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President Joe Bide; Photo credit: White House

Pushes for action on the Hill for faster processing of green cards; H-4, L-2 EADs.

Keen to fix Americas broken immigration system, President Joe Biden is pushing for action in the Congress to ensure faster processing of green cards and work permits for the spouses of foreign workers.

I think the President would reiterate that he believes that there should be faster processing, that our immigration system is broken at many levels, press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday at a White House briefing.

He is eager for Congress to move forward with action there, she said in response to a question about a protest on Capitol Hill by a number of Indian American doctors fighting against Covid-19 pandemic demanding elimination of country quotas for green cards.

Asked about delays in issuing Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) to spouses of H-1B and L-1 workers on H-4, L-2 dependent visas, Psaki said that was part of the reason for Bidens push for action on his sweeping immigration overhaul bill.

I think part of the reason we want to push for action on immigration on the Hill is to move forward with expediting the processing and doing that on several levels, including a number of the visas that you just conveyed, she said.

So thats part of the reason why we think thats such an important piece to move forward on, Psaki said in response to a question about the cause of the spouses that was supported by Vice President Kamala Harris when she was a senator.

Last month, Democrats introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill in Congress proposing removal of seven percent country caps for green cards for all nations big or small.

This has created a huge backlog for applicants from countries like India, while some small nations do not use their full quota.

According to the State Department, Indians with advanced degrees whose immigration applications were approved in 2009 and skilled workers and professionals whose applications were okayed in 2010 are still waiting for their green cards.

The immigration reform bill faces an uphill battle in the Congress with an evenly divided Senate and Republicans demanding stringent restrictions on illegal immigration.

Earlier, legislative action to remove country caps died in the last Congress because the Senate and House of Representatives failed to reconcile their differences in time.

H-1B visas are for professionals and L-1 visas are for those transferred by their companies to the US.

Their spouses, mostly Indian women, had been allowed to work in the US by President Barack Obama, but his successor Donald Trump had tried to ban work authorization for them.

In his first week in office, Biden put to an end to Trumps efforts and allowed spouses to get work permits.

READ MORE:

How will Bidens proposed immigration reform affect Green Card and H-1B visas? (March 24, 2021)

Delay in processing of H-4 and L-2 spouses EADs challenged (March 24, 2021)

Rep. Coleman asks DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas about H-4 EAD delays (March 22, 2021)

Read the rest here:
Biden wants to fix broken immigration... - The American Bazaar

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) Several groups are calling on Joe Biden to invest more federal dollars to deal with the migrant surge on the southern border.

That money should be used to immediately hire more immigration judges and shore up border infrastructure. That includes expanding temporary holding facilities and child shelters, as well as modernizing border security through technology. That, in turn, will free border agents to deal with this or future challenges, participants in a Border Solutions Roundtable said this week.

The groups are also calling on Biden to involve the governments of Mexico and Northern Triangle countries of Central America in addressing internal crises that make so many people leave their homes and seek and end to persecution or a better way of life in the United States.

I really think solutions have to begin south of the border, said Danilo Zak, senior policy and advocacy associate at the National Immigration Forum. That [] really represents the only path toward an ideal scenario where children, families and other migrants are safe and secure in their own country (with) no need to flee or migrate irregularly in the first place.

Analysts and advocates say the U.S. should help Central American nations address the root causes of migration like insecurity and poverty and provide a reliable structure for people there to apply for asylum remotely, without putting their lives and those of their children in jeopardy by making a dangerous trip through Mexico.

We should do more to combat cartels and smugglers. Part of that is engaging in a more effective messaging campaign to dispel some of the fiction sold by these cartels to desperate migrants, Zak said. And thats not just dont come, but to inform them about asylum laws and the immigration system to dispel misinformation by the smugglers.

But while that happens, the Biden administration must make immediate changes to the way it deals with the thousands of family units and single adults that are showing up at the border, they say.

The problem with the border right now is not that so many people want to come here, but solely that people are coming illegally and when they do come Border Patrol treats them inhumanely by caging them or dumping them in destitute and dangerous cities in Mexico, said David J. Bier, senior policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based public policy research organization.

Bier suggests the federal government apply the same standard to would-be refugees today as it did to Cuban emigres who showed up to ports of entry prior to 2017.

