Six on Immigration & Refugees: FAIR: Stephen Miller, White House "architect" of Trump's Immigration Policies, an "affinity" for White Nationalism, Racism, and Hate; The climate crisis Trump ignores the most; Syrian Kurds fleeing to Iraq wonder if li
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Thanks John and Gary
"[Many] don't really understand what the Immigration Act of 1924 really was about. It was about establishing racial quota laws in the United States. And it was based on eugenics, period: discredited race science that's the equivalent of believing you can turn lead into gold. That's a different matter, and it's also beyond the fact it’s supremely dehumanizing. Miller talks about the heritage of Calvin Coolidge, the four decades of heritage of Calvin Coolidge. And what he's talking about are the years between 1924 and 1965. And in 1965, we passed Hart-Celler, which put an end to racial quota laws in the United States.
His idea of “Make America Great Again” is returning the country to a time in which there were racial quota laws in the United States that were, you know, in 1924, praised by Adolf Hitler. This is far more egregious than just a "president from the past."
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"Environmental and development groups are hoping to push wealthier countries to build a fund that can support poorer nations afflicted by climate disaster. But, in an era of climate crisis, many communities may need wholesale resettlement. Drought and shifts in weather have fomented migration crises from Syria to Central America. Recognizing this, House Democrats put forward legislation that would create a federal program that would take in a minimum of 50,000 climate refugees every year in the United States.
It’s a bill that will never pass under Trump, who has reduced U.S. refugee resettlement to record-low levels and even thwarted temporary protected status for citizens of the Bahamas fleeing the ravages of Hurricane Dorian this year. Given the Trump administration’s hostility to migrants and skepticism of climate change, there may be no more forlorn a plight than that of a climate refugee."
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"The logistical challenges were daunting, but as luck would have it, Immigration and Customs Enforcement already had a partner on its payroll: McKinsey & Company, an international consulting firm brought on under the Obama administration to help engineer an “organizational transformation” in the ICE division charged with deporting migrants who are in the United States unlawfully.
ICE quickly redirected McKinsey toward helping the agency figure out how to execute the White House’s clampdown on illegal immigration.
But the money-saving recommendations the consultants came up with made some career ICE staff uncomfortable. They proposed cuts in spending on food for migrants, as well as on medical care and supervision of detainees, according to interviews with people who worked on the project for both ICE and McKinsey and 1,500 pages of documents obtained from the agency after ProPublica filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act.
McKinsey’s team also looked for ways to accelerate the deportation process, provoking worries among some ICE staff members that the recommendations risked short-circuiting due process protections for migrants fighting removal from the United States. The consultants, three people who worked on the project said, seemed focused solely on cutting costs and speeding up deportations — activities whose success could be measured in numbers — with little acknowledgment that these policies affected thousands of human beings.
In what one former official described as “heated meetings” with McKinsey consultants, agency staff members questioned whether saving pennies on food and medical care for detainees justified the potential human cost."
"Turkey views the YPG as a terrorist organisation linked to Kurdish separatist insurgents at home. It also wants to create a "safe zone" 30 km into Syrian territory where it aims to re-settle millions of Syrian refugees displaced by the war.
But the YPG, which was crucial in helping Washington defeat Islamic State (IS), describes Trump's move as a callous act of betrayal.
In a fight to survive, it struck a deal with Russian-backed Syrian forces, and they have taken swathes of land close to where the Turks are fighting.
Caught in the middle are people like Akram. Beyond their immediate survival, they must navigate fast-changing frontlines and alliances that resulted from Trump's sudden move.
"Syria is being destroyed all over again," she said at the camp where she and hundreds of others are being settled by authorities in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).
"All because Trump sold us out. And the world watched."
EXHAUSTED AND SCARED
About 1,000 refugees had crossed into Iraq's Kurdish north since the Turkish operation began, according to the UN Refugee Agency and International Organization for Migration, and more are expected.
Tens of thousands have abandoned their homes across northern Syria, a new humanitarian crisis in a part of the country where a semblance of stability had been established.
Akram paid a smuggler the going rate of $500 to get to Iraq, crossing at an informal border point because Syrian Kurdish forces would not let them leave through their checkpoint.
She and about 300 others have been taken to Bardarash, around three hours' drive by dusty road from the frontier.
Kurdish authorities have scrambled to erect tents and fix latrines in time for the first refugees arriving on Wednesday.
The camp was originally set up in 2013 to house Iraqis fleeing Islamic State, but was decommissioned in late 2017 after the extremist Islamist movement was defeated in the battlefield.
People arriving at the camp looked exhausted and scared. Some children with tear-stained cheeks wailed as they sat in the coaches transporting them.
One boy, smiling with relief, gave a thumbs up as a convoy of about a dozen coaches swept through the camp gates.
"The bombs are still falling and a lot of people still want to come," said 25-year-old Masoud Fatah, who arrived in Iraq on Tuesday from his home in Darbasiye.
YPG "WORRIED KURDS WILL LEAVE"
Akram said that YPG fighters tried to stop people leaving the Kurdish-controlled northeast, fearful of what it would do for morale.
The YPG also worry that if large numbers of mostly Sunni Arab Syrians are re-settled from Turkey, ethnic Kurds will soon be outnumbered and lose the freedoms they have fought to secure.
"They (the YPG) threatened us, told us they'd shoot at us, even though they're our people," she said in the back of the minibus that had brought her to the camp. "They're worried that if we all leave, there won't be any Kurds left."
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