make an exception.
Thanks for the response and clarifications. Agree that getting clear on definitions is going to be vital in the immigration debate. To your points in rough order...
Well, if it's an actual *crisis* it's been a crisis (on and off) for decades. Typically, when I see that word used it means something drastic and that something has changed, a turning point has been reached, and so on. In particular, a substantial sudden change for the worse. But if you want to use it to mean "a problem", I guess I can live with that. E.g. we've had a nuclear weapons *crisis* for 70 years.
Having said that, to be sure, I agree with you: it *is* a significant problem. Not one to be dismissed. I'll note, as an aside, it unfortunately has gotten swept up into the culture war agenda. So, whereas once upon a time Dems and the GOP could actually work on comprehensive immigration legislation, they no longer can. And, I'd assign something like 80% of the blame for the impasse on the GOP.
Next, OK, good, I understand your definition. I try to use the term "open immigration" policy to describe what you've stated (because "open borders" conveys the idea that there are literally no border controls - like pre-1924 - which is, of course, precisely why the right uses the term). From here it gets complicated. What, exactly, is the background check? Who is allowed in? What's the exact process? And so on.
Polling seems dependent on precise wording. For example, if I used your descriptions above, I expect you'd get a good chunk of the left to agree. However, the minute you start qualifying ("minimal background check, plenty of bad actors are likely to get in", "can come in for any reason at all, no hardships required", etc.) I'll bet you 100:1 you get a lot of backpedaling. Interestingly, I was reading a Cato Inst (not a friend of the left) analysis and polling on the subject and even they say a majority of Dems are *against* the policy you've described (well, at least as far as I can discern it - again, wording).
I'm glad you agree that good-faith discussion is a must. It's so hard to come by these days. (And, sorry, again I'd have to say the Trumpist right takes the cake in terms of bad faith.) My own views are surprisingly ambivalent on the subject. If I were Grand Poobah, I'd create a bi-partisan panel of immigration nerds and say "go figure it out". Should there be reasonably strong border controls? Yep. But should there be a rational process for immigration that's not ridiculously burdensome? Yep. Do we have to distinguish between economic refugees and political and other refugees? Yep. For the latter, I think we need to have a sensible and caring process; either, the US is a beacon of hope for the world or we're just talking crap. Anyhow, the over-the-top passion some folks have on the subject seems weird to me.
I guess I should stop there. Good chat; happy to keep going if you are.
You're so right about how horrible it is that this has fallen into the culture wars. That's one of my two big frustrations. The other one is that THIS AIN'T BRAIN SURGERY!!!!! Other countries have figured out how to do this: they have good ideas that we could just copy, if we would just climb down off our barricades and talk. " If I were Grand Poobah, I'd create a bi-partisan panel of immigration nerds and say "go figure it out"." You've absolute got my vote for that.
I live in Brazil. Left and Right reached consensus on immigration here long ago, and while Lula and Bolsonaro disagree on just about everything else, there's no light between them on immigration. It's a non-issue. This country has a more liberal policy than the US on asylum and admitting people on humanitarian grounds, with special concern for natural disasters and stateless people. There are a lot of Afghan and Syrian refugees, a lot of Haitian refugees, and, especially where I live, a LOT of Venezuelan refugees. They're processed quickly and respectfully, for the most part, and have labor cards for legal work within a couple of weeks, if they're determined to be eligible to stay. Brazil follows general international "first safe country" principles: people admitted on humanitarian grounds are free to move about the country and to engage in international travel if they clear it with the Federal Police, but if they leave without advising the Federal Police, they're assumed to be looking for a better deal somewhere else, and to have relinquished their humanitarian status. They can't come back.
People with a Brazilian parent, spouse, or child can request permanent residency. I married a Brazilian in July 2017, in the US. We registered our marriage at the Brazilian Consulate that month, I had my resident visa in August, and I moved to Brazil in November. While Brazil is very liberal with immediate family, it has built-in safeguards in the system to prevent chain migration: people entering the country this way can bring parents, grandparents, and minor children. They can only bring adult siblings who are disabled and totally dependent on the immigrant.
One of the worst aspects of the US system that doesn't get enough attention is the way it abuses LEGAL immigrants. A Brazilian marrying an American here and doing what I did in reverse would probably have to wait at least a year for the similar visa, and be treated with a great deal more suspicion.
