#migrate to usa

[iraimmigration1]

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[probablyasocialecologist]

Last week, Senate Democrats strongly indicated that the liberal wing of the American political establishment is woefully unprepared to face the future that the US—as both the world’s biggest imperial power and a leading architect of the climate crisis—has helped create. In an attempt to score a win ahead of this year’s federal election, Democrats proposed a piece of legislation that is, in effect, a laundry list of hard-line anti-immigrant policies demanded by Donald Trump and his supporters in Congress. In so doing, they conceded the right-wing framing that an increase in immigrants and asylum seekers at the southern border—already a real phenomenon—represents a “crisis” that requires a series of punitive solutions. This marks a shift in tone and policy from the Trump years, when Democrats rhetorically placed themselves in opposition to the xenophobia of the White House and tended to downplay the idea of rising immigration pressures. It also reflects an even deeper conception of the border as a bulwark against the savage hordes that would destroy life as we know it if we let our guard down. As it happens, that is exactly how the Israeli government talks about Gaza (and like Gaza is how the American right is beginning to talk about the border). Even in the short term, the Democrats’ turn is a huge mistake; as Adam Johnson and Kate Aronoff argued forcefully in separate pieces last week, going head-to-head with the right over border toughness is a losing battle, since Democrats will have a hard time beating the Republicans at their own game (racism). But more importantly, there is no indication that deterrence can counteract the long-term economic, political, and ecological forces animating population flows. Even if it were sensible policy, there is no way to shut down the border that is not itself a time bomb for political violence. Thus, by taking the hard-line approach—or, to put it another way, by embracing the Gaza model—Democrats risk losing elections, while harming national well-being where and when they do take power.

[wordswithloveee]

I invite everyone to choose forgiveness rather than division, teamwork over personal ambition.

[lilithism1848]

[phoenix-joy]

"Black queer women have shaped American culture since long before the era of gay liberation. Decades prior to the Stonewall Uprising, in the 1920s and 1930s, Black "lady lovers"—as women who loved women were then called—crafted a queer world. In the cabarets, rent parties, speakeasies, literary salons, and universities of the Jazz Age and Great Depression, communities of Black lady lovers grew, and queer flirtations flourished. Cookie Woolner here uncovers the intimate lives of performers, writers, and educators such as Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Gladys Bentley, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and Lucy Diggs Slowe, along with the many everyday women she encountered in the archives.

Examining blues songs, Black newspapers, vice reports, memoirs, sexology case studies, and more, Woolner illuminates the unconventional lives Black lady lovers formed to suit their desires. In the urban North, as the Great Migration gave rise to increasingly racially mixed cities, Black lady lovers fashioned and participated in emerging sexual subcultures. During this time, Black queer women came to represent anxieties about the deterioration of the heteronormative family. Negotiating shifting notions of sexuality and respectability, Black lady lovers strategically established queer networks, built careers, created families, and were vital cultural contributors to the US interwar era."

[bopinion]

2024 / 37 - Belated vacation edition

Aperçu of the week

“Never start to stop and never stop to start!”

(Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman scholar, writer, philosopher and politician)

Bad News of the Week

Poverty and a lack of prospects as well as climate change and a lack of livelihoods are the most common reasons for migration. This is an understandable consideration: those who see no future for themselves (any more) can either resign themselves or set off in search of one somewhere else. Leaving your home country is never easy, so such a move can also be seen as the willpower of someone who won't give up.

Now there are many developed countries that even have a need for immigration. Germany, for example, has a shrinking population due to low birth rates. At the same time, many baby boomers will soon be retiring - so there is less working population and more to care for. A delta that could be closed with immigration. So it's actually a win-win situation that benefits everyone.

Germany does not exactly have the image of a classic immigration country. So anyone who is not a persecuted asylum seeker, but perhaps even a sought-after skilled worker, will think about where to build their future. Potential migrants cite the difficult language, complex bureaucracy and lack of a welcoming culture as the main reasons for not choosing Germany. We cannot change the language, but a reduction in formalities and more openness to the world would also do us good as a society.

