Yesterday as a bipartisan group of lawmakers brought an immigration proposal to the Oval Office after Trump said he would basically sign anything they came up, the real Trump came out and this came tumbling out of his bilious piehole.
“Why are we having all these people from sh*thole countries come here?” Trump said, according to The Washington Post. What Trump was referring to were people from African countries and Haiti. Instead, Trump wants to see more people from places like Norway.
This is in addition to saying “Haitians have Aids” and “Nigerians live in huts” last month right after he disbanded the President’s Council on AIDS and HIV. And of course the WH completely denied that it had happened. Or rather, didn’t.
“Certain Washington politicians chose to fight for foreign countries, but President Trump will always fight for the American people,” the White House said in a statement. However, the statement did not detail how praising Norwegian immigrants is fighting for the American people.
“The President will only accept an immigration deal that adequately addresses the visa lottery system and chain migration — two programs that hurt our economy and allow terrorists into our country,” the statement continued. “Like other nations that have merit-based immigration, President Trump is fighting for permanent solutions that make our country stronger by welcoming those who can contribute to our society, grow our economy and assimilate into our great nation. He will always reject temporary, weak and dangerous stopgap measures that threaten the lives of hardworking Americans, and undercut immigrants who seek a better life in the United States through a legal pathway.”
Trump has since called Democrats who quoted him “Liars” and threatened to record future meetings, although Republicans who were also in the room such as Lindsey Graham have confirmed it. Yeah, that’s racism.
Besides the fact that most terrorists in America are homegrown and/or White the real point here is that the second statement is frankly exactly as heartless, selfish, myopic and racist, if not moreso, than the first statement.
Take for example this Don Lemon panel from CNN last night with Charles Blow, Maria Cardona, Rick Wilson and conservative Talk Show Host John Fredericks.
“Well, Don, it’s not about race as you like to make it,” talk radio host John Fredericks started off saying in a panel discussion on Thursday’s Don Lemon show. “That’s easy and lazy. It’s about economics.”
At which point Lemon cut him off. Eventually he let him come back after apologize for calling Don “Lazy” — but it really didn’t get much better from there. (At 10:02)
Lemon to Fredericks: Do you yourself believe these countries are shitholes?
Fredericks: What I believe is, look there are two issues here.
Lemon: Do you in fact believe, because you said to me ‘truer words have never been spoken’, do you think that these countries are shitholes?
Frederick: I believe that taking in lottery visa scam immigrants from countries that have low education and low skills….
Lemon: You're not answering my question.
Fredericks: I don’t know, I haven’t been to the countries … I’m trying to give you substantive answer…
Lemon: You’re saying that truer words have never been spoken then give me the evidence that it’s true. Do you believe it or not?
Fredericks: You just cut me off.
Lemon: Answer my question. Do you believe it’s true?
Fredericks: I believe that immigrants that are coming in from these countries under the scam visa system are uneducated and very low skilled. And so here’s what happens: They come to the United States and they do nothing to increase the prosperity of the American worker.
Cardona: Oh My. GOD. I can not believe this…
Fredericks: They lower wages, or they go on welfare and extend our entitlement system. It’s an economic reality that you people will not grasp and understand. Low skilled workers and uneducated workers coming into the United States… Look Australia and Canada have a merit based system, they’re run by Liberal Labour governments, you know why they do that? They want people coming to their country that are going to enhance the prosperity of their citizens.
Now in fairness I must assume that people like Fredericks say this because of right-wing studies like these.
This study is the first in recent years to examine immigrant (legal and illegal) and native welfare use using the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). While its complexity makes it difficult to use, the survey is widely regarded as providing the most accurate picture of welfare participation. The SIPP shows immigrant households use welfare at significantly higher rates than native households, even higher than indicated by other Census surveys.
- In 2012, 51 percent of households headed by an immigrant (legal or illegal) reported that they used at least one welfare program during the year, compared to 30 percent of native households. Welfare in this study includes Medicaid and cash, food, and housing programs.
- Welfare use is high for both new arrivals and well-established immigrants. Of households headed by immigrants who have been in the country for more than two decades, 48 percent access welfare.
- No single program explains immigrants' higher overall welfare use. For example, not counting subsidized school lunch, welfare use is still 46 percent for immigrants and 28 percent for natives. Not counting Medicaid, welfare use is 44 percent for immigrants and 26 percent for natives.
