Mediaboss Marketing

Shannon Kent(Photo: Courtesy of the NSA)

A Dutchess County native who died in service to the country will be honored at a post office in Pine Plains.

U.S. Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon M. Kent was one of four Americans killed in Syria in a January suicide bombing.

The 35-year-old graduate of Stissing Mountain High School was in her fifth tour of duty.

A post office at 7722 South Main St. will be named in her honor after a bill introducing the measure was signed into law by President Donald Trump, according to a release from Rep. Antonio Delgado, D-Rhinebeck, who introduced the bill in April.

The bipartisan bill passed the Senate in November after being passed in the House of Representatives in October.

DEVELOPMENT:Bow Tie Cinemas, $98 million CIA hotel, Walkway are big winners in state REDC funding

COFFEE: Dunkin' opens Town of Fishkill location at Hudson Valley Towne Center

CRIME: Pleasant Valley woman stole $42,000 in pension payments from dead mother: Comptroller

"The courage and devotion to our nation shown by Senior Chief Petty Officer Kent should continue to serve as an inspiration to us all, and I am elated Dutchess County will be home to this permanent fixture honoring her life, service, and legacy," Delgado said in a statement.

Kent, who grew up in Pine Plains,enlisted in the Navy on Dec. 11, 2003 and then graduated from boot camp and Recruit Training Command in Illinois in February, 2004, according to the Navy.

Achief cryptologic technician in the Navy, Kent's name was added to the National Security Agency's National Cryptological Memorial,located inside the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

Kent, a wife and mother of twochildren, was a recipient of several honors, including the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, twojoint service commendation medals, the Navy and Marine Corps commendation medal, the Army commendation medal and the Joint Service Achievement medal. She also survived thyroid cancer in 2016 and returned to active duty.

Geoffrey Wilson: gwilson@poughkeepsiejournal.com; 845-437-4882; Twitter:@GeoffWilson_

Read or Share this story: https://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/local/2019/12/20/bill-name-pine-plains-post-office-after-shannon-kent-signed-into-law/2715215001/

View original post here:
Pine Plains Post Office to be named after Shannon Kent - Poughkeepsie Journal

Among Florida Republicans, the song remains the same on immigration. Like his predecessor did for years, Gov. Ron DeSantis is once again calling for the Florida Legislature to require private businesses to use the E-Verify program to check the immigration status of new employees. Once again, Republican lawmakers are unlikely to do it because the states economy cannot function without the cheap labor of undocumented immigrants. The posturing reflects the Republicans hypocrisy on immigration, touting punitive approaches while quietly acknowledging the need for workers but refusing to embrace comprehensive reforms.

For a decade , former Gov. Rick Scott and now DeSantis campaigned on requiring the E-Verify system to identify undocumented immigrants and then pushed the Legislature to approve it. Scott, now a U.S. senator, signed an executive order shortly after taking office in 2011 requiring state agencies that report to the governor to use E-Verify to determine the immigration status of all new employees, a practice now used by about 20 other states. But the Republican-controlled Legislature consistently has ignored the governors calls to extend the practice to private employers, and for good reason.

First, the E-Verify system is cumbersome to use and imperfect. Critics point out that undocumented immigrants have figured out ways to avoid detection through the use of forged documents, stolen Social Security numbers and other techniques. More importantly, large segments of the states economy depend on cheap labor supplied by undocumented immigrants. These are often the workers picking crops in the fields, cleaning hotel rooms, building apartment buildings and working in restaurants for little pay and under conditions few American citizens with better options would accept. Who would fill those jobs?

The reality is the consequences of denying any employment to undocumented immigrants in Florida would be sweeping. There are an estimated 850,000 undocumented immigrants in the state. Thats roughly 20 percent of the immigrant population, and about 1 in 14 children in Florida is a U.S. citizen living with at least one undocumented family member. Imagine the ripple effect in public schools, social service programs and neighborhoods throughout Florida if suddenly thousands of families had no income and no way to find work.

Against that backdrop, Republican lawmakers apparently cut a deal this year. They passed legislation that DeSantis sought to ban sanctuary cities. Those dont actually exist in Florida but it was a nice public relations stunt that had the side benefit of serving as another attack on home rule. In exchange, legislation that would have required use of the E-Verify system quietly died.

