Mediaboss Marketing

I was sad to hear Rush Limbaugh announce that hes battling an advanced form of lung cancer, and might not be able to fulfill his daily duties as he has for decades. Im not a listener of his anymore, but he was part of what inspired me to go into politics. And without Rush Limbaugh, you likely wouldnt be reading this article.

I wish Limbaugh nothing but the best in battling this disease. Some of his close friends, as close friends should, are saying things like if theres anyone who can beat this, its Rush. After all, he is a fighter, and quips that he does so with half his brain tied around his back. Limbaugh also lost his hearing, and thanks to a cochlear implant, was able continue to work for years.

I owe Limbaugh a debt, and Im not sure I can ever repay it. Instead, Id like to chat about his influence on me for a bit. Longtime readersknow a little bit about my career trajectory. But Ive never written much about Limbaugh, who played a role for meand hundreds of thousands of other conservativesover the years.

His show typically airs on weekdays from 12-3 in the Eastern time zone, so I didnt get to catch it much in high school, except in the summer. This was long before YouTube, podcasts, and digital streaming. Some radio stations would re-air it at late hours, particularly the 50,000 megawatt AM stations. You could record it if you had a fancy VCR-esque tape recorder. (I didnt have one.)

After graduating from high school, I took a job before going off to college at a colorants factory called ColorMatrix, working as an injection molder making plastic test chips. I got the job through my family, a sort of this is what the real world looks like experience my dad set up for me. (My dad paid for his high school and college by working at a slaughterhouse, so I had it pretty darn good.)

I was the youngest guy on the shop floor by probably 15 years, and I didnt deserve the job. It was total patronage. Not only that, I was the only non-African American in the shop except for a Pakistani immigrant named Gul Khan, who was part of a famous dynasty of squash players. He, too, was a patronage hire, working hours when he wasnt teaching squash to rich Clevelanderslike the companys owner. He was one of the best squash players on the planet. Seriously.

Anyway, every day my coworkers and I would argue over what to listen to on the radio and if there wasnt a baseball day game, Id always make the case we should listen to Rush. I rarely got my way. It was easier to listen to Rush that fall, when I went off to college in Missouri, his native state. Rush grew up in Cape Girardeaumy grandmother was from Sainte Genevieve, not far down I-55.

Rush was a steady part of my media diet throughout college, as a college Republican who dropped out of college for a semester to work on the Bush campaign. I stopped listening when I made my way to Washington in the mid 2000s, because I had a day job.

In 2007, one of my fathers law partners died. He was a former congressman from Michigan named Guy Vander Jagt. After the memorial service for him in the Longworth buildings Ways & Means committee roomwhere Id later workwe went out to dinner at a Washington steakhouse with others who had worked with the man. As we were waiting to be seated, who did I see sitting at the bar? El Rushbo himself. I excused myself from the gathering and walked over to rudely introduce myself and be a total fanboy, not even able to understand the weirdness of how he had played a part in me winding up in that room with him.

Rush was gracious and listened to my Missouri connections and abridged life story, and then asked what brought me to Washington. I told him I worked in the U.S. Senate.

In true Limbaugh style, he quipped You dont work for Lindsey Grahamnesty, do you? I told him that, from his perspective, it was probably even worse. I worked for Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, who was the author of the later-doomed immigration reform bill. Jons a great guy Limbaugh told me. I disagree with him on this amnesty stuff, but hes a good man, and I respect him.

I used to like to take pictures with famous people, before I realized it was tacky and that you should act like youve been there. In the pre smartphone era, I had a digital camera on me. I asked for a picture and Limbaugh agreed.

The break over my old bosss sensible immigration reform bill was the first of many Id have with Rush over the years. Nearly 13 years later, here we are, with him getting the nations highest civilian honor, live on national TV during the State of the Union. And to be honest, I agree with Noah Rothman: the made-for-TV presentation by Melania in the House gallery diminished the award for show. Limbaugh deserved better.

Rush Limbaugh helped inspire my love of politics, and he also inspired my skepticism of the conservative media echo chamber. Like so many in the movement who have parted ways on matters of policy and the importance of morality,I dont listen to him much anymore, and if I did, I suspect Id rarely agree.

