tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/immigration-411/articlesImmigration – The Conversation2024-03-28T12:51:11Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2207592024-03-28T12:51:11Z2024-03-28T12:51:11ZTweaking US trade policy could hold the key to reducing migration from Central America<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584593/original/file-20240326-28-qixbyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C53%2C2995%2C1940&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Employees at the K.P. Textil textile plant in Guatemala City.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/workers-wear-face-masks-as-a-preventive-measure-against-the-news-photo/1226220586?adppopup=true">Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Small changes to U.S. trade policy <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4376016">could significantly reduce the number of migrants</a> arriving at the southern border, according to our peer-reviewed study, which was recently published in The World Economy.</p>
<p>Our research delved into the effectiveness of existing trade agreements in creating jobs in migrant-sending countries, with a focus on Central America. We analyzed the impact that the <a href="https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/cafta-dr-dominican-republic-central-america-fta">Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement</a>, or CAFTA-DR, has had on apparel exports and jobs since being ratified by the U.S. and six countries – Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic – from 2005 to 2009.</p>
<p>CAFTA-DR was aimed at encouraging trade and investment ties. But restrictive provisions, particularly its <a href="https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/roi_e/roi_info_e.htm">rules of origin</a>, have hindered the region’s ability to benefit fully from the agreement. Under a “triple transformation” clause, only garments assembled in one of the countries from fabrics and constituent fibers originating from the region qualify for free-trade benefits.</p>
<p>This significantly limits the scope for trade expansion because of the limited range of fabrics produced in the region compared with the global market. For example, it means that <a href="https://sourcingjournal.com/denim/denim-mills/global-denim-market-105089/">many modern fabrics</a>, like the kinds used in some stretchy jeans, do not qualify.</p>
<p>Loosening the rules to allow for new fabrics would not only attract investment and create more jobs for Central Americans, it could also reduce immigration from the region by as much as 67%, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4376016">according to our estimates</a>. </p>
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<p>At present, about <a href="https://www.hinrichfoundation.com/research/article/ftas/central-american-emigration/">500,000 people work in the apparel industry</a> in Central America. It is labor-intensive, and expanding exports would increase employment. Our research shows that loosening the rules of origin to include new fabrics from outside the region would create about 120,000 direct jobs. </p>
<p>If a stronger relationship between exports and employment is assumed, this figure could even rise to about 257,500 jobs, our figures show. </p>
<p>And these jobs would be boosted by additional indirect employment around the expanding factories in Central America needed to accommodate the increased trade.</p>
<p>If would-be migrants in Central America instead chose the new apparel jobs in their home countries, we estimate that migration from Central America to the U.S. could fall by 30% to 67%.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>The migration crisis has taken <a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-trump-border-immigration-election-c37b1596ecf27d208e94bef592e7e616">center stage in U.S. political discourse</a>, with Republicans in Congress holding up legislation, including aid to Ukraine, over their demands that tougher border security measures be included as part of any package.</p>
<p>In December 2023, the number of U.S. Border Patrol encounters with migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/migrant-encounters-at-the-us-mexico-border-hit-a-record-high-at-the-end-of-2023/">hit a record high</a> of almost 250,000, and it <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/cbp-releases-january-2024-monthly-update">remained high</a> during the first few months of 2024.</p>
<p>While human rights violations, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3825251">security issues</a> <a href="https://knowledgehub.transparency.org/assets/uploads/helpdesk/Literature_review_corruption_and_migrations.pdf">and corruption</a> in migrant-sending countries are often cited as driving factors, in many cases, immigrants are <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/09/08/migrants-work-permits-adams-asylum">seeking job opportunities</a> that are unavailable in their home countries. </p>
<p>But despite the increased political attention on immigration, trade policy – which could be used to address the scarcity of secure, well-paying jobs in Central American countries with heavy migrant outflows – has largely been absent from either party’s strategy to address the “root causes” of migration.</p>
<p>We believe addressing the root causes of the current border crisis requires creating good jobs in migrant-sending countries. </p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>We looked only at one industry – apparel – in Central America and the Dominican Republic, a Caribbean nation.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10290-014-0188-3">Academic reviews suggest</a> that as many as half of all trade agreements have no significant effect on trade flows, and only about one-quarter of them increase trade. In fact, trade agreements may even create barriers to trade by adding additional clauses that are complicated or too restrictive.</p>
<p>The key question is how to make all trade agreements more effective at creating jobs in migrant-sending countries. Identifying and relaxing barriers within trade agreements is, we believe, an important first step toward reducing emigration. </p>
<p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take on interesting academic work.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220759/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>In 2021, the Mosbacher Institute received funding for Bush School student research from the American Apparel and Footwear Association while Raymond Robertson was the director. The AAFA provided neither funding nor any other form of support, including any direct or indirect support, for the research described in this article.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kaleb Girma Abreha does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Relaxing ‘rules of origin’ restrictions in an existing trade deal could add tens of thousands of jobs in Central America.Raymond Robertson, Professor of Economics and Government, Texas A&M UniversityKaleb Girma Abreha, Assistant Research Scientist, Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics, and Public Policy, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2267272024-03-27T08:56:00Z2024-03-27T08:56:00ZView from the Hill: Albanese hit by unexpected wave as he tries to clear the decks<p>In 2023, Anthony Albanese was shooting for the moon, his eyes on the Voice referendum. On one view, he looked like the idealist reflecting his left-wing roots. </p>
<p>In 2024, we’re seeing a pragmatic, determined, managerial prime minister, busy attempting to reinforce the anchors of the ship of state and to clear its decks ahead of the May 14 budget. But this week, some rough weather hit the boat. </p>
<p>At a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2015/jul/25/alp-conference-2015-bill-shorten-to-unveil-asylum-policy-politics-live">Labor national conference less than a decade ago</a> Albanese opposed the ALP embracing turning back boats carrying asylum seekers. This week, his government tried to rush through legislation to give it power to force non-citizens to cooperate in their removal by, for example, signing an application for a passport or other travel documents.</p>
<p>Also this week, the government watered down its proposed vehicle efficiency measure in an effort to defuse opposition attacks that it is a “new car and ute tax”. </p>
<p>On another front, Albanese last week took the extraordinary course of declaring the government won’t proceed with legislation on religious discrimination without bipartisan support. </p>
<p>Taken together, these actions show a PM wanting to chart a course firmly focused on an election that is at most just over a year away. </p>
<p>Preoccupied as it was with the Voice referendum for much of last year, the government was late to appreciate the extent to which voters were becoming overwhelmingly concerned with the cost of living. </p>
<p>It’s not making that mistake now. </p>
<p>Last year it also didn’t anticipate a possible threat to its immigration detention regime. It was ambushed by the High Court’s judgement in November prohibiting the indefinite incarceration of immigration detainees. </p>
<p>As a result of that decision, about 150 people were released, the Coalition sparked a fear campaign about ex-criminals roaming the streets, and the government played catch-up with emergency legislation including for preventative detention. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-consequences-of-the-governments-new-migration-legislation-could-be-dire-for-individuals-and-for-australia-226713">The consequences of the government's new migration legislation could be dire – for individuals and for Australia</a>
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<p>But it always has the refugee lawyers on its heels and so, for example, to avoid court rebuffs to legislation already passed, it has been withdrawing its requirement for individuals to wear ankle bracelets.</p>
<p>The government didn’t want to be caught out a second time by the High Court, which has another seminal case coming, with a hearing in April. It relates to an Iranian man who’s refusing to cooperate with attempts to deport him; Iran won’t take back involuntary removals. </p>
<p>The government has better prospects of winning this case. But it wants to shore up its defences, both to convince the court, and in the event the worst happens. </p>
<p>This week’s bill would prohibit non-citizens the government is trying to remove from refusing to cooperate. The penalty would be a mandatory year’s jail, with a maximum sentence of five years. Countries that refuse to accept involuntary returnees would also be subject to sanctions – their citizens (with some exceptions) could not get visas to come to Australia. </p>
<p>One can imagine what Labor would have said if a Coalition government had thrown up such a bill with no notice. </p>
<p>The government gambled the opposition would have little option but to pass the bill. But on Wednesday the Coalition called its bluff. </p>
<p>In a rare alliance of Coalition, Greens and crossbenchers, the Senate has referred the bill to a committee inquiry. This is due to report on May 7, meaning the legislation can’t be passed before the budget session (or the High Court hearing).</p>
<p>Worse for the government, the heat intensified on Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil, after a report that she had bawled out her departmental secretary, Stephanie Foster, over Foster making public, in the context of a Senate hearing, a document about the ex-detainees’ criminal backgrounds. </p>
<p>On the same day the immigration legislation was unveiled, Energy Minister Chris Bowen and Transport Minister Catherine King walked back the government’s vehicle efficiency standards policy. </p>
<p>Initially the government had released three options for this new (and overdue) policy, declaring its preferred option would see Australia in line with the United States. </p>
<p>Then a few things happened. The Coalition went into full attack. The US recalibrated its own position, under pressure from its auto industry. The Greens, unhappy about another government policy, indicated they wouldn’t wave through the government’s option. </p>
<p>The Albanese office maintained oversight of negotiations with the industry, and agreed to take meetings with senior stakeholders from the car companies and industry bodies, to build confidence in the consultation process.</p>
<p>The retreat on emissions standards is modest, although the opposition will campaign against the standards regardless. </p>
<p>While the battle over the immigration bill and the retreat on emission reduction standards were playing out in public, behind closed doors Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus was briefing his opposition counterpart Michaelia Cash, the Greens and crossbenchers about the proposed religious discrimination draft legislation. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/future-of-anthony-albaneses-religious-discrimination-legislation-is-in-peter-duttons-hands-226119">Future of Anthony Albanese's religious discrimination legislation is in Peter Dutton's hands</a>
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<p>The government has given Cash the draft legislation, on a confidential basis. The Greens and some crossbenchers were angry they were not provided with it. </p>
<p>From what’s been said so far, the proposed religious discrimination legislation would scrap the present provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act, which allow religious schools to discriminate on grounds of sexuality and gender identification against both students and teachers. </p>
<p>This would be replaced in new legislation by a prohibition of any discrimination against students. Schools would be able to preference people sharing their faith and values in hiring, but not discriminate in firing. </p>
<p>In addition, there would be an explicit protection to safeguard people against discrimination on the basis of their faith. </p>
<p>The Senate forced the government into an inquiry on the immigration legislation, but Albanese has said he won’t have an inquiry into the religious freedom legislation. </p>
<p>Albanese’s conditional stand on this legislation is driven by his not wanting a divisive debate in the run up to the election. He has been seared enough by the Voice issue. </p>
<p>On religious discrimination, he is wedged between LGBTQ+ advocates and various faith groups. The situation is further complicated by the Greens saying they would be willing to work with the government on the legislation. If the attempt to get bipartisanship – Labor-Coalition agreement – falls apart, both sides can blame each other. Most voters will have their minds on more urgent concerns. </p>
<p>The final days of the autumn parliamentary sitting have run off course for the government, with the delay of the immigration legislation. The uncertainty hanging over the religious freedom legislation is unhelpful. Despite Albanese’s efforts, the seas are still choppy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226727/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In 2024, we’re seeing a pragmatic, determined, managerial prime minister trying to reinforce the anchors of the ship of state ahead of the May budget.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2267132024-03-27T03:24:35Z2024-03-27T03:24:35ZThe consequences of the government’s new migration legislation could be dire – for individuals and for Australia<p>The Albanese government came to power with <a href="https://twitter.com/AlboMP/status/1154510763433684992?lang=en">a promise</a> to be “strong on borders without being weak on humanity”. </p>
<p>But there was little humanity in parliament yesterday as the government tried to force through some of the most draconian migration laws this country has seen in decades. The draft legislation was distributed to MPs and introduced in the lower house for debate <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-26/government-suddenly-brings-on-legislation-deportation-powers/103632704">just hours</a> later.</p>
