tequila4kapp said:

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What a wacky coincidence that migrants from far away lands throughout the Americas somehow know that all they have to do is say the word "asylum" and they get to enter the country. Hmmm. Wonder how that happens?

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Because they have cell phones.

In my graduate program (https://polisci.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/faculty-directory/emeriti-faculty/cornelius-profile.html)

Wayne's research showed just how powerful these information networks were and how migrants communicated in near real time to conditions in regional labor markets. He was trying to understand why and how migrant communities from the same mexican villages ended up in same neighborhoods 1000s of miles away.

That was actually in the ear before the ubiquitous nature of smart phones and relied upon a lot of more mudane forms of communication.

I lost touch with Wayne's research after I left but it was smart on.

But it isn't at ALL surprising that this is communicate back town the asylum chain.

Zippergate said:

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Who cares what the freaking number is. Do you deny that countless billions have been spent to house, feed, clothe, etc people who have no right to be here? Way to totally get lost in the trees.

Here's the article. It was 6%, not 4%. If you want claim "gotcha" be my guest.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-equal-opportunity-corporate-diversity/

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Again - what is the alternative? These are individuals who have ((and I would agree here) "abused" the asylum system ((the spirit if not the letter of the law) but once you say they have a right to have that claim adjudicated then you are stuck with what to do with them if your system isn't able to rapidly process them.

Again - we tried the "bad" way of simply blanket denial. Isn't clear that is what the public wants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis

BTW - that is where you are wrong "no right". That is actually baked into the asylum laws adopted by the US after WW2. I also ((likely) would agree with you that these are a set of laws DESPERATELY in need of overhaul but the politics get in the way - and of course Trump undercut his own argument this week with the whole **** show over south africa because it isn't clear to me why Afrikaaners losing SOME Of their land in a land reform process are somehow in desperate need of asylum while individuals fleeing violence form transnational criminals are not....oh yeah - cause one group "white" while the others speak spanish and don't look fully european.

Zippergate said:

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Yeah that massive surge in "asylum" seekers, I'm sure it has nothing to do with these NGOs taking billions and billions to coach them and facilitate their passage to the US.

Now it’s the “Lutheran” faith (this use of “religion” as a money laundering operation must end):

Lutheran Family Services and affiliated organizations receive massive amounts of taxpayer dollars, and the numbers speak for themselves. These funds, total BILLIONS of American… pic.twitter.com/IaTG2uNXRB

— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) February 2, 2025

The Catholic Charities Houston received more than $500,000,000 of taxpayer funds.

This money predominantly went to immigrants for cars, rent, housing, food, attorneys, cash assistance.

$81,000,000 in Government Grants to Catholic Charities Houston alone in 2023. pic.twitter.com/yodIcWxbrw

— Merissa Hansen (@merissahansen17) January 28, 2025

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Really???!!!

The lack of agency that you ascribe to people with non-European features is pretty remarkable. Guess what, I am sure they get a phone call from a family member or friend explaining how the system works.

In respect to Catholic and Lutheran Charities again - a fair amount of this is humanitarian. YOU might be happy with absolute no humanitarian assistance to asylum seekers and let them starve and beg on the street but most americans are not..

Zippergate said:

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Yeah that massive surge in "asylum" seekers, I'm sure it has nothing to do with these NGOs taking billions and billions to coach them and facilitate their passage to the US.

Now it’s the “Lutheran” faith (this use of “religion” as a money laundering operation must end):

Lutheran Family Services and affiliated organizations receive massive amounts of taxpayer dollars, and the numbers speak for themselves. These funds, total BILLIONS of American… pic.twitter.com/IaTG2uNXRB

— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) February 2, 2025

The Catholic Charities Houston received more than $500,000,000 of taxpayer funds.

This money predominantly went to immigrants for cars, rent, housing, food, attorneys, cash assistance.

$81,000,000 in Government Grants to Catholic Charities Houston alone in 2023. pic.twitter.com/yodIcWxbrw

— Merissa Hansen (@merissahansen17) January 28, 2025

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And a bit of googling suggests just how bad the outrage machine is.

