Separating Immigrant Mothers from Children

Letter sent to Congressman and Senators:

I am writing to alert you to an even bigger problem than the children of illegal immigrants who are being held in immigration child care facilities along the Mexican border.  This is the existence of a huge private child care industry spread across the entire United States, much like the narcotic drug industry. 

Every day, millions of mothers and fathers are separated from their children who are placed in day care facilities so that the parents can go to work instead of caring for their own children.  I have it on good authority that every day some of the children in these day care facilities cry and ask for their mommies and daddies.  Sadly, in many cases the children do not cry for their parents because they spend so little time with them that they don’t miss them. 

I hope that Congress will act to end this blight on American civilization.  You should make separating mothers from children at day care facilities a federal crime and station federal officers at the doors of these facilities to arrest the parents who attempt to drop off their children and thus separate them from their natural familial bonds.

Please let me know when you will introduce legislation to stop this horrendous crime that is being committed daily across this country. 

Mexican Immigration and a Dominica Visa

All the hoorah about immigration on the Mexican border reminds me of an immigrant visa case I had as vice consul in Sao Paulo, Brazil.  A woman who was boon on the island of Dominca and who lived in Brazil was applying for an immigrant visa to join her mother who lived in the United States.  At this time, the 1970s, the US quota for immigrant visas for people born in Dominica was quite small, about 200, I think. 

This woman was on the list when she first applied; there were still available visa numbers.  However, she was slow in getting her visa application together, which involved taking a medical exam, proving that she could support herself in the US, so that she would not be a public charge, getting a labor certification proving that she would displace an American worker, and so on. 

When she finally got her application together, all the visa numbers for the Dominica quota had been used up, and she was no longer eligible for an immigrant visa.  She went into hysterics in my office.  She was crying, screaming, and trashing around.  I thought I was going to have to call the police to take her away.  After an hour or so of trying to calm her down, she finally left. 

Today, if she lived in Mexico or Central America, rather than Brazil, she could just walk into the United States, join her mother and go to work.  Whether she would receive welfare, take an American's job, or even go into the drug business, is irrelevant.  Public opinion just wants her to be happy.  So, the favored immigration policy seems to be "Don't worry, be happy!"  America is an open country.  Anybody who wants to can come.  If it turns out you are a murderer or a drug dealer, we can worry about that later. 

I don't buy it.  I think the US should and can choose who it wants to move to this country permanently.  We don't have to take everybody.  We can set limits and standards and enforce them.  I feel badly for the immigration officers who are charged with enforcing the existing laws.  The public portrays them as heartless villains for doing their jobs.  It reminds me of when I came home from the war in Vietnam and the general depiction of Vietnam veterans was as baby killers.  This is a country that vilifies public servants for doing their job. 

I support the enforcement of immigration laws, but I appear to be in the  minority.  If we want no immigration laws, repeal them all and abolish the Department of Homeland Security.  I have never like the name "Homeland" anyway; to me it has a Nazi connotation because of its similarity to "heimat" which Wikipedia says is equivalent to "Vaterland," the homeland of the German nation, people or tribe.  

Trump's Foreign Policy

David Brooks NYT column, "Donald Trump Is Not Playing by Your Rules," is interesting, but gives Trump too much credit for thinking, or at least for having a basic idea that he is implementing.  It contrasts with Jeffrey Goldberg's article in the Atlantic, "A Senior White House Official Defines the Trump Doctrine: 'We're America, Bitch,'"  which says there is no underlying Trump foreign policy: America does whatever it wants.  Both analyses lead to the same conclusion: Trump doesn't care what the world thinks. 

I am disappointed that these are both Jews who are criticizing Trump for breaking with generations of foreign policy ideals, but I agree with them.  There is no excuse for Trump's attack on Justin Trudeau.  What Trudeau said after the G-7 summit ware not the "false statements" that Trump said it was.  Trudeau's saying that Canada will not be pushed around is not "dishonest and weak."  It's a simple statement of fact. 

Larry Kudlow made the argument that Trump needed to look strong before going into his meeting with Kim Jong Un, but as it turned out, he did not look strong when he met Kim, and didn't really get anything significant from the meeting with him.  The Iran deal Trump denigrates had much more substance and did much more to limit Iran's nuclear program than Trump's deal with Kim. 

I have tried to defend Trump, mainly because he represents white men who are increasingly being displaced by almost everyone else, blacks, women, Hispanics, but especially by Jews.  Brooks and Goldberg are representative of the Jewish intellectual establishment, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Bloomberg, and Adelson represent the Jewish financial and wealth establishment.  Schumer, Feinstein, Blumenthal, Schiff, and Polis represent the Jewish political establishment at the national level.  While there are still white men at the top of some of these lists -- Buffet and Bill Gates, McConnell and Ryan, they are getting older. 

Increasingly, though, I am displeased to have Trump as a leading example of white men in power.  I have looked the other way at many of the boorish things he has done, but I am getting tired of it -- his personal peccadillos and his professional faux pas.  His tweets are terrible, often mean and nasty with poor grammar.  The good side of his character is that he has the tough hide to take the criticism from the left.  I support him on immigration, for example, but so far he has done almost nothing on that issue.  He has tried, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as won most of the showdowns on immigration. 

NYT Article Inadvertently Confirms Trump's Claims

In the article "With 'Spygate,' Trump Shows How He Uses Conspiracy Thories to Erode Trust," the NYT actually strengthens Trump's claims and undermines its own credibility.  The article seems to emphasize the difference between a "spy" and an "informant."  To most people, including me, this is not an important distinction.  In fact most descriptions of Halper's activities by the liberal press (NYT), claim that he was investigating Russia's activities (spying on a foreign power), not the Trump campaign (informing on political activities).  Thus, from the liberal viewpoint there is more justification for calling him a spy that from the conservative viewpoint. 

So far, press reports have not made clear what Halper was doing.  There was a big meeting between the administration and Congressional representatives to discuss what he was doing.  The Democrats objected to Trump's lawyer's presence.  This objection seems inappropriate to me.  The Democrats seem to be arguing that Trump as a defendant against possible charges of treason has no right to hear the charges against him.  They seem to believe the prosecution process should be some kind of star chamber persecution process which blocks the participation of Trump's lawyers.  To me, this makes the liberal Democrats look more authoritarian than Trump.  They give credence to Trump's claim of a "witch hunt," just as the NYT article justifies his claims of a "spygate." 

If the liberals was to accuse Trump of bad conduct, they have to behave themselves better than he does.  Labeling this article "news analysis" does not prevent it from being pure tabloid mud-slinging that plays loose with the facts.