But despite going separate ways Ill always be grateful for him, both for helping bring me into the world of politics and for his personal kindness to a starstruck nobody. I wish El Rushbo the best of health, and would like to thank him for his kindness and inspiration.

Read more from the original source:
El Rushbo and Me - The Bulwark

On Monday, the Supreme Court lifted a lower-court stay on a Trump Administration rule that will deny permanent-resident status to legal immigrants who are deemed likely to become public charges, because they have in the pastor may in the futurereceive public assistance, such as Medicaid or Social Security supplemental income. The rule has been called a humanitarian catastrophe, an act enabling racist and classist cruelty, and a throwback to the darker days of rejecting the neediest immigrants, be they Irish, Jewish, queeror nonwhite. It is all of those things, but it is not, contrary to many comments, a drastic change in immigration policy. Like much that is Trumpian, the new rules, and the Supreme Court order allowing them to go forward, build logically on the last few decades of the American political conversation on immigration, race, and class.

In August of last year, Ken Cuccinelli, then the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, quipped in an NPR interview that the guiding principle of American immigration policy is give me your tired, your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge. He was telling the truth. U.S. policy has always hewed closer to his rendering than to the original Emma Lazarus poem that adorns the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The public charge exclusion in immigration law goes back to the middle of the nineteenth century, and the underlying fear that newcomers will take what is rightly ours predates the policy by centuries.

The immediate precursor of the Trump Administration rule is the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the welfare-reform law signed by Bill Clinton, in 1996. Clinton had run on the promise to end welfare as we have come to know it, and he did. On its way through Congress, the reform package acquired provisions that effectively threw most noncitizens, present and future, off most federally funded public-assistance programs. Clinton opposed these amendments. In his speech heralding the passage of welfare reform, he said:

I am deeply disappointed that the congressional leadership insisted onattaching to this extraordinarily important bill a provision that willhurt legal immigrants in America, people who work hard for theirfamilies, pay taxes, serve in our military. This provision has nothingto do with welfare reform. It is simply a budget-saving measure, andit is not right.

These immigrant families with children who fall on hard times through no fault of their ownfor example, because they face the same risks the rest of us do from accidents, from criminal assaults, from serious illnessesthey should be eligible for medical and other help when they need it.

Then Clinton signed the bill into law. Of course he did: it was his signature legislative achievement, which had taken years to craft and pass. The fear of spending too much money on immigrants, meanwhile, had become a matter of bipartisan consensus. (In the years leading up to welfare reform, California residents voted for a bill that would strip noncitizens of public benefits.) In the end, most of the money that the Treasury actually saved on welfare reform came from cutting benefits to noncitizens.

The thinking that underpinned the anti-immigrant amendments was fundamentally indistinguishable from the thinking that drove welfare reform in general: that undeserving people would somehow take advantage of the system, getting something for nothing. The spectre of the welfare queen haunted America. Viewed through the prism of this fear, immigrants are the least deserving people of all, because they havent paid their imaginary dues.

One could point out that noncitizens pay taxes. (Notably, many noncitizens pay Social Security taxes even though they may never attain the status that would entitle them to benefits.) But arguing about taxes misses the point. The basic idea behind the welfare state is that its best for a society when all its members lead lives of dignity. Not only those who have paid taxes, not only those who have worked, want to work, or will work, not only those who were born here, but all people who inhabit this wealthy land ought to have a roof over their heads and food on the table, have basic medical care, and be free of fear that they will not have any of these things tomorrow. Precisely because this is the foundational principle of a welfare state, in most welfare states noncitizens are eligible for public assistance, and, indeed, public assistance is seen as an essential element of integrating immigrants into society.

After welfare reform became law, the number of noncitizens receiving public assistance decreased precipitouslymore drastically than the law required, in fact. Many people who were still eligible, such as citizen children of noncitizens, stopped receiving benefits, not because they were thrown off the rolls but because they stopped seeking the help. Some of the provisions of the law, such as those stripping benefits from people who were already in the country and receiving aid, were never enforced, but people complied with them anyway. Scholars called this a chilling effect: immigrants, fearful of repercussions, went into the shadows.

