Mediaboss Marketing

Connecticut knows Geno Auriemma as a man for all seasons, especially the basketball season, a voice to provoke us, soothe us, humor us on most any topic.

We ask the Hall of Fame coach things, different things, everything. UConn even asked him to be a virtual commencement speaker when COVID-19 prevented anyone from attending graduation live. Yes, he can even entertain an empty room.

People are asking me what Ive discovered during this quarantine thing, Auriemma said Wednesday. I discovered Superman isnt Clark Kent. Jack Bauer is Superman.

This shows you how whacky my life has been all these years. Im watching 24 for the first time. How old is that TV show? It started 18-19 years ago. Im up to Season 6. How far were they ahead of the times? They had two black presidents before Obama. Im fascinated by the level of technology (in counterterrorism). If thats what was happening in 2002, what in Gods name is happening today at those places?

While the sports world waits, Auriemma has become more dedicated to his workouts. The golf course is one place hes still allowed to be himself and not have to talk to anybody. He learned how to Zoom and now hes dangerously close to being Zoomed out. He learned how to do Instagram Live, has done a few of those. The other day there was a glitch on Villanova coach Jay Wrights end, caused a bunch of complaints and led Auriemma to say, Ive noticed people are really mean on social media.

He goes on eating the same things for breakfast and lunch. He throws on the same pair of pants.

My biggest realization the past 21/2 months, Auriemma said, is how little I need to live on.

After Auriemma was asked to give the graduation speech earlier this month, he had a conversation with his 88-year-old mom Marciella.

In her own Italian way, she was telling me why she hates whats going on and how God is mad at everybody, Auriemma said. Shes like, Our time is over. This is horrible for the kids. She was distraught about what she was seeing on TV and how her granddaughter and great-granddaughter had to speak to her through the screen door.

He tried to offer his mom some perspective.

Im like, When you were 13-14 you were chased out of your house by the German soldiers and you and your brothers and sisters went up in the mountain and built a shelter and lived there for a couple weeks. You thought it would never end and no one would survive it and you did.

Every Italian family in America had two portraits in their house: Pope John XXIII and JFK. Shes in the U.S. for two years and JFK is assassinated. She sent me to school wondering if a nuclear bomb was going to hit. Were hiding under our desks. We thought the world was coming to an end.

Through the Great Depression, World War II, the decade of Vietnam and Civil Rights, 9/11 and now to high school and college seniors in 2020, Auriemma had this message for UConn graduates, for all young people:

Generations are defined by the events of that time. All those people figured out a way to learn from it and make something better out of what happened. You will look back at this as a monumental time. You are being thrown into a dangerous situation for you in the world, very uncomfortable. This is an opportunity for people today to be on the cutting edge of something to change the world.

Do I need to go to the mall three times a week? Do I really need to be online ordering more stuff? How much can I do without? What am I willing to do to change? What am I doing for other people? What am I doing to make my neighborhood better? Am I going to be responsible, stay home when Im supposed to and wear a mask?

Auriemma, 66, immigrated to the U.S. when he was a kid. Americans, he said, are similar to Italians in one sense: When laws are passed in Italy, each Italian thinks they have the right to decide if the law applies to them. In the case of COVID-19, having learned a hard, deadly lesson, Italians bought into social distancing and masks.

Americans are so individualistic, the entire basis of this country is individual freedom. If I dont want to wear a mask I dont have to wear a mask. You dont have to if you dont want. However, if you not wearing a mask makes me sick, you are disgrace to humanity.

We all have this vision of whats best for us? Always. Always. Whats best for me? When I vote its what is best for me. I never take in account the bigger picture. I have been thinking about this and its funny how it works. Im thinking people wont vote against giving teachers a raise anymore. After teaching their kids in their own house for two months, every single parent is going, These teachers arent getting paid enough. My kids are jerks. And now youre saying this poor teacher has to deal with my kid and everyone elses kid. God bless them.

Auriemma was a political science major. He loves history, loves to read about it. From Caesar to Napoleon to Kennedy, you name it. He is haunted by what he sees today.

You come across an idea now and you go this is a great idea, Auriemma said. But then someone goes, If you do that, it will label you a Democrat, a liberal. Just because I like the idea? This is a great concept. Lets try it. Well, that means youre a Republican, a conservative. Why? Why cant I have thoughts that fluctuate as I try to balance my feelings about what is right or what I prefer. Why cant I be somewhere in the middle?

