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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told "Sunday Morning Futures" in an exclusive interview that the Biden administration "completely abandoned" ranchers, residents in his state and "all the people who live on the border," arguing that President Joe Biden is "putting them in danger."

He also pointed out that "these arecounties and these are people whotraditionally have votedDemocrat, that the Biden administrationis ignoring."

The Texas governor also blamed Biden's "catastrophic open border policies" for the migrant crisis.

Abbott told host Maria Bartiromo, who traveled to the southern border last week, that one year ago, during the Trump administration, policies put in place led "to the greatestreduction" in bordercrossings.

"But now, were seeing the highestnumber of cross border crossings and its allbecause of thecatastrophic open borderpolicies by the Bidenadministration," he continued.

Thecrisis at the southern border has seen hundreds of thousands of migrants encountered in recent months and has overwhelmed Border Patrol agents while causing a massive political headache for the Biden administration.

In a tour of the border near Mission, Texas, last week Fox News saw groups of migrants coming across, predominantly families, who were pointed in the direction of nearby processing areas.

Border Patrol agents told Fox News that migrant family units were unlikely to be removed under Title 42 public health protections (only 19% of family units were removed under Title 42 in August) and instead would likely be processed and released into the interior potentially at a nearby bus station either that night or in the morning.

The Biden administration ended the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) which kept migrants in Mexico as they awaited their immigration proceedings. Separately, they also ended asylum cooperative agreements (ACAs) which meant migrants would claim asylum in Northern Triangle countries instead.

LEAKED BORDER PATROL DOCS SHOW MASS RELEASE OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS INTO US BY BIDEN ADMINISTRATION

With those changes, the administration has also reinstated the practice known as "catch and release," something the Trump administration had used a patchwork of policies to end. Now, while single adults are mostly still being removed from the U.S., migrant families are mostly allowed to enter the U.S. -- handed only a Notice to Appear at court or a Notice to Report to a nearby Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.

Republicans have blamedthe dramatic changes in policy, including the ending of border wall construction, for the surge in migration. More than 200,000 migrants were encountered in July and August, and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has reportedly warned of a worst-case scenario of 400,000 migrants hitting the border if Title 42 public health expulsions are ended.

The Biden administration, however, has blamed a mixture of Trump administration policies and "root causes" in Central America for the surge.

Abbott warned that cartels have been "getting evenmore aggressive."

He said that the cartels on the Mexicanside of the border "arebeginning to open fireon the National Guardthat Texas has down onthe border to secure theborder."

"This is escalating intoa firing war on eachside of the border whereTexas and our NationalGuard are having todefend themselves anddefend the state ofTexas," Abbott continued.

He went on to explain that "Texas is stepping up to do more thanany state has ever doneto help to secure this region."

Abbott added that "Texas has devoted morethan $3 billion tosecure the border."

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He explained that includes having the National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety on the border and that "Texasitself is building aborder wall to make surethat we will be able tobetter secure ourborder."

Fox News Adam Shaw contributed to this report.

Link:
Texas Gov. Abbott argues Biden 'completely abandoned' everyone who lives on the border - Fox News

Rep. Stan Lambert| Abilene Reporter-News

Earlier in the year, I had the opportunity to visit our border.

There is much to say about what I saw, but a quote from President Ronald Reagan speaks to many of my thoughts and concerns: Our country is great because it is built on principles of self-reliance, opportunity, innovation, and compassion for others.

The issues surrounding our southern border and our current immigration crisis are significant and multi-faceted, encompassing foreign policy, national security, state sovereignty and countless more.

But at a more basic level, what worries me most is the human suffering that is occurring. People are being killed, trafficked, and abused. Folks that live along the border are scared and their property is being damaged. They deserve the same protection and level of safety we have in House District 71 or anywhere else in Texas.

But those fleeing their home countries also deserve to be safe. So as a lawmaker, my dilemma is how do we protect all individuals affected by this crisis and how much burden and resources do Texans share with our federal partners and other countries?

In total, my team and I have made 10trips to the Texas/Mexico Border since 2015 (five to the Rio Grande Valley, three to Big Bend and two to El Paso). What we have seen cannot be unseen and what we have heard cannot be unheard. It is hard to convey the inhumane conditions we have witnessed, the haunting testimony of those who are victims of human trafficking, the pallets upon pallets of counterfeit goods, large quantities of illegal substances and the pleas of law enforcement begging us to secure the border.

To all those affected, and to me, it is about safety. Safety for all Texans and safety for law enforcement. But equally as important, safety for those seeking to enter our country. I wanted you to know what I saw and heard on my most recent trip.

People who live and work near the border say the 2021 surge of immigrants crossing into Texas has significantly increased. Dealing with threats to their personal safety, the draining of local governmental and community resources causes serious financial losses and disruption. Fences sometimes are cut as migrants move across agricultural land. High speed chases destroy property and lives.