<p>Today, the senate <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-27/coalition-wont-support-immigration-legislation/103638462">stopped the bill</a> in its tracks, referring it to a committee instead of passing it just before a parliamentary break.</p>
<p>In a radical departure from the existing framework, the government is seeking to further criminalise the migration system. The consequences could be disastrous.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-government-is-fighting-a-new-high-court-case-on-immigration-detainees-whats-it-about-and-whats-at-stake-226120">The government is fighting a new High Court case on immigration detainees. What's it about and what's at stake?</a>
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<h2>What would the laws do?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r7179">Migration Amendment (Removal and Other Measures) Bill</a> proposes amendments to the Migration Act to deal with situations where non-citizens subject to removal are not cooperating with government authorities, or where their own government refuses to take them back. </p>
<p>It is widely understood to be a response to the High Court’s ruling in <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-high-court-has-decided-indefinite-detention-is-unlawful-what-happens-now-217438">November 2023</a> that found indefinite immigration detention to be unlawful. </p>
<p>It’s also considered an attempt to pre-empt <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/government-sweats-on-critical-new-court-challenge-on-immigration-detainees-20240315-p5fcro.html">further litigation</a> scheduled in the High Court. The case of an Iranian man refusing to cooperate in his deportation is due before the court <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-government-is-fighting-a-new-high-court-case-on-immigration-detainees-whats-it-about-and-whats-at-stake-226120">next month</a>.</p>
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<p>However, the amendments introduced in the bill go far beyond addressing this issue. They have wide-ranging impacts for how non-citizens are treated in Australia, and indeed for Australia’s relationship with governments around the world. </p>
<p>As such, it is particularly concerning the government tried to rush the bill through parliament without the opportunity for proper scrutiny or review. While a senate committee hearing is a welcome development, it won’t fix everything. </p>
<h2>Criminalising non-cooperation</h2>
<p>The bill gives the minister new powers to compel people who have exhausted their options to stay in Australia to cooperate and take steps towards their own removal. This would apply not only to people affected by the High Court’s ruling last year, but also to certain bridging visa holders. </p>
<p>Extraordinarily, it would also apply to “any other non-citizens” the minister might seek to designate through the migration regulations. </p>
<p>The powers include directing individuals to sign and submit documents to facilitate their departure, attend appointments, and provide any other information as required. In the case of families, if the parents are affected non-citizens, they can be directed to help facilitate the removal of their children, irrespective of whether it is in the child’s best interests.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/government-rushing-through-bill-to-crack-down-on-uncooperative-non-citizens-it-is-trying-to-remove-226615">Government rushing through bill to crack down on 'uncooperative' non-citizens it is trying to remove</a>
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<p>Anyone who fails to comply with these directions without a “reasonable excuse” will face a mandatory jail term of between one and five years, a A$93,900 fine, or both. The fact that someone faces a real risk of persecution or other serious harm will not be considered a reasonable excuse. </p>
<p>These are extraordinary provisions without precedent in Australia. Even in the context of terrorism offences, a failure to comply with a direction does not result in mandatory imprisonment. </p>
<p>The closest comparisons are offences under various state laws concerning failure to disclose identity, which may be punished by up to 12 months’ imprisonment. In some states, reportable offenders, such as child sex offenders, who fail to produce electronic devices when directed by police, may face up to five years in prison. </p>
<p>However, in all these cases, these are maximum sentences, not a mandatory minimum sentence. As the Law Council of Australia President <a href="https://lawcouncil.au/media/media-releases/removal-bill-causes-rule-of-law-and-human-rights-concerns">put it</a>: “In effect, this Bill will implement mandatory sentencing”.</p>
<h2>Concerns for fast-track asylum seekers</h2>
<p>Section 199D of the bill attempts to ensure that the new powers are not used to remove individuals to a country where they would face a real risk of persecution or other serious harm. </p>
<p>But there is a risk the bill could still lead to people who do have protection claims being forced to return to countries where their life or freedom is threatened. There are particular concerns for people assessed under Australia’s fast-track asylum processes. </p>
<p>The Labor party has acknowledged these processes have not been <a href="https://alp.org.au/media/2594/2021-alp-national-platform-final-endorsed-platform.pdf">“fair, thorough and robust”</a>, meaning people with genuine refugee claims may have been denied protection. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-governments-preventative-detention-bill-heres-how-the-laws-will-work-and-what-they-mean-for-australias-detention-system-219226">What is the government's preventative detention bill? Here's how the laws will work and what they mean for Australia's detention system</a>
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<p>Others could also be at risk of removal contrary to Australia’s protection obligations if their personal circumstances or the situation in their home country has changed since their original protection claim was determined. </p>
<p>The Refugee Council of Australia has warned about these risks and shared its <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/new-legislation-puts-refugees-failed-by-fast-track-process-at-risk/">concerns</a> that “those who do have strong claims, but have not had a fair hearing or review, will be sent back to real harm.” </p>
<h2>Countries can be blacklisted</h2>
<p>The bill also gives the minister a new power to “blacklist” entire countries and prevent their citizens from applying for Australian visas.</p>
<p>This is a discretionary power that requires little consultation and is unlikely to be subject to administrative or judicial review. The only limitations on this power are that the minister first consults with the prime minister and minister for foreign affairs. The immigration minister must also detail why they think it is in the national interest to make such a decision.</p>
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<p>The travel bans are intended to force targeted countries to cooperate and accept the return of their own nationals. But in practice, they will prevent people who may wish to work, study in or visit Australia from leaving – through no fault of their own. </p>
<p>Travel bans could also have unintended consequences. Diplomatic relations between countries may sour following such decisions, and countries may opt to <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/homesec/IF11025.pdf">retaliate</a> in other ways, whether through trade, tourism or other matters of international concern. </p>
<p>The issue of international cooperation concerning the return of nationals to their home country is a diplomatic one that should be negotiated in good faith between political leaders. It is quite likely that inducements rather than threats would work better. </p>
<p>Other countries may also simply be unmoved to take any further steps to facilitate returns, or may even welcome their citizens not being able to visit Australia. It is important to remember that not all countries wish for their citizenry to be able to leave.</p>
<h2>Walking the walk</h2>
<p>At a time when the immigration minister has <a href="https://minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/AndrewGiles/Pages/refugee-communities-assoc-aust-conf-21092023.aspx">emphasised</a> the “importance of lived experience in shaping national and international dialogue and policy” and claimed that the “government walk the walk on meaningful participation for refugees”, it is disappointing to see attempts to rush this bill through parliament without any consultation with refugee communities and other stakeholders, and very limited scrutiny. </p>
<p>The Albanese government is continuing the tradition of governments before it by attempting to ram legislation through parliament that severely curtails human rights and is disproportionate to its stated objectives. Both the government and the opposition have a vested interest in passing laws that further expand the minister’s discretionary powers, which are already ill-suited to a liberal democracy. </p>
<p>But the changes will have far-reaching consequences for both our migration program and our foreign policy objectives, and demand further democratic scrutiny.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226713/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane McAdam receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a member of the expert sub-committee of the Ministerial Advisory Council on Skilled Migration. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Ghezelbash receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the NSW Government. He is a member of the management committee of Refugee Advice and Casework Services and Wallumatta Legal, and a Special Counsel at the National Justice Project.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Madeline Gleeson and Tristan Harley do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The government has failed in its attempt to ram unprecedented changes to the migration act through parliament. The laws, now being reviewed by a senate committee, could be disastrous.Jane McAdam, Scientia Professor and Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW SydneyDaniel Ghezelbash, Associate Professor and Deputy Director, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Law & Justice, UNSW SydneyMadeline Gleeson, Senior Research Fellow, Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW SydneyTristan Harley, Senior Research Associate, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2266152024-03-26T05:12:39Z2024-03-26T05:12:39ZGovernment rushing through bill to crack down on ‘uncooperative’ non-citizens it is trying to remove<p>The government is seeking to rush legislation through parliament to crack down on non-citizens who refuse to cooperate with attempts to remove them. </p>
<p>The bill, introduced by Immigration Minister Andrew Giles just after noon on Tuesday, also allows a minister to designate a country as a “removal concern country” when it won’t cooperate with the return of its citizens. </p>
<p>This would mean that, apart from certain exceptions, nationals of that country who are outside Australia could not apply for a visa to come here. Exemptions would be for close family members of Australian citizens and permanent residents as well as applications for refugee and humanitarian visas. </p>
<p>Giles said: “This legislation sends a strong signal about the government’s expectations of cooperation with removal efforts, by non-citizens who are on a removal pathway, and by other countries where it is appropriate for them to accept their nationals on removal from Australia”.</p>
<p>The government wants the legislation, which has gone through the House of Representatives, passed by the Senate on Tuesday night, or Wednesday at the latest. Parliament adjourns on Wednesday until the budget on May 14.</p>
<p>The government allowed minimum opportunity for debate in the house. It said there were time factors requiring the legislation to be passed quickly.</p>
<p>The opposition demanded a brief Senate inquiry to be held late on Tuesday so it could question officials. The government agreed to it.</p>
<p>Crossbenchers were outraged at the lack of time to consider the bill. </p>
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<p>The government’s action is driven by a looming High Court hearing next month that, if it went against the Commonwealth, could prompt the release of another group of people from immigration detention. </p>
<p>The case is about an Iranian citizen who has been in immigration detention for a decade. He has refused to cooperate with efforts to send him back to Iran, saying he fears for his life. Iran won’t take back involuntary removals. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-government-is-fighting-a-new-high-court-case-on-immigration-detainees-whats-it-about-and-whats-at-stake-226120">The government is fighting a new High Court case on immigration detainees. What's it about and what's at stake?</a>
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<p>The government believes it is more likely to win this case than an earlier High Court one, when its defeat led to the release of 152 people from immigration detention. But it wants to bolster its defences.</p>
<p>Giles said people who refused to cooperate with their removal would face penalties of a mandatory minimum sentence of one year in jail and a maximum of five years.</p>
<p>Giles told parliament: “Unfortunately, examples of non-cooperation with the government’s removal efforts have been going on for far too long. Against the expectations of the Australian community. And undermining the integrity of our migration laws.”</p>
<p>The measures “will make clear that a non-citizen who is on a removal pathway is expected to voluntarily leave Australia. And must cooperate with steps taken to arrange their lawful removal from Australia.</p>
<p>"The removal pathway direction provides a positive duty on the non‑citizen to cooperate with removal efforts,” Giles said.</p>
<p>An example of the cooperation required from those subject to removal is completing, signing and submitting an application for a passport or other foreign travel document to facilitate their removal.</p>
<p>“When this legislation is enacted, it will make clear that the parliament expects foreign countries to cooperate with Australia to facilitate the lawful removal of their citizens from Australia,” Giles said.</p>
<p>Briefing crossbenchers, Giles named Iran and Iraq as countries which did not take back involuntary returns but indicated there could be a number of others potentially affected by the legislation. Government sources other countries could be Zimbabwe and South Sudan.</p>
<p>He told parliament the legislation would apply to various categories of non-citizens who are on “removal pathways”. </p>
<p>He stressed: “these amendments are targeted at non-citizens who have come to the end of any visa application processes. </p>
<p>"These individuals may be unlawful non-citizens who have exhausted their visa processing options. And who are being held in immigration detention</p>
<p>"Or they may be in the community on a bridging visa that is issued for removal purposes.”</p>
<p>In a range of safeguards in the legislation, the minister may not give a direction </p>
<ul>
<li><p>“if the non-citizen has applied for a protection visa and the application is not yet finally determined</p></li>
<li><p>to take an action in relation to a country from which the individual is owed protection</p></li>
<li><p>directly to children under 18 (but can make a direction to that child’s parents to take certain actions)</p></li>