Why cant I say I like some things in Column A and some in Column B. But if I like something in Column A, it doesnt mean I hate everyone in Column B. Thats the world adults have created for our kids. Were raising a whole generation of people who dont trust anything about anybody, anywhere, anytime. Or the opposite. They trust everything someone says regardless whether its true or not. There is no, let me figure out what parts are part of my belief system.

Auriemma stops to ask whatever happened to a great moderate Republican or a conservative Democrat? He continues on his roll.

We have allowed people the freedom that this country entitles you to ruin our lives in so many ways, Auriemma said. You have the freedom to do it. The Constitution allows you to ruin my life. The Constitution gives the president the freedom to go on television and essentially accuse someone of murder. Theres no repercussion. None. Zero. That used to be unthinkable.

And now we have a blink-of-the-eye mentality. You look real quick and turn away before you see the negative. Or you look real quick and you see tremendous negatives but if you stayed a little longer you would have seen the positives. Were not conditioned to that anymore. Were conditioned to react to the first thing we see and forget doing any kind of research or future reading. So here we are.

Yes, here we are with Geno the restaurant owner. One who recently closed Genos Grille in Storrs. One who owns Caf Aura in Manchester that has donated many meals to healthcare workers.

This is all you need to know about what Im talking about, he said. Someone posted a review of a restaurant on one of those review boards. The restaurant hadnt even opened yet.

He was a dishwasher in high school. He worked as a bartender. He stocked supermarket shelves from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. He drove a truck delivering produce. Got into Philly at 5 a.m. He saw what the supply side looked like and what those workers are paid in order for people to have food on their table or a meal at a restaurant.

But youre a kid and you made life better for yourself because you had a couple of bucks in your pocket, Auriemma said. From owning a restaurant, I see there are people working those jobs who are tying to raise a family, pay a mortgage, send their kid to school, pay health insurance.

The restaurant business brings to life how widespread the tentacles are when a restaurant closes, when the restaurant industry goes into the kind of downfall that it has. What the effects are. What I learned is there is no going back to where we were in some cases.

That doesnt mean the permanent end of a New York-style restaurant where people are sitting close together. That will return at some point.

You cant have everyone sitting six feet apart with plexiglass between forever, Auriemma said. If we wanted that Id go to an office building and ask someone if I can use their cubicle. Thats not happening. Whats going to change is how we treat people who stock shelves, cashiers, servers, cooks. A lot of the restaurant people I know in the business, we laugh at this immigration policy. Listen, Im an immigrant. I came to America from across the ocean. There was no sneaking in for me. I cant swim the length of a pool.

I understand the uproar on illegal immigration. Im a big proponent that weve got to fix the whole system. But anyone who thinks theyre going into any service industry sees the value of what they bring with goods and services. How these people actually live and try to survive. Were going to have to figure out a way to value jobs that to this point were seen as non-essential or inconsequential. The guy who delivers your packages, your mail, the bus driver, the train conductor, anybody who gets up every morning to makes sure your life is better that we tend to take for granted.

Auriemma went over to Rentschler Field with his staff recently to help Foodshare distribute goods to those in need during the pandemic. His eyes were opened by the long lines.

To see all the people come through looking for a way to eat that week, Auriemma said. Somebody at the end of February was OK, paying rent, getting in their car going to work, and a couple of months later they have none of it.

History is rife with underrepresented, underappreciated masses of people rising up and changing the world they live in. I dont give a damn if you go back to the Roman Empire, the American and French revolutions. The word is built on societies that are sick and tired of one group of people deciding the fate of the other three quarters of the people. At some point its going to get like the movie Network: I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore! Thats what Ive learned through this.

jeff.jacobs@hearstmediact.com; @jeffjacobs123

Visit link:
Jeff Jacobs: What Geno Auriemma has learned about himself and society during the pandemic - CT Insider

Only 60 people have received Windrush compensation payments during the first year of the schemes operation, with just 360,000 distributed from a fund officials expected might be required to pay out between 200m and 500m.

There has been rising concern among support groups working with those affected by the Home Office scandal about the slowness of compensation offers, and about the difficulties experienced by those trying to claim.

One individual has received a payment of more than 100,000, which suggests the other 59 people who have been granted compensation will have received relatively low payouts averaging 4,400, according to figures released on Thursday. The Home Office has stressed that many of these are interim payments, and people will likely receive further instalments at a later date.

By the end of March, 1,275 people had applied under the scheme. Many of those who are still waiting for compensation remain in difficult financial circumstances, as a direct result of their treatment by the Home Office when they were mistakenly classified as being in the UK illegally, as a result of the hostile environment against illegal immigration introduced by Theresa May, when she was home secretary from 2010 onwards.

