by C.A. Matthews
Having
worked closely with immigrants over the years, I can’t help but take
each setback in their collective struggle for equal rights and justice
as personal. So many come to the US fleeing gang violence, destitution,
climate catastrophe, religious and racial discrimination… And what do
they find when they land on US shores? Often more of the same.
The
US hides its bias behind a veneer of supposed legality and
practicality. But is it really legal? Take for instance Biden’s latest
twist in immigration law that prevents individuals from claiming asylum
when they come to our southern border. In other words, he wants to get
rid of US Code 8, Section 1158 which clearly states:
§1158. Asylum
Any
alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in
the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and
including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been
interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of
such alien's status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this
section or, where applicable, section 1225(b) of this title.
It’s
pretty straightforward. If you are fleeing for your life, and you claim
asylum, you are to be given an asylum hearing inside the US no matter
how or where you enter the country. Until your claim has been
adjudicated by an immigration judge, you're allowed to stay safely
within the US. That is the law.
But Genocide Joe
is trying hard to get the Trump bigots on his side for the upcoming
presidential election. He has decided that brown and black people who
usually enter on foot at our southern border shouldn’t be able to
qualify for asylum even before they can open their mouths to request it.
It's telling how immigrants with money (usually white and European in
origin) can fly directly into any US airport and request asylum then and
there, no problem. Very telling.
Does
the president even have the authority to prevent non-citizens from
entering the US? Some say he does under INA Section 212(f), however:
INA
§ 212(f) does not allow the president to interfere with or subvert
other parts of the INA or other federal laws. That includes INA § 208,
which grants people the right to seek asylum in the United States… While
212(f) authority has been used in recent years in an attempt to
restrict access to asylum at the U.S./Mexico border, the courts have
identified significant limitations. Some courts have also ruled that the
president may not invoke this authority to address purely domestic
considerations, such as high unemployment or costs to taxpayers. From Understanding INA Section 212f
The
ongoing genocides in Gaza, Sudan, and other parts of the world—along
with a potential for World War III involving Ukraine to begin any day
now—have stolen the news limelight lately, making this heinous stunt
violating human rights at our southern border almost invisible to the
majority of Americans. But these types of violent conflicts are the
driving forces behind much of the immigration to the US today.
The
US is the driver of its own immigration problems because it can’t keep
itself from stealing others' land and resources. It can't stop itself
from overthrowing democratically elected governments in countries that
won’t do business with American businesses on US corporations' terms
alone.
Until
we shut down the US war machine and dismantle the
military-industrial-Congressional complex, we’re going to see more and
more people coming to our borders fleeing from the violence and climate
catastrophes the US military has instigated in their homelands.
As the executive director at Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) states:
"This
move to drastically reduce asylum access is dangerous, immoral, and
illegal," said Anna Gallagher, executive director at CLINIC. "We are
appalled that the United States is abandoning its commitment to
humanitarian protection and national and international asylum law in
issuing this executive order. The policy will strip countless migrants
of their legal right to seek asylum with due process, and as a result
many lives will be endangered and lost, and families separated."
Who
really needs due process or to respect the legal rights of others, huh?
Obviously, we’ve decided that the migrants we don’t want to let in for
whatever reasons don’t have any rights at all. It was bad enough when
Trump and his cadre use the misnomer “illegals” to describe immigrants
coming to our border seeking asylum, but now we have Butcher Biden
continuing the Trump tradition of separating family members, separating
children from their parents. This move will cause ever more desperate
immigrants to seek the services of human traffickers to help smuggle
them into the US. More deaths, more lawsuits, more unhappiness…
The US Southern Border Wall https://borgenproject.org/10-facts-about-mexicos-southern-border/
I
talked to our resident historian, Coast Watcher, about the walls at our
southern border, the barbwire-covered walls circling the bomb-pummeled
territory of Gaza, historic walls such as the one that divided East and
West Berlin. That got Coast Watcher thinking about how certain patterns
of history are once again repeating themselves.
Is
Biden really trying to keep desperate people out of the US, or is he
very slyly trying to keep desperate Americans locked in? Why would the
Biden administration fear Americans escaping? Are there not enough
cannon fodder (soldiers) for a big war planned in the near future?
