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One of the many sideshows overshadowing serious national and international issues is over who will pay for the big beautiful wall along the southern border that President Trump has promised to build. The president says Mexico will. The Mexicans say they wont.

Lost in the barrage of schoolyard taunts are several important matters. First, not only would the United States benefit from secure barriers along the border, but so too would many Mexicans. Second, taxing, or imposing fees on, remittances sent out of the country (not just to Mexico) is not an unreasonable proposition.

The lawless border between the two countries is not just a problem for the United States. Communities in Mexico are plagued by criminal cartels that engage in cross-border activities like smuggling of drugs and human beings. Interdicting rampant criminal activity along the border would loosen the grip of these violent syndicates on communities in northern Mexico, ending their reign of terror, and enabling honest and productive businesses to flourish.

From the standpoint of the United States, collecting fees on money transfers out of the country would not be entirely punitive. Remittances represent a very significant but often overlooked cost of mass immigration. According to the World Bank, $133.5 billion flowed out of the U.S. in 2015. In 2016, remittances to Mexico (mostly from the U.S.) hit an all-time high of $27 billion exceeding that countrys revenues from oil exports.

This massive outflow of money harms local economies in the U.S. The $133.5 billion that was earned here and shipped elsewhere is money that is not recirculated through local economies, stimulating local economic growth and generating revenues for local governments. Moreover, many of those working here illegally are being paid under the table, so the money is not taxed when it is earned. It is not unreasonable, therefore, for the United States to consider recouping some of the cost of the fence by collecting fees or taxes on funds being transferred abroad.

Most importantly, regardless of who pays for the fence, both the United States and Mexico would benefit greatly from a secure shared border that is open to legitimate commerce and travel, but secured against illegal immigration and criminal activity.

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Mexico Would Benefit from a Wall Too | Immigration Reform Blog - ImmigrationReform.com (blog)

The Daily Banter

My Family Is Living In Hell Thanks To Donald Trump's Inhumane Immigration Policies The Daily Banter We could not fathom the thought of our child growing up without his father so we stopped the process and hoped Congress would pass immigration reform. Over the next decade we built a life together and our son grew into a well-adjusted, smartass pre ...

The rest is here:
My Family Is Living In Hell Thanks To Donald Trump's Inhumane Immigration Policies - The Daily Banter

OUR SYSTEM CAUSES THE VERY PROBLEMS WE ALL DECRY

I am against illegal immigration; I am for legal immigration and wish to widen the avenues toward legal immigration. However, under our current policy, sometimes the process of legal immigration could literally take 100 years. Some say that the illegals should get into the back of the line. Well, that completely ignores the fact that sometimes there is no line to get into the back of. Saying we must first secure the border before we pass immigration reform is like a doctor telling a cancer patient we must first wait for all the cancer symptoms to go away before we treat the cancer. Our immigration system causes the very problems we all decry.

I agree with former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint who during his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign supported a robust worker visa plan. Despite competing for some low-wage jobs against American born non-high school graduates, overwhelmingly as Mexicans move in Americans move up the income ladder.

Of course its not Republicans who are against a worker visa plan, it is the Democrats who oppose it at the behest of their financial backers the unions. The worker visa solution during the Bracero program of the 1950s reduced illegal immigration arrests by some 90 percent. It gave immigrants a legal path to enter the country whereby we could document and permit them and thus they were more than happy to choose a legal form of entry. In fact, if a border patrol caught an undocumented worker, he would simply drive that worker across the border into Mexico, document and permit him, and then drive him back north of the border and drop him off at his work site, usually to pick crops at some local farm.

I adamantly oppose welfare benefits for these workers for two reasons: Its both bad for the American taxpayers and bad for the recipients as welfare leads to government dependence and deprives workers of the opportunity to feel proud of themselves which comes through hard work not government handouts.

In addition, our current policy makes it much harder to find terrorists and other dangerous criminals. When youre looking for the bad guys, youre looking for needles in a haystack. Having over 10 million undocumented workers creates millions of forged documents, which provides plenty of cover for the bad guys.

