monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Fascists like Baldy hate it when people exercise their democratic rights.

Did you miss this line you typed?

I simply posted facts that Mr. Germany missed from his own statement.

Despite fewer unauthorized immigrants entering the United States than there were a decade ago, immigration is shaping up to be a pivotal topic in the 2020 debate. The crowded field of Democratic candidates for president have rightly called out President Trump for his racist, divisive and often false anti-immigrant rhetoric. But few have offered a compelling policy response to the president — and if they don’t, their failure may help get him re-elected.

Before Mr. Trump’s campaign, immigration was fairly low on voters’ lists of their top issues. Since Mr. Trump’s election, this has changed strikingly: In a Gallup poll of registered voters taken days before the 2018 midterms, immigration tied with the economy as the “most” or an “extremely” important issue, at 78 percent, just below health care. The concern is bipartisan — 74 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners ranked it similarly near the top.

Mr. Trump understands that these voters represent a ripe target for fearmongering and for extremist policies that play off that fear. At heart, voters have legitimate concerns about undocumented immigration and the possibility of ever-larger numbers of people attempting to cross the southern border. But Democrats’ leading candidates have responded defensively, with rhetoric and policy ideas that are sometimes extreme and incoherent in the opposite direction.

During the recent presidential debates, the field of 20 candidates took positions that focus on largely peripheral issues and seem mostly intended to play to the emotions of liberal base voters: decriminalizing illegal entry (relatively few cases are prosecuted criminally, usually for trafficking); providing them free health care (largely a state law issue, except for emergency Medicaid); and not deporting illegal entrants who commit no other offense. Democrats also — rightly — favor more immigration judges and safe, well-run detention facilities that don’t separate parents and young children.

For the most part, though, Democratic candidates appear unwilling to make the hard choices that a difficult situation like the one along the border demands. For example, facilities on the American side are inadequate to house all the people seeking asylum; it makes sense, then, to house them on the Mexican side, so long as the United States, along with human rights groups, ensures applicants safe, decent housing conditions and due process in immigration court. But most of the candidates reject that option out of hand — even though we know that a vast majority of asylum claims will be rejected.

Their unrealistic position seems to imply that most people who arrive at the border asking for asylum have a valid claim. But as much as we can sympathize with their plight, the poverty and generalized fear of violence that most at the border hope to escape do not qualify them for asylum under American or international law. “Membership in a particular social group” (the legal category they invoke) is sometimes interpreted to cover fear of targeted gang violence and domestic violence. But courts traditionally have rejected this reading, because such fears are so common and are not tied to a qualifying “particular social group.” Democrats should propose more rigorous criteria for adjudicating such claims, rather than just pretend that the law means something it mostly doesn’t.

Democrats should also endorse much stronger interior enforcement, although it is more socially disruptive than border control: Roughly half of the 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in America entered illegally, and the other half overstayed their visas and melted into the population. President Barack Obama took interior enforcement seriously, and Democrats today should not apologize for his actions, deriding him as “deporter in chief” — as they too often do on the stump and the debate stage.

Effective interior enforcement means mandating that all employers use an improved, pre-hiring E-verify status check, and occasionally using well-targeted work site audits and arrests to enforce employer sanctions, which have been on the books since 1986. No administration, Republican or Democratic, has made that a priority. But it could be a winning issue for a smart Democratic candidate appealing to American working-class and union voters.

A harder enforcement choice is whether to apprehend otherwise law-abiding undocumented people in places other than at work. Such a tactic may be unwise or unjust in many cases, and it must be done in a way that does not interfere with community policing. But leading Democratic candidates reject even warranted deportation once undocumented migrants manage to cross the border. Predictably, this stance invites charges that they favor “open borders.” American voters keen to protect our national sovereignty will punish candidates who risk undermining it.