1) First, they CHANGED THEIR NAME. I assume that they did so a long time ago but it is flagged as Luthern likely as a DBA thing. Here is the organization that actually got the money

https://www.globalrefuge.org/who-we-are/leadership/senior-leadership-team/

But Fllynn is stiring you up (or being stupid) by not spending a nano second digging.

2) Second, I am not going to fully defend this industry. They are more permissive than I am in respect to migration. But it isn't some SCAM. Once the nation makes a decision to allow people to make a claim you need to provide somee base level of support and resettlement assistance.

Zippergate said:

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Here's the article. It was 6%, not 4%. If you want claim "gotcha" be my guest.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-equal-opportunity-corporate-diversity/

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It's not actually anywhere near 4 or 6%. Those are preposterous numbers.

You really need to internet better. All you have to do is read the article and use the brain that got you through Cal to realize that the data analysis is absolute garbage. If it sounded crazy to you, it probably is crazy.

Here's an explanation of how it's so wrong:

https://www.dailywire.com/news/bloomberg-flubs-data-for-bombshell-report-that-only-6-of-new-corporate-hires-are-white

"Bloomberg based its analysis on a form companies file to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission listing the racial breakdown of their U.S. employees. The forms are filed annually, but they don't break out stats for employees hired that year; they just provide the total headcount of all employees by race.

Bloomberg, reaching for a way to isolate recent numbers, focused on the fact that companies increased their cumulative headcount by some 320,000 in 2021. Then they made a flawed leap of logic: They took the increase of minorities across the entire workforce, and divided it by the number of new positions not the number of actual hires, which overwhelmingly come from replacing people who leave the company. In short, they got the denominator wrong."

Gotcha?

The point isn't the number. If you want to dwell on the details, be my guest, but I will stick to the big picture. People who don't take a stand on anything don't have anything to defend. Shall we nitpick all your sacred cows?

Zippergate said:

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The point isn't the number. If you want to dwell on the details, be my guest, but I will stick to the big picture. People who don't take a stand on anything don't have anything to defend. Shall we nitpick all your sacred cows?

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Sure it is the number!!! It is highly misleading (either intentionally or the fact that Bloomberg failed math/logic) and the article posted does a great job of showing how they failed.

It is like someone showing you the math for why the house has an advantage in Vegas and you saying that Those are details and you want to focus on the big picture that your sister won $30 at blackjack.

It is reasonable to hold to your belief and values. I think that noble. But it isn't reasonably to use fatally flawed data to try to not only say these are your values but that you are objectively "Right:".

Haloski said:

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Zippergate said:

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The point isn't the number. If you want to dwell on the details, be my guest, but I will stick to the big picture. People who don't take a stand on anything don't have anything to defend. Shall we nitpick all your sacred cows?

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Holy crap. The details (data) actually showed that nothing had changed and the premise was totally incorrect. The details are so important to the big picture.

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Bingo. Thanks for posting. I was really trying to understand the flaws in the bloomberg piece last night and the article does a great job in showing itts logical flaws. Sad they didn't put a disclaimer/take it down.

That could actually be the secondary story - that reporters are really DUMB and that basic algebra is beyond them. I have such funny stories about policy makers failing that.

socaltownie said:

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Haloski said:

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Zippergate said:

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The point isn't the number. If you want to dwell on the details, be my guest, but I will stick to the big picture. People who don't take a stand on anything don't have anything to defend. Shall we nitpick all your sacred cows?

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Holy crap. The details (data) actually showed that nothing had changed and the premise was totally incorrect. The details are so important to the big picture.

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Bingo. Thanks for posting. I was really trying to understand the flaws in the bloomberg piece last night and the article does a great job in showing itts logical flaws. Sad they didn't put a disclaimer/take it down.

That could actually be the secondary story - that reporters are really DUMB and that basic algebra is beyond them. I have such funny stories about policy makers failing that.

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No problem. Statistics are fun! It really is crazy that something so wrong can stand uncorrected like that.

Zippergate said:

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Who cares what the freaking number is. Do you deny that countless billions have been spent to house, feed, clothe, etc people who have no right to be here? Way to totally get lost in the trees.