- Immigrant households have much higher use of food programs (40 percent vs. 22 percent for natives) and Medicaid (42 percent vs. 23 percent). Immigrant use of cash programs is somewhat higher than natives (12 percent vs. 10 percent) and use of housing programs is similar to natives.
- Welfare use varies among immigrant groups. Households headed by immigrants from Central America and Mexico (73 percent), the Caribbean (51 percent), and Africa (48 percent) have the highest overall welfare use. Those from East Asia (32 percent), Europe (26 percent), and South Asia (17 percent) have the lowest.
Data such as the above has been used to justify the idea of “merit based” immigration policy claiming that we don’t want to bring in people that will be non-productive, but this process is still inherently racist because it assumes that each individual person is going to only be perfectly representative of their national average.
There is one problem to those numbers: most immigrants are legally barred from even receiving welfare.
- Legal permanent residents (LPRs) who were residents of the United States as of Aug. 22, 1996, are barred from receiving food stamps and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. Each state, however, is allowed to offer LPRs Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Medicaid. Since 1997, states have been mandated to provide State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) coverage to immigrant children legally in the U.S. before Aug. 22, 1996.
- LPRs entering after Aug. 22, 1996 are not eligible for food stamps or SSI. However, they can apply for Medicaid and TANF benefits five years after entering the country legally, and are then allowed benefits at each state's discretion. States may use the maintenance of effort requirement to serve post-1996 legal immigrants who would be eligible for TANF if not for the five-year bar. In addition, the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 restored immigrants' access to food stamps.
- Refugees and asylees are eligible for benefits seven years after their date of entry.
- Nonimmigrants and undocumented immigrants are barred from receiving benefits. They are eligible, however, for public health, emergency services, and programs identified by the attorney general as necessary for the protection of life and safety.
Also because of the welfare reform of the 90’s the rates of welfare participation among immigrants has been declining, not increasing.
- By 1997, noncitizen families with incomes below 200 percent of poverty had welfare use rates that were significantly lower than citizens' rates?14.5 percent versus 17.9 percent. (Fix and Passel 1999)
- Between 1995 and 2000, the number of noncitizen children and noncitizen parents receiving Medicaid fell by seven to eight percentage points. At the same time, the percentage of low-income, noncitizen children and parents who lack health insurance, including job-based insurance, increased by six to seven percentage points. (Fremstad 2002).
- Between 1994 and 1999, low-income LPR families with children receiving TANF decreased by 53 percent, and refugee families receiving TANF decreased by 78 percent. (Fix and Passel 2002).
- While the number of naturalized citizen families increased by 480,000 between 1994 and 1999, the number participating in TANF dropped by 300,000. There were only 16,000 new enrollments. At the same time, the foreign-born population grew from 24.5 million in 1995 to 28.4 million in 2000. (Fix and Passel 2002).
This entire line of thinking also presumes that only those people who have already become accomplished are worth having as opposed to those who continue to have potential that has yet to be fulfilled, and possibly could only become realized in a nation with greater opportunities. The value of immigrants isn’t always what people have already done and how they can be USED by our economic system, but it’s also how they may be highly motivated by the troubled experiences in the home to strive hard for something better.
And as it turns out when you look, for example, at data related to the rate of entrepreneurs among natives and immigrants it begins to paint a very different picture than the above.
Immigrants are known as entrepreneurial people, for obvious reasons: those with the ambition and energy to uproot themselves and build new lives in a distant land are well equipped to build businesses and the economy, too. That is the common wisdom, anyway, which a new study from the Fiscal Policy Institute strikingly confirms. The study, based on census data, looks at owners of small businesses across the country and paints a broad and detailed picture of immigrant entrepreneurship.
The study found that there were 900,000 immigrants among small-business owners in the United States, about 18 percent of the total. This percentage is higher than the immigrant share of the overall population, which is 13 percent, and the immigrant share of the labor force, at 16 percent. Small businesses in which half or more of the owners were immigrants employed 4.7 million people in 2007, the latest year for which data were available, generating $776 billion in receipts. They accounted for 30 percent of the growth in small businesses — those with fewer than 100 employees — between 1990 and 2010.
Immigrant entrepreneurs are concentrated in professional and business services, retail, construction, educational and social services, and leisure and hospitality. They own restaurants, doctor’s offices, real-estate firms, groceries and truck-transportation services. More of them come from Mexico than any other country, followed by Indians, Koreans, Cubans, Chinese and Vietnamese. California has the highest percentage of immigrants among small-business owners at 33 percent, followed by New York (29 percent), New Jersey (28 percent), Florida (26 percent) and Hawaii (23 percent).