Residents report widespread vandalism. Theft rates are rising. Trash and other unattended items left by the immigrants become the responsibility of these landowners. The rights of these citizens and landowners are being trampled.

It is clear to me, through many meetings with the Department of Public Safety, that those charged with securing our border share the concerns of residents in south Texas. There are six Mexican cartels that control areas of access into Texas, and violent gangs transport illicit drugs and traffic people, operate stash houses, conduct enforcement operations, and provide retail drug distribution throughout Texas.

On March 4, Gov.Greg Abbott announced Operation Lone Star (OLS). On May 31, Abbott issued a disaster declaration concerning border security. In response, the Legislature passed House Bill 9(HB9) during the second special session. HB9 gives Abbotts office more than $1 billion, with about $750 million dedicated to construct border barriers. This is in addition to the $250 million that was already budgeted in the regular session.

In the most recent reports on OLS, DPS reports 5,298 criminal arrests and completed 694 vehicle pursuits (up 774% in Del Rio alone). Additionally, from March 4 through Sept. 8, DPS has arrested 199 known gang members.

From October 2020 through September 2021, there have been a record number of migrant apprehensions and referrals in Texas, totaling more than 1.1 million people. The previous record was just more than 726,000 in 1986.

As I work with my colleagues to pursue solutions to this crisis, I hope we can all keep the following in mind, as these issues have been weighing heavy on my heart:

I ask for your prayers for discernment as we workto help alleviate the border crisis and its widespread effects.

Rep. Stan Lambert represents Texas House District 71.

Visit link:
Legislators working to address the border crisis - Abilene Reporter-News

For the past week, senior Conservatives have been taking to the airwaves to talk about the new economic model they are apparently creating. A high-wage, high-skill, high-productivity economy, their new enthusiasm sparked by the shortage of workers since Brexit.

Though the idea has been discredited, even by rightwing thinktanks, ministers have still been repeating it lets face it, the idea of a brave new order in which everyone can be a high-skill worker, paid high wages, and so highly productive that the government can still cut taxes, is seductive populist politics.

Yet it is a deliberate distraction from the real crisis in the UK, which is a shortage of labour for low-skilled jobs; and if supply chains are not to collapse, it is these low-skill jobs for which we will have to start paying higher wages and improve conditions, with all the inflationary pressures that will bring.

Ministers talk about automation as a way of improving productivity, yet machines to replace these workers cannot be magicked up instantly. Business, which Boris Johnson blames for not investing, has in fact over the last three decades poured millions into automating our supply chainsso much capital has been sunk into the infrastructure of transnational just-in-time systems that they have decimated any local alternatives and will be hard to abandon.

Business has invested in its people technology too, so that workers in distribution centres can wear hi-tech, high-productivity wrist devices linked to control rooms that calculate arm movements a minute and beam orders to them to hurry up if they lag behind company targets. It is not lack of business innovation that has held their wages back.

The big lie in the governments slogan is that, like a conjurer, it can abolish this low-skill work. Further investment in automation may reduce the need for some of it but it is just as likely to simply create low-skilled work in new forms, in different parts of the supply chain, as it has in the past.

For a century at least, and not just since we joined the European Union, the UK has depended on importing foreign labour to do its low-skilled jobs; and for the last 70 years immigration has been managed by successive governments through a series of schemes. According to Prof John Salt of University College Londons Migration Research Unit, there are few if any cases anywhere in the world where jobs that have come to be dominated by low-paid migrant labour have been transformed to better-paid work for the domestic population. The possible exception, for a brief interlude, is agriculture in California in the mid-1960s, when a clampdown on undocumented Mexican labour saw a burst of automation and more local employment, before reverting to migrant workers again.

Poverty wages are not caused by immigration in itself, but by a failure to ensure wages and conditions for the local workforce are not forced down by exploiting migrants. The two ways to prevent a race to the bottom are by organising labour so that unions can bargain for decent pay, and by enforcing labour law. The Conservatives, with their anti-union policies and constant bonfires of regulations, brought this low-wage economy into being, however much Johnson would like to disown responsibility.

Through most of the 1960s and 1970s the share of UK national income paid out as wages was between 58% and 61%, but in the Thatcher years it declined rapidly and hit a low in the late 1990s of 52%. The share paid out in profits to private companies increased correspondingly.

Recent Tory governments have continued to promote a low-wage economy. They worked hard to block EU directives on working time, and on equal rights for agency workers that sought to curb the undercutting of existing terms.

In 2013, prime minister David Cameron abolished the Agricultural Wages Board that protected pay and conditions in low-skill farming jobs. His austerity budgets imposed such deep cuts that it would take inspectors responsible for enforcing the minimum wage hundreds of years to visit Britains businesses. Gang master inspectors were similarly cut back.

