Jeff Yang 🫶 Profile picture
Aug 12, 2019 10 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Trump is banning green card eligibility for any LEGAL immigrant who uses a social safety net program—or who can’t convince a consul that they‘ll never use one.

The potential impact is immense. If you can’t get a green card, you can never become a citizen.
wsj.com/articles/trump…
It means immigration to the US will increasingly shift toward those wealthy enough to have a buffer against disaster, who‘ll disproportionately be from white non-“shith*le” countries.

That’s Trump’s goal, because he’s a racist for whom wealth is a proxy for human value.
But anyone who thinks this will stop poorer, browner immigrants from coming is deluded. For all that Trump has degraded America, it’s still an aspiration for poverty-stricken, oppressed and at risk people around the world.

They’ll come—only to be permanently disenfranchised.
Immigrants will live in terror of taking government support, sending rates of child poverty, disease and hunger soaring. Or they might take Medicaid out of desperation, only to be stricken from green card eligibility, and then be unable to work legally or travel out of the US.
We have millions living in the US in a shadow world, fearful of discovery and deportation even with citizen family, productive jobs (at, say, Trump resorts) and deep roots in their communities.

But this stretches the shadow to the legal immigrants that the GOP claims to support.
Not only is this a horrific betrayal of those who’ve properly “waited in line” to come to America, it amounts to confiscatory taxation, the GOP’s hobbyhorse.

Legal residents pay all taxes citizens do—but would now be ineligible for the social safety net that they’re paying into.
And even if there were moral merit to this move, which there is not, in practical terms it turns America from a land of opportunity where new entrepreneurs can hustle to success, to a catchbasin for the already affluent.

We‘re trading hungry innovators for fat dividend cashiers.
There are too many billionaires and not enough millionaires or thousandaires in America.

But even Trump, obsessed with the billionaire status he’s never achieved himself, should be aware that dozens of prominent people have been on public assistance at some time in their lives.
That includes WhatsApp founder Jan Koum, Flipboard founder Mike McCue, wealthy GOP donor Phil Drake and Trump HUD head Ben Carson.

Being poor isn’t a bar to success. But a man who inherited his wealth and nearly lost it all many times wouldn’t get that.
m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_48…
America is just the beginning. This is a global conservative anti-immigrant conspiracy, reinforcing rising attitudes of nationalism and xenophobia.

Similar sh*t, different country.

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More from @originalspin

Dec 8, 2022
And after massive protests, Xi suddenly rolls back Zero Covid policy with the standard “oh the virus has evolved/our policies have worked” stuff that govs everywhere have done. What are the “Xi can’t possibly pivot or lose face!” maximalists thinking now?
nytimes.com/2022/12/08/wor…
I would’ve thought it would come with a massive vax push but Xi clearly thinks he has power firmly enough in hand that he can shake off whimsically ending a despised public health mandate—and the millions of deaths that will likely follow
Read 7 tweets
Nov 13, 2022
A gift of @ewarren’s Op-Ed in the @nytimes, in which she gives smart, sound, detailed advice on what Dems should do now that we’ve held the Senate. Sharp analysis on how progressive ideas won voters over, and going further will win more, per her brand.
nytimes.com/2022/11/12/opi…
Curious what part of

—reverse Trump tax giveaways to wealthy
—cut housing and child care costs
—end gerrymandering
—protect abortion rights as kitchen table issue not ideologically
—focus on economic well-being of families
—embrace populist economic policies

you disagree with.
Based on your timeline most of these seem to be things you’d support? Or am I wrong
Read 5 tweets
Nov 13, 2022
When the driver of the car decides to play chicken with a police cruiser
It’s a good thing @SenMarkey has no ability to impact my newly acquired social media busi— whoops!

Well at least my satellite broadband startup is oka— dammit

Oh well, I’ve still got my thriving electric transportation company— D’OH ImageImage
No, people in positions of power never abuse them by harassing those who are at the mercy of their authority
Read 4 tweets
Nov 11, 2022
If anyone, ANYONE doubted that Trump's 2024 campaign (which is surely coming, now more than ever) was going to lean hard into China-bashing and inflaming anti-Asian xenophobia, stop doubting.

Also, Trump is a racist, that much is plain.
Kind of makes me wonder how newly re-elected Republican congressmember @YoungKimCA feels about her soon-to-rise-again racist overlord ImageImage
Also has anyone told Donald Trump that “young” and “kin” are both actually words in English Image
Read 4 tweets
Oct 20, 2022
Lara Logan was CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent from 2006–2018
I continue to feel sorry for her assault but questions about her journalistic ethics began well before that and then erupted with her Benghazi coverage.

But now who knows how deep Qanon has its claws into her.
It’s quite possible, but it is absolute garbage that Newsmax is trotting her out there while trying to guide her to a coherent on message right wing talking point. Then again I’m sure they’d throw Kanye out there to spout unmedicated antisemitism if he were available.
Read 4 tweets
Jun 18, 2022
Pence is no hero for not criming Trump into office, just like Romney and six other GOP senators are no heroes for voting to impeach him and Liz Cheney is no hero for helping investigate a deadly insurrection

But the bar is just so low for Republicans now—we celebrate Team Normal
The truth is of course that the Republican Party will never be normal again. When no more than a token handful of its members are even willing to *investigate* a massive existential crime against democracy, it’s clear it is beyond hope. And this just the most egregious evidence.
The GOP is a party that refuses to acknowledge the clear and present threat of climate change to the humans species

That won’t act to reign in guns even as kids are murdered week after week

That lets its members flout rules and overtly embrace white nationalism without censure
Read 10 tweets

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