I therefore react with incomprehension to the current behavior of the conservative CDU/CSU. They are adopting the pejorative rhetoric of the right and are raging without sense or reason against a supposed emergency situation at the borders caused by an increasing flow of irregular migration - which does not exist to this extent in Germany any more than it does in the USA. An ultimatum from this largest opposition party to the ruling coalition, which it was even prepared to take up constructively, was finally declared a failure just in time for the general debate in the German parliament Bundestag. In this debate, CDU/CSU parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz insists on the rejection of refugees at the border. Despite all legal concerns and criticism from neighboring countries.

Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz argues against this: “There is no country in the world with a shrinking working population that has economic growth. That is the truth with which we are confronted”. And “We are a country that offers protection to those who are politically persecuted and that is in our constitution and we are not putting that up for debate”. However, he also concedes that openness to the world does not mean that anyone who wants to can come: “We must be able to choose who comes to Germany.”

So the door to talks is still open. Even if only with vague hints instead of a concrete plan on how immigration could be managed for the benefit of all. However, as long as the conservatives bask in good poll ratings and believe it cannot leave populism to the extreme parties, they will refuse to cooperate out of self-interest until at least the next general election. And we will once again fail to come up with a constructive, forward-looking concept for migration. Which we actually urgently need.

Good News of the Week

Taylor Swift and I agree. Elon Musk and I do not. So it should be clear what I'm talking about: the upcoming presidential elections in the USA. Or rather, the televised debate between the two candidates last week. Because it clearly went to the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, as even the otherwise barely objective right-wing populist broadcaster Fox News admits. The corresponding polls can be averaged out at two thirds to one third.

On the one hand, Donald Trump delivered his usual ghost train of doom-mongering, brazen lies, self-praise and bad humor. If he were to lose, there would be a third world war. The one between Russia and Ukraine, on the other hand, would never have happened in the first place. Thanks to him, NATO would be strong again, the pandemic would have been overcome superbly, the economy would be running smoothly and the whole world would take the USA seriously. The Democrats, on the other hand, if not their current vice president personally, would bring millions of migrants from Latin American mental institutions into the country to change gun laws, abort fracking even after birth, eat the cats off African-Americans and tax jobs. Or something like that - at times it was difficult to follow what he was saying.

On the other hand, Kamala Harris gave a solid performance. She came across as factual, credible, confident and self-assured. Yes, at some points one would have wished for more factual content than pathos, but that was not the point. In the run-up to the event, a majority of Americans had explicitly wished to learn more about the candidate. Who ultimately remained rather pale as Vice President. And who had to manage the tightrope act of simultaneously selling her previous performance well and embodying a new beginning. She has managed this reasonably well. And my hopes have risen that we could once again scrape past the abyss on November 5 instead of falling into it. I'm curious to see how the vice-presidential candidates' debate goes the week after next - I'm assuming that it could be entertaining instead of just weird.

Personal happy moment of the week

I had another great time with great people in Québec this week. Thank you!

I couldn't care less...

...that Google has been fined billions in the European Union. We simply have legislation that attempts to control dominant market positions and enable healthy competition in the interests of consumers. I think that's fine in principle.

It's fine with me...

...that BioNTech is now also launching an mRNA vaccine against lung cancer. After all, it was the German company's aim from the outset to use messenger ribonucleic acid to combat this cruel disease, which is the second most common cause of death in humans. This could be nothing less than a medical breakthrough.

As I write this...

...Germany is approaching the last state election of the year. This time it's Brandenburg's turn. Where the ruling Social Democrats could succeed in the last few meters to deprive the far-right AfD (Alternative für Deutschland / Alternative for Germany) of what they thought was a certain victory. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that.

Post Scriptum

After 28 years, the original German internet search engine MetaGer is shutting down. This makes it older than Google, but it has never been able to compete with it. As Yahoo is ending its involvement as an advertising partner without official justification, one of the longest-lived German Internet projects is now being discontinued. However, I have to admit that I have never used it.