Of course they did. Another of Clintons signature legislative achievements was the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (I.I.R.I.R.A.), which created the framework for the mass deportations of immigrants who broke the law in the United States. The law was rooted in thinking that we have now normalized: that noncitizens and citizens should be punished differently for the same crimescitizens by incarceration, fines, and community service, and noncitizens by removal, often in addition to the standard penalty a citizen would have received. It also reified the image of immigrants as criminals, and it laid the groundwork for mass deportations, for which the Obama Administration, which removed hundreds of thousands of people a year, still holds the record. In addition, the I.I.R.I.R.A. mandated the construction of a physical barrier on parts of the southern border, laying the literal foundation for Trumps wall. The I.I.R.I.R.A. became law the same year as welfare reform, as did the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which created expedited procedures for deporting alien terrorists. This was five years before 9/11, and two decades before Trump conjured the image of immigrants as terrorists in his 2016 campaign.

Trumps spin on these long-standing policies and fears takes them to an entirely new level of hatred and cruelty. But, to reverse them, we will have to do much more than return to the way things were before Trumpism.

Continue reading here:
Trumps Immigration Rule Is Cruel and RacistBut Its Nothing New - The New Yorker

The president has said he'll build a border wall, cancel funding for sanctuary cities and remove undocumented immigrants, among other things.

President Donald Trump has promised to make big changes on immigration since he was a candidate.

"The truth is our immigration system is worse than anybody ever realized," the president said.

Among them, build a southern border wall, remove undocumented immigrants, cancel funding for sanctuary cities and other sanctuary jurisdictions, suspend immigration from certain countries, limit legal immigration, and end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

We'll cover the border wall and DACA in separate stories, but here's a closer look at some of these other promises.

"There are vast numbers of additional criminal illegal immigrants who have fled, but their days have run out in this country. The crime will stop. They're going to be gone. It will be over," the president said.

On the campaign trail, President Trump said he'd remove all undocumented immigrants from the U.S., especially those who had committed crimes. Pew Research estimated there were about10.5 millionundocumented immigrants in the U.S. in 2017.

In a series of tweets in June 2019, thepresident reiteratedthat promise. He said Immigration and Customs Enforcement would "begin the process of removing the millions" of undocumented immigrants. In total, ICEremoved over 267,000 peoplein fiscal year 2019, a slight increase from the year before.

"Cities that refuse to cooperate with federal authorities will not receive taxpayer dollars," President Trump said.

In January 2017, President Trump signed anexecutive ordersaying sanctuary jurisdictions could not receive funding that's not already mandated by law. Two months later, the Justice Department announced it would expand an Obama-era policy that denied sanctuary cities funding.

Los Angelessued the DOJafter it was passed over for a community police grant. The case went back and forth in court, and in July 2019, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Trump administrationcan give preferential treatmentwhen awarding grant money to cities that use it to combat illegal immigration.

Let's go back to President Trump's first few days in office: On Jan. 27, 2017, hesigned an executive orderbanning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries. The order was quickly challenged and met with nationwide protests. The White House revised the order two times and a revised ban eventually made it to theSupreme Court, which upheld it in June 2018.

"When politicians talk about immigration reform, they usually mean the following: amnesty, open borders, lower wages. Immigration reform should mean something else entirely," President Trump said. "It should mean improvements to our laws and policies to make life better for American citizens."

President Trump has also looked at limiting legal immigration. In September 2017, the State Department said itwanted to capthe number of refugees admitted to the U.S. at 45,000 for the 2018 fiscal year. That was the lowest since the refugee program was created in 1980. The Trump administration decreased that cap again in each of the next two years. Forfiscal year 2020, the U.S. has a refugee admissions ceiling of 18,000.

In May 2019, the presidentoutlined his planto overhaul the U.S. immigration system. The heart of the proposal was the creation of a merit-based point system aimed at prioritizing skilled workers in the immigration process.

"Our proposal is pro-American, pro-immigrant and pro-worker. It's just common sense," President Trump said.

