The GOP Immigration Offer

Liberty and the Fire Boat (M.A. Reilly)

Donald Trump and the GOP want to eliminate family-based migration and instead have potential immigrants prove their worth in order to be admitted. Family-based migration allows family members living in the United States legally to bring other family members to this country. Trump wants to do away with that process and instead enter immigrants based on merit.

The merit-based system would select immigrants based on education, skills, work experience, language proficiency and age.  The concern is substantial given the belief that these factors which would be weighted and allocated specific points fail to consider the unknown trajectory of any person’s actual life and the process decries basic American values. Further the plan crafted by Stephen Miller, a nativist, privileges wealth and completion of high level science/technology/engineering/mathematics (STEM) education as if these two factors represented the ideal immigrant.

And isn’t that the problem? There is no ideal immigrant. There is simply immigrants. 

When I came to America I had just turned two. I came from an Irish orphanage in Dublin. There was no way at that time to determine how profitable I might be for my new country once grown. In fact, if conservative sociologists were to be believed, my IQ by virtue of having lived in an orphanage should have been 8 points lower than the average at four years of age. The United States took a chance on me and my two older brothers as it has done for others. Fortunately, I was allowed into the United States and three years later went to court and became a naturalized citizen at the age of 5. My son too was adopted and he arrived in the States at 5 months old and became a naturalized citizen 13 months later. On that August morning, the judge celebrated our son’s naturalization and I still have a photo from that day of Rob, Devon, my dad and me standing with the judge. We were all bright smiles. 

Under Trump’s merit system the majority of Americans who are citizens would likely not be admitted. To be admitted, the potential citizen would need to earn 30 points. The proposed point system favors a particular type of person (wealthy and/or STEM educated) and that is what is most unethical and anti-American about the plan. 

So how do you amass the highest points in each category? First, think young. You need to be young, preferably between 26 and 31, highly educated in a STEM subject—Ph.D preferred, wealthier than the median income of the state you plan to live in by 300 percent. If you lived in New Jersey as I do that would mean that you would need to prove an income greater than $260,000.  If you wanted to live in Mississippi, you would need to demonstrate an income of $120,000. The only place you could live with an income under $120,000 is Puerto Rico. But be warned: if the island is crippled by a hurricane, don’t expect the Unites States government to help. You are on your own. Last, it would be advantageous to have earned already a Nobel prize (you’d be awarded 25 points) or its equivalent.  

So do you think you would qualify? I’m guessing you don’t!  By the way if you are 50 or older you would earn 0 points in the age group. When I examined the criteria, I thought a lot about what was being valued. Given the absence of compassion among Trump and his advisors and a xenophobic attitude about other, the proposal is not too surprising. These folks want to establish the United States in their own image.

Merit is troublesome as whatever is deemed preferable is of course potentially problematic when seen in another light. What would a country of 26-31 year old wealthy people act like?  What about a country of people with advanced degrees in STEM subjects? What about a country where its new citizens largely bought their way in by investing at least $1.8 million in an America based project that the applicants list as their primary jobs, similar to the the Jared Kushner-Chinese investment scheme that was attempted earlier in the year. That alone would net you 12 of the 30 points you need.  Why is someone who has large amounts of cash better than the hard working immigrant that built this country?  My mother’s mom came to America and raised 6 children. My father-in-law’s family worked hard as new immigrants living on the lower East side. They built a profitable company and raised kind children. For Trump and Miller wealth, STEM education, and capacity of speak English are all privileged. No tired huddle mass here. The Statue of Liberty would bow her head and weep at such deplorable gimmicks.  Frankly, we should too. 

When I think about the proposed ‘immigration’ bill Trump just forwarded that pits the DACA kids against the GOPs Wall and nativist immigration policy, I am reminded of the wisdom in Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” where the speaker aptly states:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

The problem though with the GOP and Trump is they never shy away from giving offence.

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#SOL17: Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Cancer and Financial Ruin

Earlier tonight, I'm reading before finishing  preparations for dinner when I see a notice from The Guardian flash on my screen with the headline, Congress approves initial measures to repeal Affordable Care Act.

from The Guardian

Take a minute to study the self congratulating smugness that defines these House Republicans. They appear quite pleased with themselves.


Or look at this image of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from this past Monday.

from The Guardian

After six years of vowing to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act,  these callous clowns are moving ahead. Full steam. No stopping. No plan.

But I'm not here to talk about health care as much as I want to say few words about cancer, grief, and the unnecessary burdening of those who already are bearing too much.

Please listen.

II.


A year ago this February I was wondering if Rob, Devon and I would lose our home. I was wondering if the staggering costs of health care and the loss of income would make living where we do impossible. Our health care payment concerns were tempered, in part, because we had pretty good coverage, amazing family and friends who helped us.

And we needed help.

