#legalize undocumented immigration

[lillucyondabeat]

I'm just saying, for some solidarity with our fellow immigrants...

Legalize Undocumented Immigrants

Ban Deportation

Abolish Citizenship

Fuck Xenophobia

Immigrants are not lazy, are not criminals, they were forced into unfortunate, dangerous circumstances out of their control, and are trying their hardest to get by, just because their nations and people were among the many victims of capitalism.

Many immigrants, can't rely on broken asylum systems to escape persecution, that could reject you over 50% of the time even if you risk execution, and are forced to fulfill insane visa requirements that are designed to keep out poor people.

Now riddle me this, how come diligent, hardworking people like that, are faced with risks of rejection, deportation, imprisonment, or even death, but mansion-dwelling passport bros, who probably haven't worked a day in their lives, can live anywhere they want, with no issue, just for the hell of it?

Better question, how come people who don't have to go through their struggle, get the right to vote and serve office, but immigrants can't?

Its not to "protect domestic jobs," its not to "keep out criminals," its to re-enforce a global apartheid campaign by the imperial core, that has been going on since the very first empire was born.

And I'm sick of self-proclaimed "leftists" who defend this broken, inhuman system. No more excuses.

As a trans person fleeing the United States due to Project 2025, it is unacceptable for all the shit we get put through.

[reasonsforhope]

"California will begin paying for free legal help with immigration for undocumented farmworkers who are involved in state investigations of wage theft or other labor violations, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced this week.

The $4.5 million pilot program will provide qualifying farmworkers with referrals for legal help with their immigration status. 

Roughly half of California’s farmworker population is believed to be undocumented. Fear of deportation and difficulties finding jobs can discourage workers from filing labor complaints or serving as witnesses in cases alleging unsafe work temperatures, wage theft, or employer retaliation for unionizing, officials said...

Respecting immigrant rights

Farmworkers in labor investigations who qualify for the new state program will receive a direct referral to legal services organizations that already offer immigration services, such as the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County or the United Farm Workers Foundation, which spoke in support of the program. 

The free legal services workers could receive include case review, legal advice and representation by an attorney, according to Newsom’s office...

Deferred deportation

State officials said the pilot program aligns with a new Biden administration policy that makes it easier for undocumented workers who are victims of labor rights violations to request deferred action from deportation. Because the federal Department of Homeland Security can’t respond to all immigration violations, it exercises “prosecutorial discretion” to decide who to try to deport.

State officials said they won’t ask for workers’ immigration status, but noncitizens granted this deferred action may be eligible for work authorization.

This year, California labor department officials began supporting undocumented workers’ requests for prosecutorial discretion or deferred action from federal immigration officials, including when employers threaten workers with immigration enforcement to prevent workers from cooperating with state investigators. 

“The Department of Industrial Relations’ Labor Commissioner’s Office … was the first state agency to request deferred action from DHS for employees in an active investigation, and that request was successful,” Hickey said. “This is an important process for undocumented workers to be aware of.”"

-via CalMatters, July 21, 2023

[usadvlottery]

Immigrant Legal Aid Policies in the United States encompass a set of regulations and initiatives designed to provide legal assistance and support to individuals navigating the complex immigration system. These policies aim to ensure that immigrants, regardless of their status, have access to fair representation, information, and resources. Legal aid organizations collaborate with government agencies, pro bono attorneys, and community partners to offer services such as legal consultations, representation in immigration court proceedings, and advocacy for the protection of immigrants' rights. These policies reflect the commitment to upholding the principles of justice, fairness, and inclusive, recognizing the importance of a robust legal framework to address the diverse needs of the immigrant population in the United States.

[llycaons]

you can make the wens mob bosses if you want but the jins had power that was legitimate by the standards of the setting and they has zero oversight or restrictions on their actions. it's more accurate to characterize them as an actual governing body, or at least a very powerful business with ties to politics, a lobbying body that pushes laws to let them legally murder or torture people, a massive legal team to keep them out of trouble, and a fantastic PR team that keeps their image clean

[ponderlyapp]

🔻Should undocumented migrants be allowed to sue government entities? There’s talk it’s ‘fundamentally inhumane to deny justice’ from Andrew, but Luke argues the US has deportation rights…

The debate focuses on policy & legal aspects. Are you ready to jump into the convo and vote?