Who are the Windrush generation?

They are people who arrived in the UK after the second world war from Caribbean countries at the invitation of the British government. The first group arrived on the ship MV Empire Windrush in June 1948.

What happened to them?

An estimated 50,000 people faced the risk of deportation if they had never formalised their residency status and did not have the required documentation to prove it.

Why now?

It stems from a policy, set out by Theresa May when she was home secretary,to make the UK 'a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants'. It requires employers, NHS staff, private landlords and other bodies to demand evidence of peoples citizenship or immigration status.

Why do they not have the correct paperwork and status?

Some children, often travelling on their parents passports, were never formally naturalised and many moved to the UK before the countries in which they were born became independent, so they assumed they were British. In some cases, they did not apply for passports. The Home Office did not keep a record of people entering the country and granted leave to remain, which was conferred on anyone living continuously in the country since before 1 January 1973.

What did the government try and do to resolve the problem?

A Home Office teamwas set up to ensure Commonwealth-born long-term UK residents would no longer find themselves classified as being in the UK illegally. But a month after one minister promised the cases would be resolved within two weeks,many remained destitute. In November 2018 home secretary Sajid Javid revealed that at least 11 Britons who had been wrongly deported had died. In April 2019 the government agreed to pay up to 200m in compensation.

Many were sacked, and subsequently found themselves ineligible for unemployment benefits despite having paid taxes for decades. Some people were evicted from their homes because they built up arrears as a result of being sacked. More than 160 people were mistakenly detained or removed from the country, and sent back to countries they had left as children decades earlier. Many are waiting for compensation payments, so they can repay debts accrued during that period of enforced unemployment.

Some applicants have described being asked to provide very high levels of documentary evidence proving their right to compensation. While there is an understanding of the need to prove eligibility, some have felt the process echoes the original scandal, when they struggled to persuade Home Office staff that they were living in the UK legally, and were asked for large quantities of difficult-to-find documentary proof, showing they had arrived as children in the 1950s and 1960s.

Support groups helping claimants to fill in the application forms say many people have yet to submit their claims, because they are still gathering evidence to prove eligibility. Since the government first apologised for its mistakes two years ago, more than 12,000 people have received documentation from the Home Office confirming they are living in the UK legally a figure that offers an indication of the number of people who may eventually claim compensation.

The home secretary, Priti Patel, said: By listening to feedback from community leaders and those affected, we have begun to put right the wrongs caused to a generation who have contributed so much to our country.

The Windrush compensation scheme has been developed to ease the burden from the unacceptable mistreatment some have faced, which is why it is so important that people continue to come forward.

The Home Office said a further 280,000 of compensation had been offered to claimants, but not yet paid out, possibly because applicants felt the offer did not reflect the extent of the difficulties experienced.

Twenty-three people have been told they are not eligible for any payment and 27 have asked for the payments offered to be reviewed by the Home Office. While the scheme is making good progress and continues to process claims as quickly as possible, the Home Office is committed to getting more people to come forward and claim, a spokesperson said. Many of the payments made are interim, which means people will get a far greater award.

Elwaldo Romeo received a letter in 2018 from the Home Office telling himhe was liable to be detained because he had not been given leave to enter the United Kingdom and offering support on returning home, despite the fact he had moved to the UK from Antigua 59 years earlier, aged four. He coordinates the group Windrush Action, made up of people who were affected by the scandal. He said he was very disappointed by the slow progress of compensation payments, but urged people who have been affected to come forward and make claims.

Judy Griffith was told by a jobcentre employee that she was an illegal immigrant, 52 years after moving to the UK from Barbados. She could not travel, so was unable to see her mother before she died. As a result of being unable to work she got into significant arrears on her flat. She is waiting for compensation so she can pay back the arrears and repay friends and relatives who helped her when she was classified as an illegal immigrant. She applied for compensation more than six months ago and is still waiting.

I understand that they have to verify everything but I am still in arrears, still trying to keep my head above water, still getting calls from the council about the arrears. Were still suffering and they dont seem to understand how badly it has affected our lives, she said.

Link:
Windrush scandal: only 60 victims given compensation so far - The Guardian

Five Mexican citizens apprehended this week after illegally entering the United States in remote northern Maine were returned to Canada within hours under a rule put into place as part of the U.S. government response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A similar policy by the Canadian government allows the return to the United States of most people seeking asylum in Canada.

While the restrictions haven't ended illegal immigration into the United States from Canada, the emergency policy has all but ended the use of Roxham Road in Champlain, New York one of the most well-known routes used by people fleeing the U.S. to seek asylum in Canada.