<li><p>to take actions related to making or withdrawing an Australian visa application, or in regards to court or tribunal proceedings.”</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Greens senator David Shoebridge accused Labor of “trying to outflank the Coalition to the right by coming up with new and novel ways to be cruel particularly to refugees and asylum seekers”.</p>
<p>The opposition spokesman on home affairs, James Paterson, said: “It feels like groundhog day. Another day, another rushed, patch up job from a panicked government when it comes to border protection, national security and community safety. </p>
<p>"This is now the fourth piece of legislation that the Albanese government has dropped on the opposition and the crossbench in the parliament and asked us to pass in as little as 36 hours to deal with the rolling crisis of immigration detention.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226615/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The government is rushing legislation through parliament to crack down on unlawful immigrants. In a further reaction to the high court decision late last year.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2194672024-03-25T12:39:47Z2024-03-25T12:39:47ZExcessively high rents are a major burden for immigrants in US cities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583715/original/file-20240322-16-rcdx9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C7%2C5069%2C3802&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nashville is one of the fastest-growing U.S. cities and increasingly a destination for immigrants.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sunrise-view-of-nashville-skyline-as-seen-over-the-news-photo/1449200320">Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Rents across the U.S. have <a href="https://theconversation.com/affordable-housing-in-the-us-is-increasingly-scarce-making-renters-ask-where-do-we-go-176778">climbed to staggering levels</a> in recent years. Millions of renters spend <a href="https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/calendar/americas-rental-housing-2024">more than 30% of their income</a> on rent and utilities, a situation that housing experts call <a href="https://nlihc.org/gap/about#:%7E:text=A%20household%20is%20cost%2Dburdened,%25%20are%20severely%20cost%2Dburdened.">being cost burdened</a>.</p>
<p>High rents affect almost all segments of the population but are an especially heavy burden for immigrants, particularly those who have not yet become U.S. citizens. Immigrants, both documented and undocumented, play <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/19/opinion/immigration-us-economy.html">important roles in the U.S. economy</a>. They often provide the cheapest labor in the <a href="https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/issue-brief/employment-among-immigrants-and-implications-for-health-and-health-care/">riskiest of industries</a>. Yet they are still not broadly accepted or supported in many U.S. cities. </p>
<p>We are geographers who study housing market issues, including <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=CsIu0wMAAAAJ&hl=en">racial-ethnic diversity</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3Z9CehkAAAAJ&hl=en">housing affordability</a>. Our research on Nashville, which has emerged as an immigrant metropolis in the Southern U.S., suggests that foreign-born residents who are not yet citizens are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00167428.2023.2217266">far more burdened by high rents</a> than other groups. </p>
<p>Many immigrant workers in Nashville spend more than 50% of their incomes on rent. This makes it hard for them to afford education and job training, healthy food, health care and other necessities that can help them participate as productive residents. Heavy rent burdens undermine their ability to have a higher standard of living and to be included in mainstream society. </p>
<p>As immigrants increasingly <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-28/chicago-and-denver-are-growing-fast-as-migrant-destinations">fan out across the U.S.</a>, we believe cities receiving new foreign-born residents should anticipate a growing need for affordable housing.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/A8hBdWzlAHQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A 2022 study found that immigrant families in San Diego faced some of the highest rent burdens in the surrounding county.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hard times for renters</h2>
<p>The past 15 years have been challenging for renters <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-023-10898-3">across the country</a>. In the 2008-09 recession, which was triggered by a collapse in the housing market, millions lost their homes to foreclosure and <a href="https://www.gao.gov/blog/what-can-great-recession-teach-us-about-rent-affordability-age-coronavirus">became renters</a>. Tighter financing made it harder for others to buy homes. By 2015, <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/assets/2018/04/rent-burden_report_v2.pdf">almost 43 million households had been pushed into renting</a>.</p>
<p>Today <a href="https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/state-nations-housing-2022">about 37% of U.S. homes are occupied by renters</a>. By 2020, almost 46% of U.S. renters paid more than 30% of their household income toward rent. As of June 2021, the median monthly rent in the 50 largest U.S. cities was $1,575 – an 8.1% increase from June 2020.</p>
<p>The heaviest rent burdens fall disproportionately on minorities. Almost 46% of African American-led renter households are rent burdened, <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/assets/2018/04/rent-burden_report_v2.pdf">compared with 34% of white households</a>. </p>
<p>The COVID-19 pandemic worsened housing insecurity for people of color because of <a href="https://theconversation.com/removing-urban-highways-can-improve-neighborhoods-blighted-by-decades-of-racist-policies-166220">longstanding racially targeted policies</a> and widespread <a href="https://theconversation.com/pandemic-misery-index-reveals-far-reaching-impact-of-covid-19-on-american-lives-especially-on-blacks-and-latinos-159902">health and economic disparities</a>. Renters of color faced higher cost burdens and <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/pandemic-exacerbated-housing-instability-renters-color/">eviction rates</a>. In Nashville, this was especially true in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00167428.2023.2217266">Latino and Somali communities</a>. </p>
<h2>Why immigrant housing matters</h2>
<p>Immigration is the main driver of population growth in the U.S., which is important for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/02/27/economy-immigration-border-biden/">filling jobs and boosting tax revenues</a>. After dipping because of pandemic-era restrictions in 2020-22, immigration to the U.S. started growing again, adding <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/population-trends-return-to-pre-pandemic-norms.html">1.1 million new residents in 2023</a>. </p>
<p>Foreign-born residents make up 7.15% of the U.S. population today. Most of these immigrants are not citizens, although <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship-resource-center/naturalization-statistics">more than 878,000 people became citizens in 2023</a>. The median length of time these new citizens spent in the U.S. before becoming naturalized was seven years. </p>
<p>Nashville is the largest metropolis in Tennessee and one of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/grow.12496">fastest-growing immigrant gateways in the South</a>. It is home to over 37% of Tennessee’s Latino population and has been a <a href="https://dc.uwm.edu/ijger/vol4/iss1/1/">major destination</a> for Latinos and other foreign-born residents since the early 2000s. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjrFuVXPYhB/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>For <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00167428.2023.2217266">our research</a>, we used census data estimates for 2015-19 from the <a href="http://doi.org/10.18128/D050.V16.0">National Historical Geographic Information System</a> covering metro Nashville’s 13 counties, which contain 372 census tracts. We found that Nashville’s most racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods had the highest levels of rent burden.</p>
<p>This includes census tracts with high shares of foreign-born residents who are not yet citizens, especially if those residents are Black or Latino. Our analysis of the 37 census tracts (10% of the region’s total) with the largest shares of foreign-born residents who are not yet citizens shows that the average monthly rent paid by a household in these tracts was $1,306.20, compared with $1,288.70 metrowide. </p>
<p>In the 37 tracts with the largest shares of Latino residents and Black residents, we found that about 21% of households spent more than 50% of their household income on rent. </p>
<p>Our findings corroborate other scholarly analyses of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26409159">Nashville’s Somali refugees</a>, who tend to be clustered in communities that also house other diverse groups, including Egyptians and other African immigrants. In these areas, gentrification and urban renewal have forced several Black and Somali communities from ownership into renting. </p>
<p>We believe specific groups of foreign-born residents may either have been ineligible or didn’t know how to apply for <a href="https://www.latinopolicyforum.org/publications/fact-sheets/document/Forum_Housing-PublicCharge-2.pdf">government-funded housing and rental assistance programs</a> and may have had to rent from predatory landlords as a result. Some Muslim immigrants also <a href="https://sahanjournal.com/housing/minnesota-homebuying-islamic-no-interest-loans/">avoid applying for bank loans</a> because of <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/riba.asp">a concept in Islamic banking called ribā</a>, which views charging interest on loans as unjust and exploitative. </p>
<p>More encouragingly, we found that tracts with newer housing stock, built since 2000, have relatively lower rent burdens even though those tracts are home to many Black and non-Asian minority residents. This suggests that newer development has an important role to play in mitigating rent, especially in suburban, relatively affordable locations. In the 37 census tracts with the most foreign-born residents who are not yet citizens, about 28% of the total housing stock was built in 2000 or later, compared with 23% across Nashville. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583172/original/file-20240320-17-x2dx79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A row of men in hard hats, shoveling dirt." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583172/original/file-20240320-17-x2dx79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583172/original/file-20240320-17-x2dx79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583172/original/file-20240320-17-x2dx79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583172/original/file-20240320-17-x2dx79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583172/original/file-20240320-17-x2dx79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583172/original/file-20240320-17-x2dx79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583172/original/file-20240320-17-x2dx79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Federal, state and city officials break ground in 2022 on a mixed-income residential development at Cayce Place, Nashville’s largest subsidized housing property. The city is replacing aging structures on the site, built between 1941 and 1954.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nashville-mdha.org/2022/05/04/mdha-breaks-ground-on-newest-residential-development-at-cayce-place-2/">Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Easing rent burdens</h2>
<p>One of the best ways to mitigate rent burdens is to build more housing and create affordable housing. However, communities sometimes oppose affordable housing projects and <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/02/14/metro/milton-housing-vote-referendum/">pro-development zoning</a> because of fears of crime, traffic congestion or populations viewed as undesirable. Nashville <a href="https://www.thecentersquare.com/tennessee/article_c69cc1a8-2ae6-11ed-96e6-332a6bc8c03b.html">is not immune to this syndrome</a>.</p>
<p>The cost of housing has been <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/columnists/david-plazas/2017/12/17/nashville-affordable-housing-experts-city-must-talk-less-do-more/945289001/">a heated topic in the Nashville region</a> since the mid-2010s. A 2023 Urban Institute report recommended creating more affordable housing in Nashville by promoting partnerships among academic, faith-based and health care institutions that <a href="https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2023-11/Promoting%20Affordable%20Housing%20Partnerships%20in%20Nashville.pdf">own land that could be developed for housing</a>. And the <a href="https://www.nashville.gov/departments/council">Metropolitan Council</a> for the Nashville region plans to substantially revamp building codes to <a href="https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/nashville/metro-council-wants-to-revamp-codes-to-build-affordable-housing/">promote new housing construction</a>. </p>
<p>However, critics argue that the council <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/columnists/david-plazas/2024/02/15/nashville-zoning-laws-affordable-housing-oconnell-cooper-metro-council/72601833007/">gives too much weight to anti-development arguments</a>. And there is little discussion of specific ways to help groups that are ineligible for benefits and assistance that are available to U.S. citizens. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583161/original/file-20240320-24-33s412.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A crowded meeting room with speakers clustered at a podium." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583161/original/file-20240320-24-33s412.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583161/original/file-20240320-24-33s412.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583161/original/file-20240320-24-33s412.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583161/original/file-20240320-24-33s412.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583161/original/file-20240320-24-33s412.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583161/original/file-20240320-24-33s412.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583161/original/file-20240320-24-33s412.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition celebrate on March 26, 2019, after the defeat of a state bill that would have barred most landlords from renting housing to people in the U.S. illegally.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ImmigrationHousing/40610c4b5f5a4d099beb8a4b2288c67c/photo">AP Photo/Jonathan Mattise</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A priority for cities</h2>
<p>Our research shows that creating more rental opportunities can help reduce rent burdens for all. We see great potential to take this research further through community-based investigations of local nuances that may add to rent burdens, especially factors and processes that can’t be adequately captured in quantitative data analysis. Many local actors have important roles to play, including elected officials and local nonprofits and community organizations that work to promote <a href="https://www.tnimmigrant.org/">rights for immigrants and refugees</a>. </p>