I also agreed with Mitt Romney on the higher-skilled immigrants. He said we should staple an H1-B visa to every diploma we hand out to foreign graduates, many of whom are the worlds best and brightest, receiving PHDs in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields which are needed by a growing, innovative, globally competitive economy.

We are educating the worlds best and brightest, people who according to a study commissioned by Bill Gates would have created five American jobs per high-end skilled immigrant we kick out of the country. Our country has an approximately 70,000 cap per year on H1-B visas and they are used up in three to four days. And only 13 percent of these go to actual workers, the balance is for their spouses and dependents.

This cap should be lifted to reflect the demands for these workers as well as the benefits to our economy. These would-be immigrants are very entrepreneurial. In fact, Sergey Brin, an immigrant from Russia founded Google which has created tens of thousands of high-paying jobs. Meanwhile Gates has opened an office in Vancouver, Canada just north of his Seattle, Washington office to hire these high skilled workers and they are contributing to the economy paying taxes in Canada not America.

Im against amnesty, but am open to realistic solutions.

With respect to the current borders crossings by Mexican youth, this problem is created by our disastrous War on Drugs which by one estimate puts $300 billion per year into the hands of the most violent criminals on the face of the earth. Not only that, weve given the Mexican government money to wage war with the drug cartels and now children are gettingcaught up in the crossfire. Many Mexican policemen are given the choice of plata o plomo, which means silver or lead. They can either accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes or they can refuse and be killed or have a member of their family killed. The effects of our disastrous drug policy are now spilling over onto U.S. soil.

Drugs are bad but as we learned in the aftermath of the only constitutional amendment ever repealed, prohibition is worse.

Thomas Ravenel is the former treasurer of South Carolina and one of thestars of Southern Charm, a Charleston, S.C.-based reality television show that airs nationally on Bravo TV.

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Thomas Ravenel: On Immigration - FITSNews

Immigrant and civil rights advocates celebrated Friday as Daniela Vargas, a Mississippi Dreamer who was detained by federal agents minutes after speaking at a news conference about her plight, was released from custody.

The 22-year-old, who was brought to the United States from Argentina when she was 7, spent more than a week at the LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, La., following her arrest in Jackson, Miss.

Daniela is really happy to be out right now, understandably, her attorney, Abigail Peterson, told reporters. "She was very surprised this morning, when all this happened, and very relieved. She was told to get her things, and she was given about five minutes to get out, and she took it.

Vargas case drew nationwide attention in part because she had been accepted for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, an Obama administration measure that allows so-called Dreamers, young immigrants brought into the country illegally as children, to obtain work permits and protects them from deportation.

She also won publicity because her attorneys claimed she was targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in retaliation for speaking to the media about her hopes for immigration reform and the effect of enforcement raids on her family.

This is a moment for celebration in what has been a terrifying set of months for the immigrant community and their families, said Karen Tumlin, legal director for the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles. Today shows you what happens when a brave young woman stands up stands up and expresses her rights, the rights of her family and community and fights back.

After she was released at around noon, Vargas was driven back to Mississippi by a friend.

The deportation order against her has not been rescinded, however, and she is required to check in with her local ICE office in April, her attorneys said.

One of the worries is they could enforce it at any point, Peterson said, noting that the decision to release her seemed to be the result of prosecutorial discretion, based largely on community pressure and media attention.

At the beginning of the week, a coalition of civil rights and immigration attorneys filed a petition in federal court alleging that enforcement agents violated Vargas constitutional due process rights and her right to be free from retaliation for protected speech. The petition sought her immediate release, as well as a hearing before an immigration judge to challenge the decision to deport her.

On Friday, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana issued an order transferring that habeas petition to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

According to attorneys, Vargas has two pending applications for immigration relief. First, although her DACA status expired in November 2016 while she says she was trying to save up the $495 needed to renew it, her attorneys filed a renewal application in February.

She also has a pending 2014 petition for a non-immigrant U visa based on her status as the child of a victim of a serious crime who has suffered mental or physical abuse and is cooperating with the investigation of criminal activity.