Democrats rightly favor legal status for millions of the undocumented, especially the Dreamers and many of their parents (Mr. Trump favored this, then reneged). Congress should extend this status to other longtime-resident, law-abiding undocumented people. The easiest fix would legalize all long-term, continuously resident applicants who can show good moral character — easy because a statutory remedy dating to 1929 uses a very old eligibility cutoff; it cries out for updating to include those who arrived before, say, 2009.

The United States should also welcome many more new immigrants than the 1.1 million we now admit annually. Democrats should call for an end to the misbegotten “diversity lottery,” which eats up 50,000 precious visas each year, and instead use those visas for a pilot program for a points-based system like Canada’s (which proportionately admits many more immigrants than we do).

Democrats should call for a return to the norm for refugee admissions of roughly 75,000 to 85,000 a year, from the shamefully low 22,000 admitted per year under Mr. Trump. They should also support some conservatives’ proposals to modernize the larger system, such as reforming the clotted approval process for admitting temporary farmworkers and H-1Bs, and reassessing the troubled investor visa program.

Mr. Trump is determined to deny green cards to legal immigrants who use certain federal benefits. In opposing this, Democrats should be careful to draw defensible lines on welfare entitlements for newcomers, lines acceptable to most Americans who respect immigrants who strengthen our society and are as independent as their circumstances permit.

Rhetoric, then, is not enough, especially when it is simply a retort to the president’s latest outburst. Democrats must convince Americans of their ability to govern wisely in the face of unprecedented pressures on our immigration system. Clichés about America being a diverse nation of immigrants, while true, are not policies — and voters know the difference.

The unprecedented pressure on our immigration policies is called Trump.

Until he came along our government was quietly working on it. Not making it a racist movement by the head of state.

There's a video from Obama saying these same thing from 2014

What short and convenient memories you guys seem to have

Trump is just contemptible

I am tired of him being the focus of the world and wish he was gone.

Where do they talk about illegal immigration in your second video?

And another big thanks a bunch to Austraila for sharing Rupert Murdock and his craven style of energizing the stupids. It's time to send Rupert should back to whatever ****-hole country he came from even if they don't deserve to be punished.

I never took part in any Mr Germany pageant.

[...]
Trump’s interest in acquiring Greenland was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

According to the CIA’s World Factbook, Greenland is 2.2 million square kilometers, with 1.7 million of that covered in ice. It has considerable natural resources, such as coal and uranium, but only 0.6 percent of the land is used for agriculture. It has about 58,000 residents, making it one of the world’s smallest countries by population.

It is a self-governing country that is part of the kingdom of Denmark. Trump is scheduled to visit Denmark in two weeks.
[...]
It was unclear why Trump might want the United States to buy Greenland, though his administration has identified the Arctic as an area of growing importance to U.S. national security interests.

“This is America’s moment to stand up as an Arctic nation,” Pompeo said in May during a speech in Finland. “The region has become an arena of global power and competition.”
[...]
Trump’s desire to buy Greenland wouldn’t be the first time an American president broached the idea.

The U.S. military had a presence on Greenland during World War II as a means to protect the continent if Germany ever tried to attack. After the war, the Truman administration offered Denmark $100 million to buy Greenland, according to the academic tome “Exploring Greenland: Cold War Science and Technology on Ice.”

Since then, the Danish people have been wary of the United States’ continued use of Greenland. The land was critical territory during the Cold War because of its location halfway between the United States and Northern Europe and its proximity to the former Soviet Union. The Pentagon built its northernmost military installation, Thule Air Base, on Greenland in 1951, as a means for missile defense.

“Exploring Greenland,” co-written by academics from Denmark and the United States, says that the U.S. military’s “extensive activities in northern Greenland” was seen by Danish citizens and some politicians as “a violation of their national sovereignty."

Some on Thursday night responded to the news with incredulity; others, with support.

“This idea isn't as crazy as the headline makes it seem,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) said in a tweet. “This a smart geopolitical move. The United States has a compelling strategic interest in Greenland, and this should absolutely be on the table.”