Non-family based immigration is based strictly on skills. A potential immigrant needs to have a job offer in hand from a Brazilian employer. This skews non-family immigration strongly toward STEM and other technical fields, if in a rather heavyhanded way. Illegal immigration is controlled through stringently enforced employer penalties for hiring illegals, and does not seem to exist in any meaningful way.
A permanent resident foreigner in Brazil has all of the non-political rights of a citizen and is under no pressure to become a citizen, although s/he may, within one to four years. Unless from a Portuguese-speaking country, the candidate has to prove the ability to speak, read, and write Portuguese at about high school graduate level to be naturalized; the language requirement is lifted after a person has been a permanent resident for fifteen years.
Canada and Australia have a point-system based evaluation system for non-humanitarian immigration that I like more than Brazil's. It gives points for age, language ability in the national languages (Canada), level of education, field(s) of study, professional achievements, and other criteria.
My ideal immigration regime would include an asylum and humanitarian regime more like Brazil's, processing speed like Brazil's, family admission policies like Brazil's, treatment of long-term permanent residents like Brazil's. and a point system for all other immigration, like Canada's.
In the US, there WERE health checks before 1924, which were often applied in a discriminatory way, especially against what was explained as "feeblemindedness". My reference earlier to 1870 was to that pre-1924 system. Whether in 1870 (pop. 38.9 M) or 1920 (pop. 106 M), we were a rapidly industrializing country with a chronic labor shortage that needed vast armies of unskilled labor to staff new and growing factories. We're now a post-industrial country of 331.4 M, and I don't think that massive unskilled immigration is relevant to our current reality. If anything, I think it would tend to perpetuate abuses and inefficiencies that we should be fixing instead.
Over to you.
Wow, great info. I was somewhat aware of what Canada is doing, but know nothing about Brazil. Fascinating. To your point, these other countries can get this stuff done...why can't we? And, it's not just immigration. Other places don't get rabid when it comes to other issues, e.g. abortion. (Interesting aside: some polling in Canada shows that many Canadians are concerned that action on abortion in the US will spill over into Canada and cause unrest.) Now even health care is off limits to constructive reform. Just ask Chuck Grassley, if you can catch him in a moment of candor.
Well, we know why we can't get it done. Once something gets sucked into the culture war tornado, it ain't happening.
Also agree with your last point: policies can't be static. What made sense in 1922 doesn't necessarily work for 2022.
P.S. cool you're living in Brazil now. Whereabouts? Have a friend with relatives in Salvador. Got that election coming up...should be interesting. You'll have to tell us if Bolsonaro is as nuts as he is portrayed.
I live in Manaus, where the Solimões meets the Rio Negro to form the Amazon proper. It's a water world with a city of over 2 million in the middle of it, and no land connections to most of the rest of the country. A wonderful, fascinating, sometimes frustrating place.
Salvador's a lovely city. My husband is about to get his law degree and is jobhunting; the Northeast coast is a definite possibility for us.
Bolsonaro is worse than he's portrayed, hard as that may be to believe. This is the first election in which I get to vote, and I'm looking forward to voting against him. Manaus has been full of smoke for the past month, and I think it's because deforestation has picked up because the environmental criminals are afraid that he WILL lose, and are trying to destroy as much as they can, while they can. A second term for him would be an environmental, political, and moral disaster.
I don't mean to suggest that Australia, Canada, and Brazil have immigration solved: they still have problems (in Brazil, mainly resource-based), and there's the issue of scale. None of those countries are anything like the magnet for immigration that the US is. The US not only has to find the will to reform, it has to come up with the money. It won't be cheap, and the tendency ever since Bill Clinton left the Presidency for both parties has been to just issue debt for public services and let future generations worry about it rather than to ask people to pay their fair share. But that's a different discussion!
Thanks for the good conversation. Enjoy your weekend. 🤝
I want to nominate both of you as Grand Poobahs of the newly established revised U.S. Immigration Policy. I just don’t understand why the two of you have both come up with tangible ideas in a short amount of time but we can’t seem to elect people that have the ability and desire to do the same? You both give me hope.
Thanks for hanging with us! And here I thought the two of us were just yacking away. :-)
BTW, I found an interesting analysis on some aspects of the border issue. If nothing else, it has some choice data points and good insights, some of which are surprising. Their view is that some of our policies are doing the opposite of what was intended.