At @ponderlyapp everything’s debatable. Let’s go 🦕🦖

[gardenstateofmind]

idk maybe it's bc growing up i've always had family that has rental properties, but to me there's a difference between a landlord that's just some guy and real estate companies owned by millionaire investors

like it is without argument a huge privilege to actually own property, but like a working class family renting out their basement isn't bad to me

[robertreich]

Five Biggest Border Lies Debunked 

Republicans are lying about immigrants and the border. Here are five of their biggest doozies.

1. They claim Biden doesn’t want to secure the border

Well, that’s rubbish. Biden has consistently asked for additional funding for border security.

Republicans have just as consistently refused. They’re voting to cut Customs and Border Protection funding in spending bills and blocking passage of Biden’s $106 billion national security supplemental that includes border funding.

2. They blame the drug crisis on immigration

That’s more rubbish. While large amounts of fentanyl and other deadly drugs have been flowing into the U.S. from Mexico, 90% arrives through official ports of entry, not via immigrants illegally crossing the border. In fact, research by the Cato Institute found that more than 86% of the people convicted of trafficking fentanyl in 2021 were U.S. citizens.

3. They claim that undocumented immigrants are terrorists.

Baloney. For almost a half century, no American has been killed or injured in a terrorist attack in the United States that involved someone who crossed the border illegally.

4. They say immigrants are stealing American jobs.

Nonsense. Evidence shows immigrants are not taking jobs that American workers want. And the surge across the border is not increasing unemployment. Far from it: unemployment has been below 4% for roughly two years.

5. They blame crime on immigrants

More baloney. This has been debunked by numerous studies over the years. In fact, a 2020 study found that undocumented immigrants have "substantially" lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants.

Notwithstanding the recent migrant surge, America’s homicide rate has fallen nearly 13% since 2022 — the largest decrease on record. Local law enforcement agencies are also reporting drops in violent crime.

Who’s really behind these lies?

Since he entered politics, Donald Trump has fanned nativist fears and bigotry.

Now leaning into full neo-fascism and using the actual language of Hitler to attack immigrants.

Trump wants us to forget that almost all of us are the descendants of immigrants who fled persecution, or were brought to America under duress, or simply sought better lives for themselves and their descendants.

Know the truth and spread it.

[partisan-by-default]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the famously outspoken Democratic congresswoman from New York, says she has a simple approach to fixing the immigrant crisis in the U.S.

“The answer should really be, we should make it easier to be legal, documented and citizens of the United States of America,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Ocasio-Cortez, talking to the “The Daily Show” host Desus Nice in an interview Monday night, said the country needs to return to how things were done in previous generations when the process for becoming an American citizen was more streamlined.

“From all parts of the political spectrum, one of the big issues that we have when it comes to immigration is the fact that we have an undocumented population,” Ocasio-Cortez said on the Comedy Central show. “Now you can fix that by trying to build a wall or you can fix that by trying to document people and create a path to citizenship.”

[crimethinc]

Don't let the news about Title 42 and the rhetoric about "waves of migrants" confuse you: the largest demographic that is impacted by US border policy is comprised of longtime residents of the United States.

Well over 10 million undocumented people live in the United States. Many of them have lived here for decades. Lacking legal rights, they are especially vulnerable to exploitation and oppression.

Solidarity with workers means solidarity with the undocumented. Solidarity with your neighbors means solidarity with the undocumented. This is why we continue to call for the abolition of borders.

To that end, we've reprinted another 100,000 copies of our classic "Immigrants Welcome" sticker. Please order these and display them in your community!

https://store.crimethinc.com/collections/stickers/products/immigrants-welcome

[the-greatest-fool]

I basically only post and read posts in my bubble aside from occasionally scrolling through Real Tumblr, but people’s takes about US politics on this website are fucking unbelievable. They talk about our government as if it didn’t save us from a pandemic-induced financial collapse, pump trillions of dollars into public works, not to mention substantially invest and rein in pharmaceuticals, and is instead some sort of ultra-neoliberal-corporate kitty shooting machine.