That proposal has since stalled. But in August, the Trump administration issued its so-called "public charge" rule. It prevents people from getting green cards and visa extensions if they use or are deemed likely to use public benefits in the future. Federaljudges temporarily postponedthe rule while it faced legal challenges, and in late January, the Supreme Court said the rule should be allowed to take effect.

Finally, in the latter half of 2019, the U.S. entered into asylum agreements with Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. It's part of the Trump administration's goal to limit the number of migrants entering the U.S. at the southern border. Under those deals which are often referred to as "safe third country" agreements the U.S. will send migrants to apply for asylum in those countries regardless of whether they actually passed through on the way to the U.S. The Guatemala deal is in effect after several legal challenges, but the Honduras and El Salvador agreements aren't being enforced yet.

Visit link:
Trump Has Had A Lot Of Immigration Plans Here's Where They Are - Newsy

Driscolls One Family philosophy has played a key role in helping the company navigate challenges such as labor standards, immigration reform and water stewardship. We spoke to Soren Bjorn, President of Driscoll's of the Americas, about the impact it has had on the farming communities who produce its berries.

From its humble beginnings as a small family business more than a century ago,Driscolls has become a major producer of berriesin the US and beyond. But the ideas of family and community still play a keyrole in Driscolls business philosophy especially as it navigates increasinglychallenging issues such as labor standards, immigration reform and waterstewardship. While agriculture can bring work and prosperity to a community, itcan also put a strain on precious resources such as water. And while there maybe regulations in place to ensure workers receive the financial and healthbenefits they are entitled to, making sure this happens can be a very differentstory.

We spoke to Soren Bjorn, President of Driscoll's of the Americas, about thecompanys One Family approach, andto find out more about the impact it was having on the farming communities whoproduce the berries we eat.

Soren Bjorn: In our business, we work in a number of different countries,and while there may be laws and regulations in place, we often see varyingdegrees of enforcement and compliance. In Morocco, for example, many of thefarmworkers were not even registered with the state; and so, had no socialsecurity or registration number. This meant that although social security wasbeing paid on their behalf, the workers had no way of ever getting the benefits.So, we worked to get individuals registered to make sure that they will beeligible for these benefits one day.

In Mexico, in a lot of the smaller communities, there may not even be ahealth clinic meaning that although the grower is paying for health benefitson behalf of the workforce, the workers wont receive any benefit. To deal withthat, in some instances, we would pay to get a clinic up and running and fundthe infrastructure required to make sure the workers receive those healthbenefits.

Hear insights from a variety of field experts and practitioners on the myriad benefits of a world devoted to regenerative sourcing practices June 1-4 at SB'20 Long Beach.

If you want to drive meaningful change, you need to address these underlyingissues. This is why you sometimes need to draw the circle around your businessmuch wider and think beyond the narrow economic impact.

SB: Working in agriculture, we have to consider not just the water on thefarm; but also ask if the community has enough water to sustain itself. InBaja, California, for example, there was not enough water in the community;so we made a decision not to increase our footprint in that region unless wecould find a more sustainable source of water. For five years, even though therewas a demand for more berries, we didn't increase our footprint. More recently,our largest grower in the region developed an ocean water plant; which allows usto grow more berries, but also to return that supply of water back to thecommunity.

We've been involved with Ceres for quite a long time. In Watsonville, inthe Pajaro Valley, both agriculture and the community depend on the aquiferfor water, as there is no pipeline to bring water in. This aquifer issignificantly overdrawn, so we wanted to help solve that problem as part of thecommunity. We worked with Ceres on this and also as advocates for thegroundwater legislation that passed in California five years ago. Through that,we got introduced to the AgWaterchallenge.

By joining this challenge, we get to work with others who are already facingsimilar issues and get access to their expertise, as well as a lot of greatideas. There is also the pressure of having to make progress, and thats wherethe challenge part comes in. Water stewardship is not an individual businessissue, but a community and a societal one. To be able to tap into all theseother resources is absolutely critical to meeting the challenge.

SB: That was a really interesting project and one I was very involved inpersonally. We were originally trying to tell the story of our company throughthe voices of our growers. But it became clear when we went out to film thisdocumentary that labor and immigration issues were what everybody wanted to talkabout. We saw this as an opportunity not to advocate for or criticize anyspecific policy, but to shine the light on an issue that we think is critical not just for our business, but for society at large.