Check it out:
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/rising-border-encounters-in-2021
Re: the cruelty is the point: "One of Trump’s political innovations was to realize that his followers wanted cruelty...they had various subsets of Americans whom they hated. What they wanted was a strongman who would target these othered peoples and hurt them."
I respectfully refer you to Crystal Minton, Florida resident who, feeling the practical effects of the government shutdown in 2019, made the following complaint, live and on the TV: "...but he isn't hurting the people he's supposed to be hurting."
Cruel people view life as a zero-sum game. Should they be discommoded or disadvantaged in any regard, "someone" must pay dearly for that affront. Should "someone" be too powerful for them to pursue and punish, cruelty must be satisfied nevertheless, hence The Other, Them, Enemies of the People, etc. What's truly awful, though, is once these people taste performative cruelty--or more especially, normative cruelty--they quickly develop an appetite for it that cannot be satisfied merely by "hurting the people he's supposed to be hurting." No, their hunger for cruelty grows so immense, it can only be sated by the food of cruel gods everywhere, i.e. human sacrifice.
While I don't think Cruel America is quite there yet, we can't say Crystal Minton didn't give Not-Cruel America a big ol' heads-up.
The articles about Christianity and immigration were spot on. I enjoyed the short write up on Patagonia and was excited about watching the documentary. I just checked my Amazon Prime for 180 Degrees South and sadly it’s currently not free.
Steve Schmidt is calling DeSantis "The Little Eichman." Over the top or justified?
Thanks for pointing out some of the many contradictions most Christians display today between their positions on immigrants and what Christ taught and exampled. And, of course, their defense and support of Trump. I'm a Christian and was for 50 years a Republican. I find it appalling that people claiming to be Bible based believers can be so blind to how unChristian Trump and most conservatives' actions and policy desires are. Some even think Trump is a Christian. And DeSantis too. Sad. Somehow most Christians, including pastors, think that power and selfishness are ideals consistent with the teachings and life of Christ. Satan has surely twisted their minds.
JVL, you are absolutely right that more Christians ought to speak out. DeSantis’ stunt, and other Govs before him, are simply inhumane & shouldn’t be tolerated by our society. But they are. And we are supposed to tolerate that as “legitimate political differences.”
Here is a subject I would like the Bulwark to delve into. We all are upset about illegal immigrants but we fail to address the incentives. How many illegal employers face zero consequences, reap the profits and line their pockets employing all these illegal immigrants? If illegal employers were treated like drug dealers, their assets seized, arrested, imprisoned, wouldn't the incentive decrease?
How many plant raids, bus loads of illegal workers do we have to see before we demand E-Verify get passed? How many plant raids does it take before the ill gotten gains are seized? How many CEO's lining Wall Street's pockets walk away? We all know why they are coming here, they can get jobs! If they couldn't get jobs, they wouldn't keep coming in such numbers. No one wants to actually address the underlying problem.
Go after the employers. Period, full stop. Take their companies, their assets, their ill gotten gains and start putting them in prison for human trafficking because that is exactly what they are doing. But, no, no one wants to actually sink to the story that is causing it all.
I imagine that if you tried to get the right leaning US Chamber of Commerce to support a nationwide requirement for e-verify in every sector they’d refuse. They know that the workers are needed but our immigration system isn’t organized or developed enough to keep up with demand. So the unsaid part is illegal labor is needed. This isn’t about doing what is effective. It’s about notching points against Democrats. Bush wanted to resolve this 20 years ago and his own party smacked him down.
Did it ever occur to you that undocumented workers are filling a need. They work in restaurants hotels, meat packing plants, hospitals, for home builders - and right now the U.S. has a labor shortage that migrants could help fill. Instead of going after employers, why not make it easier for people -those who want to work - to come in, work, and have a road to citizenship.
Most of those employers are Republicans that claim to be supporters of "law and order". But, like their leader, The Donald, laws are for others.
There are an awful lot of meat-packing towns in the Midwest that would go under if we started prosecuting the cos responsible for illegal hiring. The elected officials who represent these towns, counties, & states are very aware of this fact.
Around Boston I know there are a large number of Brazilian undocumented immigrants who work in restaurant kitchens, as well as daily home cleaning help. Some have done well enough, learned English and earned enough to gain US Citizenship. When you think about how difficult and dangerous jobs involving quickly slicing meat 🥩 in cos & restaurant kitchens are, how many American citizens want the jobs??? IMHO what what truly needs our focus is identifying and separating out criminals & gang members from Immigrant Groups. Perhaps collecting DNA and giving each immigrant an official number entered into a robust database would be a good start. There are many good, hard working people who come in undocumented. To me the issue is how do we separate the good from the bad??