In January, Matthew Taylor left his role as director of Labour Enforcement, accusing the government of a deafening silence around protecting workers and tackling the low-wage gig economy. He has still not been replaced.

As Taylor had left, the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, cancelled a consultation on transferring EU labour protections in post-Brexit Britain. A promised employment bill to bring those protections into British law has not yet materialised.

It was not the Conservative government but Uber drivers, with the help of unions, who took the company to court to claim their legal right to the minimum wage and to challenge bogus self employment.

Meanwhile, in all his bluster, Johnson makes no mention of the thing that would really give low-paid people higher wages: redistribution, so that ordinary workers receive a fairer share of the national income.

Originally posted here:
It was Tory governments that created the low-wage economy not immigration - The Guardian

Bowdoin Presents is available here.

This audio offering will tap into the array of talent available within the Bowdoin community, says producer Lisa Bartfai.

The first season, which runs throughout the semester, will examine the broad issue of democracy from several different angles, she adds.

Well be featuring in-depth one-on-one conversations with people who have thought long and hard about our democracy, adds Bartfai, who also hosts the podcast.

The episodes range in length from twenty to forty minutes and feature guests who approach the subject from a number of different perspectives, including a tech entrepreneur, a conservation advocate, and someone with direct experience as a political representative.

The first season contains six episodes, she explains, and the opening one features a conversation with Associate Professor of Government and Asian Studies Henry Laurence.

He and Bartfai discuss the politics behind public broadcasting, which is also the subject of Laurences latest book project.

We talk, among other things, about the role of public broadcasting in laying the groundwork for civic discourse and countering the spread of misinformation and so-called fake news, she says.

Well be featuring in-depth one-on-one conversations with people who have thought long and hard about our democracy.

See the original post:
New Bowdoin Podcast to Tackle Issues of Democracy - Bowdoin News

At a time when democratic institutions are under pressure and the University of Michigan community is looking to engage, U-M will continue Democracy & Debate, its universitywide collaboration on democratic engagement, through the 2021-22 academic year.

The announcement of the programs continuation was made by Michael Barr, dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and Anne Curzan dean of LSA, along with other Ann Arbor deans and directors.

I am delighted to be partnering with Anne Curzan and our fellow deans and directors across campus to continue the important work of Democracy & Debate, Barr said.

Our democracy is strong when we nurture and protect it every day, not simply in election season. Our programming this year will help to engage students, faculty, staff and alumni, and educate the broader public on critical local, state, national and global issues.

A multidisciplinary faculty Steering Committee and a Core Team of faculty, staff and students will shape unique engagement opportunities in five focal areas: arts and democracy, civics education in democracies, climate change and democracy, democracy and racial and social justice, and democracies in peril.

From the arts to engineering, the School of Information to the Ford School, and in partnership with the National Center for Institutional Diversity and the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the offerings will touch all students and U-M community members.

Democracy & Debate 2021-22 builds on the success of last years campuswide theme semester in which thousands of students, faculty, staff and alumni engaged with programming to enhance voter education and increase voter participation during the tumultuous 2020 election season.

Throughout the academic year, Democracy & Debate will offer programs and engagement opportunities, including events with national experts, student competitions to expand understanding of participation in the democratic process, and partnerships to galvanize voter participation and civic engagement.

It also includes a suite of self-directed learning resources, including Michigan Onlines Democracy and Debate Collection, a portfolio of learning experiences curated to address the complexities of democratic systems, and Michigan Publishings, Dialogues in Democracy, an interdisciplinary collection of University of Michigan Press books that explore the core tensions in American political culture.

More information about events, programming and learning resources can be found on the Democracy & Debate website.

We enthusiastically endorse the mission of the Democracy & Debate effort because it is strongly aligned with our values and beliefs, said Thomas Finholt, dean of the School of Information. We welcome the opportunity to continue to engage U-M students, faculty and staff in conversations about what it means to be a member of a democratic society and how this has changed in the face of new modes of interaction and communication.

NCID Director Tabbye Chavous said the programs impact has been felt across the campus.

Democracy & Debate has mobilized our communities to think more critically about movement towards a more diverse and inclusive society, she said. The contributions this year from expert diversity scholars will continue to help us all better understand and further examine the history of democracy and leverage this opportunity to engage with students, faculty and staff to envision a more just campus, community and society.

Democracy & Debate underscores the deans and directors commitment to the universitys future-enriching mission and aligns with U-M core values as it develops leaders and citizens who will challenge our present for the better, Curzan said.

It feels essential that we as an institution sustain our focus on what it means to be a member of a democratic society, in the U.S. and globally, she said. We are committed to open, informed dialogue about key issues, from free speech to voting access to structural inequalities, as part of our mission to contribute to the common good and create more sustainable and just societies.

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Democracy & Debate project to continue through 2021-22 | The University Record - The University Record