Trump’s preoccupation with foreigners “taking advantage” of Americans could still usher in an Australian-style future.
.. Australia does not separate the children of “unauthorized arrivals” from their parents, but it does detain entire families in horrible conditions, sometimes for years.
.. The only way to deter people desperate enough to risk death on their journey to a new country is to threaten them with conditions worse than the ones they fled.
A United Nations report from 2017 cites isolation, overcrowding and limited access to basic services on Manus and Nauru, along with “allegations of sexual abuse by the service providers” and continuing reports of self-harm and suicide.
.. About 80 percent of the asylum seekers detained on Nauru and Manus are ultimately found to be refugees. But with no prospect of ever being allowed into Australia, hundreds decide to return to their countries of origin.
.. While a quarter of the population say policies are too tough, higher numbers usually say policies are too soft. Some Australians see refugees from predominantly Muslim war-torn countries as national security threats, and believe they must be dealt with as harshly as possible.
.. Many others resent those who arrive by boat as “queue-jumpers” who have unfairly circumvented Australia’s laws, unlike the “legitimate” refugees who wait for years in United Nations refugee camps.
.. Politicians justify draconian measures with appeals to Australians’ sense of fairness and safety, and in turn they face an electorate that they fear would punish them if they did otherwise.
.. politicians warn that people smugglers are watching and waiting for a moment of weakness by Australia
.. Last month, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton warned that “the hard-won success of the last few years could be undone overnight by a single act of compassion.”
.. If American public opinion turns toward accepting cruel deterrent measures, it will be political rhetoric that leads the way. Warnings by the Trump administration that criminals use children to exploit legal loopholes would sound familiar to Australians, whose government once claimed that asylum seekers threw children into the sea to force the navy to take them to Australia.
.. fictional dystopias to account for our asylum policies we often reach for Ursula Le Guin. Her short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” describes a peaceful and idyllic city-state whose happiness depends on the cruel imprisonment of a child in a basement. Everyone knows the child is there.
.. “Le Guin intended her story as a cautionary tale. How did we end up with two political parties using it as an instruction manual?”
Prankster Calls the President, and the White House Puts Him Right Through
The president of the United States, one of the most protected people on the planet and among the least accessible to the public, would seem to be a long-shot target for a prank caller looking to have some fun.
.. The result was an impromptu six-minute conversation on immigration and the Supreme Court between the president and the radio host and comedian John Melendez, known to his listeners as “Stuttering John.”
.. As far as Mr. Trump knew, he was taking a call from Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, who seemed to have an urgent legislative matter he wanted to raise.
.. “Congratulations on everything — we’re proud of you,” Mr. Trump said by way of a greeting, apparently alluding to the real Mr. Menendez’s recent acquittal on corruption charges
.. “You went through a tough, tough situation, and I don’t think a very fair situation.”
.. affected a British accent and identified himself as Sean Moore (“S-E-A-N, as in Sean Connery, and Moore, as in Roger Moore”), an aide to Mr. Menendez who, he claimed, badly needed to speak to Mr. Trump.
.. she would contact Mr. Trump’s assistant, but then decided to try to transmit the call “through signal,” a reference to the White House Communications Agency, originally known as the White House Signal Corps, which provides emergency mobile communications for the president wherever he goes.
.. When he was a private citizen, Mr. Trump frequently called in to the shock jock Howard Stern’s bawdy radio program — the same one that made Stuttering John, Mr. Stern’s sidekick on the show for more than 15 years, famous
.. he received a call from Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, arranging a callback time for him and the president and asking what topic he would like to raise with Mr. Trump.
.. a discussion about what he should say to his constituents in New Jersey about the Trump administration’s immigration policies that have led to migrant families being separated at the southwestern border.
.. “Tune into my new Podcast where I prank call the President & he calls me from Air Force One!” Mr. Melendez wrote. A short time later he tweeted out the audio. Neither tweet got much traction at first, which frustrated Mr. Melendez.
How the Supreme Court Replaced One Injustice With Another
.. During World War II, about 120,000 men, women and children of Japanese descent, including almost 40,000 foreign nationals living on the West Coast, were removed from their homes, forced to forfeit their possessions and then incarcerated on the basis of military orders authorized by the president.
.. The real reason for the government’s deplorable treatment of Japanese Americans was not acts of espionage but rather a baseless perception of disloyalty grounded in racial stereotypes
.. When President Trump used questionable evidence to issue executive orders last year banning immigration from predominantly Muslim countries, I heard the same kind of stereotypes that targeted the Japanese-Americans in World War II being used against Muslims.
.. we implored the court to repudiate its decisions in those cases while affirming their greater legacy: Blind deference to the executive branch, even in areas in which the president must wield wide discretion, is incompatible with the protection of fundamental freedoms.
.. But the court’s repudiation of the Korematsu decision tells only half the story. Although it correctly rejected the abhorrent race-based relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans, it failed to recognize — and reject — the rationale that led to that infamous decision. In fact, the Supreme Court indicated that the reason it addressed Korematsu was because the dissenting justices noted the “stark parallels between the reasoning of” the two cases.
.. the Supreme Court seemed to repeat the same bad logic of the 1940s decision by rubber stamping the Trump administration’s bald assertions that the “immigration travel ban” is justified by national security.
.. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor explained in her dissent
.. By blindly accepting the government’s misguided invitation to sanction a discriminatory policy motivated by animosity toward a disfavored group, all in the name of a superficial claim of national security, the court redeploys the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu and merely replaces one ‘gravely wrong’ decision with another.”
.. The court’s decision replaced one injustice with another nearly 75 years later.
Why Are Parents Bringing Their Children on Treacherous Treks to the U.S. Border?
President Trump hopes to deter the flow of migrants into the United States, but near the busy border crossing in Arizona, some said that the threat of separation from their children would not deter them.
“Why would you undertake such a dangerous journey?” said Magdalena Escobedo, 32, who works at the migrant shelter here in Tucson, called Casa Alitas. “When you’ve got a gun to your head, people threatening to rape your daughter, extort your business, force your son to work for the cartels. What would you do?”
.. Critics, including Mr. Trump, have long said that allowing migrants to go free while their immigration cases are pending encourages parents to enter the United States with children, and some conversations bear that out.
“This is the reason I brought a minor with me,” said Guillermo T., 57, a construction worker who recently arrived in Arizona. Facing unemployment at home in Guatemala, he decided to head north; he had been told that bringing his 16-year-old daughter would assure passage. He asked that only his first named be used to avoid consequences with his immigration case.
“She was my passport,” he said of his daughter.
.. they are primarily motivated to leave their countries by violence and lack of economic opportunities, phenomena which she described as closely connected.
.. She said these migrant families choose the United States because they often have networks in the country already and know that there are many job opportunities
.. his son was approached twice by a gang who demanded he join them, flashing a gun and urging him to commit his first extortion. “They kill you if you don’t obey,” said Mr. Cruz.