<p>Given the important role that immigrants play in filling jobs and contributing to local economies, we believe that helping them afford housing is a smart strategy, especially for growth-oriented cities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219467/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The US economy relies on immigrants to fill jobs, but many of them are struggling with high rent burdens that make it harder to build productive lives and integrate into their communities.Madhuri Sharma, Associate Professor of Geography, University of TennesseeMikhail Samarin, Lecturer in Geography and Sustainability, University of TennesseeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2261202024-03-20T04:45:08Z2024-03-20T04:45:08ZThe government is fighting a new High Court case on immigration detainees. What’s it about and what’s at stake?<p>The government will be on tenterhooks again next month when the High Court of Australia hears another case that could lead to the release of a further cohort of people currently in immigration detention. </p>
<p>Given the ongoing political fallout of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/high-court-reasons-on-immigration-ruling-pave-way-for-further-legislation-218699">previous controversial</a> High Court case, the outcome of this one will be closely watched.</p>
<p>So why is this new case so significant, and how does it differ from the last one?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-governments-preventative-detention-bill-heres-how-the-laws-will-work-and-what-they-mean-for-australias-detention-system-219226">What is the government's preventative detention bill? Here's how the laws will work and what they mean for Australia's detention system</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<h2>What is the case about?</h2>
<p>The case is called <em>ASF17 v Commonwealth</em>. It concerns an <a href="https://www.hcourt.gov.au/assets/cases/07-Perth/p7-2024/ASF17-Cth-App.pdf">Iranian citizen</a> who has been held in immigration detention for ten years. He failed in his application for a protection visa and is therefore subject to an obligation that he be deported as soon as reasonably practicable. </p>
<p>However, he has hindered his deportation (or “frustrated” it, in legal terms) by refusing to meet with Iranian officials to secure the travel documents needed for his return to Iran. </p>
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<p>He says he has good reason not to want to be returned to Iran because he is bisexual, has converted to Christianity, is Kurdish and has opposed the mistreatment of women by the Iranian government. </p>
<p>He says he fears for his life if he is removed to Iran, but he is prepared to cooperate in his removal to any country other than Iran.</p>
<p>The Commonwealth has accepted there is no prospect of his removal to any country other than Iran. It has also accepted that he cannot be removed to Iran without his cooperation, as Iran does not accept involuntary removals. </p>
<p>So does this mean he’ll be released in accordance with the High Court’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-laws-to-deal-with-immigration-detainees-were-rushed-leading-to-legal-risks-219384">previous <em>NZYQ</em> case</a>? </p>
<h2>How is this different from the previous case?</h2>
<p>You might remember the <em>NZYQ</em> case from late last year. In it, the court found a stateless Rohingya refugee, who couldn’t secure a visa because of previous criminal convictions, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-10/asylum-seekers-indefinite-detention-to-be-released/103088762">couldn’t be held</a> in indefinite detention. This was because there was “no real prospect of his removal from Australia becoming practicable in the reasonably foreseeable future”. </p>
<p>The decision overturned a 2004 precedent and triggered the release of at least <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-12/half-released-immigration-detainees-convicted-violent-offending/103455458">149 other detainees</a> in similar situations.</p>
<p>The Commonwealth has argued ASF17’s case falls into a different category, because whether there is a practical prospect of removal must be assessed on the basis that the detainee is cooperating. </p>
<p>When the case was first heard in the Federal Court, the Commonwealth argued that when assessing whether there is a practical prospect of deporting a detainee, delays caused by the detainee not cooperating shouldn’t be taken into account. This is regardless of whatever may be the reasons for his or her non-cooperation. </p>
<p>Justice Colvin, in the Federal Court, <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/FCA/2024/7.html">accepted</a> the Commonwealth’s argument. He pointed out that the reasons for refusal to cooperate, including fear of persecution on return to Iran, were matters separately dealt with during his application for a protection visa. </p>
<p>Once the detainee had reached the end of his appeals on this point, he was being held solely for the purpose of removal from Australia, so the reasons for his concerns could not be revisited. </p>
<p>Justice Colvin concluded that the assessment of whether there was a real prospect of his removal becoming practicable in the reasonably foreseeable future then had to be made on the basis of the detainee’s cooperation in taking relevant steps towards deportation. This was the case even if the detainee refused to act. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-laws-to-deal-with-immigration-detainees-were-rushed-leading-to-legal-risks-219384">New laws to deal with immigration detainees were rushed, leading to legal risks</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The appeal to the High Court</h2>
<p>ASF17 then appealed to the Full Federal Court, and the Commonwealth government successfully sought the removal of this case directly into the High Court. This is because the lower courts have not been acting consistently on this point. </p>
<p>For example, in <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/FCA/2023/1497.html"><em>AZC20 v Secretary, Department of Home Affairs (No 2)</em></a>, an Iranian detainee who had never been convicted of a crime and had been held in detention for ten years was ordered to be released, despite the fact he was refusing to cooperate with his removal to Iran (although he was prepared to cooperate with his removal to any other country). The Commonwealth therefore wants the High Court to resolve the uncertainty and give a clear decision.</p>
<p>Previously, in its <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/HCA/2023/37.html"><em>NZYQ</em> judgment</a>, the High Court distinguished that case from cases in which the detainee seeks to frustrate attempts to deport them. </p>
<p>This justifies the Commonwealth’s approach of treating detainees who have frustrated their deportation as being in a different category. It still, however, leaves it open to the High Court to decide whether they should be released or remain in detention. </p>
<p>In the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/HCA/2019/17.html">past</a>, the High Court has not been sympathetic to those who have sought to thwart their deportation by telling falsehoods about their identity, noting that the courts are disinclined to allow a party to take advantage of his or her own wrongful conduct. </p>
<p>But whether honest non-cooperation, as opposed to falsehoods, would be treated the same way remains to be seen.</p>
<h2>How many detainees will be affected?</h2>
<p>The decision in this case is likely to affect a wider cohort of people in immigration detention who cannot be deported because they have refused to cooperate. <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-unwanted-high-court-to-determine-the-fate-of-another-127-in-limbo-20240318-p5fdah.html">Some countries</a>, such as Iran, do not accept the involuntary return of their citizens, which means detainees can prevent their deportation to these countries by refusing to cooperate. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/20/australia-asf17-immigration-detainees-high-court-challenge-more-than-170-could-be-freed">The Guardian</a>, a leaked government document estimated that about 170 people currently in detention could be affected, although the minister has refused to discuss numbers or the details of the case while it is before the courts.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/high-court-reasons-on-immigration-ruling-pave-way-for-further-legislation-218699">High Court reasons on immigration ruling pave way for further legislation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>If the High Court were to decide that a person could prevent their deportation by refusing to cooperate and could use this to cause their release into the community, it would give detainees a great incentive to refuse cooperation in deportation matters. </p>
<p>The Commonwealth has strong arguments on its side, but as always it is a matter for the High Court ultimately to decide.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226120/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Twomey has received grants from the ARC and occasionally does consultancy work for governments, Parliaments and inter-governmental bodies. She is also a consultant with Gilbert + Tobin Lawyers, which does pro bono work for refugee claimants.</span></em></p>The government will head back to the High Court next month for another immigration case. If it loses, there could be wide-ranging consequences.Anne Twomey, Professor emerita, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2262022024-03-19T20:42:27Z2024-03-19T20:42:27ZTexas immigration law in legal limbo, with intensifying fight between Texas and the US government over securing the Mexico border<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582914/original/file-20240319-18-3mjl2y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=502%2C0%2C5479%2C3970&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Texas National Guard soldier watches over a group of migrants who crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Dec. 18, 2023. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/texas-national-guard-soldier-watches-over-a-group-of-more-news-photo/1865364688?adppopup=true">John Moore/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. Supreme Court <a href="https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4542285-supreme-court-texas-law-state-police-to-arrest-migrants/">issued an opinion on March 19, 2024, that Texas can</a> – at least for now – have <a href="https://www.keranews.org/texas-news/2023-12-18/gov-abbott-signs-bill-that-makes-unauthorized-entry-a-state-crime">state authorities</a> <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/15/texas-immigration-law-sb4-border-court-hearing/">deport undocumented migrants</a>, which has traditionally been the federal government’s responsibility. </p>
<p>Three liberal judges dissented from the opinion that temporarily backed Texas’ controversial new law, known as Senate Bill 4. </p>
<p>“That law upends the federal-state balance of power that has existed for over a century, in which the national government has had exclusive authority over entry and removal of noncitizens,” Supreme Court justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in their dissent.</p>
<p>The Biden administration had tried to block Texas’ enforcement of SB 4, maintaining that the state law is “flatly inconsistent with federal law,” <a href="https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4540053-supreme-court-pause-texas-law-migrants/">according to a letter</a> U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote to the Supreme Court justices. </p>
<p>The Supreme Court’s decision <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/19/us/supreme-court-texas-immigration.html">tossed the question of SB 4</a> to an appeals court for a ruling. With this 6-3 ruling, the justices also foreshadowed how they could ultimately rule on SB 4 if a ruling by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is itself appealed to the Supreme Court in the near future. Late on March 19, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-wont-halt-texas-law-illegal-border-crossings-2024-03-19/">the 5th Circuit barred enforcement</a> of the law until it heard arguments in the case.</p>
<p>This decision follows shortly after a failed Senate proposal to tighten border security and make it tougher for people to get asylum in the U.S. It also coincides with Americans’ rising <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/02/27/immigration-americans-top-problem-us-poll-election">concern about immigration</a>.</p>
<p>Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been battling with the Biden administration since 2021 over the state’s ability to secure its border with Mexico. Under Abbott’s leadership, <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/republicans-governors-national-guard-and-the-texas-border-what-to-know-/7467727.html">Texas has sent Texas National Guard</a> troops and state troopers to its 1,254-mile-long border with Mexico. Texas is the only border state that has built its own wall, partially dividing itself from Mexico. Texas has also constructed <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/02/09/news/texas-on-track-to-build-more-border-wall-in-state-than-trump-gov-abbotts-says/">more than 100 miles</a> of other barriers along the border.</p>
<p>I <a href="https://www.bakerinstitute.org/expert/mark-p-jones">am a scholar</a> of Texas politics and government at Rice University’s Baker Institute. Texas’ attempts to control its border with Mexico and intervene on immigration issues – historically both the responsibility of the federal government – derive in part from the fact that many Texans believe that their Lone Star State is unique. </p>
<p>Texas, for starters, is the largest U.S. state among the lower 48, geographically speaking, and the second-most populous after California. It has a distinct state culture and the history of being an independent republic. </p>
<p>Today, Texas is the most powerful and influential red state, pushing back against the Biden administration on many policy issues. It is also home to a small but growing political movement advocating for Texas to secede from the U.S. and become an independent country.</p>
<p>There is a great deal of truth to the popular saying that everything is bigger in Texas.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578708/original/file-20240228-28-ctnbfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man is seen from the side, holding both an American flag and a Texas flag, which is red and blue with one white star." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578708/original/file-20240228-28-ctnbfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578708/original/file-20240228-28-ctnbfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578708/original/file-20240228-28-ctnbfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578708/original/file-20240228-28-ctnbfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578708/original/file-20240228-28-ctnbfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578708/original/file-20240228-28-ctnbfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578708/original/file-20240228-28-ctnbfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People protest Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s immigration and border policies in Eagle Pass, Texas, in February 2024.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/counter-protesters-wave-flags-across-the-street-from-local-news-photo/1978653675?adppopup=true">Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Border security battles</h2>
<p>Over the past several months, Texas has become increasingly enmeshed in a series of skirmishes with the Biden administration over border security and immigration. Abbott, bolstered by <a href="https://uh.edu/hobby/txprimary2024/">Republican voters</a> and the unanimous support of Texas Republicans who dominate the state Legislature, has made Texas more involved in day-to-day border security and immigration enforcement than any state in recent history. </p>