For more than three years, Janet McFetridge, a humanitarian activist from Champlain, helped the northbound asylum seekers.

It makes me wonder where they are and whether they are safe, she said of their absence.

Prior to COVID-19, depending on the circumstances of the individual border crosser, the five people apprehended in Maine on May 12 could have been charged with a federal crime in the United States or quickly processed for deportation to their home country.

President Donald Trump closed the borders with Mexico and Canada to all-but-essential traffic in March. For those entering illegally or seeking asylum, the administration has suspended immigration laws on public health grounds, giving border officials authority to rapidly expel them.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's order allowing rapid expulsions along the Mexican and Canadian borders is set to expire May 21, but administration officials have said it could be extended.

The vast majority of the expulsions have been on the southern border. CBP statistics show that between the time the rule was implemented and the end of April, 20,860 people were returned to Mexico. On the northern border, there were 27.

One of the first instances of returning northern border crossers came on March 21, the day the policy was implemented, when Border Patrol agents in Richford, Vermont, apprehended six individuals who had just illegally entered the U.S. from Canada. They were returned to Canada the same day.

Justin Mohammed of Amnesty International Canada, which is party to a pending Canadian lawsuit challenging the safe third country agreement that allows the northbound migrants to seek asylum in Canada, said his organization was extremely concerned by the Trump administration's summary expulsion of migrants back to Canada, including people who could possibly seek refugee protection.

The terms of the arrangement between Canada and the U.S. have never been publicly disclosed, and thus it is unclear how Canada is ensuring that it will not be complicit in any violations committed by American authorities, he said Friday in an emailed statement.

But Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies for the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for tight restrictions on immigration, said Friday the immigration crackdown is having the desired effect of reducing illegal immigration.

Its pretty clear the main reason for this is the policies, Vaughn said. They are not going to get away with making asylum claims, they are not going to be able to game the system.

Since around the time Trump took office, tens of thousands of immigrants in the U.S. who despaired of finding a permanent safe haven began crossing illegally into Canada to seek asylum. Many of those asylum seekers used Roxham Road, a back road in Champlain that ends at the Canadian border.

There, they would cross the border and be arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but were allowed to file an asylum claim. In most cases, they were released while their applications were pending.

After the pandemic hit, the Canadian government implemented its own border restrictions that allows it to return most asylum seekers to the United States. The current order is now scheduled to expire June 30.

In an email response to questions, the Canada Border Services Agency said that between March 21 and May 13, 26 asylum seekers were returned to the U.S., including 21 irregular border crossers 14 in Quebec and nine in British Columbia. The other three asylum seekers presented at a port of entry in southern Ontario and were sent back to the U.S.

Two other asylum seekers were allowed to enter Canada under exceptions to the rule that include being an unaccompanied minor or a U.S. citizen seeking to make an asylum claim in Canada.

In the Maine case, Customs and Border Protection says the immigrants were apprehended May 12 near the St. Juste Port of Entry in Maine's Big 10 Township, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) southeast of Quebec City.

They were spotted by a local resident emerging from brush near the border. The local then gave the five people a ride to the nearby border crossing, where they were taken into custody by the Border Patrol.

Later that same day they were returned to Canada at the Armstrong, Quebec, port of entry.

More:
Virus rules tighten illegal immigration on northern border - ABC News

Identifying illegal aliens in Census Bureau data is a challenging task. Researchers must gather the limited amount of outside information they have about the illegal population, then make educated guesses about the legal status of non-citizens in the data. Given all the uncertainty, it's important to assess the face validity of the results in other words, are they plausible?

That's where a new Cato Institute analysis went wrong. Intending to demonstrate the importance of immigrants to the healthcare system, Alex Nowrasteh and Michelangelo Landgrave reported that over 42,000 physicians in the United States are illegal aliens.

Take a moment to consider the implausibility of that number. The Center for Migration Studies (CMS) estimates 7,427,035 illegal immigrants in the labor force, based on the same 2018 American Community Survey (ACS) data that Cato used. If Cato's illegal-physician count is correct, then about 0.6 percent of all illegal workers are doctors. But only 0.5 percent of natives in the labor force are doctors 653,865 native-born doctors out of 135,783,619 workers. In other words, illegal workers are supposedly more likely to be physicians than native workers!