Like let’s be for real. Do they…know what the government does? How it works? Do you know what a conservative is? Do you know what an authoritarian is?

Because a system of government whose citizens are all lucky it has had continuous peaceful transfer of power for centuries could very well have its greatest norm violated—that those who reject its legitimacy must be rejected—and we don’t blink an eye.

Because the first major investment against climate change, coupled with life saving investments into healthcare, cancer research, and drug costs could be shredded by indiscriminate fiscal conservatives who don’t care if we die in forest fires, cancer from pollution, lose insurance because we’re jobless, or, apparently, all die in a fricking plague.

Because a foreign policy establishment that had finally reversed two decades of foreign intervention in favor of a normalization strategy aimed at reducing American foot presence, drone strikes, and indiscriminate killings is about to be replaced by the whims of a man who dropped the “mother of all bombs” on the Middle East, gave American soldiers up to Russian bounty hunters, extorted a foreign leader for political favors and arguably indirectedly resulted in that country being BRUTALLY INVADED BY AN IMPERIAL NEIGHBOR, is in the pockets of CCP-funded billionaires, and WANTS TO “FINISH THE JOB” IN GAZA.

Because a President who is against family separations and promotes a path for DREAMERs and more legal immigration and rights for unodcumented people could be replaced by a man who wants to separate families, PUT UNDOCUMENTED PEOPLE IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS, RESTRICT EVEN LEGAL IMMIGRATION, ESPECIALLY THAT OF MUSLIMS, AND SHOOT MIGRANTS.

Because a President who stopped a repeat of the Great Recession and the painful decade that followed it with strong fiscal stimulus which CUT CHILD POVERTY IN HALF BEFORE CONSERVATIVES MADE IT EXPIRE, then managed to cut deficits and presided over a decline in inflation, resulting in record high real wages (aka taking into account inflation) for workers is going to be replaced by a President who wants to TARIFF ALL FOREIGN GOODS by 15%, CUT TAXES FOR THE FILTHY RICH AND THE TAX ENFORCEMENT TO STOP THEM, INCREASE CHILD POVERTY AND UNINSUREDNESS by cutting gov’t programs, and HURT UNIONS which by every measure will lead to lower wages, higher prices, and more poverty and starvation.

Because a President who has pledged to sign a bill codifying Roe v. Wade (which has yet to be possible in recent memory, whatever these kids say), who enshrined the right to marry someone of the same sex or different race, who supports the Equality Act which would enshrine LGBTQ protections into the law, could be replaced by THE MAN WHO REMOVED AMERICA’S RIGHT TO ABORTION, whose Christian nationalist supporters want to END SEXUAL FREEDOM as we know it including TARGETING IVF AND BIRTH CONTROL, who wants to reverse LGBTQ discrimination law in favor of Christian bigots who hate queer and trans people, and who demonizes that community to win political support.

Ask yourself if you really think there’s no difference between the two. Ask yourself if a reasonable person given these facts would choose the latter. Ask yourself why you see so much propagandizing against the reasonable choice. Ask yourself why so many people seem to have opinions on this when they “don’t even go here”.

Maybe I’m just preaching to the choir here. Maybe people who say this inane stuff wouldn’t vote anyways. Maybe somehow we’re screwed anyways. Maybe people will stupidly vote third party and we’re fucked. Maybe this will get me attacked.

I don’t care anymore. If I have to see one more fucking post acting like we live under the fucking Evil Empire while a SELF PROCLAIMED DICTATOR is about to end the best streak of decent governance I’ve ever seen in a while, I just can’t anymore.

[centrally-unplanned]

Very happy to see someone do a write-up of this! Its one of my go-to "you are wrong about x" facts if that is called for...not that, that is, uh, ever called for, I would never do that in a conversation. Probably why I never did a write-up myself.