<p>In December 2023, Abbott signed SB 4, which made it a state crime to cross the border illegally and also gives Texas judges the power to deport undocumented migrants. SB 4 will now be implemented, at least until the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reaches a decision in April.</p>
<p>Abbott’s border security interventions are funded by a 2021 state initiative called <a href="https://gov.texas.gov/operationlonestar">Operation Lone Star</a>. During the program’s first two years, Texas spent <a href="https://www.governing.com/now/2-years-and-4b-later-what-we-know-about-operation-lone-star">US$4.4 billion</a> on a multifaceted strategy that includes, for example, sending Texas <a href="https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-expands-border-security-operations-in-eagle-pass#:%7E:text=The%20Texas%20Military%20Department%20acquired,created%20by%20the%20Biden%20Administration.">National Guard troops</a> to the border. In some cases, these National Guard <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4416126-texas-us-legal-standoff-eagle-pass-border/">troops have blocked U.S. Border Patrol agents</a> from patrolling the border. </p>
<p>Now, Texas is spending <a href="https://everytexan.org/2023/10/27/third-special-spending-updated-spending-limits-mean-more-options-for-lawmakers/">$5.1 billion</a> on trying to patrol the border from 2023 through 2025. </p>
<p>This doesn’t include the additional $1.5 billion Texas has allocated for expansion of its <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/border-wall-deportation-bills-18480062.php">border wall</a> over the next few years. </p>
<p>Since 2022, Texas has sent more than 100,000 immigrants who arrived in Texas to <a href="https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/texas-transports-over-100000-migrants-to-sanctuary-cities">liberal cities such as New York and Chicago</a>. </p>
<p>And in 2023, Texas constructed a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/texas-buoys-border-immigration-12bc8abddef1c9384b25222b92d0840b">buoy barrier in the middle of the Rio Grande</a>, although a federal appeals court ruled in December that Texas must <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/01/politics/federal-appeals-court-orders-texas-to-remove-controversial-border-buoys-from-rio-grande/index.html">remove those barriers</a> from the river. </p>
<p>The Biden administration has <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/biden-lawsuit-border-law-18588009.php">challenged</a> virtually all of these actions in court.</p>
<p>The federal government argues that Texas’ border and immigration activity is unconstitutional, since only the federal government can enforce immigration law. The <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4416126-texas-us-legal-standoff-eagle-pass-border/">federal government maintains</a> that the new Texas immigration law that allows state authorities to deport migrants also would interfere with the federal asylum process. </p>
<p>In response, Texas says that its border and immigration work is legal, in part because the federal government cannot adequately secure the border. Abbott and other Republicans characterize migrants crossing into Texas as an “invasion,” which they say gives Texas the right to defend itself, as <a href="https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-issues-statement-on-texas-constitutional-right-to-self-defense">they say the U.S. Constitution allows</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578723/original/file-20240228-24-kgno9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A middle aged white man in a white shirt sits in a. wheelchair and shakes the hand of a soldier who wears a camo uniform, in a row of other people in camp." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578723/original/file-20240228-24-kgno9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578723/original/file-20240228-24-kgno9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578723/original/file-20240228-24-kgno9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578723/original/file-20240228-24-kgno9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578723/original/file-20240228-24-kgno9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578723/original/file-20240228-24-kgno9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578723/original/file-20240228-24-kgno9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tours the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass in May 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/texas-governor-greg-abbott-tours-the-us-mexico-border-at-news-photo/1240862283?adppopup=true">Allison Dinner/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>What’s unique about Texas</h2>
<p>Understanding Texas’ particular history and Texans’ sense of pride for their state helps to better understand the context behind this current conflict. </p>
<p>In Texas, you can’t travel far without seeing the Texas flag fluttering outside of houses and business storefronts. It is quite common to see people carrying Texas flag-themed Koozies, or wearing Texas flag shirts and hats. </p>
<p>Texas is one of the only U.S. states that went directly from being an independent republic – from 1836 to 1845 – to getting statehood. More than <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/texas-day-by-day/entry/220">nine out of 10 Texans</a> voted for Texas to become part of the U.S. in 1845. </p>
<p>Texas has also been led continuously by a Republican governor since 1992, when George W. Bush was first elected. No Democrat has won any statewide race in Texas since 1994. </p>
<p>Today, Texas’ executive branch, led by Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton, is the country’s most powerful and vocal opponent of the Biden administration. </p>
<h2>A push to secede</h2>
<p>While the Texas state government is challenging the federal government’s immigration and border powers, there has also been a <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/15/texas-secession-texit/">rise in support for</a> a political group called the <a href="https://tnm.me/">Texas Nationalist Movement</a>, which since 2005 has been advocating for Texas to secede from the U.S.</p>
<p>Texas’ Republican political leaders have not embraced this secession movement, often called “TEXIT.” Recently, Matt Rinaldi, the ultra-conservative chair of the Texas Republican Party, kept a Texas secession proposition <a href="https://www.tpr.org/government-politics/2023-12-28/texas-gop-rejects-ballot-question-asking-if-state-should-secede">off the Republican primary ballot</a>. </p>
<p>Abbott and other Texas Republican politicians agree with former conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who <a href="https://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2010/02/scalia-no-to-secession-025119">wrote in a letter in 2006,</a> “If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.”</p>
<p>But these same Republicans still want Texas to have greater state autonomy from the federal government. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578703/original/file-20240228-22-c5eetx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The words 'Greetings from Texas' are seen on a colorful illustration, with a large red star, blue bulls and smaller images of fruit and flowers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578703/original/file-20240228-22-c5eetx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578703/original/file-20240228-22-c5eetx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578703/original/file-20240228-22-c5eetx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578703/original/file-20240228-22-c5eetx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578703/original/file-20240228-22-c5eetx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578703/original/file-20240228-22-c5eetx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578703/original/file-20240228-22-c5eetx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A vintage postcard from the 1950s offers greetings from Texas, often known as the Lone Star State.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/vintage-illustration-of-greetings-from-texas-the-lone-star-news-photo/583785842?adppopup=true">Found Image Holdings/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Texas pride</h2>
<p>Abbott and other Texas Republicans continue to assert their right to secure the border and deport undocumented immigrants because they say the federal government is failing to do either effectively. </p>
<p>In addition, Republicans continue to use immigration and border security as a top issue to rally Republican and independent voters heading into the 2024 election. </p>
<p>And, while TEXIT is not going to happen, Texas Republicans will continue to vigorously promote Texas autonomy, appealing to their voters’ Texas pride. </p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/military-drones-are-swarming-the-skies-of-ukraine-and-other-conflict-hot-spots-and-anything-goes-when-it-comes-to-international-law-205898">article originally published on Feb. 29, 2024</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226202/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark P Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Supreme Court announced that Texas can have state authorities arrest and deport undocumented migrants. A lower court has temporarily blocked the law.Mark P Jones, Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies & Baker Institute Political Science Fellow, Rice UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2203272024-03-17T19:01:55Z2024-03-17T19:01:55ZOutrage is a key performance indicator for Peter Dutton, the ‘bad cop’ of politics. But what does he value?<p>Lech Blaine and Peter Dutton are both from Queensland, where the political culture is tough and masculine and politics south of the border always good for a spot of confected outrage. </p>
<p>So Blaine, author of <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2021/09/top-blokes">Quarterly Essay 83: Top Blokes: The Larrikin Myth, Class and Power</a>, is a good choice to try to make some sense of the federal Liberal Party’s current leader. </p>
<p>Who is Peter Dutton? What drives him? Why did he choose politics? What does power mean to him? And what does he hope to achieve if he wins government? </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Bad Cop: Peter Dutton’s Strongman Politics: Quarterly Essay – Lech Blaine (Black Inc.)</em></p>
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<p><a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/bad-cop">Bad Cop</a>, Blaine’s second Quarterly Essay, mixes straightforward narration of events in Dutton’s life with perceptive interpretation and one-liners like: “Politics would enable Dutton to be the bad cop without fear of physical injury.” </p>
<p>Dutton’s first job was as a policeman, which exposed him to the worst of human behaviour. He took from this experience a suspicion of the legal system’s presumption of innocence and its strict rules of evidence, disdain for those who try to understand human criminality and transgression, and no compassion at all for the criminal and depraved. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/show/kitchen-cabinet/series/7/video/FA2211H002S00">on Kitchen Cabinet</a>, Annabel Crabb put to him his wife Kirrilly’s description of him as black and white, without shades of grey, he agreed. </p>
<p>But, as Blaine shows, we know much more about the black in Dutton’s world than the white: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jan/03/peter-dutton-says-victorians-scared-to-go-out-because-of-african-gang-violence">African gangs</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/fake-refugees-dutton-adopts-an-alternative-fact-to-justify-our-latest-human-rights-violation-78175">illegal immigrants</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2020/feb/25/kristina-keneally-calls-for-bettina-arndt-to-be-stripped-of-australia-day-honour-politics-live">Islamic terrorists</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/nov/22/peter-dutton-lebanese-muslim-comments-dismay-security-services-labor">Lebanese criminals</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-peter-dutton-most-deported-kiwis-arent-paedophiles-and-youre-hurting-our-relationship-with-nz-120655">paedophiles</a>, <a href="https://nit.com.au/19-10-2023/8231/this-is-not-what-first-nations-people-want-coalition-of-groups-attack-peter-duttons-call-for-a-royal-commission">Indigenous sexual abusers</a>, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/one-in-five-a-dole-cheat-minister-20050305-gdzq37.html">welfare cheats</a>. </p>
<p>It is a richly peopled world, compared with the bland suburbia and regional Australia he wants to protect, with much more energy expended on blaming and punishing than on praising. Compared with John Howard, with whom he shares aspects of political style, we know little about Dutton’s heroes and what he values about Australia. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bdPM6nKuMJU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">We know little about what Peter Dutton values about Australia.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>In his interests to stoke fear</h2>
<p>Dutton is a boundary rider. As a politician whose main offering is the promise of safety, it is in his interests to stoke fear. </p>
<p>He thrives on conflict and when he is not fighting the criminals and depraved, he is fighting those who are not as alert as he is to danger: human rights advocates, inner-city elites, bleeding hearts, the welfare lobby, the Greens, and of course his arch enemy in our two-party Westminster system, the Labor Party. </p>
<p>Mostly, it seems what he wants is a reaction. For Dutton, says Blaine, outrage from Labor, the Greens and on Twitter is a key performance indicator. Hence his political strategy of abandoning the inner city to Labor, the Greens and the Teals – and winning government from the outer suburbs and the regions. </p>
<p>The big question facing Dutton’s political future and his electoral strategy is whether Australia is quite as fearful and homogeneous as he imagines, or whether, as Blaine argues, he is forever riding a time machine to 2001.</p>
<p>Dutton resigned from the police after he crashed his car during a chase. He shifted into property developing with his father, and then into politics. In 2001, John Howard’s Tampa election, Dutton won the seat of Dickson, which he still holds. </p>
<p>It was, says Blaine, a fateful moment for an ex-policeman with authoritarian tendencies to embark on a political career. But compared with Howard, we have little sense of what else, besides safety and not being Labor, Dutton is offering. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-liberals-lost-the-moral-middle-class-and-now-the-teal-independents-may-well-cash-in-182293">How the Liberals lost the 'moral middle class' - and now the teal independents may well cash in</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Style over substance</h2>
<p>Howard had enduring policy interests – in economic policy and industrial relations. Does Dutton have any policy interests, besides law and order? He was not even especially competent in his <a href="https://theconversation.com/peter-dutton-becomes-national-security-ministerial-tsar-in-portfolio-shake-up-81186">supersized ministry of Home Affairs</a>, where his obsession with keeping out asylum seekers at any cost distracted him from the border incursions of organised crime and the systemic rorting of the immigration system, together with problems with the award of contracts. </p>