The government should grant asylum immediately at the border to as many applicants as possible. It should grant the rest parole status and admit them to pursue their applications, Bier said. This would end the illegality and inhumane treatment. Perhaps more people would come but if they crossed legally this wouldnt be a problem any more than the millions of legal crossers that we (process) each week.

Bier says refugee admission policies are behind the steep rise in unaccompanied minors coming across the border.

We will accept 100 percent of them but only if they cross illegally. If they seek asylum at ports of entry, nearly all will be refused entry. This approach means that nearly all kids are being forced into the hands of smugglers, he says. If they are with their parents, in many cases theyre expelled to Mexico. So, many parents are sending their kids alone and trying to sneak in behind them, leading to repeated attempts over and over by parents to reunite with their kids.

The migrants wouldnt have to resort to smugglers if, for instance, theyre given Temporary Protected Status on account of hurricanes that struck the Northern Triangle late last year and devastated communities and farms.

And Biden should boost the H2-B visa cap for temporary workers, he said, because despite the pandemic millions of job openings exist in certain industries.

Monica Weisberg-Stewart, chair of the Texas Border Coalition, said border security issues must also be addressed or else the Mexican drug cartels will continue to exploit women and children, smuggle drugs and inflict pain on our American way of life.

She said immigration reform, better equipped and staffed ports of entry and new asylum laws are a must.

Asylum laws need to be updated. The children traveling alone needs to be addressed. We believe keeping Title 42 on the border is essential given what is happening at the border currently, she said. Title 42 is a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention order allowing federal officials to immediately expel unauthorized migrants to prevent cross-border spread of COVID-19.

More immigration judges are needed to deal with the surge and Biden should engage border leaders and residents before making decisions that affect them, she said.

We are right here on the border. Our mayors are dealing with these issues every day, Weisberg-Stewart said.

She added border agents need to be allowed to do their jobs because theres a lot of mixed messages.

Visit theBorderReport.com homepagefor the latest exclusive stories and breaking news about issues along the United States-Mexico border.

Excerpt from:
Groups urge Biden to hire more immigration judges and fight drug cartels - KLBK | KAMC | EverythingLubbock.com

The surge of asylum-seekers at the nations southern border grimly illustrates the need for comprehensive immigration reform.

But despite Americas flawed system, lawmakers continue to allow petty, divisive politics to stand in the way of the needed overhaul to our immigration system.

The most formidable obstacle to a comprehensive immigration bill is allowing a path to citizenship to the estimated 11.5 million people including at least 1.6 million in Texas who are in the country without authorization. Republican lawmakers and many GOP base voters are against any plan that would give amnesty to those residents, even though mass deportations are impractical and unlikely.

Ronald Reagan was the last president to push through an immigration plan with a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants.

The inability to pass a comprehensive plan should not discourage President Joe Biden and lawmakers from addressing important immigration-related issues in pieces. As most homeowners know, fixing things a little bit at a time is an improvement over doing nothing.

Here are some immigration issues our leaders should find a way to solve.

The southern border is again flooded with refugees from Central America seeking asylum and escape from awful situations in their home countries.

Many immigration lawyers say laws related to asylum need updating, while the border needs an influx of judges and related staff to process cases faster.

Policy guidelines should take a stand against family separation or any abuse of those seeking asylum.

And officials also should stay diligent in protecting against smugglers and human traffickers.

Its a tough order, but necessary to stop the chronic surges of refugees at the border.

Former U.S Rep. Will Hurd, R-San Antonio, suggests that Biden should create a high-level official with power and resources to deal with the countries that are creating the refugee problem.

The U.S. needs a mix of diplomacy and ideas to solve the problems in Central America like gang violence, corruption, trafficking, smuggling and the drug trade.

Dealing with the problem at its source is the best way to stop the flow of asylum-seekers.

Immigrant labor is an essential part of the nations economy, particularly in Texas.

There are people in Mexico and other places who want to work in America, but go back to their home countries.

Guest worker proposals have died with the debate over a path to citizenship and other immigration issues.

There is hope for movement. Last week, the House approved a bill, with 30 GOP votes, to expand a visa program for temporary agriculture workers. It would provide a pathway to permanent legal residency for about 1 million farm workers, with the possibility of eventual citizenship.

