T1B

smackaholic wrote: And international laws says you seek asylum in the closest nation.

smackaholic wrote:

Our policy should be you follow the rules for applying for asylum and if you are found attempting to sneak in, asylum is off the table.....forever.

Trump is failing miserably on his biggest issue. And he’s covering it up with lies.
By Greg Sargent

U.S. border agents fired tear gas into crowds of asylum-seeking migrants at the southern border Sunday,
and you can be certain that President Trump will amplify the claim that this turmoil strengthens his case
for getting his way on immigration.

He will be aided in this by one of the worst conventions in political reporting — the habit of asserting
that a given occurrence “provides fodder” for a politician’s attacks or arguments, simply by virtue of the
fact that the politician will try to use it that way, regardless of whether facts or logic support it. For
example, the New York Times claims “the unrest” will “likely provide him with additional ammunition”
to keep out the migrants.

So let’s be clear on the real meaning of the latest mayhem: It doesn’t give Trump “ammunition” at all.
Instead, it shows that Trump’s immigration agenda is a total and abject failure and that he is covering up
this glaring reality with lies.

In a series of tweets, Trump lashed out over the latest border clash. He blamed it on the fact that his
administration has stopped separating families, claiming this now means “vast numbers of additional
people storm the Border.” He raged that the migrants are “stone cold criminals” and that the Obama
administration used the same family separation policy. He vowed to close the border entirely if Mexico
does not ship the migrants back home, insisted that Democrats “created this problem” and once again
demanded that Congress “fund the WALL!”

Trump is making a real argument, but it’s nonsense
It’s important to understand that Trump is making a real argument of sorts here. To simplify, his basic
claim is that Democrats and/or Congress will not change the law in a way that would allow Trump to
detain asylum-seeking families all together for extended periods, which means the administration must
choose between separating children or ultimately releasing parents pending their hearing.

Trump had to drop the separations due to the political and legal backlash. He’s now saying that means
he’ll have to release the parents, and that this will help adults game the system by disappearing into the
interior — what he calls “catch and release” — thus encouraging more asylum-seekers to come. In short,
Trump blames the current crisis on being hamstrung in one way or another from deterring them with
cruel and inhumane policies — he can’t separate the kids, and he can’t detain families indefinitely.

But this whole argument is based on a lie. We already know that cruelty as deterrence doesn’t actually
work — and we know this because Trump’s own effort to do this failed.

Vox’s Dara Lind examined the data and found that even during the period of family separations, there
was “no evidence” that this “harsh treatment … actually works as a deterrent.” Careful reporting explains
why: Asylum seekers from Central America are driven by horrific economic, political and civil conditions
at home, so they’re willing to risk the worst to escape it.

The whole premise of Trump’s approach to the migrant crisis — that the answer is ever-escalating
deterrence, which is supposed to showcase his “toughness” — has already been revealed as a failure.
Indeed, as BuzzFeed points out, the administration has also done other things to try to dissuade
migrants, such as eliminate fear of gang violence as a criterion for asylum, yet they keep coming.
Trump’s decision to send troops to the border — in addition to using the military as a prop in the GOP’s
failed midterm propaganda message — can also be seen as an attempt at deterrence (remember when
Trump suggested migrants might be shot?), one that also failed.

Trump is trying to mask this epic failure with other lies. The suggestion that the failure to build the wall
is to blame — and that funding it would stop this situation — is absurd, since asylum seekers want to
turn themselves in at the border so their claims can be heard. The whole narrative of a “catch and
release” criminal menace is itself based on lies and wild exaggerations. Trump’s rage tweet about “stone
cold criminals” echoes previous similar claims that have been roundly debunked. And migrants and
asylum seekers actually show up for immigration court proceedings at far greater rates than he claims.
Meanwhile, Trump is trying to mask the cruelty of his deterrence approach before domestic audiences by
claiming his predecessor did the same thing, which is false (though the Obama administration did
experiment with forms of deterrence, disastrously).