Immigrants also have slightly higher rates of employment than their native born peers.
The unemployment rate of immigrants fell to 8.1% in 2012, the same as the jobless level for people born in America. This marks the first time in several years that immigrants have not had a higher jobless rate.
As Congress debates immigration reform, the work experiences of those born outside this country grow in importance.
Still, the overall unemployment rate of immigrants masks differences between the races. Foreign-born whites, for instance, have a higher unemployment rate than their native-born counterparts. (The unemployment rates for both white immigrants and white natives are still below the overall average though.) But other immigrant groups are less likely to be unemployed than their peers born in America.
Foreign and Native Born Employment Rates
This puts the previous Right-wing study in a dubious light because if unemployment for Latino Immigrants is only 9.1% — how exactly are 73% of them on welfare?
Generally speaking on top of being more involved in starting businesses and providing jobs Black and Latino Immigrants — from the Shithole Countries — are actually more likely to be employed than native born Black and Latino citizens. It’s the White/European immigrants where that is reversed.
The attitude here is of course viciously racist, but again even if you accept the “Economic” take on it — it’s still based on blatantly bigoted ideas. Even if it’s not racial bigotry, it’s still economic bigotry that is not fully born out by the facts.
It ignores the fact that people who come from difficult circumstances are going to be far more highly motivated to succeed than people who already live in a prosperous country because America provides opportunities they couldn’t otherwise have.
Frankly people from Norway don’t have a good reason to come to America because their median standard of living is already far better than ours.
Norway performs very well in many measures of well-being relative to most other countries in the Better Life Index. Norway ranks top in personal security and subjective well-being and ranks above the average in environmental quality, jobs and earnings, income and wealth, education and skills, housing, work-life balance, civic engagement, social connections, and health status. These rankings are based on available selected data.
Money, while it cannot buy happiness, is an important means to achieving higher living standards. In Norway, the average household net-adjusted disposable income per capita is USD 35 739 a year, higher than the OECD average of USD 30 563 a year. There is a considerable gap between the richest and poorest – the top 20% of the population earn close to four times as much as the bottom 20%.
In terms of employment, about 74% of people aged 15 to 64 in Norway have a paid job, above the OECD employment average of 67%, and one of the highest rates in the OECD. Some 76% of men are in paid work, compared with 73% of women. In Norway, about 3% of employees work very long hours, much less than the OECD average of 13%, with 5% of men working very long hours compared with just 1% of women.
Good education and skills are important requisites for finding a job. In Norway, 82% of adults aged 25-64 have completed upper secondary education, higher than the OECD average of 74%. This is slightly truer for women than men, as 82% of men have successfully completed high-school compared to 83% of women. In terms of the quality of the education system, the average student scored 504 in reading literacy, maths and science in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), slightly higher than the OECD average of 486. On average in Norway, girls outperformed boys by 13 points, wider than the average OECD gap of 2 points.
In terms of health, life expectancy at birth in Norway is 82 years, two years higher than the OECD average of 80 years. Life expectancy for men is 81 years, compared with 84 for women. The level of atmospheric PM2.5 – tiny air pollutant particles small enough to enter and cause damage to the lungs – is 4.6 micrograms per cubic meter, considerably lower than the OECD average of 13.9 micrograms per cubic meter. Norway also does well in terms of water quality, as 96% of people say they are satisfied with the quality of their water, compared with the OECD average of 81%, and one of the highest rates in the OECD.
Why would a Norwegian actually need to come to America at all? What does America offer them?
In fact, they’ve already begun rejecting Trump’s offer.
The Nordic country, one of the richest in the world by GDP per capita, was last year named the happiest nation on the planet and is known for a cradle-to-grave welfare state funded in part by large reserves of oil and natural gas.
...
“On behalf of Norway: Thanks, but no thanks,” tweeted Torbjoern Saetre, a politician representing Norway’s Conservative Party in a municipality near Oslo.
Others condemned the U.S. president’s comments as inappropriate or racist.
“We are not coming. Cheers from Norway,” one woman wrote.
Clearly that isn’t the case for everyone in every country. For many people around the world America offers them opportunities they simply can’t have otherwise. Just as it has for centuries as described here quite directly by CNN contributor and former CIA and FBI Officer Phil Mudd.
I’m not surprised,” Mudd confessed to Lemon. “In one way, I’m proud. I am a proud sh*tholer. My family was called Wops and mackerel-eaters. I’m proud of that. We came when with people from Ireland when they were seen as dirty people. Dirty Catholics who didn’t belong in a Protestant country.”