SallyJones
I live in Brazil, so as you can imagine, I like Brazilians. In fact, I'm a dual national -- US citizen by birth, Brazilian citizen by naturalization (and a Biden/Lula voter, if that matters to anyone). I'm a legal immigrant, so besides liking Brazilians, I like legal immigration, too.
I have a problem with importing poor people so that we can exploit them. Jobs in the US that American citizens won't take should be improved so that they will take them, and if they can't be, then that work should be re-evaluated to find another way to do it, or to stop doing it altogether.
I would be willing to bet money that NO Brazilian you know is a legitimate asylum seeker, meeting the requirements defined in US and international law. This is a free country, people can come and go as they please, and are free to seek a better life anywhere they please, as far as the Brazilian government is concerned. I'm sure that those Brazilians are very hard-working: they're the definition of economic migrants.
Another interesting thing about the Brazilians living illegally in Boston: they're almost all from or came through the same place, the city of Governador Valadares in the State of Minas Gerais. Valadares is the home of a thriving illegal immigration industry, exploiting the loopholes in US law and enforcement. Having a travel agency, of course, is not illegal in Brazil, and neither is having US dollars. And it's no accident that the rare US deportation flights to Brazil land in Belo Horizonte, rather than São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, or Brasília. Belo Horizonte is the capital of Minas Gerais, so the deportees are landed close to home.
A final point. Brazil has a liberal asylum policy that conforms strictly to international law. It's legal immigration policy is based on admitting immigrants who bring demonstrable skills that the Brazilian economy needs, or have family connections to the country, with safeguards to prevent chain migration. What it doesn't have is an illegal immigration problem. That's because employer sanctions against people or companies that hire illegals are strictly enforced, and its immigration policies have broad support across the political spectrum from Left to Right, who all recognize the right and the obligation of the government to safeguard the country's borders and provide for its orderly development.
I think allowing people who want to come here to work in restaurants or wherever can be structured in ways that are not automatically exploitive. Making them legal via work permits could prevent that - they would be subject to the same minimum wage and worker protection laws as anyone else. My grandfather came over from Sicily. He was poor. He drove a truck delivering bananas to grocery stores. My grandmother took in washing. One of their great grandchildren is a now a law school prof, their great great children are attending Boston Univ and the Univ of Chicago. Yes, I know there is a different economic situation today, but there are still ways to offer migrants a chance for better lives here.
Australia and New Zealand are able to staff restaurants without waves of unskilled immigration, by paying decent wages and charging prices that support them. We make massive use of underpaid labor to subsidize cheap food across the agricultural spectrum; it's important not to let a nostalgic view of a different time that required a different immigration policy blind us to that. We are entitled to have an immigration system that supports our own economic development and needs, and we should be willing to pay for it: we seem to be the only country in the world with an influential segment of its population that objects to that seemingly self-evident fact.
As far as the food industry is concerned, if we can't grow certain crops for a price that makes economic sense, then we should be importing them from countries that can, not importing people to do stoop labor and underpaying them. The same goes for restaurant work. And some of the things that we can do because of our broken immigration system, like growing strawberries, almonds, and lettuce in the desert, we shouldn't be doing at all, and won't be able to do much longer for lack of water, even if we continue to refuse to make hard decisions.
That said, we DO need more immigration to support non-food service industries. I honestly don't know how to square that circle in a way that doesn't exploit other people's desperation; I just know that a way has to be found.
“We should pay for it”. I agree with everything you’re saying, but just wait until you hear the reaction from “the average person” if we actually paid restaurant workers the right wage, and agricultural workers too. Prices would skyrocket because owners would have an easy out to increase prices to keep profits at their level. I don’t think it’s sustainable and again- agree with your take on this. I guess my point is that’s an astronomical cultural change in the USA.
I hope the realize that I Absolutely agree that importing people in order to exploit them is terribly wrong. My comments answering the person who referenced meat packing plants was just to acknowledge other places I’ve experienced hard working undocumented immigrants. The often come in on a temporary Green Card, stay on when the job/card expires to work for themselves and don’t procure another Green Card.
SallyJones