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As it continues to ignore the wholesale breach of our nation's borders, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) just announced the launch of "Uniting for Ukraine," a historic effort to welcome 100,000 Ukrainians into the U.S. through various admission pathwaysmost prominently through humanitarian parole.

The full details have yet to be announced, but early indications are that this program will be yet another example of the Biden administration usurping congressional authority through an expansive and illegal use of humanitarian parole.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has continually abused the limited discretion delegated by Congress in order to run his own mass immigration and refugee program. His abuse of humanitarian parole, expansion of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), weakening of asylum standards and non-existent interior immigration enforcement all amount to a lawless destruction of our nation's immigration limits and controls.

We are a compassionate nation with the world's most generous immigration system. Granting temporary refuge to people whose country was invaded by a malevolent, expansionist neighbor is the right thing to dobut it must be done lawfully.

Statute requires that parole be used temporarily, on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit reasons. In this case, humanitarian parole, rather an actual immigration status authorized by Congress, is being used to circumvent immigration caps that Congress established in order to move hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals into the United States.

By any measure, the United States has over the last two years done more than its fair share of worldwide immigrant and refugee admissions.

The Biden administration and lawmakers in both parties also continue to improperly frame the plight of displaced Ukrainians. The fact is, nearly all Ukrainian refugees are already being properly assisted in the region, and there are plenty of ways for us to assist with monetary aid to ease suffering, restore stability and ensure that they can easily return home once the conflict subsides.

In early March, the European Union generously granted three-year residency to all Ukrainian refugees to live, work and access health care in 27 of the world's most secure and developed countries. Why not assist this effort rather than ignoring our own laws to give Ukrainians one more option halfway around the world?

Of course, Ukrainians are a group with compelling humanitarian needs and we share the Biden administration's sympathy for their plight.

However, Congress created the refugee admissions process and authorized TPS specifically to address these types of humanitarian situations, and has repeatedly sought to rein in the executive branch's abuse of humanitarian parole.

Humanitarian parole is not the appropriate mechanism to help Ukrainian refugees. "Programmatic" or class-based parole is unlawful and being used to get around caps that may have required the United States to accept fewer refugees from other regions.

With Mayorkas continuing to improperly invoke parole authority, it raises the questionwho's next and how many? Congress, not the executive branch, has plenary authority over immigration. Americans must demand that their government respect its limits.

Dan Stein is president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) in Washington, D.C.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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Destroying Immigration Laws Isn't the Way to Help Ukrainian Refugees | Opinion - Newsweek

Congressman Tom Tiffany should have resigned long ago. His latest stunt is only more evidence that he is hostile to American democracy and would support a coup to install an unelected authoritarian government if given the chance.

Already infamous for promoting an an effort to overturn the will of Wisconsin voters (through supporting a failed Texas lawsuit that sought to throw out certified vote totals from multiple states) and opposing a symbolic resolution to stand with NATO as it faces the war designs of Russias dictator Vladimir Putin, Tiffanys latest stunt is to sign on as a co-sponsor of a resolution to impeach one of President Joe Biden Cabinet secretaries, Alejandro Mayorkas of Homeland Security. The Hazelhurst Republicans well-known infatuation with demonizing immigrants shines through in a letter he co-signed Monday to Mayorkas.

Tiffany is part of the latest GOP effort to divert attention from the investigation of the attack on the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021joining other right-wing Trumpers at the US southern border this week to make loud noises about a genuine problem while rejecting the only workable solution: true immigration reform. The folly of a massive, wasteful wall is their Holy Grail. Failure to support it, they claim, is reason enough to impeach Mayorkas.

This is not new territory for Tiffany. Prior to his special election to Congress in May 2020, he took part in a stunt by Republican state senators who refused to confirm several of Gov. Tony Evers cabinet heads and other nomineesan unprecedented and now permanent stain in the history books of Wisconsin Republicans. So its only in character for Tiffany to now want to impeach someone in the line of succession to the US presidency for partisan purposes rather than actual crimes. The only impeachment of a Cabinet secretary took place in 1876 amid charges of bribery.

This is extremistand arguably treasonousbehavior: undermining election results and thwarting the will of duly-elected chief executives at the state and federal levels for the sake of creating instability that threatens democracy itself.

In more normal times we would warn Tiffany that this is a dangerous game he and former President Donald Trumps other sycophants are playing. But we no longer believe this is just another game. Crazy as it sounds, these people arent merely trying to make political hay out of creating a Constitutional crisis, nearly overthrowing election results, and aiding an attempted coup. They believe it needs to happen and are seeking just enough public support to give them cover.