But yeah the idea of the immigrants to America being essentially "undocumented masses" is a myth, 19th century European people had documented identities and were paying for passage via legal contracts - changing their name on arrival would have been a huge headache honestly, its a story that never made sense. I agree with Tabarrok that the Godfather was a big part of this becoming a 'known thing', but it did not originate the story; I have I believe seen versions of this story from the 1950's, bundled in the general mythologization of Ellis Island. And its in a lot of media - Don Bluth's An American Tail has an example of it, it was pretty much a go-to trope for any story of 19th century immigrant New York City. I would be interested in tracing out its origin! Maybe someone has done that somewhere, I will take a look.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

By James Downie

“If everything’s honest, I’d gladly accept the results.” That was former President Donald Trump on Wednesday, playing cute with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s question over whether he’d accept the outcome of Wisconsin’s presidential election. As my colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim pointed out, Trump has a long track record of similar statements, offering sham justifications to disguise the fact that he doesn’t feel bound by election results. The events of Jan. 6, 2021, laid bare the true consequences of this shell game.

But this latest instance — coupled with statements Trump recently made in his interview with Time magazine — highlight a disturbing and underappreciated aspect of his 2024 campaign. Trump’s approach to election results has become his approach (and his devotees’ approach) to the law more broadly. Even as their policies and rhetoric have become more extreme, Trump and his MAGA acolytes are already lining up the justifications — legal and otherwise — to buttress their extremist and authoritarian agenda in ways that simply didn’t occur to the first Trump administration.

The deportation of millions, the deployment of the National Guard and even the military domestically, the firing of prosecutors, the autocratic expansion of executive authority, the potential weaponization of the Comstock Act to ban abortion: all of these will have excuses that range from “tendentious” to “outright fiction.” Or, as Trump told Time: “I’ll be doing everything on a very legal basis.”

Take, for example, immigration: It’s easy to forget how Trump’s immigration policy has shifted in eight years, even as it has remained consistently bigoted. His 10-point plan on immigration in 2016 consisted of the border wall and a bunch of truisms. (“We’ll build safe zones, which is something I think all of us want to see.”) The military was absent; the word “invasion” was nowhere to be found, and the courts barely merited a mention.

Contrast this with the Time interview, where Trump defends deploying the military both at the border and inland to deport “15 million and maybe as many as 20 million” undocumented immigrants — the equivalent of deporting the entire state of Florida. With bigger autocratic moves come bigger fictions. Migrants are no longer just “bringing crime”; Trump has created a whole separate (and demonstrably false) category of “migrant crime.”

Domestic deployment of the armed forces would seem to violate an 1878 ban on using troops against civilians. But this Trump, unlike the 2016 version, has a legal facade ready to go: Undocumented immigrants are invaders, not civilians, and “I will be complying with court orders.” Those two sentiments may seem difficult to reconcile, given that the former categorization flies in the face of legal precedent. But as recent oral arguments over presidential immunity have illustrated, precedent means little to this Supreme Court.

Immigration is just the tip of a very dangerous iceberg. In close advisers like Stephen Miller and aligned projects like Project 2025, we can see not only the policies but also the underlying justifications and legal authorities they have ready to go. Part of this effort is practical. Trump’s presidency was rife with policy efforts that either never got past the planning stage or wasted months (or even years) in false starts. The reality that Mexico wouldn’t pay for his border wall meant that less than 20% had been built when he left office. His administration spent the better part of a year tossing out different iterations of Trump’s self-described “Muslim ban,” searching for a version that could pass muster in the courts.

Trump’s supporters are determined not to waste time this round. There’s no better example of this than the Comstock Act: Rather than wait for congressional Republicans to pass a new national abortion ban, they could simply resurrect a “zombie law” to criminalize any materials used in abortions and count on the more Trump-friendly courts to back them up.

