Before taking this oath, they had to answer questions like
"What is the rule of law?" & "what keeps one branch of government from becoming too powerful?"
I'd like to hear the illegally-appointed head of DHS + the president who is stealing an election in front of us answer those
I know and respect what naturalization means to my clients--especially refugees and asylum seekers--who have waited so long and done so much get there. Anyone who sees it as nothing more than convenient filler for a political convention does not.
Healthy democratic states do not allow immigration systems to be politicized. The good people I know at USCIS work in service of the integrity of the system, not any party/president.
Trump has crossed yet another Rubicon here, hardly noticeable in the noise of the past months
One of the five new citizens exploited last night is from Sudan, a country which was on Trump's 2017 #travelban list & was recently barred from the #diversityvisa lottery. But pls tell me more about how much this man loves immigrants who "do it the right way"
The problem here is not that the natz ceremony was televised--I'd love to see that become a regular thing!--or even that Trump was presiding over it. It's the cynical pretense that Rs have any interest in promoting immigration, & the blatantly partisan exploitation of the process
When DHS was created 17 yrs ago, opponents (including Rs) argued that it was too much power in one place, & risked politicization of one of the most important federal functions.
This has absolutely happened with ICE, CBP... & now USCIS. #AbolishDHS before this gets any worse.
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Me, a very clever human: write a @alyankovic parody in the form of a 15th century madrigal about the collapse of FTX and the crypto market
*two seconds later*
#OpenAI: alas tis a lamentable day, the visions of riches have become mere wishes, etc
A notably less weird Al here but otherwise am I the only one who thinks this is all kind of terrifying
I will not print it here but it cheerfully spit out an '80s party rap anthem denying the death of six million Jews in the Holocaust just because I asked it to.
The word "orgy" was consistently censored out of my prompts though so I guess we're looking out for what really matters
N. B.: the author of this fascist manifesto is not some Roman statue "Western chauvinist" account with 76 followers. He is the senior editor of the closest thing the American right has to a journal of record.
"save the country"
"rebuild and in a sense re-found"
"getting used to the idea of wielding power, not despising it"
"compromise with the left is impossible"
when I say this is fascism I mean this literally, it is literal fascism
Very few people outside the system know this, but you need to:
US asylum law knowingly & intentionally requires the deportation to certain death of people who have been on the wrong side of the criminal legal system.
First: I didn't know her, but this is the only publicly available news re: the murder of Melissa Nunez--and more importantly, her life. She was, among other things, a determined advocate who loved horses and traveling and dreamed of living in Puerto Rico
From information available online, I gather she was convicted on charges brought from defending herself against anti-trans violence. This conviction constituted an "aggravated felony," a class of offenses which bar someone from receiving asylum.
This @ similar questions from the @MarshallProj sheriffs survey linked below get to one of the most fundamental problems holding back progress today: a belief that past (white) immigrants had it harder & had to do more to "earn" a place than today's. It's exactly backward
It's only human to want to believe that your ancestors were better and smarter and worked harder than today's immigrants, because that kind of generational progress is such a fundamental part of the golden era American immigrant story. Which is to say the *white* immigrant story
But the reality is that it was hardly any trouble at all to immigrate before 1965--& absolutely no effort before 1921--& the system had nothing at all to do with today's. We are in NO WAY doing anything to make it easier now, only much much harder
Would you be surprised to learn that a Presidential pardon doesn't prevent someone from being deported for a drug offense?
Of course pardons for federal marijuana possession convictions are the right thing to do, but it is largely meaningless for immigration purposes and the real harm has come from the wide range of MJ-related offenses not touched by today's order
Anyway, whether by intent or by accident Congress exempted those convicted of controlled substance and domestic violence offenses from being saved from deportation by a state or federal pardon. It was one of the first weird little bits of imm law I noticed when I first started