Cancer treatment is expensive. Neurosurgery is prohibitive. Home care can break the little bit of bank you might still have. My husband could no longer work and had stopped earning any income the summer before and by February, I too stopped working completely so I could care for Rob who had come home to die.  Our health care no longer provided any services and my husband could not care for himself. He required round the clock care.  He could not move his body, sit up, stand, walk, turn himself. He was unable to take a sip of water without assistance. I had no idea how I would care for Rob and pay our bills once spring arrived. It was only my husband's death that saved us from financial ruin.

III.

I think about those dark days when I look at the jubilant faces of Speaker Ryan, his merry cohort of legislators, and Senator McConnell. I wonder how it is possible for them to be so out of touch with the sharp and unnecessary pain their careless actions are causing.

When faced with the imminent death of your husband, the financial ruin of your family, and the understanding that on your slim shoulders rests the financial responsibility of a teenage son who will soon be fatherless and is just a year away from college--and frankly the last thing anyone in such a space needs to worry about is what Congress is going to do to screw them over.

They, like me, are deeply hurt already. The surviving spouse has enough on his or her shoulders without having to now worry if the bit of cushion their health care plan provides is also going to be yanked away.

Adding uncertainty to such injury is nothing less than cruel.


IV.

Right now in the United States there is a husband, a dad dying of cancer.  There beside him is a wife who is facing what I faced a year ago.  That heartbreak alone, that immense loss is more than some can carry. At least I didn't have to worry that the multi-million dollar medical bills that were piling high as Rob's treatments failed one after the next would also be my sole responsibility. My health care insurance paid the majority of those bills.

Now, I would not know that.
Now, I would add worry as I could not know what the irresponsible GOP in Congress would be doing as I cared for my husband in his last weeks of life and comforted a young son who would no longer have his dad.

Why anyone would want to add to that grief, stress, and fear is impossible for me to understand.


V.

Fix health care?
Yes.

Revise the Affordable Care Act to make it better for consumers?
Certainly.

But do it reasonably. Not irrationally.

Shame on Paul Ryan.
Shame on Mitch McConnell.
Shame on all who support this recklessness.

These are little boys who have been tossed a new ball to play with and have no sense about the damage their actions are causing. I imagine these men might think differently if they were faced with the ordinary struggles you and I carry each day. I imagine they might pause a bit if they did not have the finest health care plan for free in their own back pocket.

Can Public Schools Be Saved From Obsolescence?

from NYT. 

This Sunday's NYT's magazine cover story, Can the Republicans Be Saved From Obsolescence? has me thinking a lot about the parallels between the GOP and many school leaders. Neither group understands the power of a Web 2.0 world. For both groups, "the yawning digital divide" between them and their counterparts (Democrats and more Web 2.0 ed leaders) is huge.

One telling moment in the article highlights the failure of GOPs to undersand the social power of the  Net.

Under the stewardship of Zac Moffatt, whose firm, Targeted Victory, commandeered the 2012 digital operations of the Romney campaign, American Crossroads and the Republican National Committee, Team Romney managed to connect with 12 million Facebook friends, triple that of Obama’s operation in 2008; but Obama in 2012 accrued 33 million friends and deployed them as online ambassadors who in turn contacted their Facebook friends, thereby demonstrably increasing the campaign’s get-out-the-vote efforts in a way that dwarfed the Republicans’. (added emphasis)

It is this failure to recognize that it isn't that you have friends on Facebook, but rather how those friends connect with others that tells the better tale of social media and its use. I think of this when I work with clients who explain that their district technology leaders have a locked down approach to the use of the Internet at school.  These leaders, much like the GOP, proudly tout wireless environments, but then explain that they do not allow hand held devices,  students or teachers bringing in and using their own devices, student or teacher using Google apps (such as Google drive/Docs, hangouts), Twitter, Facebook, Skype, YouTube, Wikis, or student blogs that are posted on the Internet--to name but a few.  They think they are with it because they use email.  Inevitably we get to the safety discussion and I wonder at how misdirected this approach (not the sentiment) is.

As a mom, I want to protect my son too. That means having the harder discussions with him about his responsibility while on the Internet and about his growing  capacity to hack alongside his responsibility to respect other people's property (intellectual, virtual, and real).  Barring him from the Internet given the way we live would be akin to barring dogs from barking, leaves from falling.  It just isn't going to happen and frankly I am glad to say that.  Our responsibility as parents and as district leaders is not to withhold the world we live in from our children, but rather to continue to help young people navigate and negotiate a changing world in responsible and responsive ways.

And yet, many schools still value an insular world and their leaders seems to think this makes them responsible. It makes them safe and their children less so. Sneering at those who use Twitter in the classroom, making snarky comments about staff or students who advocate the use of Skype or Google hangouts, or bragging that you prohibit google docs for teachers and students does not make you appear as educator of the year.

An insular world is not possible and education leaders who propose such nonsense are as obsolescent as the GOP strategists who engineered Romney's stunning loss.  Suffering such foolishness harms our children, limits our teachers, and reduces the critical and creative potential of all.