But mostly this effort is political. As writer Brian Beutler puts it, “To the MAGA core, he offers a bloody revanchism; to the uncommitted, a series of mollifying assurances.” Most of Trump’s signature policy proposals — such as a military deportation force and huge tariff increases — and those of his most devoted advisers are unpopular. So Trump balances the lawless extremes of his ambitions by minimizing how radical his plans sound, hoping to avoid scaring persuadable voters with his authoritarian signals. “When we talk military, generally speaking, I talk National Guard,” he says, as if those two terms are interchangeable. “But if I thought things were getting out of control, I would have no problem using the military.” Just like he’ll accept the results “if everything’s honest.”

“I don’t think they’re bold actions,” Trump tells Time of his policies, “I think they’re actions that are common sense.” But phrases like “if everything’s honest” and “if things were getting out of control” create loopholes as wide as they are chilling. It’s easy to imagine, for example, a deportation force being sent to New York and then beefed up when local residents resist — with horrible consequences. But if the platitudes get him back in the White House, he and his followers will move swiftly to welcome that horror.

[gray-wednesday]

ANYONE BUT TRUMP

In addition to Project 2025, Trump released another set of plans called Agenda 47 that he plans to execute in his next term as president. These include many disastrous policies including:

Reducing children's access to a decent education by dissolving the department of education so that public schools are only controlled by states and therefore doesn't need to meet a national standard

Endangering unarmed citizens by making it legal for anyone to have a concealed gun on their person without needing to go through background checks and psychology evaluations, which will force even more people to buy guns to feel safer

Mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and preparation for war on the US-Mexico border

Demanding back money that was donated to Ukraine and using it to create "freedom cities" on federal land (he hopes to encourage a "baby boom" there by inviting young families to move in, which is ludicrous)

Eliminating gender affirming care entirely for both children and fully autonomous adults

Destroying our environmental progress by removing any regulation on fossil fuels and beginning to drill for oil on home soil

And other disastrous things that can be found by clicking the link embedded in Agenda 47 above. Agenda 47 is a ridiculous idea that 1) will not come fully to fruition, but 2) can and will have lasting consequences. The presidential election, like the previous one, will come down to Biden vs Trump. Although there are many reasons why Biden is not ideal, he is better than Trump: he can be reasoned with, and he actually cares about America and its citizens as well as America's place in the world.

Trumps policies will incite violence on american soil and on a European and Mexican front. We will lose allies, and become further divided at home. Even if you don't believe in global warming or trans people, there are still many important, real problems that will develop if Trump returns to office.

TLDR: The only thing Trump wants is to tear down America's progress. His plans will cause confusion, hatred, and violence and we can not protect ourselves on all the fronts his plans will create. Our job isn't to vote for Biden, it is to vote for Anyone But Trump.

[collapsedsquid]

With very few exceptions, all immigrant males between ages 18 and 25 are required by law to register with the Selective Service System (SSS) within 30 days of arriving in the United States. This includes naturalized citizens, parolees, undocumented immigrants, legal permanent residents, asylum seekers, refugees, and all males with visas more than 30 days expired.

Love this fact about the US draft, was told a story of a brit who delayed moving to the US out of fear he would be drafted to serve in Vietnam, War of 1812 but in reverse shit.

[and-then-there-were-n0ne]

Yesterday CNN published an article by senior writer Tara John about the UK National Health Service’s newly skeptical stance toward youth gender medicine. The main takeaway, which is big news to observers of this debate, is that the NHS will no longer provide puberty blockers to young people, other than in research contexts. (As for cross-sex hormones, a relatively strict-seeming regime is set to be implemented, and they will be offered to youth only “from around their 16th birthday.”)

As myself and a number of others pointed out, the article contains a sentence that is, in context, rather wild: John writes that “Gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender — the one the person was designated at birth — to their affirmed gender — the gender by which one wants to be known.” But of course, whether youth gender medicine is medically necessary and evidence-based is exactly the thing being debated, and anyone who has been following this debate closely knows that every national health system that has examined this question closely, including the NHS, has come to the same conclusion: the evidence is paltry. That’s why so many countries, including Sweden, Finland, the UK, and Norway have significantly scaled back access to these treatments for youth. So it’s very strange to see this sentence, which reads as though it comes from an activist press release, published in a news article in CNN, an outlet that generally adheres to the old-school divide between news and opinion.