Coming out of the pandemic, American companies are going to need immigrant labor, so some kind of guest worker program makes sense.

Millions of people were brought to the country by their families as children and now face life in America as residents without citizenship or authorization to be here. They go to school, work and contribute to society, but worry about deportation or other problems that their residency status creates.

Last week, the House approved a bill that would allow citizenship to 2.5 million unauthorized immigrants, including those commonly referred to as Dreamers.

The proposal includes people already in the U.S. who were 18 or younger when they entered the country. It would cover those who currently have temporary protections under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which is known as DACA.

Though only nine Republicans backed this bill, there should be space for lawmakers to ultimately compromise on this issue and provide the stout legislation needed to solve the problem.

Most experts agreed that former President Donald Trumps push for a wall along the southern border as initially proposed was unnecessary. He did get 452 miles of barrier built.

Any good immigration policy should include protections against criminals entering the country. And border security should include the constant fight against drug and human trafficking, as well as the protection of residents living in the area.

Metrics should be developed to determine whether border security goals are being met, as this will prevent lawmakers who oppose the above proposals from using the refrain that nothing should happen with immigration until the border is secure.

Read the rest here:
With petty politics blocking broad immigration reform, lawmakers should tackle the issue in pieces - The Dallas Morning News

The House passed two bills on Thursday that would advance part of President Joe Bidens immigration agenda, offering a path to citizenship to undocumented DREAMers who came to the US as children, farmworkers, and immigrants with temporary humanitarian protection.

Nine Republicans joined Democrats to pass the Dream and Promise Act by a vote of 228-197. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act also passed 247-174, backed by 30 Republicans. Both bills had previously passed the House in 2019 with fewer Republican votes, but were never taken up in the then Republican-led Senate.

The bills narrowly address immigrant populations perceived as sympathetic by at least some members of both parties. They represent Democrats best chance of passing immigration reform at this point; a comprehensive immigration reform bill backed by Biden is unlikely to attract the Republican votes necessary to proceed in the Senate for now. But even so, its not clear that there is an appetite for smaller immigration bills in the Senate, where at least 10 Republicans would need to get onboard.

I have spoken to quite a few Senators, including Republican Senators, who are interested in making progress It gives me hope that we might be able to move this forward, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democratic co-sponsor of the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, told reporters on Thursday. We wouldnt put in all this work just to have a House victory.

The Dream and Promise Act is a more expansive version of the mainstay Democratic immigration bill, the DREAM Act. While that bill covered mostly DREAMers, it did not address immigrants covered by Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) types of humanitarian protection that allow citizens of countries suffering from natural disaster, armed conflict, or other extraordinary circumstances to live and work in the US free of fear of deportation.

The Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which was the product of months of bipartisan negotiations, could legalize up to about 325,000 immigrants currently working in agriculture who do not have legal status. Republicans are usually reluctant to back any kind of legalization of undocumented immigrants immigration restrictionist groups have lambasted the bill as a means of securing cheap foreign labor at the expense of American workers but the lawmakers who supported the bill represent districts where agriculture is a major industry.

We cant keep waiting. I urge Congress to come together to find long term solutions to our entire immigration system so we can create a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system, tackle the root causes of migration and legalize the undocumented population in the United States, Biden tweeted Thursday, urging lawmakers to pass both bills.

The Dream and Promise Act offers a pathway to citizenship for about 2.5 million DREAMers and other immigrants with temporary humanitarian protection. The original DREAM Act was narrower, covering about 1.5 million people. Many of them have lived in the US for years, if not decades, but former President Donald Trump sought to dismantle the programs that offered them protection from deportation.

The paths vary for different groups. DREAMers undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children would face a longer path to eventual citizenship. More than 825,000 DREAMers have already been allowed to live and work in the US under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which Trump unsuccessfully sought to undo. But a coalition of red states, led by Texas, is still challenging the legality of the program in federal court; the judge in that case is expected to rule any day now, leaving recipients in a precarious position.