In the US today, we are very fortunate to have absolute food security. We are asubstantial net exporter of food; and if we want to maintain that status, weshould do everything within our power to try to protect it. If we want the freshfruits and vegetables that we consume to mostly be grown in this country, weneed immigration reform. The reality is that 75 percent of all the fruit andvegetables grown in the US are still harvested by hand, and the vast majority ofthe people who do that work are immigrants to this country.

If we, as a society, make the choice that we dont want immigrants here doingthat work, we also have to recognize that we are choosing not to have that foodproduction here. This means that we would be relying on imports for a wholerange of commodities.

Even if a person generally takes an anti-immigration stance, they probably donthave an anti-food security stance. But they dont make the connection. When weshow the documentary, it is always done with the intention of having a reallygood dialogue, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Immigration reform, particularly for agriculture, could easily happen. There isa pretty good bill that just passed in the house of representatives withbilateral, cross-party support.

Although we want to solve the problems in agriculture, we are also aware that itis part of a larger issue about immigration.

SB: Because of our business model, our growers are not in a contract withus. It is much more of a partnership, where we are both trying to delightconsumers in the marketplace and have the consumers reward us for that. And weshare that revenue with the growers. In fact, 80-85 percent of the revenue goesback to the growers in their local community. So, the single largest impact weare having in the community is through the success of the independent grower.

I'll give you an example. We grow berries in a small village in the south ofChina. For 1,200 years, they have grown only rice commercially in thatcommunity. If you grow an acre of rice in the south of China, the revenue yougenerate is somewhere around $1,000 per acre. Today, we have growers in thatcommunity growing Driscolls raspberries and the revenue that comes from thatone acre is somewhere between $60,000-80,000. In our model, 85 percent of thatrevenue goes back to the grower in that community to pay for wages, land andother inputs. This means more money for people to spend at the butchers; so thebutcher gets wealthier and has a lot more money for the people that own therental properties, so they can develop new properties and so forth. The impactthis has on the broader community is tremendous.

Another example is in Mexico, where we have mobile medical clinics drivingaround the fields providing basic health services to people that otherwise wouldnot have any health services. This led us to partner up with the ColgateFoundation in Mexico, which had always provided basic dental services tochildren. We asked if they would be interested in serving the farmworkercommunity. We have now partnered up with an NGO that goes out in the field;offering training in how to care for your teeth, as well as providing basicservices. And we have recently done the same thing on eyecare.

So, what started as a mobile clinic has mushroomed into a host of services for acommunity that previously couldnt access those services. And this isn'thappening with our money; it is happening because people are doing a really goodjob of connecting the pieces together. So, I think that is an example ofsomething that is really exciting, because it creates a much healthiercommunity.

Published Jan 30, 2020 7am EST / 4am PST / 12pm GMT / 1pm CET

This article, produced in cooperation with the Sustainable Brands editorial team, has been paid for by one of our sponsors.

Originally posted here:
One Family: How Driscoll's Is Working to Safeguard Its Farming Communities - Sustainable Brands

In the lead-up to the 2020 elections, the Journalists Resource team is combing through the Democratic presidential candidates platforms and reporting what the research says about their policy proposals. We want to encourage deep coverage of these proposals and do our part to help deterhorse race journalism, which research suggests can lead to inaccurate reporting and an uninformed electorate. Were focusing on proposals that have a reasonable chance of becoming policy, and for us that means at least 3 of the 5top-polling candidates say they intend to tackle the issue. Here we look at research on criminalizing unauthorized U.S. border crossing.

Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang

Amid calls for immigration reform, some presidential candidates have taken aim at a previously obscure provision within federal law known as Section 1325, which makes it a crime to cross the U.S. border without going through controlled inspection areas. While research provides mixed evidence that the law has discouraged unauthorized immigration, studies document a range of negative consequences for migrants and their children, many of whom were born in the U.S. and are, therefore, citizens.