He went on to say that it was “sh*tholers that built this country,” he explained they were called “slopers and slant eyes. Chinese people who built this country. Sh*tholers from Japanese internment camps as American citizens and that’s the legacy we bare shame for.”
These immigrants escaped Guatemala and El Salvador, Mudd explained. He said that he worked for a sh*tholer who protected the country after 9/11.
“George Tenent [former Director of Central Intelligence for the United States Central Intelligence Agency] is a first generation Greek,” Mudd continued. “I guess he’s a sh*tholer.”
“I’m proud to be a sh*tholer and I want a t-shirt, hashtag, I am them. I’m proud, yeah, let’s stand against this and say, ‘It’s not about black people. It’s not about white people from Norway, it’s about the people who built America, and who we denigrated until we were ashamed and we realized it was inappropriate. And we’re learning the lesson again today.”
The KEY to American opportunity is that when you go to China — you can’t become Chinese. When you go to Germany, you can’t become a German. But when anyone from anywhere comes to America — they can indeed become an American. We are a concept, we are an ideal, not a race.
This is a point made by Rick Wilson to John Fredericks in the first clip — just before he said he’d “gut him like a fish.”
“I go back to this again, I’m curious that John doesn’t have any objection to Norwegian workers coming here to take high skilled high paying jobs,” Wilson said. “With a mysterous demographic characteristic I can’t put my finger on. But, you know, it goes back to a broader question, America is not a Volk, we are not a race of people. We are a proposition, we are an idea. We are a Constitution and a set of laws and principles and objectives that when you come here, if you buy into that system and play by the rules in that system, you are part of it. It is the American system, we are not based on a single demographic mix, and no matter what your flimsy economic excuses are about it.”
...
“It really comes down to that point where, if you believe in this country and the proposition of this country, then you’re color-blind to where people are coming from, if they come to this country, follow the law, play by the rules and enter the society to work hard and raise their families and embrace the American dream,” Wilson continued. “These are things that I know cause problems for people, like John, and for Donald Trump. And I know that they’re looking for many ways as many ways as they can tonight to excuse and why he says this thing. you know, about shIthole countries. It’s inexcusable. Indefensible.”
Rick is correct. America isn’t about what you can do for America — it’s about what America can enable and inspire you to do for yourself and those around you.
People are not products for America to make use of, they are individuals with their own dreams and their own hopes. What makes America Great — is the fact that it is the one country on earth that help inspire people to strive for their dreams, and hunt for their hope beyond all reasonable odds, beyond where they may have original come from, beyond what anyone else might think of them — in America you have to potential to define who you are on your own terms.
You have the opportunity to make your life into it’s best possible version.
In America, you can have hope.
Or at least, you could have before Trump.
Apparently if you come from a shithole country — there’s is no more hope for you in America. Problem is — whose to say that someone may not decide that Germany is a shithole, or that England is a shithole, or even that Norway is a hyper-liberal shithole tomorrow? Once you jump on the shithole slip-and-slide exactly where does it stop?
Friday, Jan 12, 2018 · 7:14:45 PM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
Two Things: Many of Trump’s “low skilled” workers at Mar-A-Lago come from Haiti.
CNBC flagged Mar-a-Lago’s hiring practices Friday, citing a New Yorker report from March of last year.
The magazine’s Sheelah Kolhatkar reported that the 64 foreign workers expected to be brought in to help staff the club “tend to come from two countries, Haiti and Romania, according to someone who works at Mar-a-Lago as an employee of an outside contractor.”
This by the way was after Mar-A-Lago increased their request for foreign workers this year and actually buried their ads for native employees in the back of a newspaper without a direct contact number.
And #2: The Haitian Government says that Trump laundered money from their former leader through Trump Tower.
Trump companies reportedly sold $35 million in real estate last year alone — mostly to secretive shell companies that open the president up to possible influence peddling.
According to the Buzzfeed News report, the Haitian government complained in the 1980s that former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier laundered money stolen from the Caribbean nation’s treasury by purchasing an apartment in Trump Tower.
Duvalier, nicknamed “Baby Doc,” was overthrown in 1986, but three years earlier used a Panamanian shell company called Lasa Trade and Finance to buy apartment 54-K in Trump’s Manhattan tower for $446,875 cash.
So when he needs low-cost workers or illicit cash from Shithole Countries — he’s just fine with it.