<p>As Minister for Home Affairs, concludes Blaine, “His bad cop act was a triumph of style over substance.” His championing of nuclear power to reduce Australia’s emissions, despite all the <a href="https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/nuclear-power-stations-are-not-appropriate-for-australia-and-probably-never-will-be/">expert evidence</a> it is much more expensive than renewables and will take too long, shows that opposing Labor rather than solving problems is his primary motivation.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dutton-wants-a-mature-debate-about-nuclear-power-by-the-time-weve-had-one-new-plants-will-be-too-late-to-replace-coal-224513">Dutton wants a 'mature debate' about nuclear power. By the time we've had one, new plants will be too late to replace coal</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581217/original/file-20240312-20-cpokru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lech Blaine gives ‘a compelling account of Dutton the strong man’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Black Inc.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Blaine gives a compelling account of Dutton the strong man, but he also claims that if you watch him for a long time, you see a man who is small and scared. The <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo27832683.html">pioneering political psychologist Harold Lasswell says</a> politicians like Dutton, preoccupied with the management of aggression and with provoking reaction, are driven by low self-esteem and a compulsive need for deference. </p>
<p>This fits Blaine’s observation, but I needed more on this side of the man. What is he scared of and why? Of being ignored and irrelevant? Of inner demons that need to be kept under lock and key? Of a world that is changing? All of the above? </p>
<p>Writing about the moving target of a politician seeking power is a tough gig. Some learn as they go, some don’t. It’s too early yet to tell is Dutton is a learner or not – but Blaine has told us what to watch out for.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220327/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Judith Brett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In his second Quarterly Essay, Lech Blaine tries to make sense of former Queensland policeman Peter Dutton. Who is he? What drives him? And what does he hope to achieve if he wins government?Judith Brett, Emeritus Professor of Politics, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2254222024-03-13T12:41:26Z2024-03-13T12:41:26ZWhat is the Darien Gap? And why are more migrants risking this Latin American route to get to the US?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581331/original/file-20240312-22-hvlt6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C140%2C3347%2C2084&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Migrants wade through the Tuquesa River as they traverse the Darien Gap.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PanamaMigrants/2c51a3fc202e44459d50d668897f80eb/photo?Query=Darien%20Gap&mediaType=photo&sortBy=creationdatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=288&currentItemNo=62">AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Much of the discussion over illegal immigration to the U.S. has in recent weeks <a href="https://apnews.com/article/immigration-latin-america-venezuela-ukraine-mexico-712d00c90114568fe8a1b5c9e26fdadd">moved its focus south to the Darien Gap</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>This treacherous route that spans parts of Central and South America has seen an increasing number of people attempting to pass on their way to claiming asylum in the U.S.</em></p>
<p><em>To explore the reasons why, The Conversation turned to Sara McKinnon, an <a href="https://commarts.wisc.edu/staff/mckinnon-sara/">immigration scholar at University of Wisconsin-Madison</a>, who knows the region well and has interviewed people who have traversed the jungle crossing.</em></p>
<h2>Where is the Darien Gap?</h2>
<p>The Darien Gap is a stretch of densely forested jungle across northern Colombia and southern Panama. Roughly 60 miles (97 kilometers) across, the terrain is muddy, wet and unstable.</p>
<p><iframe id="QA5lJ" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/QA5lJ/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>No paved roads exist in the Darien Gap. Yet despite this, it has become a major route for global human migration.</p>
<p>Depending on how much they can pay, people must walk anywhere from <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/dari%C3%A9n-gap-migration-crossroads">four to 10 days</a> up and down mountains, over fast-flowing rivers and through mud, carrying everything they have – and often carrying children who are too young to walk – to make it through the pass. Those who make it through then take buses through most of Central America and make their way north through Mexico to the U.S. border zone.</p>
<p>Cellphone service stops once people enter the dense forest; migrants rely on the paid “guides” and fellow migrants to make it through. </p>
<p>In the decade prior to 2021, <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/dari%C3%A9n-gap-migration-crossroads">10,000 people annually</a> took this route on their way north to seek residence in the United States and Canada. </p>
<p>Then, in 2021, the Panamanian government documented <a href="https://www.iom.int/news/number-migrants-who-embarked-dangerous-darien-gap-route-nearly-doubled-2022">133,000 crossings</a>, a dramatic increase in human movement in such a volatile stretch of land. In 2023, more than <a href="https://www.datosabiertos.gob.pa/dataset/migracion-irregulares-en-transito-por-darien-por-pais-2023">half a million people</a> transited through this part of the Isthmus of Panama.</p>
<h2>Why is it so dangerous?</h2>
<p>The route, and really the entire trajectory that people take when they migrate from South America to North America, is controlled by criminal organizations that <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/immigration-crisis-migrant-smuggling-darien-gap-cfb40940">make millions, if not billions of dollars</a>, annually in the human migration economy.</p>
<p>It is impossible to cross this stretch of land without the help of a smuggler, or guide, because the criminal organizations who control the territory demand payment for passage.</p>
<p>Payment does not, however, assure safe passage. Sometimes the very people paid to facilitate the journey extort migrants for more money. There are also <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/andes/colombia-central-america/102-bottleneck-americas-crime-and-migration">reports of armed groups</a> ambushing those in transit to seize their belongings and steal what money they may have stowed away and sewn into clothing seams.</p>
<p>Extortion and kidnapping are common occurrences, and the medical aid charity Doctors Without Borders recently reported a surge in instances of <a href="https://www.msf.org/lack-action-sees-sharp-rise-sexual-violence-people-transiting-darien-gap-panama">mass sexual assault</a> in which hundreds of people have been captured, assaulted and raped – often in front of family members. In December 2023, one person was sexually assaulted <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/feb/05/darien-gap-sexual-attacks-panama-colombia-migrants">every 3½ hours</a> while crossing, according to Doctors Without Borders.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.cfr.org/article/crossing-darien-gap-migrants-risk-death-journey-us">extreme nature of the swamplike jungle</a> also makes the journey dangerous.</p>
<p>The paths can be very muddy, especially in the rainy season. In mountainous sections, it is often necessary to climb over steep rocks, or cling to a rope to not slip and fall off a cliff. </p>
<p>The Missing Migrant Project reported <a href="https://missingmigrants.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbdl601/files/publication/file/MMP%20Americas%20briefing%202022%20-%20ES_3.pdf">141 known deaths</a> in the Darien Gap in 2023, which is likely a fraction of the actual number due to the challenges in reporting and recovering bodies.</p>
<p>Many of the people I interviewed who had made the journey talked about seeing bodies along the path covered in mud, likely the result of slipping or falling to their death. </p>
<p>Fellow migrants left markers close to the bodies, such as pieces of fabric tied to a tree, and took photos of the dead in the hopes that this evidence might someday help recover the bodies.</p>
<p>The rivers are also dangerous. Flash floods and rushing rapids mean that many people are swept away and drown in the muddy waters. Bruises, cuts, animal bites and fractures are common. The high humidity and heat each day, combined with a lack of clean drinking water, mean that many fall sick with symptoms of severe dehydration. </p>
<p>Vector-borne, water-borne and fungal-related illnesses are <a href="https://www.unocha.org/news/migration-through-darien-jungle-7-things-know-about-perilous-trek">also quite common</a>.</p>
<h2>What is behind the recent surge in crossings?</h2>
<p>Violence, insecurity and instability in their home countries cause many people to move. They may move to elsewhere in their region. But when the level of violence and insecurity is similar in that country, they keep moving to find a safer place to live.</p>
<p>Options for legally allowed immigration are increasingly limited for those in low-income countries. For example, when governments implement travel visa restrictions for certain nationalities, it impacts the options available to the people of that country for movement. </p>
<p>In 2021, with pressure from the United States, Mexico started requiring <a href="https://www.wola.org/analysis/mexico-restrictive-visa-policy-limits-venezuelans-ability-flee-us/">Venezuelans traveling to Mexico to carry travel visas</a>. This meant that Venezuelans hoping to seek asylum in the United States could no longer first fly to Mexico as a tourist and then present themselves at the border to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent to express their fear of returning to their home country.</p>
<p>Venezuelans had to find another route to move, and for many, that was and continues to be irregular transit through the Darien Gap without travel documents. </p>
<h2>Who is making the journey?</h2>
<p>In 2023, of the 520,085 people who moved through the region, <a href="https://www.migracion.gob.pa/images/img2023/pdf/IRREGULARES_X_DARIEN_2023.pdf">Venezuelans counted for over half at 328,650</a>. But the total also included 56,422 Haitians, 25,565 Chinese, 4,267 Afghans, 2,252 Nepali, 1,636 Cameroonians and 1,124 Angolans.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A child is hoisted onto an adult's shoulders as a woman and man wade through water." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581334/original/file-20240312-28-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581334/original/file-20240312-28-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581334/original/file-20240312-28-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581334/original/file-20240312-28-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581334/original/file-20240312-28-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581334/original/file-20240312-28-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581334/original/file-20240312-28-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Haitian migrants wade through water as they cross the Darien Gap.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/YEMigration/4294f14f09a24ca0beeba0b14dc0120f/photo?Query=Darien%20Gap&mediaType=photo&sortBy=creationdatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=288&currentItemNo=95">AP Photo/Ivan Valencia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Human migration in the Americas is a global phenomenon.</p>
<p>It is also increasingly gender and age diverse, as <a href="https://www.migracion.gob.pa/images/img2023/pdf/IRREGULARES_X_DARIEN_2023.pdf">figures from the Panamanian government</a> show. Adult men made up just over half of those moving through the Darien Gap in 2023, and adult women counted for 26% of the population. </p>
<p>Children under 18 constituted 20% of those crossing, with half of those children under the age of 5. Parents may be carrying children for long stretches of the journey, or children may have to walk even though they are tired. The stress and fatigue add to the likelihood of injury along the way. </p>
<h2>How have authorities responded?</h2>
<p>The travel visa restrictions of many governments has only pushed more people to attempt this dangerous route. Governments have also been lukewarm to the presence of humanitarian groups who assist migrants in transit. On March 7, 2024, <a href="https://www.msf.org/msf-forced-suspend-medical-care-people-move-panama">Doctors Without Borders reported</a> that the Panamanian government would no longer permit the organization to provide medical support to those in transit through the Darien Gap. This reduced access to health care will certainly mean a more dangerous passage.</p>
<p>In May 2022, countries across the Americas jointly announced the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/06/10/fact-sheet-the-los-angeles-declaration-on-migration-and-protection-u-s-government-and-foreign-partner-deliverables/">Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection </a> to improve regional coordination to manage migration.</p>
<p>Through this, the U.S. government implemented a series of <a href="https://migrationamericas.commarts.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2087/2023/09/MIAP-Policy-Report-0923-1.pdf">new legal programs to move to the U.S.</a> and <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2023/04/27/fact-sheet-us-government-announces-sweeping-new-actions-manage-regional-migration">application processing offices</a> in South American and Central American countries that give people the opportunity to apply for U.S. refugee resettlement, humanitarian parole and family reunification, and have the visas processed while waiting abroad. </p>
<p>But these programs are not available to people of all nationalities. And some of the programs also require official documents like passports, a requirement that excludes many of those who make their way through the Darien Gap.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225422/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara McKinnon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>More than half a million people made the treacherous crossing in 2023 – far higher than in previous years.Sara McKinnon, Professor of Rhetoric, Politics & Culture, University of Wisconsin-MadisonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2235302024-03-11T12:28:23Z2024-03-11T12:28:23ZChinese migration to US is nothing new – but the reasons for recent surge at Southern border are<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580813/original/file-20240309-22-nrn6pj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C21%2C7232%2C4807&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chinese migrants wait for a boat after having walked across the Darien Gap from Colombia to Panama.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PanamaMigrants/2ba0353fc214442d94948cdd54d7139b/photo?Query=chinese%20migrants&mediaType=photo&sortBy=creationdatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=195&currentItemNo=4">AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The brief closure of the Darien Gap – a perilous 66-mile jungle journey linking South American and Central America – in February 2024 temporarily halted <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/world/americas/migrants-darien-gap-arrests.html">one of the Western Hemisphere’s busiest migration routes</a>. It also highlighted its importance to a small but growing group of people that depend on that pass to make it to the U.S.: <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-migrants-fastest-growing-group-us-mexico-border-60-minutes-transcript">Chinese migrants</a>.</p>