Should we expect American citizens to be denied human rights like we're
currently denying them to asylum seekers, like the Israeli government
denies the rights of the indigenous Palestinian people?
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/berlin-wall-pictures-1961-1989/
by Coast Watcher
A
common theme of far-right criticism leveled at Biden is, “He’s a
Commie!” On the face of it such an accusation is far from accurate.
Biden was, is, and (for what little remains of his putrid life) always
will be a conservative authoritarian.
And yet, that
little comment throws up a few surprising parallels between the United
States of Israel—er, America—with the former Communist Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR. In English, we called it the German Democratic Republic, or more commonly East Germany.
The first parallel is how in both nations the mainstream media was/is almost entirely state-controlled. (Not owned by the state necessarily in the US but controlled.) Little is published that contradicts or criticizes The Regime.
Social media takes up a lot of the slack here in the US, but with
increasing levels of censorship it’s taking on the appearance of samizdat.
In terms of online material much that is frowned upon is self-censored
by the corporations who own the social media platforms on behalf of the
status quo.
A recent example of censorship in Biden’s America is how the Columbia Law Review’s website was closed down by the university board of directors after the site published an article by Rabea Eghbariah criticizing Israel.
Secondly, there’s The Regime’s obsession with walls. The DDR created a beauty when it erected the Antifaschistischer Schutzwall
(the Anti-fascist Protection Barrier, a.k.a. The Berlin Wall, a.k.a.
The Iron Curtain). Supposedly a wall against the pernicious influence of
capitalism, the Berlin Wall acted to prevent the hemorrhaging of the
East German population to the West. Something in the region of 20% of
the DDR’s people voted with their feet against the totalitarian regime
during its existence, causing immense harm to the DDR's economy and its
image.
Part of the Gaza Wall activestills.org
Of
course, both Biden and Trump claim the wall built along America’s
southern border is to prevent mass illegal immigration. Looking at posts
on X (Twitter) from people seeking to leave the increasingly
totalitarian United States, I wonder how long it’ll be before the border
wall is turned around to face inward. If the US wants you to stay put,
you will be walled in similar to how the Gazans have been walled into
their own homeland by the white settler colonists, a.k.a. Israeli
Zionists.
The DDR shut down political dissent as
soon as it appeared. We’re seeing that very same phenomena in the United
States nowadays. Police response to pro-Palestine demonstrations on
university campuses has been far beyond proportional to any trouble
caused. Zionist vigilantes have been allowed to beat up on student
protesters while the cops look the other way and arrest the peaceful
students who were beaten.
The
message is clear. There is to be no resistance, no objections to the
official narrative. Anyone who supports the Palestinian people are
“Hamas” and subsequently “terrorists” to be locked up.
And
when it comes to protesting the government’s policies in any way, shape
or form, here’s a quote from Police Superintendent Larry Snelling in
reference to the upcoming so-called “Democratic” Party conference in
Chicago: “Protesting peacefully doesn’t always mean you’re protected by the First Amendment.”
What’s
free speech good for if you can’t even be protected from harm by your
own government while exercising your First Amendment rights peacefully?
The East German Stasi would have been proud.
CodePink SE Los Angeles and Inland Empire joined other activists in vocally disrupting Vice President Kamala Harris’s guest spot on the Jimmy Kimmel Live television show.
They were forcefully removed, assaulted, and illegally detained by the
show’s security. So much for free speech anywhere in the US.
And
then there’s the economy… The DDR suffered massive financial stress due
to its totalitarian policies. Everything from food to furniture to cars
became harder for the workers to afford. The East Germans were left
with rising food costs and increasingly decrepit infrastructure.
The
United States is on course for the same trouble with, as an example, a
week’s grocery bill for two people in New York City costing over $750.
The price of eggs has skyrocketed. Locally this most staple of cheap
foods costs about $1.49 a dozen as of this past week. What will it cost
next week? Will working class people even be able to afford eggs at all
by November?
And it’s not like the US has
experienced any recent example of infrastructure failures such as
derailed trains carrying toxic chemicals deliberately set on fire in the
middle of a small town or bridges falling over from a small tap from an
overloaded ocean-going container barge.