Trump’s agenda is failing in another way: Other prescriptions he still hopes to implement are deeply
misguided and are all-but-certain non-starters. Trump hopes to restart family separations, but some
officials remain worried about the blowback — since it would just revive the cruelty in another form —
and it’s not even clear it would be legal. Trump just tried to ban asylum-seeking by people who don’t
cross at an official port of entry — a cruelly contrived way of restricting people from exercising their legal
right to apply for asylum here — but this has been blocked in court. Trump’s threat to close down the
whole border — which appears to mean restricting all asylum-seeking, even at official ports of entry —
would be a humanitarian and diplomatic disaster, and also likely would not survive legal challenge.

Fox News thinks the border clash helps Trump. It doesn’t.
There is no way what happened Sunday gives Trump “ammunition” to argue for any of those things. The
border patrol claims it used tear gas only after migrants threw things at them, but at the same time, tear
gas was used on groups that included children. The resulting horrifying imagery only underscores the
deep disconnect between the root causes of the crisis and Trump’s “solutions” to it, which only highlights
that the crisis remains intractable in the face of Trump’s fabled toughness.

Indeed, the specifics of this event cannot change the underlying reality that the prescriptions Trump now
wants would either produce all kinds of unacceptable outcomes or are unlikely to stand up in court, or
both. This is an extremely complicated problem, one that bedeviled the Obama administration as well,
and one that can probably be addressed only by regional solutions of some kind that seriously grapple
with both its complex causes and the need to treat migrants humanely. But Trump’s unstable bluster and
threats only make that harder.

Fox News, however, appears convinced that all this imagery helps Trump. As Matthew Gertz of Media
Matters shows, Fox has been plastered with coverage of the clash. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us
have to pretend it boosts Trump’s arguments. The exact opposite is true.

Sudden Sam wrote:dilemma

Dinsdale wrote: taht

Carson wrote:

Kierland wrote:From tax payers to mail carriers and post office admin.

...for shitty, uninspired service because they know they'll get paid anyway.

Die in a post office mass shooting.

Kierland wrote:

Dinsdale wrote: taht

You are stupid.

Shlomart Ben Yisrael wrote:

Mikey wrote:That's beautiful.

I love the small of napalm in the morning.

Sudden Sam wrote:

Dinsdale wrote:
Although it's also one of those words that's been misused so frequently, taht people are starting to accept the incorrect definition. Much like the suffix "phobe/phobia."

I was thinking about this and sorta agreeing, then this definition arrived at my door:

a difficult situation or problem

So it works.

Screw_Michigan wrote:gassing desperate women

Sudden Sam wrote:Ahhhh...I see what you mean.

Screw_Michigan wrote:How about adding staff to accelerate the processing of these migrants?

Derron wrote:Why sure. Grow government some more.

Derron wrote:

Screw_Michigan wrote:How about adding staff to accelerate the processing of these migrants?

Why sure. Grow government some more. We all know how much better things will be if we add more government drones. Add those immigrants, give them government cheese teach them how to cocksucker the President.

Send your resume in, a job like that would fit your lazy ass, get paid to do nothing. Something you are an expert at.

Screw_Michigan wrote:Mary and Joseph were refugees, Sam.

Screw_Michigan wrote:How about adding staff to accelerate the processing of these migrants? Instead Trump opts for the political charade of an "invasion" at the border and ops for tear gassing desperate women and children. And Trump ball lickers like ass to mouth dad eat it up.

Rooster wrote: These people created an atmosphere of urgency which is entirely of their own making.

Rooster wrote:Presumably, these intrepid adventurers will depart henceforth and forthwith to work in meat packing plants out in the Midwest whereupon they will lead crime-free and honorable lives turning those icy red states blue, not from the cold, but from their hard earned political knowledge that the GOP is out to get them.

Sudden Sam wrote: Screwy, you gotta admit jobs are important and minority unemployment is way down.

Having the government support families doesn't display respect for those families, whereas providing them jobs does.

Yes, I know corporate welfare is far more disgusting and far more costly.