When Congress adopted Section 1325 in 1929, improper entry by alien became a federal misdemeanor punishable by fine and up to six months in prison for the first offense. A subsequent violation is a felony that carries a possible prison sentence of up to two years.

Most of the top-polling Democratic presidential candidates have said they want to decriminalize improper border crossing. On the other hand, three Democratic candidates Michael Bennet, Joe Biden and John Delaney support keeping Section 1325 on the books. Amy Klobuchar said at an event held at The Washington Post last year that she opposes eliminating border crossing penalties, the Post reported.

Its unclear what position, if any, candidates Michael Bloomberg, Tulsi Gabbard and Deval Patrick have taken on the issue.

Since the law took effect, the federal government has gone through phases of relaxed and aggressive enforcement. Prosecutions of illegal entry rose sharply under President George W. Bush in 2005 and became even more common during President Barack Obamas tenure, according to Syracuse Universitys Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research center that tracks cases and activity within U.S. immigration courts.

Journalist Roque Planas, who covers immigration for HuffPost, reported last year that, Although the law criminalizing illegal entry was first passed in 1929, the Justice Department only began prioritizing those cases in 2005, as a way to funnel migrants into federal jails in areas that lacked bed space for those detained in the civil system. By the time Barack Obama took office in 2009, immigration prosecutions had skyrocketed to the point that they had overtaken half the federal criminal docket. They continued to take up half the federal criminal caseload through his presidency.

Prosecutions have further increased under President Donald Trump. Section 1325 became the basis for his zero-tolerance immigration policy, announced in 2018 and used to justify separating immigrant children from adult family members who had been charged with violating the law.

The number of improper entry cases filed in U.S. Attorneys Office districts along the southwestern border more than doubled from about 27,000 in fiscal year 2017 to about 62,000 in fiscal year 2018, according to a report the U.S. Government Accountability Office released in December 2019.

The U.S. is not alone in treating unauthorized border crossing as a crime. More than 120 other countries impose criminal sanctions for unauthorized entry, according to an August 2019 report from the Law Library of Congress. In France, for example, individuals who are caught entering the country without permission face spending a year in prison if convicted, the report explains. Meanwhile, in Malaysia, entering the country without a valid entry permit or pass could result in a five-year prison sentence and receiving a whipping of not more than six strokes.

The number of immigrants living in the U.S. without permission has fallen since its peak of 12.2 million in 2007, the Pew Research Center estimates. There were an estimated 10.5 million people living here without authorization in 2017, about 5 million from Mexico, Pew reported in 2019. Almost 2 million were from Central America.

Many of the immigrants who are not supposed to be in the U.S. have called it home for years. About two-thirds of the adults who were living here without authorization in 2017 had been in the country more than a decade, according to Pew.

The U.S., however, removes hundreds of thousands of immigrants a year, a significant portion of whom have prior criminal convictions, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In fiscal year 2018, the federal government removed 337,287 immigrants, including 149,440 with prior convictions, according to a DHS report published this month. The report does not indicate how many of these individuals had been in the U.S. without authorization. It also does not offer details about the crimes for which they were convicted, including where they were committed.

Of those removed in 2018, 74% of immigrants from South America, 89% of immigrants from Oceania and 43% of immigrants from North America had criminal backgrounds.

The American public appears to have mixed feelings about immigration. While a Gallup poll conducted in June 2019 found that 57% of respondents think immigrants have improved food, music and the arts and 43% believe they have made the economy better, 42% said immigrants have had a negative impact on taxes and the crime situation. More than 60% of Americans who participated in a different Gallup poll in 2006 said unauthorized immigration should be a crime.

When a nationally representative sample of registered voters was asked about illegal immigration in July 2019, 41% said immigrants who cross the border without permission should be subject to criminal prosecution. Thirty-two percent of those who participated in that online poll, from The Hill newspaper and market research and consulting firm HarrisX, said illegal border crossing should carry civil fines, and 27% of respondents were unsure whether either approach is the correct one.

In 2015, the DHS Office of the Inspector General released a report that questions the effectiveness of a federal initiative known as Streamline, which targets individuals who enter the countrys southwestern border without permission and refers them to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution.