We will continue to challenge the unconstitutional actions of ICE agents in this case and will not rest until she is no longer under threat of deportation, Naomi Tsu, deputy legal director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in a statement. It is counterproductive and harmful to our communities for ICE to be targeting aspiring young people in this country.

Jarvie is a special correspondent.

Originally posted here:
Mississippi 'Dreamer' Daniela Vargas released from detention but deportation order stands - Los Angeles Times

In a time of heated rhetoric and divisiveness around immigration, Marylands unions, faith community and immigrant rights groups are leading the way forward on state-level immigration reform. Two bills are currently under consideration in Maryland that would offer significant protections to immigrant workers and familiesthe Maryland Law Enforcement and Governmental Trust Act (H.B. 1362/S.B. 0835) and the Regulation of Farm Labor Contractors and Foreign Labor Contractors Act (H.B. 1307/S.B. 1016). The measures proposed in these bills would help ensure that our law enforcement policies respect due process and protect civil rights in the workplace and community, and would expand protections within guest worker programs.

In a letter to the Maryland House of Delegates and Senate, the Maryland State and District of Columbia AFL-CIO called on lawmakers to pass the Trust Act to "help prevent unscrupulous employers from manipulating the deportation machinery to undermine the exercise of workers rights." All too often, employers use the threat of deportation to keep workers silent about labor violations, and the treat of deportation often keeps immigrant families from engaging with law enforcement and other public services when they are needed. Immigrant and faith groups from around the state came out to support the Trust Act, which would create a firewall between immigration enforcement and labor inspectors, local police and state institutions.

The Maryland State and District of ColumbiaAFL-CIO, the Baltimore Teachers Union, Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, the Maryland Catholic Conference and other faith groups also came together this week and testified on behalf of the Foreign Labor Contractors Act, which would bring needed protections and reforms to guest worker programs in Maryland.

According to Donna Edwards, secretary-treasurer of the Maryland andD.C. labor federation: "The status quo is unsustainable...laws on guest worker programs are riddled with gaps and allow for employment discrimination, fees to access work, the payment of below market wages and restriction on movement." She argued that the rights of America's workers can only be protected if immigrant workers and guest workers are able to exercise their rights and when employers no longer have an incentive to underpay and mistreat them.

The Foreign Labor Contractors Act would address these issues by creating a registry for labor recruitment firms that bring guest workers to Maryland, ban charging fees to workers to secure jobs, and make employers responsible for abuses in recruitment and for providing transparent contracts.If Maryland passes H.B. 1307/S.B. 1016, it will follow in the model of California, where lawmakers passed a similar recruitment reform bill in 2014.

Rogie Legaspi, a teacher-of-the-year winner and a vice president of the Baltimore Teachers Union, shared his experience being recruited into teaching jobs in Texas and Maryland from his home in the Philippines. Stressing the need for reform and transparency, he told of his time in Texas, where his recruiter fraudulently served as his employer, forced him to sleep in a basement with 17 other teachers, and took 10% of his salary.

Legaspi said that when he was later hired by Baltimore City Public Schools, unlike his time in Texas, he "felt well-informed and respected," as they provided a clean apartment, a transparent contract with union representation and supported his certification to teach in the state. He stressed to Marylands delegates that all guest workers should have these protections, but unfortunately the abuse he experienced is not uncommon.

In a survey of 220 H-2 guest workers, CDM reported that 58% of workers paid a recruitment fee, 52% were not shown contracts and 10% paid a fee for a non-existent job. "I've been defrauded three times," said Adareli Ponce, a member of the CDMs Migrant Defense Committee. "In my community, there are plenty of stories like mine. We need a recruiter registry. If we had one, we wouldn't have any of these stories; we'd know if job offers are real."

As our broken immigration system continues to divide families and undermine labor rights, states will increasingly play an important role in creating a just environment for immigrants and workers. Passing the Maryland Trust Act and the Foreign Labor Contractors Act would put the state of Maryland at the forefront of resisting out-of-control immigration enforcement and employer exploitation, and leading the way for a pro-worker immigration system.

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Advancing Immigration Reform in Maryland - AFL-CIO - AFL-CIO (blog)