1889
1890


1891

David Glosser on the hypocrisy of his asshole nephew Stephen Miller. And also, and more importantly, why the US must not give up on immigration.

I have met Central Americans fleeing corrupt governments, violence and criminal extortion; a Yemeni woman unable to return to her war-ravaged home country and fearing sexual mutilation if she goes back to her Saudi husband; and an escaped kidnap-bride from central Asia.

President Trump wants to make us believe that these desperate migrants are an existential threat to the United States; the most powerful nation in world history and a nation made strong by immigrants. Trump and my nephew both know their immigrant and refugee roots. Yet, they repeat the insults and false accusations of earlier generations against these refugees to make them seem less than human.

1892

Ignacio Lanuza had every reason to believe he’d earned the right to live in the United States. An undocumented immigrant from Mexico, Lanuza had worked in masonry and construction since entering the country in 1996. He married a U.S. citizen and had two children, both citizens. In May 2009, Lanuza petitioned an immigration judge to become a lawful resident.

Because he had a family, more than 10 years of residence, and no criminal record, he should have qualified for legal status. But at his hearing, an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement attorney produced startling evidence against him: a form signed by Lanuza accepting voluntary departure to Mexico, dated January 2000. By signing this document, the lawyer explained, Lanuza had rendered himself ineligible for legal residence. The judge agreed and ordered him deported.

There was one problem: The form was a forgery. Jonathan M. Love, the ICE attorney, had fabricated it for the specific purpose of securing Lanuza’s deportation. Aided by a new lawyer, Lanuza was able to confirm the fraud in 2012 and received lawful resident status in 2014. Now he is seeking more complete restitution, suing Love for violating his due process rights. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s conservative justices, it is extremely difficult to sue a federal agent for damages. But on Tuesday, a federal appeals court allowed Lanuza’s suit to move forward in a forceful opinion decrying the “egregious constitutional violation” at issue.

1893

Good Christ.

ICE delenda est.

1894

What needs to be established is exactly why a lawyer working for ice would actually break the law to try and deport a random guy he didn’t even know.

That suggests either a profound hated of immigrants, to try and prevent them from starting no matter what the law says, or an institutional motivation for ice lawyers to achieve certain ends in terms of quotas or something.

1895

And he should be disbarred, and prosecuted for felony fraud, in addition to anything else, and be personally liable for legal fees and restitution.

1896

I assume they are reviewing his other cases… right?

1897

Well, at least we know who will replace Sessions.

1898

President Trump just released a letter he has sent to state and local leaders across the country (Governors, Lt. Governors, State Attorneys General, Mayors, State Legislators, Sheriffs) asking them to use “letters, public statements, op-eds, resolutions and events” to defend ICE and CBP against a “nationwide campaign of smears, insults, and attacks by politicians shamelessly catering to the extreme elements in our society that desire lawlessness and anarchy.”

Letter after the jump …

1899
1900

US immigration authorities coerced parents who were separated from their children at the border under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy into signing documents they didn’t understand or didn’t want to sign, according to a complaint filed Thursday.

The complaint filed by the American Immigration Council and the American Immigration Lawyers Association includes testimonials from some parents who said immigration officers told them they had to sign the forms, including deportation papers, or they would never see their children again.

Still others said they were pressured by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers into signing forms that already had been filled out. Some of the parents who signed the forms were seeking asylum.

“This really is the systemic and intentional effort to take children away from parents and hold them as hostages in order to sabotage their right to apply for asylum in the US and then use these children as threats to other parents contemplating coming to the United States,” said Ben Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

1901

In many places in the country farm worker wages have risen to $20/hour, but the country is still chronicly short.

I’ve mentioned before that we have an impossible task getting native American to do the work. Turns out this has been a problem for a very long time.

1902

Turns out, people want high wages to do crappy jobs. Surprise surprise.

And not crappy work conditions.

1903

TBH i have to wonder how much of this problem is discoverability. Are they “trying” to find workers or are they trying, because i’ve not seen a single advertisement for farm workers ever.

Low income people are the least likely to be able to move around, and are probably the least connected to social networks that they need to help support them move around.

What that industry needs are essentially human bees; just like apiarists move bees around across the country on contract, what that industry needs are companies that move workers around the country in mobile “work camps” (RVs, trailers, whatever) following the harvest.

“We” (ie, the West) used to have harvesters and gleaners but those “positions” more or less died out with mechanization.

People have been flooding the oil field to do hard labor for similar hourly wages, and you’re talking about ditch digging sort of jobs, by no means easy living. But everyone knows the oil industry is going through a boom. I don’t think this is an unsolvable problem.

Hell, maybe i should start a farmhand service company.

1904

Exactly. In the Red River Valley (the Red River of the North, not the Texas one) as recently as the '90s it was very common for migrant farm workers to labor in sugar beet fields during certain times of year. Other times they’d be to the south - due to different growing seasons, different latitudes reach peak work requirements at different times of year.

Migrant farm workers have a 100+ year history. If you go back far enough (generations to the late 1800s), white people would work as migrant workers - many of them white immigrants or first generation children of immigrants. But during living memory most migrants in my region came from Mexico. Some were US citizens but even then mostly from the southern US with Latino backgrounds. I’m sure the farmers and foremen hiring migrants always dutifully filled out all the paperwork proving work status.

There’s not as many migrants now. My understanding is their work (thinning out the sugar beet crop and such) is now mostly done by machines. And some put down roots in the area and have lived in the region for decades with more regular and long term jobs, thus leaving the migrant worker pool.

For most people, it’ll take a lot of money to get them to accept the nomadic lifestyle and working conditions of migrant farm labor. That’s why immigrants were used - they’ll work for lower wages.

1905

They also have no roots to worry about most of the time.

1906
1907

That’s it, I can’t do this timeline anymore.

1908

Wasn’t he born in Kenya?