Operation Streamline, the precursor to the Streamline initiative, was launched in 2005 to deter improper entry and end the Border Patrols longstanding practice of apprehending individuals who were not supposed to be in the U.S. and then releasing them into surrounding U.S. communities until their cases could be heard by an immigration court. Under Streamline, which covers a larger geographical region than Operation Streamline, migrants convicted of illegal border crossing are processed for removal after serving their sentences.

The Border Patrol had claimed that Streamline was a more effective way to curb illegal entry than simply returning migrants to the other side of the border. According to the agencys data, immigrants who had been criminally prosecuted were less likely to try again to cross the border between ports of entry

In fiscal year 2012, for example, 10.3% of immigrants who were criminally prosecuted and removed from the U.S. tried to cross the border again, according to the Inspector Generals report. The following year, 9.26% did. When immigrants who did not have authorization to be here were simply returned to the other side of the border and released, 27.06% tried to cross again in fiscal year 2012, and 28.61% did in fiscal year 2013.

In its report, the Inspector Generals office pointed out that the Border Patrols data did not offer a complete picture because it did not take into account an immigrants attempts to enter the country over multiple years. By the Border Patrols metric, the authors of the report write, an alien attempting to cross the border at the end of a fiscal year and making a second attempt at the beginning of the next fiscal year would not be considered a recidivist.

A study published in 2015 in the Journal on Migration and Human Security also raises questions about whether criminalizing border crossings discourages illegal entry. For the study, researchers examined data gathered during survey interviews with more than 1,100 adult migrants who had been recently returned to Mexico after entering or attempting to enter the U.S. without permission. Researchers discovered that imposing criminal sanctions on illegal entry did not dissuade migrants from making plans to try again. Those who had been prosecuted and returned to Mexico were as likely to say they intended to try again in the future as migrants who were not prosecuted prior to removal.

The researchers write that migrants who have family in the U.S. and consider it home are willing to endure physical hardships and criminal penalties to return. The idea that the cost of migration can be too great, the danger too perilous, and the punishments too harsh to keep people from reuniting with their loved ones needs to be rejected, the researchers write.

A newer study that relies on data from the same survey finds that Mexican migrants who were prosecuted for illegal entry were 47% less likely to say they intended to try again within the next week than migrants who were not prosecuted before their removal. However, the deterrent effect appears to be short-lived, especially among migrants with strong ties to the U.S., the researchers explain in their paper, which appeared in the International Migration Review in 2018.

In fact, despite the threat of a criminal charge, 55% of all the Mexican migrants surveyed said they planned to try to cross again in the future, and another 22% were undecided.

But a 2019 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that sanctions, including criminal sanctions, imposed by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection between 2008 and 2012 did discourage unlawful entry among a group of Mexican nationals. The authors used fingerprint data to track male migrants aged 16 to 50 years old who had been apprehended six or fewer times while attempting to enter the U.S. without permission. The researchers looked at whether these migrants were less likely to try again after facing one or more sanctions.

They found that exposure to penalties reduced the 18-month re-apprehension rate for males by 4.6 to 6.1 percentage points.

While there is conflicting evidence that criminal penalties discourage unauthorized immigration, a growing body of research highlights the negative consequences of criminalizing border crossing for migrants and their families.

In What Part of Illegal Dont You Understand? The Social Consequences of Criminalizing Unauthorized Mexican Migrants in the United States, Daniel E. Martnez of the University of Arizona and Jeremy Slack of the University of Texas at El Paso examine the harms of holding migrants in the same prisons where violent offenders and individuals convicted of human and drug smuggling are serving time.

There, they are exposed to illicit social networks such as drug trafficking organizations and prison gangs, Martnez and Slack write in the journal Social & Legal Studies in 2013.

Policies that systematically criminalize and incarcerate people at high rates, such as Operation Streamline, are exposing economic migrants to criminal networks and certain norms and values that they may have otherwise never been exposed to, they write. They add that prosecuting improper border crossing might deter some migrants from coming to the U.S. while also funneling other migrants into the previously unfamiliar and violent world of drugs and crime.