But E-Verify never really goes away. DeSantis has again made it a priority, raising the typical unsubstantiated claims that it would help reduce crime by undocumented immigrants. Senate President Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, made clear this week that he opposes requiring E-Verify as an additional burden on private businesses. And dozens of Florida business leaders -- including executives from the cruise lines, the construction industry and health care companies -- have warned that "mandating a flawed and costly system will devastate our economy.'' Get ready to watch a familiar re-run of rhetoric when the Legislature convenes in January.

This is a snapshot of the hypocrisy of Republicans on immigration. They want to sound tough about cracking down on undocumented immigrants to respond to the fears of voters who worry about crime or losing their own jobs. But they dont want to lose the cheap labor and harm the Florida economy. The real solution is not requiring E-Verify. It is national immigration reform that fixes a broken system, recognizes the need for legal workers and provides a reasonable path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants who are already here.

Editorials are the institutional voice of the Tampa Bay Times. The members of the Editorial Board are Times Chairman and CEO Paul Tash, Editor of Editorials Tim Nickens, and editorial writers Elizabeth Djinis, John Hill and Jim Verhulst. Follow @TBTimes_Opinion on Twitter for more opinion news

Continue reading here:
The Republican hypocrisy on immigration | Editorial - Tampa Bay Times

WASHINGTON An estimated 800,000 immigrants who are working legally in the United States are waiting for a green card an unprecedented backlog in employment-based immigration that has fueled a bitter policy debate but has been largely overshadowed by a border wall and the Trump administrations focus on migrant crossings from Mexico.

Most of those waiting for employment-based green cards that would allow them to stay in the United States permanently are Indian nationals. And the backlog among this group is so acute that an Indian national who applies for a green card now can expect to wait up to 50 years to get one.

The wait is largely the result of an annual quota unchanged since 1990, and per-country limits enacted decades before the tech boom made India the top source of employment-based green card-seekers.

The backlog has led to competing bills in Congress and has pitted immigrants against immigrants, setting off accusations of racism and greed and exposing a deep cynicism about the prospects for any kind of immigration reform in a polarized nation.

The debate centers on the potential benefits of a quick fix to alleviate the wait times for those already in the backlog versus a broader immigration overhaul that could allow more workers to seek permanent residency, address country quotas and expand the number of available green cards.

Among those pushing for a quick resolution are business leaders, who worry that a congressional stalemate doing nothing at all could push Indian workers out of the United States and cause others to seek easier paths to citizenship in other countries.

What does that ultimately mean? Valuable, skilled people decide they should leave because theyre never going to get what they had hoped for, said Bruce Morrison, a lobbyist and immigration lawyer who wrote the last bill that increased the number of employment green cards in 1990, when he was in Congress representing Connecticut.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT

And valuable people dont come because they figure our system is so broken they cant see their way through it. Therefore, other countries bidding for these skilled workers get those workers.

Companies in America move jobs abroad to employ those skills elsewhere. And American prosperity suffers.

The crisis of employment-based green cards burst into the open in October after a narrow bill to address the issue nearly passed the Senate in a unanimous consent motion, after sailing easily through the House.

But Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and other critics of the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, which aims to provide relief to Indians by eliminating the country quotas for employment green cards, said it isnt so simple.

Because the bill did not increase the overall number of green cards, they argue the backlog will worsen, waiting times for all nationalities will extend to 17 years, and a trickle-down effect will make it difficult for working professionals from anywhere other than India to come to the United States.

Durbin and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., each proposed their own, more comprehensive bills.

On Tuesday, Capitol Hill aides said there was possible deal under discussion, but it was unclear whether it would materialize, and how soon.

View post:
Employment green card backlog tops 800,000 - The Gazette

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2019 (HR 5038), a massive amnesty that the bill's title tries to disguise. The final vote, mostly along party lines, was 260-165.

By giving the legislation a sympathetic but totally misleading name, its Open Borders signatories hope that the public will get behind it, and encourage the Senate to pass it. The House dares not identify HR 5038 as what it is: an amnesty that includes lifetime valid work permits, Green Cards and a path to citizenship for up to 1.5 million illegal aliens who have been employed or claim they've been employed in ag at least part-time during the last two years. Amnesty would also be granted to their family members.