There’s a strong case to be made that CNN’s sentence, as written, is false. Gender medicine is at best unproven, when it comes to the standards society (and regulatory bodies) expects medical researchers to adhere to. The situation with youth gender medicine is particularly dicey, given that this is a newer area of medicine suffering from an even severer paucity of quality studies.

It would be bad enough for this sentence to have appeared in one article on one of the most important news websites in the world. But here’s the thing: this wasn’t the first time. Rather, this exact sentence, and close variants of it, has been copied and pasted into dozens of CNN.com stories over the last few years, as a Google search quickly reveals. 

This sentence, and its close variants, appear over and over and over. I asked my researcher to create a list of all the instances he could find. Here’s what he sent back, in reverse chronological order [...]

I haven’t triple-checked every single one of these, but it’s undeniable that effectively the same words have appeared in about three dozen CNN articles since May of 2022, which was already years after the present wave of European nations rethinking these treatments had begun. 

When I asked CNN about this, I heard back from someone there who explained on background that it’s standard for outlets to provide reporters with guidance about accurate and appropriate language. While that’s true, it doesn’t really answer my question. Sure, it’s not unusual for an outlet to have a house style, sometimes enshrined in a stylebook, that provides rules about how to refer to, for example, individuals in the United States who lack legal status. They used to be called “illegal immigrants,” and now they’re often called “undocumented immigrants,” or language to that effect. This is a fairly normal process by which language changes and, sometimes as a result of a push-pull between outlets and advocacy groups, outlets decide which changes to make and when. So you may or may not agree with the fact that many outlets have switched from “biological sex” to “sex assigned at birth” when discussing trans issues, but the underlying process of switching from one phrase to another is standard and occurs in many areas. 

This is quite different. You do not generally see the same complex sentence pasted over and over and over into news stories written by different authors and published in different sections. I asked CNN if it could provide me any other examples of CNN.com publishing the same sentence in multiple stories by different authors, and posed the same question in an email to Virginia Moseley, the CNN executive editor who, according to the website, “oversee[s] international and domestic news operations across platforms.” I didn’t hear back about this.

This copy-paste job is journalistically problematic for a number of reasons. For one thing, it suggests that CNN has decided, at the editorial level, that its institutional stance is that youth gender medicine is “medically necessary” and “evidence-based.” While they’re being used somewhat colloquially in these articles, these terms have fairly specific definitions in certain medical and legal contexts, and treatments only qualify for such designations if they have exceeded a certain evidentiary benchmark based on solid published research. That is not the case here — far from it, actually. As written, this is a deeply misleading sentence.

The language also puts CNN writers in an awkward position. Does each and every bylined author of these stories believe that youth gender medicine is “medically necessary” and “evidence-based”? Maybe they do (which would be disturbing), but the fact is that they didn’t write these sentences — they, or one of their editors, grabbed that language from somewhere else and pasted it in. They are effectively outsourcing their own judgment on a hotly contested controversy to their employer. This is not what journalists are supposed to do, and, at the risk of repeating myself, it’s significantly different from a reporter rolling their eyes when using language like “undocumented immigrant” or “sex assigned at birth,” rather than their own preferred verbiage. Those are rather small-stakes linguistic quibbles, different not only in degree but in kind from the question of whether or not youth gender medicine is medically necessary and evidence-based. And it goes without saying that a CNN reporter who does develop doubts about youth gender medicine is likely to be deterred from investigating further by the fact that their bosses have already decided that this is the way they’re going to cover this subject — say the line, Bart. Why bother?

It’s a pattern, unfortunately. Many outlets dug themselves into a deep hole on this issue by simply acting as stenographers and megaphones for activist groups rather than doing their jobs. And now that there is ever-mounting evidence undercutting the loudest activist claims, climbing out of this hole is going to be awkward. But there’s no other option, really. Because right now there’s absolutely no reason to take CNN.com seriously on this issue — the site has proven, demonstrably, that it doesn’t take itself seriously on this issue.