Latinos No Longer the Face of Refugees

For the past year or so, the face of  “refugees” in the press has been “Latinos” fleeing gang violence and government corruption in their Central American homelands. But that perception changed in August. The face of refugees now is desperate Afghani families fleeing certain torture and death. But who are really refugees? Legislators have to pay close attention to legal definitions such as immigrant, migrant, asylee, and refugee when they make laws. There are clear differences the media and public should know.   

• Migrants are those populations that move from one area to another, within or between nation states.

• Immigrant is the term used for people who seek to move permanently from their home country to another. Every sovereign nation state makes their own laws stating who can immigrate there, who can’t and how those laws are to be enforced. Each year the U.S. gives out over 1 million new permanent immigration permits - Legal Permanent Residency (aka: green cards), and over 2 million legal temporary non-immigration permits. Only those with green cards can choose to apply for U.S. citizenship after five years of continuous residency; most don’t. The biggest source of illegal (aka: unauthorized, undocumented) immigration are people over-staying one of the dozens of temporary permits: students, skilled/unskilled workers, visitors, business, clergy, entertainers, and the like.

• Asylees are people who come to another country (usually a neighboring country) seeking temporary refuge from unlivable conditions in their homeland, usually due to war or natural disaster. Internationally, asylum is recognized as a temporary designation, and asylees are expected to return home. Openly seeking a better job, social benefits – a better life - is not usually an acceptable claim for asylum; some 90 percent of asylum applications in the U.S. are denied for that reason, But many deniers just stay on illegally, hoping for eventual amnesty. It is only a misdemeanor.

• Refugee is an international category developed by the United Nations to designate individuals who seek to change permanent residency to another country because they can document that they face permanent mortal danger if they stay in their homelands. Refugees are usually required to make their claims, be vetted and housed in temporary camps or shelters before they are allowed to settle in a country that accepts them. The United States grants refugees a green card within a year if they meet certain conditions. Every country handles refugees differently, as is their right.

The differences in these migration categories are not nuclear science. But politically, they are fraught. Immigrant activists, reporters, and editors often conflate the terms immigrant, refugee, asylee, and migrant into one dramatic, sympathetic, and simple (clickbait) label: “refugee.” That label has been applied for years to the tens of thousands of migrants surging illegally over the southern border even though the vast majority are not qualified for asylum, not less refugee status. The confusion undermines the entire system for legitimate asylees and refugees. President Biden raised the cap of legally vetted refugees to 125,000 last spring, but he didn’t implement it due to the pandemic. At the same time, the 2020 order for certain temporary protected status (TPS) asylees to return home was halted only temporarily by one federal court judge and will come up again. On August 25, the Supreme Court confirmed that all migrants coming into the U.S. from Mexico and seeking asylum must return to Mexico while their claims are considered. Even DACA has been declared unconstitutional by a federal court.  The “immigration” issue will most likely be a major election issue in 2022. It caused both Brexit and Trump to win in 2016.  It is essential to know the legal terms, not just the spin.

“Mask Mandates a Civil Rights Issue,” says Ed Sec Cardona

Is banning mask mandates against civil rights?  Education Secretary Miguel Cardona – the first Hispanic to hold this cabinet-level office – suggested the possibility of bringing civil rights complaints against states that ban masks in schools. “Since covid-19 disproportionately affects people of color, eliminating mask mandates constitutes an illegal barrier to their rights to an education,” Cardona argues. But critics say that this is too broad a reading of civil rights that could effectively allow the federal government to override any decision of a local or state school system.

“Racial Census Categories Becoming Obsolete,” says renowned demographer

Lots of surprising headlines emanated from the 2020 Census Report of August 2021. “D.C. No Longer a Chocolate City; only 41% are ‘Black,’” “(non-Hispanic) Whites Are Decreasing” “(racially white) Hispanics Increase in Almost Every State, But Not From Immigration” “American Asians Fastest Growing Population.” “My biggest surprise was to see how diverse Americans have become: racially, ethnically, even politically,” said William Frey, Brookings Institution Demographer. In 30 years, the classification of Americans by race and (non-monolithic multicultural) ethnic groups like Latinos and Asians will change, Frey concluded. The increasing diversity within present categories is making the absolute labels obsolete.

Legalize DACAs, Free College et al.:  Stand Alone Bills? Or Comprehensive?

Go piecemeal and pass, or go comprehensive and fail? That is the dilemma of legislators and advocates as they debate whether to piece out long-sought sympathetic bipartisan-supported immigration and infrastructure reforms. For example, the Senate’s bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill of 2013 - that included the legalization of all DREAMERS - failed to make the agenda in Congress. But House Judiciary Committee members debated on July 23, 2013, the  “KidsAct” stand-alone bill that would have fully legalized Dreamers. It was opposed by all Democrats. “It all or nothing,” said Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) at the time. “Then you’ll get nothing,” said Raul Labrador (R-IO).              

Hispanic Power, Diversity Increasingly Visible in the News

FYI: Three of the nine “moderate” Democratic Congressmen who are flexing their muscles to block approval of the $3.5 trillion social infrastructure bill until the $1.2 trillion physical infrastructure is signed into law are all Hispanics from Texas:  Henry Cuellar, Filemon Vela, and  Vicente Gonzalez. Sadly, it seems that five of the 13 soldiers killed in Afghanistan on August 16 were of Hispanic heritage; the seven others were non-Hispanic whites.