[xicoindia]

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[tomorrowusa]

One book I’d like to read before the year is over is The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration by Jake Bittle.

He appeared in this podcast episode with FiveThirtyEight’s Galen Druke.

Climate change has already been the cause of some internal migration inside the US. We should expect that to accelerate as the century progresses. It will be almost the reverse of the late 20th/early 21st century migration to the sunbelt and coastal areas. 

While no part of the US is completely immune to the effects of climate change, the Great Lakes region and Upper Midwest are likely to fare somewhat better than other parts of the country.

Cities in the Great Lakes area are already beginning to think through the effects of a surging population.

Except for the New Madrid fault in southeastern Missouri, the Midwest is not subject to major earthquakes; volcanoes and tsunamis are unknown there.  Once people around the US rethink the overall benefits of living in the region, sustainable growth may become one of the most acute issues in the area. 

[iraimmigration1]

Planning a trip to the USA? Let us help you achieve your dream of obtaining a tourist visa, making your journey to America a reality with ease and expertise.

[nando161mando]

The migrant crisis in Latin America is the consequences of the Capitalist Modernity

Those people that are fleeing their land at thousands, if not millions, are met with the military and oppressive apparatus of the “first-world”, the “north-world”, European countries letting people die in the seas of the Mediterranean sea so they don’t get to the borders of the south Europe or the concentration camps in the Mexico-US border where agents of ICE and the United States Border Patrol behave as Gestapo agents by leaving people without food or any human care as they are caged – even children are separated from their families. This happens due to the eugenicist mentality of this countries, their white policies that had origin in the colonisation and the bases of the creation of the nation-state mentality.

[head-post]

24 governors backed Abbott in his fight with Biden over the border

Twenty-five Republican governors have signed an open letter supporting Texas Governor Greg Abbott in his escalating conflict with the federal government over who has the authority to enforce border policy.

The letter reads:

We stand in solidarity with our fellow Governor, Greg Abbott, and the State of Texas in utilizing every tool and strategy, including razor wire fences, to secure the border. We do it in part because the Biden Administration is refusing to enforce immigration laws already on the books and is illegally allowing mass parole across America of migrants who entered our country illegally.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government has the right to dismantle the razor wire that Texas has installed on its border with Mexico.

Read more HERE

[tennisarchives]

all of the cousins i grew up with are migrating away and it’s making me sad

[totallyhussein-blog]

Exploring the global landscape and the different ways to be American

In 2003, when Kathy Saade Kenny, the granddaughter of Palestinian immigrants, stumbled upon a mysterious cache of letters stored in an old See’s candy box tucked away in the back of a closet in her mother’s Los Angeles home, she was intrigued.

As Susan Bell explains, inside the box were more than 130 letters written by her grandmother, Katrina Sa’ade. A successful businesswoman, Sa’ade had migrated to California from Palestine, via Mexico.

Suspecting the letters could provide a treasure trove of information about her family history, Kenny was excited to read them. However, as a third-generation immigrant, she didn’t possess the necessary key to unlock their secrets: The letters were written in Arabic.

Sarah Gualtieri describes this scene in her book Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California (Stanford University Press, 2019), which explores how an Arab American community came into being in Southern California. In doing so, Gualtieri, associate professor of American studies and ethnicity, history and Middle East studies at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, re-inscribes Arabs into California history.

“Traditionally, California history hasn’t done a very good job of recognizing the deep roots of the Arab community here in the state,” Gualtieri says. “My book also pushes against this idea that circulates very widely in the media that Arabs are new immigrants, and that they are always somehow more Middle Eastern than they are American.”

Enlisting the help of a Palestinian historian and translator, Kenny embarked on a journey to unlock the secrets of her grandmother’s past. The translated letters revealed a complicated divorce case between her grandmother and her then-husband — a case that took her grandmother back and forth to Palestine.

“Kathy comes to understand her grandmother’s journey as a migrant, as a woman who came from Palestine to California through this unfolding mystery that’s revealed through her letters,” Gualtieri says. “Not only does Kathy discover an untold family drama, she starts to understand this whole dimension of her life in a new way. This helps her connect to her sense of Arabness and refine her identity as an Arab American.”