Here's the article. It was 6%, not 4%. If you want claim "gotcha" be my guest.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-equal-opportunity-corporate-diversity/

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I read the article. It's not 6% of all hires; it's 6% of the hires in new jobs that were created.

Yeah, that's nothing. Nothing has changed. White supremacy reigns. It's the same tactics over and over again. Find something to nit about, blow it up way out of proportion and ignore the substance, deny the underlying truth.

Zippergate said:

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Yeah, that's nothing. Nothing has changed. White supremacy reigns. It's the same tactics over and over again. Find something to nit about, blow it up way out of proportion and ignore the substance, deny the underlying truth.

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I'm not even sure that you know what you're saying at this point.

Not even that. The article lays out how they got the denominator wrong and limits in the dataset

Returning to the original topic: whatever you may think of his policy accomplishments, I think Obama did have the POLITICS of these issues right. People are willing to right the wrongs of racism, but if you start explicitly saying you will prioritize one racial or ethnic group over another for benefits you are going to start a fight. Even the "underprivileged" groups that you are trying to prioritize will start to find it condescending. I think a lot of talk (white fragility, etc.) that probably should never have left academia got too much purchase in the mainstream left and that caused problems.

Obama was able to mostly keep a lid on it while he was around, but Biden was too weak of a leader and let the entire narrative get away from him. I also think that continuing to focus on racial/gender/etc. diversity right now is fighting the last war, the war of the 80s and 90s. We're in an era where people are more demanding of class-based economic solutions, thanks to the twin shocks of the 2008 financial crisis and now COVID. I'm not sure Democrats get that yet. I think Trump has no real solutions here either, but on a political level he seems to understand that's what he should be talking about.

And at what point during the Biden administration did Obama finally realize the progressives were on the wrong side of history? Was it after the failed assassination attempt?

He didn't do that because he wanted to leverage the asylum/open border to get other immigration reforms.

Excellent post but I gotta disagree here. You assume they are rational and well-intentioned. When one looks at all of their actions taken in total, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that their goal was to flood the country with as many people as they could and lavish them with benefits. We can speculate about why they might want to do this, but that they were doing it is hard to argue with.

Not going to defend the biden policy but I do know that the burdens on Mexico were proving unsustainable and you need a partner In Mexico to make that policy work.

socaltownie said:

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Not going to defend the biden policy but I do know that the burdens on Mexico were proving unsustainable and you need a partner In Mexico to make that policy work.

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That's what I think. It was a temporary band-aid that wasn't going to hold forever. The real fix is that you need to overhaul the laws, and that requires Congress.

sycasey said:

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socaltownie said:

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Not going to defend the biden policy but I do know that the burdens on Mexico were proving unsustainable and you need a partner In Mexico to make that policy work.

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That's what I think. It was a temporary band-aid that wasn't going to hold forever. The real fix is that you need to overhaul the laws, and that requires Congress.

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You mean before Trump 2.0, right? Congress doesn't do anything anymore. They can't even shut down the government anymore when they refuse to raise the debt ceiling. Trump is beating them to that punch right now.

Big C said:

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sycasey said:

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socaltownie said:

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Not going to defend the biden policy but I do know that the burdens on Mexico were proving unsustainable and you need a partner In Mexico to make that policy work.

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That's what I think. It was a temporary band-aid that wasn't going to hold forever. The real fix is that you need to overhaul the laws, and that requires Congress.

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You mean before Trump 2.0, right? Congress doesn't do anything anymore. They can't even shut down the government anymore when they refuse to raise the debt ceiling. Trump is beating them to that punch right now.

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Congress hasn't been able to pass anything on immigration for decades so I won't be holding my breath here.

socaltownie said:

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Not going to defend the biden policy but I do know that the burdens on Mexico were proving unsustainable and you need a partner In Mexico to make that policy work.

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When progressives lost their way....

There are nearly 700 district court judges nationwide—more than triple the number of elected house democrats. Letting the most radical extreme subset of those 700 run the executive branch at whim is like giving AOC and Omar unilateral power to override any presidential action.

— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) February 26, 2025

In some ways, the progressives still hold a lot of power in this country through activist judges that were appointed by Biden and Obama. These activists are using their positions to thwart Trump's executive orders and policies.