Here is another way to look at it: The 2018 ACS shows a total 66,065 non-citizen physicians who arrived in the United States since 1980.1 This is around the earliest time that any current illegal alien could have arrived due to the IRCA amnesty.2 Nowrasteh and Landgrave would have us believe that nearly two-thirds of them are here illegally.3

Their illegal counts for some other healthcare occupations also constitute an implausibly high share of post-1980 non-citizens. In the table below, the first three columns are from Cato's Table 1, and the last two columns (in red) are our calculations from the same data. For example, 88 percent of all post-1980 non-citizen nurse-anesthetists are supposedly illegal, as are 71 percent of physician assistants.

Source: Columns 1, 2, and 3 from are Table 1 of "Immigrant Health Care Workersby Occupation and State", by the Cato Institute, which is based on the 2018 AmericanCommunity Survey. Columns 4 and 5 are our calculations from the same data.

In addition to obtaining an advanced education that is out of reach for most illegal aliens, doctors and other health care providers also need to be licensed, yet few states offer licenses to people who are not authorized to work in the country. Moreover, like doctors, many of these occupations (e.g. nurse-anesthetists, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants) typically require Drug Enforcement Agency registration so they can dispense drugs. In short, many of Cato's numbers do not just stretch credulity, they break it.4

The licensing requirement is the primary reason both Pew and the CMS, which produce the two leading demographic profiles of the illegal population, automatically count physicians as legal.5 CIS follows the same rule, and it is why we do not report an estimate for illegal doctors and other highly regulated medical professions in our analysis of occupations. This is not to say that the number of illegal alien doctors or other high-skilled medical practitioners is exactly zero. Surely there are some, but no probabilistic method will be able to count them reliably.

1 Cato includes in their numbers those employed, those unemployed, and those totally out of the labor force (neither working nor looking for work). The ACS reports occupations for those not working if they were employed in the prior five years. Though it impacts the numbers only slightly, the inclusion of those totally out of the labor force is surprising since these individuals are by definition not practicing medicine. Nonetheless, the post-1980 non-citizen figures we report follows Cato's definition of healthcare professional.

2 The Cato healthcare report links to another Cato report to explain how they determine legal status. That report states that they followed the method of another researcher, Christian Gunadi, and the Cato authors "identified an immigrant as lawfully present if he or she met any of the following criteria: the immigrant arrived after 1980." This must be a typo as "after" should read "before". Gunadi is certainly clear in his report that he considers anyone a legal immigrant if they arrived before 1980.

3 Cato did not adjust upward the number of illegal immigrants identified in the data. We know this because the number of legal and illegal immigrants they report separately add up to the total number immigrants in the ACS.

4 There are occupations, such as medical assistants, that typically require only modest training and no licensing, where significant numbers of illegal immigrants do work. So their numbers in that category are not unreasonable.

5 Robert Warren of the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) noted in an email on May 13, 2020, that the estimates developed by CMS employ "logical edits" to the ACS data that exclude doctors as possible illegal immigrants. The lack of logical edits in the healthcare field is presumably the main reason Cato came up with implausible numbers.

View post:
Are There Really 42000 Illegal Immigrant Doctors? - Immigration Blog

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the $125 million coronavirus disaster relief fund last month to support undocumented immigrants who were ineligible for federal stimulus checks and unemployment benefits due to their immigration status.

It's the first state funding effort directed at helping undocumented immigrants as the coronavirus pandemic causes financial hardships and spurs unemployment across the nation.

Applications will be accepted until June 30 or until funds run out.

Undocumented workers are essential, Newsom said

Undocumented workers are overrepresented in many of the sectors deemed essential and that are keeping the state afloat, including health care, agriculture and food, manufacturing and logistics and construction, Newsom said in his initial announcement.

About 10% of California's workforce is undocumented, he said. And though they paid over $2.5 billion in local and state taxes last year, they benefit from neither unemployment insurance nor the $2.2 trillion stimulus signed by President Trump.

Private donors to the $50 million philanthropy effort include the Emerson Collective, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, James Irvine Foundation, California Endowment and Blue Shield Foundation.

"I'm not here to suggest that $125 million is enough. But I am here to suggest it's a good start, and I'm very proud it's starting here in the state of California," he said.

The measure is likely to draw criticism from groups that oppose illegal immigration, who argue that it is unfair to offer financial support to immigrants who have broken the law.

While some argue that it is not the government's responsibility to support those undocumented when American citizens are hurting financially, immigration advocates say the disproportionate effect on undocumented workers is a wider problem.

CNN's Madeline Holcombe and Catherine Shoichet contributed to this report.

See the article here:
California is now offering support to undocumented immigrants, in the first relief fund of its kind - CNN