<p>While a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/12/22/1221006083/immigration-border-election-presidential#:%7E:text=">record 2.5 million migrants</a> were detained at the United States’ southwestern land border in 2023, <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Chinese-migrants-flock-to-U.S.-Mexico-border-on-economic-pressures">only about 37,000 were from China</a>.</p>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://history.umbc.edu/facultystaff/full-time/meredith-oyen/">scholar of migration and China</a>. What I find most remarkable in these figures is the speed with which the number of Chinese migrants is growing. Nearly 10 times as many Chinese migrants crossed the southern border in 2023 as in 2022. In December 2023 alone, U.S. Border Patrol officials reported <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/migrant-encounters-at-the-us-mexico-border-hit-a-record-high-at-the-end-of-2023/">encounters with about 6,000 Chinese migrants</a>, in contrast to the 900 they reported a year earlier in December 2022.</p>
<p>The dramatic uptick is the result of a confluence of factors that range from a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/china-economy-property-adb-791934f7f9b83de455e8f8aa7178b628">slowing Chinese economy</a> and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/04/china/china-two-sessions-xi-jinping-economic-challenges-intl-hnk/index.html">tightening political control</a> by President Xi Jinping to the <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/chinese-migrants-use-social-media-tips-on-trek-to-us-mexico-border-/7071743.html">easy access to online information</a> on Chinese social media about how to make the trip.</p>
<h2>Middle-class migrants</h2>
<p>Journalists reporting from the border have generalized that Chinese migrants <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/24/us/politics/china-migrants-us-border.html">come largely from</a> <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-migrants-fastest-growing-group-us-mexico-border-60-minutes-transcript/">the self-employed middle class</a>. They are not rich enough to use education or work opportunities as a means of entry, but they can <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/03/business/darien-gap-china-immigration.html">afford to fly across the world</a>.</p>
<p>According to a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/migrants-find-tips-chinese-version-tiktok-long-trek-us-mexico-border-2023-04-28/">report from Reuters</a>, in many cases those attempting to make the crossing are small-business owners who saw irreparable damage to their primary or sole source of income due to <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/what-is-china-s-zero-covid-policy-/6854291.html">China’s “zero COVID” policies</a>. The migrants are women, men and, in some cases, children accompanying parents from all over China.</p>
<p><iframe id="QA5lJ" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/QA5lJ/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Chinese nationals have <a href="https://reimaginingmigration.org/chinese-immigrants-to-the-us-past-and-present">long made the journey to the United States</a> seeking economic opportunity or political freedom. Based on <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-border-mexico-chinese-migrants-60-minutes/">recent media interviews with migrants</a> coming by way of South America and the U.S.’s southern border, the increase in numbers seems driven by two factors.</p>
<p>First, the most common path for immigration for Chinese nationals is through a <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/chinese-immigrants-united-states">student visa or H1-B visa</a> for skilled workers. But <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/business/china-travel-coronavirus.html">travel restrictions</a> during the early months of the pandemic temporarily stalled migration from China. Immigrant visas are out of reach for many Chinese nationals without family or vocation-based preferences, and tourist visas require a personal interview with a U.S. consulate to gauge the likelihood of the traveler returning to China. </p>
<h2>Social media tutorials</h2>
<p>Second, with the legal routes for immigration difficult to follow, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/migrants-find-tips-chinese-version-tiktok-long-trek-us-mexico-border-2023-04-28/">social media accounts have outlined alternatives</a> for Chinese who feel an urgent need to emigrate. Accounts on Douyin, the TikTok clone available in mainland China, document locations open for visa-free travel by Chinese passport holders. On TikTok itself, migrants could find information on where to cross the border, as well as information about transportation and smugglers, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/us-border-crisis/article-13141787/chinese-migrants-snakeheads-gangs-cartel-flights-border.html">commonly known as “snakeheads</a>,” who are experienced with bringing migrants on the journey north.</p>
<p>With virtual private networks, immigrants can also gather information from U.S. apps such as X, YouTube, Facebook and other sites that are otherwise blocked by Chinese censors.</p>
<p>Inspired by social media posts that both <a href="https://news.creaders.net/us/2024/01/16/2690015.html">offer practical guides and celebrate the journey</a>, thousands of Chinese migrants have been flying to Ecuador, which <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/which-countries-can-chinese-passport-holders-visit-without-visa-2024-01-29/">allows visa-free travel for Chinese citizens</a>, and then making their way over land to the U.S.-Mexican border.</p>
<p>This journey involves trekking through the Darien Gap, which despite its <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/10/how-treacherous-darien-gap-became-migration-crossroads-americas">notoriety as a dangerous crossing</a> has <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/08/americas/china-us-migrants-illegal-crossings-intl-hnk-dst/index.html">become an increasingly common route</a> for migrants from Venezuela, Colombia and all over the world.</p>
<p>In addition to information about crossing the Darien Gap, these social media posts highlight the best places to cross the border. This has led to a large share of Chinese asylum seekers <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-migrants-fastest-growing-group-us-mexico-border-60-minutes-transcript/">following the same path</a> to Mexico’s Baja California to cross the border near San Diego.</p>
<h2>Chinese migration to US is nothing new</h2>
<p>The rapid increase in numbers and the ease of accessing information via social media on their smartphones are new innovations. But there is a longer history of Chinese migration to the U.S. over the southern border – and at the hands of smugglers.</p>
<p>From 1882 to 1943, the United States <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/chinese-exclusion-act">banned all immigration</a> by male Chinese laborers and most Chinese women. A combination of economic competition and racist concerns about Chinese culture and assimilability ensured that the Chinese would be the first ethnic group to enter the United States illegally.</p>
<p>With legal options for arrival eliminated, some Chinese migrants took advantage of the relative ease of movement between the U.S. and Mexico during those years. While some migrants adopted Mexican names and spoke enough Spanish to pass as migrant workers, others used <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2700784">borrowed identities or paperwork</a> from Chinese people with a right of entry, like U.S.-born citizens. Similarly to what we are seeing today, it was middle- and working-class Chinese who more frequently turned to illegal means. Those with money and education were able to circumvent the law by arriving as students or members of the merchant class, both exceptions to the exclusion law.</p>
<p>Though these Chinese exclusion laws officially ended in 1943, restrictions on migration from Asia continued until Congress revised U.S. immigration law in the <a href="https://immigrationhistory.org/item/hart-celler-act/">Hart-Celler Act in 1965</a>. New priorities for immigrant visas that stressed vocational skills as well as family reunification, alongside then Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s policies of “reform and opening,” <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/china-development-transformed-migration">helped many Chinese migrants</a> make their way legally to the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s.</p>
<p>Even after the restrictive immigration laws ended, Chinese migrants without the education or family connections often needed for U.S. visas continued to take dangerous routes with the help of “snakeheads.” </p>
<p>One notorious incident occurred in 1993, when a ship called the Golden Venture <a href="https://www.mocanyc.org/collections/stories/golden-venture/">ran aground near New York</a>, resulting in the drowning deaths of 10 Chinese migrants and the arrest and conviction of the snakeheads attempting to smuggle hundreds of Chinese migrants into the United States.</p>
<h2>Existing tensions</h2>
<p>Though there is plenty of precedent for Chinese migrants arriving without documentation, Chinese asylum seekers have better odds of success than many of the other migrants making the dangerous journey north. </p>
<p>An estimated <a href="https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1107366/download">55% of Chinese asylum seekers are successful</a> in making their claims, often citing political oppression and lack of religious freedom in China as motivations. By contrast, only 29% of Venezuelans seeking asylum in the U.S. have their claim granted, and the number is even lower for Colombians, at 19%.</p>
<p>The new halt on the migratory highway from the south has affected thousands of new migrants seeking refuge in the U.S. But the mix of push factors from their home country and encouragement on social media means that Chinese migrants will continue to seek routes to America.</p>
<p>And with both migration and the perceived threat from China likely to be features of the upcoming U.S. election, there is a risk that increased Chinese migration could become politicized, leaning further into existing tensions between Washington and Beijing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223530/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Meredith Oyen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A gloomier economic outlook in China and tightening state control have combined with the influence of social media in encouraging migration.Meredith Oyen, Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2232592024-03-11T12:23:54Z2024-03-11T12:23:54ZHow ‘hometown associations’ help immigrants support their communities in the US and back in their homelands<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580317/original/file-20240307-26-6881fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=84%2C53%2C5028%2C3119&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many Mexican immigrants stay connected to communities in their country of origin.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/merged-flags-of-usa-and-mexico-painted-on-concrete-royalty-free-image/640127588?adppopup=true">ronniechua/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24357864">Hometown associations</a>,” also known as migrant clubs, are nonprofits formed by immigrants who are originally from the same place in their country of origin. They serve as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10841806.2024.2313386">channels through which immigrants make charitable gifts</a> that help people settle in their new country while also aiding communities back in their homelands. Many <a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/mexican-hometown-associations-in-chicagoacan/9780813564920/">were created in the 1990s</a>.</p>
<p>Mexican hometown associations are the most widely established. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0374.2006.00130.x">Turkish</a>, <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/p/pri/cmgdev/wp11-03aagarwala-india-report-march-2011.pdf.html">Indian</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13691830500178147">Filipino, Guatemalan, Salvadoran</a>, <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-global-ethiopian-diaspora-shimelis-bonsa-gulema/1144167013">Ethiopian</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2013.871492">Bolivian</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/9781782387350-005">Colombian and Dominican</a> immigrants, among others, have created them too. </p>
<h2>Why hometown associations matter</h2>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=a8EwKzoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">scholar of philanthropy</a> who has recently studied the Mexican hometown associations that support causes on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10841806.2024.2313386">both sides of the U.S. southern border</a>.</p>
<p>In particular, I researched the associations that make up the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FederacionZacatecanaEnIllinois/?locale=es_LA">Federación de Clubes Unidos Zacatecanos en Illinois</a>. </p>
<p>This federation, formed by immigrants from towns in the Mexican state of Zacatecas who moved to Illinois, includes 15 active associations. Each has between 20 and 500 members.</p>
<p>Since 1995, these nonprofits have helped newly arrived Mexican immigrants in the communities where they now live and residents of their original Zacatecan hometowns. For example, they help Mexican American students in Illinois pay for college, as well as chip in to cover some higher-ed costs for Mexican students back in Zacatecas.</p>
<p>The associations also contribute to projects that benefit their communities back in Zacatecas. Examples include paving roads, establishing athletic fields, installing electricity, increasing access to clean water and building everything from churches to health clinics. </p>
<p>The groups raise money by holding member breakfasts, mariachi concerts, raffles and other events in Chicago and elsewhere in Illinois. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FederacionZacatecanaEnIllinois/videos/rifa-fcuzi/248498930146336/?locale=es_LA">Their fundraisers can generate</a> anywhere from a couple of thousand dollars to tens of thousands annually. </p>
<p>Many of these groups have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.1958">informal origins</a>. Some got their start when immigrants were gathering for other reasons, such as <a href="https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=anon%7Ec73a92bc&id=GALE%7CA282581052&v=2.1&it=r&sid=googleScholar&asid=86ff5d91">taking part in local soccer and baseball games</a>. Today, most hometown associations remain led by volunteers. </p>
<p>Even with volunteer leadership, in the Mexican case, these associations have adopted more formal approaches to their operations over the years. They gather in local community centers, which they often own. </p>
<h2>Collective remittances</h2>
<p>Hometown associations are an example of what’s known as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0012-155X.2004.00380.x">collective remittances</a>, the technical term for immigrants pooling money earned abroad and sending it back to their homelands.</p>
<p>All told, immigrants around the world <a href="https://www.migrationdataportal.org/themes/remittances">send about US$860 billion</a> back to their homelands every year through remittances. This money flows directly to family and friends, helping them pay for housing, food and other expenses.</p>
<p>This estimate leaves out collective philanthropy, including the money that hometown associations send back to their homelands. I’ve never found a reliable estimate of the scale of hometown associations’ charitable contributions. Even the number of associations across immigrant groups is not fully determined, making estimates of their collective donations hard to calculate. </p>