It should
be noted that the DDR was not above dealing with the hated Capitalist
West when it came to earning hard currency to keep its failing economy
afloat. The DDR took incredible quantities of industrial waste from West
Germany, dumping it on its own soil and causing pollution for
generations. Sounds familiar when you consider how states like Ohio take
in toxic fracking water waste to make some extra cash at the expense of
their own citizens’ health when the pollutants leak into their drinking
water.
It's
not hard to draw a parallel between the East German government taking
capitalist cash like this and the US taking “backhanders and gifts” from
oil companies to license fracking and drilling for oil on federal lands
and preserves. In the US they sometimes call this money influx
“campaign donations.”
Of course the DDR government
paid little to no attention to climate change. Thirty plus years on from
the Berlin Wall’s collaspe, the US government is doing as little or
less. This in spite of record-breaking heatwaves across the Southwest
and dramatic flooding in parts of the Central and Eastern states so far
this season. There are just too many more important things to occupy the
attention of the powers-that-be, like growing the US military budget.
When
it came to the DDR’s military budget, it was given a 6% increase each
year until it reached the point where the regime’s military became a
major partner in the Warsaw Pact alliance. Military and security
expenditures amounted to a 9.2% slice of the DDR budget, a sizable chunk
of change.
The
US military sucks up a woeful 14.7% of national expenditure. It’s not
like that money could be spent on things like universal health care or
providing a free education from kindergarten through college such as the
East Germans had. We wouldn’t want Americans to become used to things
like that. They could become “Commies.” And who really wants that?
When
it comes to the government, the East German public had little say in
how it was run. Show elections happened every few years. You might think
there would be a big difference between the DDR and the USA when it
comes to elections, but the Princeton study shows
real input from the American public amounts to no more than 3% of all
policies fielded in Congress. This is much like the DDR, where the
status quo Communist Party always won 98% or more of the vote—something
which was shown to be false when independent observers oversaw the
ballot count in the elections of May 1989.
That
particular election led to huge trouble for the DDR government, paving
the way for the massive uprising against the totalitarian regime that
threw down the Berlin Wall and brought about German reunification.
But
it’s not like that at all in the US where exit polls are no longer
taken in presidential elections. It’s not like Americans don’t have a
wide variety of candidates to choose from when they open up their ballot
for president every four years… Even in states like New York that force
independent and third party candidates to collect 45,000 verified
signatures within a short six week period. No comparison at all to GDR
with its limited choice of candidates. Nothing to see here, folks. Move
along now.
Perhaps my analogy will only go so far,
although the parallels are there to see. Perhaps someday Americans will
finally tell their bought-and-paid-for politicians where they can shove
their military budget appropriations and demand serious and lasting
beneficial changes for the people—hopefully before we all get blown to
hell by the nuclear fires of World War III.
Sources:
The Berlin Wall
https://www.stiftung-berliner-mauer.de/en/topics/berlin-wall
US military spending
https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-defense
DDR military spending
https://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R3726z1.html
Don’t Forget the USS Liberty’s Dead and Wounded https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/08/dont-forget-the-uss-libertys-dead-and-wounded/
Related Articles and Other Interesting Links
Understanding INA Section 212f https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/understanding-ina-section-212f-president-authority-suspend-entry-migrants
‘What Are They Afraid Of?’: Columbia Law Review Board Shuts Down Website Over Nakba Article https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/06/what-are-they-afraid-of-columbia-law-review-board-shuts-down-website-over-nakba-article/
Peace Activists Assaulted And Forcibly Removed From Jimmy Kimmel Taping https://popularresistance.org/peace-activists-assaulted-and-forcibly-removed-from-jimmy-kimmel-taping
Biden's new immigration order restricts asylum claims along the border. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-executive-order-immigration-border-asylum/
A century ago, anti-immigrant backlash almost closed America’s doors https://theconversation.com/a-century-ago-anti-immigrant-backlash-almost-closed-americas-doors-228589