Humanitarian protectees would face a shorter route. Among them are Liberians who sought refuge in the US from civil war in their home country from about 1989 to 2003 under deferred enforced departure. About 400,000 citizens of El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti have also been able to live and work in the US with TPS, but Trump tried to terminate their status, among nationals of other countries, starting in November 2017 against the advice of senior State Department officials. He argued that conditions in those countries have improved enough that their citizens can now safely return. But many of them have resided in the US for decades and have laid down roots, making it difficult for them to return to countries they no longer call home.

These protectees would be allowed to apply for green cards immediately if they have resided in the US for at least three years and were eligible for TPS on September 17, 2017, or had deferred enforced departure status as of January 20, 2021. After five years of holding a green card, they would be able to apply for citizenship.

DREAMers, on the other hand, would have to apply for conditional permanent residency, which would only be granted under certain conditions:

This conditional status designation would last for 10 years before they could apply for citizenship, but they would be allowed to work in the meantime. There would be other ways for DREAMers to be able to apply for a green card at any time, including serving in the military for two years, working for three years, or getting a degree from a higher education institution (or be at least two years through a bachelors or technical program).

The Farm Workforce Modernization Act is the biggest legalization effort supported by Republicans in recent memory, passing the House 260-165 in 2019. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) had introduced another version of temporary agricultural worker visa reform back in 2018 but most Democrats viewed that bill as a nonstarter.

The bill would give farmworkers who have worked in agriculture for at least 180 days over the past two years the ability to apply for Certified Agricultural Worker status, which can be renewed in six-month or five-year increments if they continue to work in agriculture for at least 100 days a year. It also offers long-term farmworkers a path to a green card, which requires at least four more years of experience in the industry and a $1,000 fee.

The bill streamlines the application process for the H-2A temporary visa program for seasonal agricultural workers, which admitted over 196,000 people in 2018. It also allows for up to 40,000 green cards to be granted annually, either through the sponsorship of an employer or if workers maintain H-2A status for 10 years.

Additionally, the bill would create a new program capped at 20,000 visas for year-round agricultural industries, which were previously barred from participating in the H-2A program and faced labor shortages, including dairy farming and producers of other animal products.

The bill tightens up enforcement, requiring farm employers to participate in the federal E-Verify program, with no exemptions for small farmers. It would freeze the minimum wage set by the government for one year and cap increases at 3.25 percent for the next nine years.

The United Farmworkers of America, among more than 250 labor groups, have backed the bill.

The US agricultural industry has relied on immigrant labor for decades, dating back to the Bracero Program in the 1940s that allowed millions of Mexicans to come to the US as farmworkers. Another large influx of unauthorized workers came during the 1990s before a slowdown that started around 2008, leaving agricultural employers unable to replace an aging workforce.

Congress has been wrestling with how to respond to labor shortages in agriculture and reduce the industrys reliance on undocumented workers ever since. That mission took on new urgency under Trump, following his administrations immigration raids targeting the agricultural sector. At one raid in August 2019, 680 workers were arrested at two poultry plants in Mississippi.

The House has opted to immediately vote on these two piecemeal bills instead of the Biden-backed US Citizenship Act of 2021, a comprehensive immigration reform package whose centerpiece is an eight-year path to citizenship for the estimated 10.5 million undocumented immigrants living in the country. The bill also addresses the underlying causes of migration, expands the number of available visas and green cards, invests in technology and infrastructure at ports of entry along the border, removes obstacles to asylum, and shores up protections for immigrant workers.

Its unlikely that the legislation, which is a kind of mission statement for the Democratic Party on immigration, will attract the 10 Republican votes needed to proceed in the Senate unless Democrats eliminate or alter the filibuster in a way that would allow them to pass the bill without a Republican vote.

Some Republicans have already warned the bill would return to the radical left-wing policies that will incentivize illegal immigration and promote an unending flood of foreign nationals into the United States.

But Democrats have so far been reluctant to say they are willing to bargain with Republicans on beefing up border security beyond modernizing ports of entry or narrowing the bills legalization provisions. Nevertheless, they have suggested that, after consulting with key members, the bill could be debated and amended through the committee markup process in April.

Were not going to waste time, Lofgren said in a press call recently. We will start planning to move the Biden bill and a number of other bills through the Judiciary Committee in April, and then on to the floor. We know we cant wait.