Numerous studies over the years have documented the hardships faced by many migrant children, including poverty, poor health, inadequate housing and a constant fear that one or more family members will be suddenly deported. In U.S. Immigration Policy and Immigrant Childrens Well-Being: The Impact of Policy Shifts, published in 2011 in the Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, researchers explain how the federal governments more aggressive stance against illegal entry has made childrens lives more difficult.

Workplace raids leave hundreds of children without one or both of their parents within minutes, as undocumented workers are immediately detained, the authors write. Detention in immigration facilities and deportation to Mexico results in significant family disruption. The disruption of undocumented families, when parents are separated from their children, results in increased symptoms of mental health problems among children.

Migrants who are in the U.S. without permission are particularly vulnerable to violence and exploitation, partly because they are afraid to call the police or draw attention to themselves, asserts a study published in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science in 2012. This lack of protection from the criminal justice system makes immigrants particularly attractive targets for victimization, the researchers explain.

Multiple studies find that the federal governments aggressive enforcement practices and the news medias coverage of it have helped shape immigrants views of themselves and how others see them.

Deisy Del Real of the University of Southern California explains in Immigration and Health that many Americans conflate Mexican origin with undocumented immigrant. She conducted in-depth interviews with 52 young adults in California who were either Mexican American or immigrants who came to the U.S. from Mexico without permission. She found that almost all of them had experienced social rejection and discrimination when others assumed they were unauthorized or discovered they were.

In the resulting paper, published in 2019, Del Real notes that one young woman told her that strangers, children, and coworkers regularly reminded her that undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. are as valuable as trash. Del Real concludes that so-called Mexican illegality stigma is especially harmful for undocumented young adults because it deteriorates their self-regard, sense of control over their lives, and financial stability that can disrupt their transitions into parenthood and the workforce.

When Joanna Dreby of the University at Albany, State University of New York interviewed 110 children of Mexican immigrants living in Ohio and New Jersey, she learned that they also associated immigration with illegality, regardless of their familys legal status.

With news programs highlighting the worst case scenarios of families caught up in enforcement politics, children in Mexican immigrant families believe that all immigrant families are at risk, Dreby writes in a paper published in the Journal of Marriage and Family in 2012. Misunderstandings about immigration and their immigrant heritage are perhaps the most devastating effect of the threat of deportability on children and childrens identity.

Why Border Enforcement BackfiredDouglas S. Massey, Jorge Durand and Karen A. Pren. American Journal of Sociology, 2016.

The gist: The authors show how border militarization affected the behavior of unauthorized migrants and border outcomes to transform undocumented Mexican migration from a circular flow of male workers going to three states into an 11 million person population of settled families living in 50 states.

Remittances: Background and Issues for CongressMartin A. Weiss. Report from the Congressional Research Service, Updated 2019.

The gist: This report focuses on remittances, transfers of money and capital sent by migrants and foreign immigrant communities to their home country The United States is the destination for the most international migrants and is by far the largest source of global remittances.

Unauthorized Aliens in the United States: Policy DiscussionAndorra Bruno, Report from the Congressional Research Service, 2014.

The gist: How to address the unauthorized immigrant population remains a key point of disagreement in discussions about immigration reform legislation. It remains to be seen in the current environment if agreement can be reached on the unauthorized immigrant issue whether on a legalization-focused strategy that involves establishing new adjustment of status mechanisms and/or amending current law, or on a primarily departure-based approach, or on some combination of the two.

Leisy J. Abrego, professor in Chicana/o studies, UCLA.

Mathew Coleman, professor of geography, The Ohio State University.

Deisy Del Real, postdoctoral fellow, University of Southern California.

Joanna Dreby, associate professor of sociology, University at Albany, State University of New York.

Daniel E. Martnez, assistant professor of sociology, University of Arizona.

Ricardo D. Martnez-Schuldt, assistant professor of sociology, University of Notre Dame.

Douglas S. Massey, Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University.

Cecilia Menjvar, Foundation Distinguished Professor, University of Kansas.

Victor Romero, professor of law, Penn State Law.

Jeremy Slack, assistant professor of geography, University of Texas, El Paso.

Maria-Elena Young, research scientist, UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

See more here:
Decriminalizing unauthorized border crossing: What the research says - Journalist's Resource