Gualtieri says the Arab American community often works to reconstruct their connection to their Middle Eastern roots. Many of those she interviewed during her research tended to mute their identity as Arab Americans — often, she says, because they came of age in the 1950s and ’60s, when, just as now, there was considerable hostility toward Arab countries.

The Latin American connection

The realization that people’s origins are frequently much more complex than they may appear on the surface is a key theme that runs through Gualtieri’s research. We tend to think of immigration as a unilinear journey, she argues, and don’t pay enough attention to the important role that’s played in shaping immigrants’ identities by the places where they live and spend time along the way.

Since the late 19th century, Syrian and Lebanese migration, in particular, to Southern California has been intimately connected to and through Latin America, and especially Mexico.

“This Latin American dimension of the Arab history in Southern California is not well known, and I wanted to tell that story,” Gualtieri said. “My book looks at what I call ‘other pathways’ to the U.S., and specifically to California, in particular at this southern route that so many Arabic-speaking migrants took to come to L.A.”

Gualtieri’s research goes beyond the Ellis Island stereotypes to uncover the stories of this Syrian American community, one both Arabized and Latinized, revealing important cross-border and multiethnic solidarities in Syrian California.

Sleepy Lagoon murder

Among them, she reveals the Syrian interests in the defense of the Mexican American teens charged in the 1942 Sleepy Lagoon murder.

Twenty-two alleged members of L.A.’s 38th Street Gang were accused of the murder of another Mexican American youth, José Díaz, who had been found unconscious and dying near a Commerce, California, reservoir.

Nicknamed “Sleepy Lagoon,” the reservoir was a popular swimming spot for Mexican Americans denied entrance to segregated pools. Seventeen defendants eventually went to court as the largest mass trial in California history took place in an atmosphere of intense prejudice and racial discrimination.

This scene on the cover of Sarah Gualtieri’s latest book showing acrobats performing at Muscle Beach near Santa Monica, California, is set against the backdrop of a Syrian American cafe.

Gualtieri tells the story of what became an infamous miscarriage of justice through the lens of one of the lead defense lawyers in the case, a Syrian American named George Shibley.

“When we understand this celebrated but difficult trial in California history through the eyes of a Syrian American lawyer, we can see the kinds of solidarities that emerged between Arab Americans and Mexican Americans in Los Angeles at that time,” Gualtieri says. “Rather than telling this story through the lens of conflict, we can shift to understanding it as a fascinating story about solidarity and the potential for interethnic coalition building.”

Different ways to be American

At a period in history when we are facing increased Islamophobia, and increased hostility to immigrants, Gualtieri says she would like people to take away the idea that there are different ways to be American.

“Something that’s always troubled me as a scholar in this field is the way in which Arabs are often seen as being unAmerican. Too often we think of Arabic-speaking migrants and their children as being somehow more connected to the region of origin than they are to the region of settlement,” Gualtieri says.

“This book offers a rich history of how integrated Arabs are into the Southern California fabric.”

The striking cover of Gualtieri’s book is a perfect illustration of this. It shows acrobats performing at the celebrated Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, California, in the 1940s. It’s an iconic Southern California scene and the backdrop is Khoury’s — a Syrian American café.

“I like that idea of thinking about the presence of an Arab cafe owner in such an iconic story of California leisure,” Gualtieri says. “I want readers to obviously be struck by the tumblers, but also to look beyond them and to see another layer — this Syrian American café where people probably went to buy a soda while they watched the acrobatics.”

[rwking01stuff-blog]

Prothonotary Warbler (Protonotaria citrea)

Spring Bird Migration USA This visit to Maggee Marsh Wildlife Area in Ohio is the first time that I have seen the Prothonotary Warbler. It is quite different from most other Warblers to look at as it does not have a distinctive cap or stripes along the body. Yes it does have a distinctive shade of yellow, as do many warblers. In fact the name is because the plumage represents the yellow of robes…