Dont go there, Congressman. The country you profess to love is in trouble, but its trouble caused by your inability to be a patriot and accept that your party continues to lose nationwide and statewide races because it has lost its way. Instead of seeking to govern, your party seeks to rulethrough gerrymadering, voter obstruction, and stoking fear. Its an authoritarian flirtation that needs to end before you and other co-conspirators drag this nation into even darker places.

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To Rep. Tom Tiffany, Co-Sponsor of Impeaching a Biden Cabinet Officer: Don't Go There - UpNorthNews

What is Censorship?Censorship is the act of altering, adjusting, editing, or banning of media resulting from the presumption that its content is perceived to be objectionable, incendiary, illicit, or immoral by the presiding governmental body of a specific country or nation or a private institution. The ideology and methodology of Censorship varies greatly on both domestic and international levels, as well as public and private institutions. Governmental Censorship

Governmental Censorship takes place in the event that the content, subject matter, or intent latent within an individual form of media is considered to exist in contrast with preexisting statutory regulations and legislation. In many cases, the censorship of media will be analogous with corollary laws in existence. For example, in countries or nations in which specific actions or activities are prohibited, media containing that nature of presumed illegal subject matter may be subject to Censorship. However, the mere mention of such subject matter will not always result in censorship; the following methods of classification are typically enacted with regard to a governmentally-instituted statutory Censorship:Censorship within the Public SectorThe public sector is defined as any setting in which individuals of all ages inhabit that comply with legal statutes of accepted morality and proper behavior; this differs by locale the nature of the public sector is defined with regard to the nature of the respective form of media and its adherence to legislation:The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sanctioned by the federal government of the United States in order to regulate the activity taking place in the public setting-based mediaCensorship and IntentWith regard to Censorship, intent is legally defined as the intended result for which one hopes as a result of their participation in the release or authorship of media; typically, proponents for individual censorship will be required to prove that the intent latent within the media in question was enacted knowingly and deliberately in any lack of adherence to legislationCensorship and Privacy

With Regard to censorship, privacy is a state in which an individual is free to act according to their respective discretion with regard to legal or lawful behavior; however, regardless of the private sector, the adherence to legislation and legality is requiredPrivate and Institutional Censorship

Private institutions retain the right to censor media which they may find objectionable; this is due to the fact that the participants in private or independent institutions are defined as willing participants. As a result, upon joining or participating in a private institution, the individuals concede to adhere to applicable regulations:

In many cases, the party responsible for an institutions funding may reserve the right to regulate the censorship of media undertakenThe modernization of censorship laws within the United States, the Federal Government will rarely call for specific, nationalized Censorship unless the content is agreed to be detrimental to the public wellbeing; in contrast, an interest group may choose to censor media that they feel may either deter or contradict their respective ideologies

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Understanding Censorship - Censorship - LAWS.com

Last summer, as protests gathered steam in Cuba, the internet shut down. The general consensus was that the government had instituted the blackout to smother protests. Whether it worked or not is still under question, but that hasnt stopped internet censorship from spreading and not just among undemocratic governments.

Even some of the purportedly freest countries on Earth are increasingly being tempted to use censorship, especially as a blunt tool for unplugging the internet for all. And increasingly, this is now giving way to the surgical precision of specialized, cheap, off-the-shelf products that can help trace and silence specific groups, messages, or individuals.

In this sense, Latin America is a perfect testing ground. Its a region where the majority of states are technically democracies, but where governments slip towards authoritarian methods to get things done from time to time. Governments are using facial recognition technology that disproportionately hurts Black citizens or spying on opposition journalists, sometimes with the broad support of their own citizens.

But, as a global investigation undertaken by Rest of World revealed this week, the silencing goes beyond disruptive internet kill switches or the infamous, and expensive, Pegasus software used for years by governments across the world and Latin America. Today, far more sophisticated and affordable tools exist. These include deep packet inspection, known as DPI, which allows data and the way it moves on the internet to be read by an outside entity.

These rather shady-sounding tools often have legal and legitimate uses, either because of security concerns or because they can help ameliorate the efficiency of traffic. Its what makes this sort of software so problematic; it is a neutral tool that could prevent child pornography or make your Netflix run faster. It can also shut down and silence a governments political opposition.

The concern around these tools also goes beyond the usual suspects (like Cuba or Venezuela). As digital censorship becomes more accessible, more seemingly benign democracies with easy access to this software and with legal measures to use them may be tempted to deploy them improperly. Over the past three years, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, and Nicaragua have all passed laws that allow for digital censorship and surveillance in one form or another. It takes just one government official with an authoritarian bent to turn these systems into tools of censorship and repression.