But some Democrats say that the calculus around comprehensive reform has changed now that the Biden administration is facing challenges on the border. Immigration authorities are struggling to humanely accommodate high numbers of unaccompanied children arriving on the border, and Republicans have sought to frame it as a Biden border crisis.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who has long been at the forefront of immigration issues in Congress and introduced the original DREAM Act, recently told reporters that he did not see a way to pass the Biden bill and its promise of a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented.

I dont see a means of reaching it, he said. I think we are much more likely to deal with discrete elements [of immigration reform].

But Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who is a lead co-sponsor on the bill in the Senate, has said hes not willing to give up yet.

Im not going to wave the white flag before we start, he told reporters earlier this week.

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The House just advanced immigration reform with the Dream and Promise Act - Vox.com

National Review

Editors Note: Below is an expanded version of a piece we have published in the current issue of National Review. Every now and then, East Africa breaks into world consciousness. It happened in the mid 1980s, when Ethiopia underwent a terrible famine. Teams of pop stars made two hit charity singles: We Are the World and Do They Know Its Christmas? The world again turned to East Africa in the mid 2000s, when the Sudanese dictatorship committed genocide against people in Darfur, a region in the west of the country. (That genocide has not quite ended.) Today, Ethiopia is again in the news, for war in Tigray, a region in the countrys north. What is happening there is worse than war, if such a thing is possible: Tigray is a theater for war crimes and crimes against humanity. To make it all the more interesting if that is the word Ethiopias head of state is the 2019 Nobel peace laureate: Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Ethiopia is a challenge to govern, no doubt. With 112 million people, it is the second-most populous country in Africa, after Nigeria. There are more than 80 ethnic groups, and as many languages. Abiy Ahmed speaks the handful of major languages in the country. In many ways, he would seem unusually well suited to national leadership. Born in 1976, he is the son of a Muslim and a Christian. Both of his parents now deceased were of the Oromo people. His father, a farmer, spoke only Oromo; his mother spoke both Oromo and Amharic. Abiy himself married an Amhara woman. He is a Pentecostal Christian, said to be devout. When a teenager, he fought against the regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, known as the Stalin of East Africa. Later, in the Ethiopian military, he fought in the EritreanEthiopian War. He served as a U.N. peacekeeper in Rwanda, after the genocide in that country. Abiy was educated extensively in Addis Ababa and London. He rose in the military, and intelligence, and business. In 2010, he was elected to parliament. After Mengistu was toppled in 1991, Ethiopia was ruled by a coalition called the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). It was composed of four parties, based on ethnicity. The dominant party was Tigrayan: the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF). A Tigrayan, Meles Zenawi, was boss of the country from 1991 until his death in 2012. Though Tigray has just 6 percent of the Ethiopian population, it long had outsize influence in national affairs. In 2018, after mass popular protests, particularly in the Oromo and Amhara regions, the coalition elected Abiy Ahmed to serve as prime minister. He quickly established himself as a new kind of leader. It is high time for us to learn from our past mistakes, he said, and to make up for all the wrongs that have been done. He apologized for the brutality and corruption of the EPRDF. Indeed, he established a new party the Prosperity Party to replace the old coalition. Three of the four parties of the EPRDF joined Prosperity; so did a slew of lesser parties. The Tigrayans the TPLF declined to join. Abiy released and pardoned thousands of political prisoners. Many had been labeled terrorists simply for opposing the government. He dismissed officials who had been thought untouchable. He invited exiled media outlets to return to the country. Whats more, he at last ended the EritreanEthiopian War. Formally speaking, the war lasted from 1998 to 2000. The two sides signed a peace agreement in December 2000. One of the things they agreed to was that an international commission would decide the boundary between Eritrea and Ethiopia. When the commission drew its boundary, it placed the town of Badme on the Eritrean side. At this, Ethiopia the EPRDF balked. The Ethiopians had control of Badme, and they would not let it go. Badme was important. In fact, another name for the EritreanEthiopian War is the War of Badme. For 18 years, there existed a condition between the two countries known as no peace, no war. Then Abiy agreed to hand over Badme. He