President Trump speaking at the March for Life anti-abortion rally:
“All of us here today understand an eternal truth — every child is a precious and sacred gift from God,” Trump said. “Together, we must protect, cherish and defend the dignity and the sanctity of every human life.”
The Trump administration said Wednesday that children born to U.S. military members and government employees working overseas will no longer automatically be considered United States citizens.
The new policy guidance states that USCIS “no longer considers children of U.S. government employees and U.S. armed forces members residing outside the United States as ‘residing in the United States’ for purposes of acquiring citizenship under INA 320.”
The guidance states that “U.S. citizen parents who are residing outside the United States with children who are not U.S. citizens should apply for U.S. citizenship on behalf of their children under INA 322, and must complete the process before the child’s 18th birthday.”
Wow. Just…wow. I guess that’s one way of cutting down on immigration. If this was the case when the late John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone to parents stationed there in the military, he wouldn’t be considered a natural born American citizen and couldn’t have run for the office of president. Huh…
From CNN:
The acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services in a new interview revised the iconic poem on the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal to suggest that only immigrants who can “stand on their own two feet” are welcome in the United States.
From the Washington Post:
As the uproar over President Trump’s racist remarks demanding four minority Democratic lawmakers “go back [to countries] from which they came” continued to flare Tuesday, the White House prepared to roll out a plan that would detail the type of immigrants the administration wants to admit to the United States.
That interruption Tuesday is far from the only obstacle White House will face this year as it tries to generate momentum for its new immigration plan, which aims to reorient the current legal immigration system to one based primarily on an immigrant’s ability to contribute to the economy, rather than on family ties.
Melania Trump’s parents, Amalija Knavs and “Trump stunt double” Viktor Knavs
From CNN:
Asked if he would consider it a racist attack if someone told his wife Elaine Chao — who is the US Secretary of Transportation and an immigrant and naturalized US citizen — to go back to her own country, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sidestepped the question and talked about his support for legal immigration.
“The Secretary of Transportation came here at the age of 8 not speaking a word of English, and has recognized the American dream. This is a process of renewal that’s gone on in this country for a very long time, and it’s good for America. We ought to continue it,” he told reporters.
McConnell continued: “As I said, the legal immigration has been a fulfilling of the American dream. The new people who come here have a lot of ambition, a lot of energy, tend to do very well and invigorate our country. My wife is a good example of that.”
He went on to say President Trump is “not a racist.”
From New York Magazine, by Jonathan Chait:
In a short, uncharacteristically non-meandering speech to the nation from the Oval Office punctuated by loud sniffing, [emphasis mine, TTPT] President Trump depicted illegal immigration as an urgent crisis. In place of cogent policy arguments, Trump substituted his familiar anecdotes about immigrants rampaging the countryside to commit a series of grisly crimes against law-abiding Americans.
A more realistic assessment was provided by administration officials, who told the Washington Post (as the Post reporter put it), “Trump believes forcing a drastic reckoning by executive action may be necessary given the Democratic resistance and the wall’s symbolic power for his core voters.”
Two words in that sentence, symbolic power, tell you everything you need to know about Trump’s motivation. A symbolic goal is the opposite of a crisis.
The lack of a wall is a crisis for Trump, of course, because it is his most famous policy goal — for many of his voters, probably the only one that springs to mind. Failure to fulfill it may hurt him badly in 2020. It is not rationally connected to either illegal immigration nor to crime. The administration recently claimed 4,000 suspected terrorists crossed the southern border in the first half of last year. The actual number is six.
Amazingly, it is not even a goal Trump himself has pursued with any urgency until this last December. He devoted almost no effort to securing wall funds during the two years when his party enjoyed full control of government (during which he might have leveraged Republican desperation for corporate tax cuts to force them to fund his wall). His 2019 budget proposed to spend just $1.6 billion more on border security — which is to say, he is now demanding Congress give him three times as much as he asked for in his own blue-sky plan. As recently as December 19, he told Congress he would sign a clean bill to continue government funding with no additional fencing.
Trump shut the government down in an impulsive fit, failing to anticipate either the pain the shutdown would create nor any strategy for escaping it. Typically, shutdowns create a political backlash against either the party that is refusing to reopen government absent some political demand (because they’re the ones who won’t simply restore the status quo ante) or the president (because Americans tend to hold presidents accountable). In this case, those are both the same person. Indeed, Trump closed off any chance of winning the debate at the outset by claiming responsibility for the shutdown and even promising not to blame it on his opponents.
In lieu of any leverage, Trump could only assert, “I have invited congressional leadership to the White House to get this done.” He repeated the last three words slowly for emphasis, but it will only serve to underscore his own impotence.
The apparent logic of his speech was that the force of presidential rhetoric would rally the public to his side. But Trump could not even maintain the appearance of believing such a fanciful story. In an astonishing comment to reporters beforehand, the president confessed he didn’t want to give the speech or take a planned trip to the border. “It’s not going to change a damn thing, but I’m still doing it,” he said, adding that “these people behind you” — pointing to his communications staffers — “say it’s worth it.”
It’s unlikely even a highly articulate, popular president could escape the mess Trump has created for himself. Trump is none of these things.
Trump on immigrants being coached by their lawyers:
“They have professional lawyers,” he said. “Some are for good, others are do-gooders, and others are bad people. And they tell these people exactly what to say. They say, ‘Say the following’ — they write it down — ‘I am being harmed in my country. My country is extremely dangerous. I fear for my life.’ ”
Feb. 6 tweet from Donald Trump:
“We need a 21st Century MERIT-BASED immigration system,” he tweeted. “Chain migration and the visa lottery are outdated programs that hurt our economic and national security.”
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The parents of first lady Melania Trump have become legal permanent residents of the United States and are close to obtaining their citizenship, according to people familiar with their status, but their attorney declined to say how or when the couple gained their green cards.
Immigration experts said Viktor and Amalija Knavs very likely relied on a family reunification process that President Trump has derided as “chain migration” and proposed ending in such cases.
It’s good to be the in-laws!
I Tried Being Tasteful... 