I know they don't teach basic civics in school any longer, but I'm old enough to have learned that we are a country of immigrants and that America was great because it was a melting pot-- even better than Canada which was disparaged as a mosaic in comparison. When Trump unchains his in-house neo-Nazi co-conspirator, Stephen Miller, and allows him to turn his energy (and bigotry) against legal immigrants, the Regime is directly attacking every family in the country. Remember when you read below, that Miller was the brilliant strategist behind family separation and border kidnappings. Yesterday the Jewish Daily Forward warned its readers that Miller's new plan stops citizenship for legal immigrants. The story originates with Julia Ainsley at NBC News, explaining how the Trumpist regime plans to "make it harder for legal immigrants to become citizens or get green cards if they have ever used a range of popular public welfare programs, including Obamacare."And they plan to institute this newest Miller attack against America without congressional approval. He's drafting a plan that would target "immigrants living legally in the U.S. who have ever used or whose household members have ever used Obamacare, children's health insurance, food stamps and other benefits."
Immigration lawyers and advocates and public health researchers say it would be the biggest change to the legal immigration system in decades and estimate that more than 20 million immigrants could be affected. They say it would fall particularly hard on immigrants working jobs that don't pay enough to support their families.Many are like Louis Charles, a Haitian green-card holder seeking citizenship who, despite working up to 80 hours a week as a nursing assistant, has had to use public programs to support his disabled adult daughter.Using some public benefits like Social Security Insurance has already hindered immigrants from obtaining legal status in the past, but the programs included in the recent draft plan could mean that immigrant households earning as much as 250 percent of the poverty level could be rejected....Miller, along with several of his former congressional colleagues who now hold prominent positions in the Trump administration, have long sought to decrease the number of immigrants who obtain legal status in the U.S. each year. And even before the rule is in place, the administration has made it more difficult for immigrants to gain green cards and for green-card holders to gain citizenship.[Note: Miller was never in Congress, although he worked for several Republican racists and xenophobes-- Jeff Sessions, Michele Bachmann, Dave Brat and John Shadegg.]Charles, the Haitian green-card holder who works as a nursing assistant in a psychiatric hospital near Boston, said he was stunned to learn his application for citizenship had been denied. He had used a fake passport given to him by smugglers when he entered the U.S. from Haiti in 1989, but confessed to border officers and received a waiver from USCIS absolving him of his wrongdoing and allowing him to obtain a green card in 2011.Now 55, Charles is a homeowner and a taxpayer and thought obtaining citizenship would be a smooth process. "I thought in this country everything was square and fair," Charles said.But when he went for his citizenship interview in August 2017, the USCIS officers told him they were going to revisit the decision to waive the fake passport incident, meaning he could potentially lose his green card as well.Then he received a letter in September telling him his request for citizenship had been denied.He appealed the decision, but as he waits for a final verdict, his lawyer says his green-card status may also now be in question.In late November, the Trump administration announced they would end temporary protected status for Haitians who came to the U.S. after the deadly 2010 earthquake. Charles's wife was a recipient of that protection and without him becoming a citizen, he would be unable to vouch for her.But Charles's biggest concern is his daughter. Although she is in her 20s and a U.S. citizen, she has severe disabilities that make it impossible for her to live by herself.Charles is unaware of Miller's new plan to limit citizenship for immigrants who have used public assistance. But it is likely to affect him because he has used public assistance to help care for his daughter, so she could end up further hurting his chances for citizenship.Though its effects could be far-reaching, the proposal to limit citizenship to immigrants who have not used public assistance does not appear to need Congressional approval. As the Clinton administration did in 1999, the Trump administration would be redefining the term "public charge," which first emerged in immigration law in the 1800s in order to shield the U.S. from burdening too many immigrants who could not contribute to society...."Any policy forcing millions of families to choose between the denial of status and food or health care would exacerbate serious problems such as hunger, unmet health needs, child poverty, and homelessness, with lasting consequences for families' wellbeing and long-term success and community prosperity," said the National Immigration Law Center in a statement.
There's a Kurt Cobain quote-- a fake Kurt Cobain quote, as it turns out-- being circulated on the Internet. I know it's fake because Danny Goldberg, the manager of Cobain's band, Nirvana, decided to write about it this week at The Nation. The fake quote, which was first posted on the Trump Train Facebook page asserted that Cobain predicted "We’ll elect a true outsider. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a business tycoon… Someone like Donald Trump." Danny set the record straight:
I know that the quote is not only made up but it is also a grotesque perversion of Kurt’s beliefs. He often differentiated Nirvana from more overtly political punk bands like Dead Kennedys and Fugazi, but Kurt was unambiguous about where his political sentiments lay and, although he identified with anarchist imagery in some contexts, Kurt had no problem making choices at election time.I remember the excitement in his voice when he called to tell me that he and Courtney Love had just contributed $100 each to Jerry Brown’s campaign for president in the Democratic primary in 1992. A few months later, Sergio Marchi, an Argentinian journalist, asked Kurt if he planned to vote in the general election, and Kurt answered “Yeah, I’ll vote for Clinton. The Democrats are very conservative but at least they are not as conservative as the Republicans.” Regarding the billionaire businessman third-party candidate Ross Perot, Kurt was equally clear: “The guy sucks. He’s rich; I don’t trust him as president.”After the election, in an interview for The Advocate, Kurt elaborated: “I was helpless when I was 12 and Reagan was elected and there was nothing I could do about it. But now this generation is growing up and they’re in their mid-20s and they’re not putting up with it. I would rather have had Jerry Brown but I’m definitely happy that Clinton is in…. Chelsea seems like a pretty neat person, a Birkenstock wearing kid,” adding “Amy Carter’s pretty cool too from what I’ve heard. She’s been seen at Butthole Surfers concerts.”Trump’s misogynistic attitude towards women would have deeply offended Kurt, who detested bullies and sexists. Explaining the lyrics to his song “In Bloom” when Nirvana’s breakthrough album Nevermind was released, Kurt was explicit: “I don’t like rednecks, I don’t like macho men, I don’t like abusive people.”I suspect that Kurt would also have been appalled by the idea of a reality-TV star becoming president. In his famous chorus to “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Kurt sang, “With the lights out, it’s less dangerous, here we are now, entertain us.” He was not endorsing hypnotic passivity, he was satirizing it. As those who program Trump-supporting bots know, apathy and cynicism help discourage some people from voting, a syndrome that inevitably helps Republicans....To make his values clear Kurt wrote in the liner notes of the Nirvana compilation Incesticide, “I have a request for our fans. If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us-- leave us the fuck alone! Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.”No one can know for sure how Kurt would view the coming mid-terms, but he did say in that Argentinian interview that he did just before the 1992 election: “Republicans are an incarnation of Satan. I hate them.”