and his Eritrean counterpart signed a joint declaration, officially ending the war, once and for all. They restored full diplomatic relations between their countries. And they threw open the border. Families, long split by the conflict, were joyously reunited. Nor was Abiy through with his peace efforts. There are various conflicts in the Horn of Africa: between Eritrea and Djibouti; between Somalia and Kenya; etc. Abiy Ahmed offered his services, usefully. Given all of the above especially a resolution to the EritreanEthiopian War it was no surprise that the Norwegian Nobel Committee made Abiy its laureate in 2019. In a press release, the committee said it was doing so with the provisions of Alfred Nobels will firmly in mind. What did they mean by those words? Though few know it, Alfred Nobel directed that his prizes all of them, not just the peace prize go to work done during the preceding year. The Nobel prizes are not supposed to be lifetime-achievement awards. They are to reward and encourage people relatively early in their labors. Sometimes, Nobel committees have abided by the will, sometimes often not. The principal criterion for the peace prize, by the way, is fraternity between nations. In announcing its selection of Abiy, the Norwegian committee issued a caveat: No doubt some people will think this years prize is being awarded too early. The Norwegian Nobel Committee believes it is now that Abiy Ahmeds efforts deserve recognition and need encouragement. A university student in Addis Ababa, Tsege Afrassa, was quoted in the New York Times: It is great that he won the prize when I think of what it means for the country. She added, But he has a lot more to do to restore full peace in the country. The prize brings more responsibility with it. That is a common sentiment, when it comes to the Nobel Peace Prize. At the ceremony on December 10, 2019, Abiy Ahmed gave one of the most beautiful, poetic, and moving speeches in Nobel history. (I have read them all.) Here is a taste a passage on the hell of war, an old theme, and one that will ever recur: War is the epitome of hell for all involved. I know because I have been there and back. I have seen brothers slaughtering brothers on the battlefield. I have seen older men, women, and children trembling in terror under the deadly shower of bullets and artillery shells. You see, I was not only a combatant in war. I was also a witness to its cruelty and what it can do to people. War makes for bitter men. Heartless and savage men. Then, Abiy told a story: Twenty years ago, I was a radio operator attached to an Ethiopian army unit in the border town of Badme. The town was the flashpoint of the war between the two countries. I briefly left the foxhole in the hopes of getting a good antenna reception. It took only but a few minutes. Yet, upon my return, I was horrified to discover that my entire unit had been wiped out in an artillery attack. I still remember my young comrades-in-arms who died on that ill-fated day. I think of their families too. Three months after the Nobel prize ceremony, the pandemic set in. A general election scheduled for August, Abiy Ahmed postponed till the middle of 2021. Up in Tigray, the TPLF was furious. The Tigrayans thought Abiy was acting dictatorially. In defiance of Addis Ababa, the TPLF held regional elections in September. In retaliation, Abiy redirected federal funds from the TPLF the regional leadership to local governments. Tensions between the TPLF and the federal government were boiling. This was a contest of wills. Be aware that the TPLF is armed. That is, they have some 250,000 men under arms, while the federal government has some 350,000. The terrible moment came on November 4 the moment that an American might think of as the Fort Sumter moment. As near as can be determined, TPLF forces attacked the headquarters of the federal governments Northern Command. Abiy Ahmed then swept the Ethiopian National Defense Force into Tigray. He and his government have referred to the war in euphemisms: law-enforcement operations; rule-of-law operations. Talk about the epitome of hell: This war has been a shocking spasm of bombings, massacres, and rape. I will spare the details, except for a few. In the second week of November, Tigrayan forces committed a massacre in the town of Mai Kadra. Chief among the victims were migrant workers from Amhara. The killers hacked their victims hundreds of them to death. In late November, Ethiopian and Eritrean forces working together shelled the town of Aksum. This was apparently indiscriminate shelling, killing unarmed civilians. Then, Eritrean forces massacred hundreds of Tigrayans within Aksum. Rape has long been a weapon of war in Sudan, the Balkans, Burma, and any number of other places. Rape in Tigray is on a mass, horrific scale. On January 21, a U.N. official, Pramila Patten, issued a statement. She is the U.N. special representative on the subject of sexual violence in conflict. I will quote just the first two sentences of her statement: I am greatly concerned by serious allegations of sexual violence in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, including a high number of alleged rapes in the capital, Mekelle. There