'Historic, But So, So Late': Israel Added to UN's Child-Killing 'List of Shame' https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-killing-children-2668478068
Israel has bombed a school less than a day since it bombed the last one https://www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/israel-has-bombed-a-school-less-than
Israel kills over 200 Palestinians to rescue 4 captives; U.S. allegedly involved in operation https://mondoweiss.net/2024/06/israel-kills-over-200-palestinians-to-rescue-4-captives-u-s-allegedly-involved-in-operation/
Narcissistic Personality Disorder in the USA https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/06/07/narcissistic-personality-disorder-in-the-usa/
Rights group accuses Israel of hitting residential buildings with white phosphorous in Lebanon https://apnews.com/article/israel-lebanon-human-rights-watch-white-phosphorus-616984b69e1cbe1efc5bbee4cb3ba8ae
US weapons parts used in Israeli attack on Gaza school https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/6/us-weapons-parts-used-in-israeli-attack-on-gaza-school-al-jazeera-analysis
US Bombs Used in Israeli Massacre of 40 in Gaza Refugee Camp https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/07/us-bombs-used-in-israeli-massacre-of-40-in-gaza-refugee-camp/
Israeli forces killed captives during Nuseirat 'massacre', alleges Hamas https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-israeli-forces-kill-other-captives-during-nuseirat-massacre-alleges-hamas
US Targets Journalists Who Criticize Administration's Foreign Policy https://denniskucinich.substack.com/p/us-targets-journalists-who-
State department says it's Hamas' fault Israel won't accept Biden's peace deal (Hamas is willing to accept the deal) https://www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/state-department-says-its-hamas-fault
The Reckless Brinkmanship With Russia Just Keeps On Escalating https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-reckless-brinkmanship-with-russia
Lawmakers move to automate Selective Service registration for all men https://www.federaltimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2024/05/23/lawmakers-move-to-automate-selective-service-registration-for-all-men/
If You Want to See White “Supremacy” at Work, Don’t go to a Trump Rally, Observe the Democrats’ Approach to Climate Change
https://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php/if-you-want-see-white-supremacy-work-dont-go-trump-rally-observe-democrats-approach-climate-change
The CIA Has “Georgia On Its Mind” https://joebrunoli.substack.com/p/the-cia-has-georgia-on-its-mind
Police Are Sending Student Protesters to the ER. Campus Cops Don’t Keep Us Safe. https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/05/police-are-sending-student-protesters-to-the-er-campus-cops-dont-keep-us-safe/
The Fight for Palestinian Recognition in American Academia https://www.citizenschronicle.org/p/the-fight-for-palestinian-recognition
Some of AIPAC’s Biggest Donors Are Also Financing Attacks Against Labor Rights https://truthout.org/articles/some-of-aipacs-biggest-donors-are-also-financing-attacks-against-labor-rights/
Scott Ritter: On My Way to Russia I Met Big Brother. https://www.youtube.com/live/lOsW84wYdzg?si=G3L4wgiRDIrK6z9A
Russian warships will arrive in Havana next week, say Cuban officials citing ‘friendly relations’ https://apnews.com/article/cuba-russia-warships-caribbean-ukraine-97905c0a6072e39e2869a18e28b0aeef
Israel Reportedly Used Fake Social Media Accounts To Garner Support From US Lawmakers On Gaza War https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/06/05/israel-reportedly-used-fake-social-media-accounts-to-garner-support-from-us-lawmakers-on-gaza-war/
When Opposing A Genocide Means You're A Nazi https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/when-opposing-a-genocide-means-youre
Everything About Israel Is Fake https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/everything-about-israel-is-fake
The Media Skew Public Perception By Manipulating People's Attention https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-media-skew-public-perception
'We Want Peace': Spain Applies to Join ICJ Genocide Case Against Israel https://www.commondreams.org/news/spain-genocide-case
Police Can Be Held Liable for Killing a Dog but Not a Black Person https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/07/police-can-be-held-liable-for-killing-a-dog-but-not-a-black-person/
Mexico Elected a Climate Scientist. But Will She Be a Climate President? https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07062024/mexico-president-elect-claudia-sheinbaum-climate-policy/
Subscribe
to The Revolution Continues on Substack today. Go to https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com and subscribe at the link at the end of
the article. You'll enjoy having each week's post automatically sent to
your email box or reading it at the Substack site. Many thanks for your
consideration.