The GOP - Beautiful Plumage and Still Dead

from here. 

My friend Michael writes:

I still believe that Romney is a lot more Republican than Tea Party and that, in a sad, scary, Faustian-pact sort of way he just did what he had to do in order to get the nomination and save the GOP from the Goldwater-sized debacle that would have ensued had we nominated, say, Santorum, thereby leaving the party to roam 40 more years in the desert….

I think Michael's right about Mitt and Faust. 

from here. 

Michael's a Republican (and like I said, a good friend) and is still determining who he will vote for in the presidential election.  Michael's conundrum is that he hasn't found a way to accept that the party whose values he believes in is gone. 

(Michael, think parrot sketch in Monty Python. Your GOP ain't just stunned, they're expired and gone on to meet their maker. Beautiful plumage and all).

I too mourn the demise of the Republican party, not because I share their former or current values, but rather, because democracies work better with choices and this tea party crew's single consistency is that they would limit choice for most Americans and do so with a rather sickening glee. 

So is voting for Mitt a vote for the Devil?

Ladies, if Michael is right and Mitt Romney has sold his soul in some GOP Faustian drama, remember that in Goethe's tale, Gretchen still gets screwed.  Her life still ends and yes she may enter heaven, but she has all choice taken from her (sound familiar?).  

Folks, any man willing to sell his soul to the Devil to get to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has not earned your respect and surely not your vote. 

Are You Better Off Today vs. We Leave No One Behind

Are You Better Off? (9.5.2012, M.A. Reilly)

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said:

 … I think that the real issue this week and what you’re seeing happening yesterday on the Sunday morning talk shows is the fundamental question back on the table for Americans, which is: Are you better off today than you were three or four years ago? Issues come and go and they will, but at the end of the day this is going to be about facts.

It was considered a provocative question in 1980 when Reagan posed it and in post-1980, I can't help but think that this question ought to give us all pause.  

Reagan's policies provided permission for many to not care about others, especially those who were poor, homeless, or ill.  Reaganomics harmed us.  From a column from  2011, Bob Herbert had this to say about Reaganomics:

Paul Volcker, who served as chairman of the Federal Reserve during most of the Reagan years, commented in the film about the economist Arthur Laffer’s famous curve, which, incredibly, became a cornerstone of national economic policy. “The Laffer Curve,” said Mr. Volcker, “was presented as an intellectual support for the idea that reducing taxes would produce more revenues, and that was, I think, considered by most people a pretty extreme interpretation of what would happen.” 

Toward the end of his comment, the former Fed chairman chuckled as if still amused by the idea that this was ever taken seriously. 

What we get with Reagan are a series of disconnects and contradictions that have led us to a situation in which a president widely hailed as a hero of the working class set in motion policies that have been mind-bogglingly beneficial to the wealthy and devastating to working people and the poor.

I am reminded of the damage of Reaganomics when I hear Paul Ryan and company forward more trickle-down economics and pose what they think is a gotcha question. But does it reveal more about the asker than what might have been intended?

Are you better off today may in fact be irrelevant, especially as it was intended to be a question solely about income. The hyper-attention by the GOP on the self and money underestimates us.  We are bigger than our pockets. We must be. The messages that form the base upon which our political parties rest are important as they are revealing.

In contrast to the gotcha question, I think of the words Bill Clinton spoke at the DNC.  He closed his speech saying this:

I love our country— and I know we're coming back. For more than 200 years, through every crisis, we've always come out stronger than we went in. And we will again as long as we do it together. We champion the cause for which our founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor— to form a more perfect union. 

Patriotic. Hopeful. Responsible. As long as we do it together...

Few adults would question that the economic times we live in are difficult for most everyone--save the super wealthy. The differences though between now and four years ago are considerable as I have a hopefulness that I did not feel at the hawkish end of the Bush-Cheney years.  I appreciate the slight changes that have been made in the name of equality. Even though I am disappointed that Congress and the President had such incredible trouble working together, I am nonetheless grateful for the changes that have happened during the first Obama presidency for our military, for gay rights, for the uninsured, and for the the little bit of tax reduction that came our way. The good person our president is, inspires me to do good as well. 

President Obama closed his acceptance speech at the DNC with these words:

America, I never said this journey would be easy, and I won't promise that now. Yes, our path is harder, but it leads to a better place. (Cheers.) Yes, our road is longer, but we travel it together. (Cheers.) 

We don't turn back. We leave no one behind. (Cheers.) We pull each other up. (Cheers, applause.) We draw strength from our victories. (Cheers, applause.) And we learn from our mistakes. But we keep our eyes fixed on that distant horizon knowing that providence is with us and that we are surely blessed to be citizens of the greatest nation on earth.

I ask you: Which of these do you want to get behind? 

"Are you better off now than three or four years ago?"  

or 

"We leave no one behind. We pull each other up."