are also disturbing reports of individuals allegedly forced to rape members of their own family, under threats of imminent violence. Who is responsible for the hell in Tigray? The prime minister, the Nobel peace laureate? The assignment of blame would take many pages of analysis. Suffice it to say, Abiy Ahmed is to blame for a lot, including the cut-off of communication between Tigray and the outside world, and the delay of humanitarian aid desperately needed to the region. Many are calling for the revocation of Abiys Nobel Peace Prize. As it happens, the Nobel Peace Prize is neither revokable nor returnable. I will offer a page or two on Nobel history. There was never a time when the Nobel Peace Prize was uncontroversial. The first award ever given in 1901, when the committee divided the prize between Henry Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, and Frdric Passy, a veteran peace campaigner was very controversial. Almost no Nobel selection meets with universal acclaim. This includes the 1979 prize to Mother Teresa. The most controversial Nobel prize ever awarded in any field was the peace prize to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, in 1973. They received the prize for the Paris Agreement, which they had negotiated. It was signed in January 1973. The Paris Agreement was a ceasefire in the Vietnam War. The Nobel committee hoped that the parties would feel a moral responsibility to abide by the agreement and, ultimately, end the war. North Vietnam, of course, shot the agreement to hell. In 1975, after the fall of Saigon, Kissinger tried to return his share of the prize. He said he felt honor-bound to do so, given the fate of Vietnam. The committee explained that Nobel prizes are not returnable. They further reminded Kissinger that he had been honored for certain work. Events in Vietnam, they said, did not negate his sincere efforts to get a ceasefire agreement put into force in 1973. One way to put this is: A Nobel prize is not conditional. In 1950, the committee honored Ralph Bunche, the American diplomat working for the United Nations. The year before, on the isle of Rhodes, he had negotiated a series of armistice agreements between the new state of Israel and four of its enemies. Those enemies, of course, blew the agreements to hell. While we are on the ArabIsraeli conflict: The award to Egypts Anwar Sadat and Israels Menachem Begin was given in 1978, for the Camp David Accords. Those were preliminary accords, not a peace treaty. The treaty was not consummated until March 1979. But the Nobel committee wanted to put the parties on the hook, so to speak. Sadat did not attend the ceremony in December 1978. His stated reason: A final treaty had yet to be negotiated. The real reason, almost certainly: The Arab world was already inflamed at him, for his peacemaking with Israel; a personal appearance in Oslo, with Begin, would have fanned the flames. Two and a half years after the peace treaty was signed, Sadat was assassinated. As was Yitzhak Rabin, in 1995, less than a year after he received the prize. The Israeli prime minister received it along with the foreign minister, Shimon Peres, and the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. The three were awarded for the Oslo Accords, which had their origin in the Nobel committees hometown. The committee wanted to hold the parties to the accords. Arafat was not to be held. The peace prize to Barack Obama, the American president, in 2009 was very controversialand not just among his critics at home. Many people, including past honorees, decried the award, especially when, less than two weeks before the Nobel ceremony, the president announced a surge of 30,000 additional troops in Afghanistan. In recent years, many people have wanted the Nobel prize of Aung San Suu Kyi revoked. She won it in 1991. By 2016, she was the leader or the civilian leader, sharing power uneasily with the military of her country, Burma. She seemed shockingly indifferent to the genocide of the Rohingya people. But did she deserve her prize in 1991? Few have deserved the prize more. Today, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has egg on its face. Aung San Suu Kyi aside, the committees 2019 laureate is presiding over this murderous, monstrous mayhem in Tigray. But the 2019 award made sense, on Nobel terms. Classically, a committee asks itself, Who has done the most or best work for fraternity between nations during the preceding year? The hell in Tigray may go on and on. It may spread, making Ethiopia a failed state. The leader of the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front, Debretsion Gebremichael, speaks in clear separatist and secessionist terms: Give in? You have to understand, we will continue fighting as long as they are in our land. Ethiopia is complicated, but I have advice for any Ethiopia-watchers, or watchers in general. It is not my advice, but the advice that Elie Kedourie, the great British historian, born and raised in Baghdad, gave to David Pryce-Jones: Keep your eye on the corpses.

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Legal US immigrants call new immigration reform bills a 'slap in the face' - Yahoo News