Illegal alien ag workers who spent as little as weekends-only on the job would qualify. But a big caveat, the Green Cards won't come until the workers have been subjected to a minimum of four years of slave-like labor. Growers know that once their laborers have Green Cards in hand, the workers will leave their indentured servitude positions to head off for better jobs in construction, manufacturing or retail. History confirms this pattern. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act granted amnesty to about 1.1 million so-called Special Agricultural Workers, or SAWS, plus their spouses and minor children. But once the government issued the Green Cards, the ag workers quickly found more lucrative employment.

HR 5038 extends its damage beyond the ag industry. The bill's sponsors kept the numerically unlimited H-2A category for seasonal work. But, HR 5038 expanded the H-2A guest worker program to include dairy, meat and fish processing, and canning employment, and would also set aside 20,000 H-2A visas each year that could be used for year-round agricultural jobs traditionally held by American workers.

The bill would also create 40,000 additional Green Cards each year for longtime H-2A workers and other low-skilled foreign workers. If HR 5038 becomes law, it would virtually ensure that Americans employed or seeking employment in several industries would be shut out or possibly lose the jobs they already hold. Passed without debate, the legislators didn't acknowledge the inconvenient truth that legal immigrants or U.S. citizens hold about 50 percent of agriculture or agriculturally related positions.

HR 5038 offers not a modicum of modernization. The House bill, bowing to the powerful ag lobby made up of mostly former federal employees, spends more than $100 million annually to guarantee that growers will have continued access to unproductive, low-wage immigrant labor.

True modernization means mechanization. Unlike humans, robots can operate 24/7 and have been successfully put to use worldwide. Machines manufactured in Australia, Holland and Japan harvest radishes, brussels sprouts, kale and other crops at, compared to manual picking, lightening-like speed.

Once employers become foreign worker-dependent, they stop looking for practical alternatives like mechanization. Employers count on immigrant workers' continuous presence in their future plans instead of taking full advantage of the no-cap H-2A visa. At the same time, foreign workers come to depend on their meager earnings to support their families, thereby vastly increasing the likelihood that the "guests" will become permanent fixtures. As the old and often-repeated immigration bromide goes, nothing is more permanent than a guest worker.

Congress has introduced an ag amnesty bill every year for more than a decade. Anti-American worker Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who during her 25-year congressional career has an unbroken record of endorsing more worker visas, is the original sponsor of HR 5038. But if Congress reallywanted to help farm workers instead of their hooked-on-cheap-labor employers, it would slow, instead of promote, more guest programs that will eventually include amnesty.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

See more here:
Never-Say-Die House Passes Another Ag Amnesty - Patch.com

It is difficult to find words to describe some of the horrors of history. The treatment of the Jewish people (and others labeled undesired) by the Nazis is one of those horrors. In the beginning of Adolf Hitlers campaign, Jewish people were encouraged to leave Germany, but many countries including the U.S. refused to increase the number of immigrants who would be accepted. People were turned away. This lack of action led to the deaths of many.

Today a horror exists at the southern border of our country. People fleeing violence and extreme poverty seek asylum in the U.S., where the number of immigrants accepted has been lowered and the rules have been changed, forcing people to wait in inhumane conditions.

Future generations will ask, How did you let this happen?

A group of Lancastrians came together to say, This is not acceptable! WING, a group welcoming immigrants, was formed, and 440 people signed a petition that will be sent to congressional representatives. It includes the following: We are your neighbors and we are grateful that our immigrant ancestors found safety and opportunity. Today we are moved by compassion to:

Say no! to the detention of asylum seekers.

Say no! to the separation of children from their parents.

Say no! to the denial of basic dignity and human rights.

Say no! to laws and attitudes that target immigrants.

Success! An email has been sent with a link to confirm list signup.

Error! There was an error processing your request.

Say no! to prohibiting asylees from crossing the border to apply for asylum.

Together we call upon our lawmakers to enact meaningful immigration reform.

The petition can be signed at bit.ly/WINGpetition.

Martha Kelley

Lancaster

Read more here:
Group formed to welcome immigrants (letter) | Letters To The Editor - LancasterOnline