It is not only the governed that are worried though. As government institutions like Mexicos Secretariat of the Economy to Argentinas Senate know, non-state actors are also showing how vulnerable even the most powerful states can be on the internet. In Brazil, a famous group of hackers worked their way into the Ministry of Healths website a number of times. The Brazilian government was lucky; the groups intent was simply to make a point about how vulnerable everybody really is on the internet:

This site remains absolutely shit and nothing has been done to correct it, the hackers wrote on the Ministry of Healths site.

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Censorship has never been so democratic - Rest of World

Silencing dissent has an ignoble and inglorious history reaching far back to ancient times. Socrates was made to pay the ultimate price for corrupting the minds of youth in fourth century BC Athens. According to the American Library Association (ALA) Office of Intellectual Freedom, there has been a 60% increase in book challenges in 2021 compared to 2020. The office tracked 729 challenges to library, school, and university materials in 2021, resulting in more than 1,597 individual book challenges or removals. According to the ALA most targeted books were by or about Black or LGBQ+ persons. Over the same period, a total of 26 states have banned books. Texas leads but sadly PA ranks second behind Texas in banned books 456 bans in 16 school districts.

In 1982, the Supreme Court provided clear guidance regarding censorship. It upheld First Amendment rights of students including the right to access information and ideas and affirmed that school boards cannot remove books simply because it or someone doesnt like its ideas, and, in this way, attempt to establish what is orthodox teaching. It also focused on the need for adherence to procedures to removing books. And to ensure First Amendment Rights, formal procedures have developed for parents and school boards to use when the need arises. Unfortunately, over the past year 98% of efforts to remove books violated these procedures.

It is of interest to note that authoritarian regimes tend to suppress politically unwelcome books while democratic countries are obsessed with problems of decency and immorality. (Harris, B; Banning Books: Media Law and Practice, June 1988.) While todays ban the books fever is as fierce and destructive as in years past, it is also cynically deceptive. Over the past year, book banning is characterized by an effort to stop students from learning while using the foil of restoring parental control.

Disruptions in the wake of the Trump administration, the arrival and lingering persistence of the pandemic together with cancelled school days, and heightened fears following the murder of George Floyd have all created a cauldron of bewilderment, belligerence, and violence. According to the Gettysburg Times, at a July 31, 2021, meeting of the Gettysburg Area School District Board, a member of a national organization known as Moms for Liberty accused the board of instructing students in CRT, i.e., Critical Race Theory. Republican Glenn Youngkin successfully used the foil of parental control to subvert instruction in CRT and won election as governor. Youngkins victory resonated widely among Republicans and resulted in calls by people like Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to create a Parents Bill of Rights. An examination of claims suggests that most people who try to ban books dont even read the literature they hope to ban (Banned Books, a Study of Censorship: Banned Books Literature and Digital Diversity, northeastern.edu). Importantly neither Virginia nor Pennsylvania mandate instruction in CRT!

The pandemic has been hard on teachers, school boards, and parents. Is it not time for all to take stock and refocus on the needs of our children? Recent polling shows that a vast majority of voters, Democrats (70%), Independents (58%), Republican (70%), oppose removing books from public libraries while 74% of polled parents express a high degree of confidence in the decisions made by school libraries (Hart Research Associates and North Star Opinion Research on behalf of the American Library Association). The recent uptake to ban or remove books from school libraries is the result of a small cohort of parents funded and supported by far-right organizations who are driven to full-throated public displays before school boards while bypassing the classroom teacher.

Teachers know how important parental involvement is and perhaps, if there were more systematic avenues for parents to become involved, we would not see a drop in public-school enrollment PA saw a drop of 5.3%. (Digest of Educational Statistics) Few if any schools provide funding for parental involvement strategies, leaving it up to individual teachers to carry the burden. At the same time, if parents would rely upon the proven goodwill of teachers and their commitment to their students, we would not be witnessing the very tragic loss of teachers across the country. In PA, there has been a 66% drop in new teaching certificates over the past 11 years. (Testimony by PA Deputy Sec. of Ed.)

No one suggests that engaging parents is an easy job, yet everyone knows how critical their involvement is for the academic success of their children. If parents had a better understanding of the challenges facing school administrators and teachers, fewer would listen to the far-right messaging. Our future and indeed the future of democracy depends upon success in our classrooms. If anger and belligerence are the only things we bring to school board meetings, our future is in question.

Tony McNevin is a member of the Democracy for America Education Task Force. He resides in Gettysburg.

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Censorship: The child of fear and the father of ignorance - Gettysburg Times