<p>But what I have observed is how the members of hometown associations team up to serve their communities in ways that don’t involve only money. They voluntarily devote their time, labor and knowledge to help their countries of origin for the public good.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223259/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Appe's research was supported by the U.S. Fulbright Program and The U.S.-Mexico Commission for Educational Exchange (COMEXUS).</span></em></p>Mexican groups are the most common, but immigrants from Turkey, Bolivia and many more countries have formed their own.Susan Appe, Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy, University at Albany, State University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2251582024-03-08T04:01:43Z2024-03-08T04:01:43ZBiden defends immigration policy during State of the Union, blaming Republicans in Congress for refusing to act<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580628/original/file-20240308-24-r50pvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address on March 7, 2024. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-joe-biden-delivers-the-annual-state-of-the-union-news-photo/2059263399?adppopup=true">Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>President Joe Biden delivered the annual <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/03/07/remarks-of-president-joe-biden-state-of-the-union-address-as-prepared-for-delivery-2/">State of the Union address</a> on March 7, 2024, casting a wide net on a range of major themes – the economy, abortion rights, threats to democracy, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine – that are preoccupying many Americans heading into the November presidential election.</em></p>
<p><em>The president also addressed massive increases in immigration at the southern border and the political battle in Congress over how to manage it. “We can fight about the border, or we can fix it. I’m ready to fix it,” Biden said.</em></p>
<p><em>But while Biden stressed that he wants to overcome political division and take action on immigration and the border, he cautioned that he will not “demonize immigrants,” as he said his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, does.</em> </p>
<p><em>“I will not separate families. I will not ban people from America because of their faith,” Biden said.</em></p>
<p><em>Biden’s speech comes as a <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4422273-immigration-overtakes-inflation-top-voter-concern-poll/">rising number of American voters</a> say that <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/611135/immigration-surges-top-important-problem-list.aspx">immigration is the country’s biggest problem</a>.</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://gould.usc.edu/faculty/profile/jean-lantz-reisz/">Immigration law scholar Jean Lantz Reisz</a> answers four questions about why immigration has become a top issue for Americans, and the limits of presidential power when it comes to immigration and border security.</em> </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580622/original/file-20240308-21-t103cg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="President Joe Biden stands surrounded by people in formal clothing and smiles. One man holds a cell phone camera close up to his face." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580622/original/file-20240308-21-t103cg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580622/original/file-20240308-21-t103cg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580622/original/file-20240308-21-t103cg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580622/original/file-20240308-21-t103cg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580622/original/file-20240308-21-t103cg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580622/original/file-20240308-21-t103cg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580622/original/file-20240308-21-t103cg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Joe Biden arrives to deliver the State of the Union address at the US Capitol on March 7, 2024.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-joe-biden-arrives-to-deliver-the-state-of-the-news-photo/2067104727?adppopup=true">Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>1. What is driving all of the attention and concern immigration is receiving?</h2>
<p>The unprecedented number of undocumented migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border right now has drawn national concern to the U.S. immigration system and the president’s enforcement <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/12/22/1221006083/immigration-border-election-presidential">policies at the border</a>. </p>
<p>Border security has always been part of the immigration debate about how to stop unlawful immigration.</p>
<p>But in this election, the immigration debate is also fueled by images of large groups of migrants crossing a river and crawling through <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/record-number-migrant-border-crossings-december-2023/">barbed wire fences</a>. There is also news of standoffs between Texas law enforcement and U.S. <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/24/texas-border-wire-supreme-court/">Border Patrol agents</a> and cities like New York and Chicago struggling to handle the influx of arriving migrants. </p>
<p>Republicans blame Biden for not taking action on what they say is an <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-doubles-warnings-migrant-crime-border-speech/story?id=107691336">“invasion”</a> at the U.S. border. Democrats blame Republicans for refusing to pass laws that would give the president the power to stop the <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-and-trump-s-dueling-border-visits-will-encapsulate-a-building-election-clash/ar-BB1j5jKy">flow of migration at the border</a>. </p>
<h2>2. Are Biden’s immigration policies effective?</h2>
<p>Confusion about immigration laws may be the reason people believe that Biden is not implementing effective policies at the border. </p>
<p>The U.S. passed a law in 1952 that gives any person arriving at the border or inside the U.S. the right to apply for asylum and the right to legally stay in the country, even if that person crossed the <a href="https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-section1158&num=0&edition=prelim">border illegally</a>. That law has not changed. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/politics/trump-overruled/#immigration">Courts struck down</a> many of former President Donald Trump’s policies that tried to limit immigration. Trump was able to lawfully deport migrants at the border without processing their asylum claims during the COVID-19 pandemic under a public health law <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/what-is-title-42-and-what-does-it-mean-for-immigration-at-the-southern-border">called Title 42</a>. Biden continued that policy <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-is-title-42-policy-immigration-what-happens-ending-expiration/">until the legal justification for Title 42</a> – meaning the public health emergency – ended in 2023. </p>
<p>Republicans falsely attribute the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/migrant-encounters-at-the-us-mexico-border-hit-a-record-high-at-the-end-of-2023/">surge in undocumented migration</a> to the U.S. over the past three years to something they call Biden’s <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4414432-house-approves-resolution-denouncing-bidens-open-border-policies/">“open border” policy</a>. There is no such policy. </p>
<p>Multiple factors are driving increased migration to the U.S. </p>
<p>More people are leaving dangerous or difficult situations in <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/02/the-crisis-at-the-border-a-primer-for-confused-americans.html">their countries</a>, and some people have waited to migrate until <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/border-numbers-fy2023">after the COVID-19 pandemic</a> ended. People who smuggle migrants are also <a href="https://thehill.com/campaign-issues/immigration/3576180-human-smugglers-often-target-migrants-with-misinformation-on-social-media-watchdog/">spreading misinformation</a> to migrants about the ability to enter and stay in the U.S. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580236/original/file-20240306-24-y12r2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Joe Biden wears a black blazer and a black hat as he stands next to a bald white man wearing a green uniform and a white truck that says 'Border Patrol' in green" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580236/original/file-20240306-24-y12r2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580236/original/file-20240306-24-y12r2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580236/original/file-20240306-24-y12r2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580236/original/file-20240306-24-y12r2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580236/original/file-20240306-24-y12r2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580236/original/file-20240306-24-y12r2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580236/original/file-20240306-24-y12r2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Joe Biden walks with Jason Owens, the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, as he visits the U.S.-Mexico border in Brownsville, Texas, on Feb. 29, 2024.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-joe-biden-walks-with-jason-owens-chief-of-us-news-photo/2041441026?adppopup=true">Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>3. How much power does the president have over immigration?</h2>
<p>The president’s power regarding immigration is limited to enforcing existing immigration laws. But the president has broad authority over how to enforce those laws. </p>
<p>For example, the president can place every single immigrant unlawfully <a href="https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-section1103&num=0&edition=prelim">present in the U.S.</a> in deportation proceedings. Because there is not enough money or employees at federal agencies and courts to accomplish that, the president will usually choose to prioritize the deportation of certain immigrants, like those who have committed serious and violent crimes in the U.S. </p>
<p>The federal agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2023/12/29/immigrants-ice-border-deportations-2023/#">deported more than 142,000 immigrants</a> from October 2022 through September 2023, double the number of people it deported the previous fiscal year. </p>
<p>But under current law, the president does not have the power to summarily expel migrants who say they are afraid of returning to their country. The law requires the president to process their claims for asylum. </p>
<p>Biden’s ability to enforce immigration law also depends on a budget approved by Congress. <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/02/29/fact-sheet-impact-of-bipartisan-border-agreement-funding-on-border-operations/">Without congressional approval</a>, the president cannot spend money to build a wall, increase immigration detention facilities’ capacity or send more Border Patrol agents to process undocumented migrants entering the country.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580242/original/file-20240306-18-k0ch8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large group of people are seen sitting and standing along a tall brown fence in an empty area of brown dirt." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580242/original/file-20240306-18-k0ch8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580242/original/file-20240306-18-k0ch8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580242/original/file-20240306-18-k0ch8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580242/original/file-20240306-18-k0ch8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580242/original/file-20240306-18-k0ch8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580242/original/file-20240306-18-k0ch8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580242/original/file-20240306-18-k0ch8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Migrants arrive at the border between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, to surrender to American Border Patrol agents on March 5, 2024.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/groups-of-migrants-of-different-nationalities-arrive-at-the-news-photo/2054049040?adppopup=true">Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. How could Biden address the current immigration problems in this country?</h2>
<p>In early 2024, Republicans in the Senate refused to pass a bill – developed by a bipartisan team of legislators – that would have made it harder to get asylum and given Biden the power to stop <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-biden-border-authority/">taking asylum applications</a> when migrant crossings reached a <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/senate-vote-border-bill-aid-02-07-24/h_3263c78238d0d2de96a203fad7fd9e94">certain number</a>. </p>
<p>During his speech, Biden called this bill the “toughest set of border security reforms we’ve ever seen in this country.”</p>
<p>That bill would have also provided <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/senate-vote-border-bill-aid-02-07-24/h_3263c78238d0d2de96a203fad7fd9e94">more federal money</a> to help immigration agencies and courts quickly review more asylum claims and expedite the asylum process, which remains backlogged with millions of cases, Biden said. Biden said the bipartisan deal would also hire 1,500 more border security agents and officers, as well as 4,300 more asylum officers. </p>
<p>Removing this backlog in immigration courts could mean that some undocumented migrants, who now might wait six to eight years for an asylum hearing, would instead only wait six weeks, Biden said. That means it would be “highly unlikely” migrants would pay a large amount to be smuggled into the country, only to be “kicked out quickly,” Biden said. </p>
<p>“My Republican friends, you owe it to the American people to get this bill done. We need to act,” Biden said. </p>
<p>Biden’s remarks calling for Congress to pass the bill drew jeers from some in the audience. Biden quickly responded, saying that it was a bipartisan effort: “What are you against?” he asked. </p>
<p>Biden <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-weighs-invoking-executive-authority-stage-border-crackdown-212f/">is now considering</a> using section 212(f) of the <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/laws-and-policy/legislation/immigration-and-nationality-act">Immigration and Nationality Act</a> to get more control over immigration. This sweeping law allows the president to temporarily suspend or restrict the entry of all foreigners if their arrival is detrimental to the U.S.</p>
<p>This obscure law gained attention when Trump used it in January 2017 to implement a <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-s-immigration-ban-raises-more-questions-answers-here-s-n1188946">travel ban</a> on foreigners from mainly Muslim countries. The Supreme Court upheld the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/world/americas/travel-ban-trump-how-it-works.html">travel ban in 2018</a>. </p>
<p>Trump again also signed an executive order in April 2020 that <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-s-immigration-ban-raises-more-questions-answers-here-s-n1188946">blocked foreigners who were seeking lawful permanent residency from entering the country</a> for 60 days, citing this same section of the Immigration and Nationality Act. </p>
<p>Biden did not mention any possible use of section 212(f) during his State of the Union speech. If the president uses this, it would likely be challenged in court. It is not clear that 212(f) would apply to people already in the U.S., and it conflicts with existing asylum law that gives people within the U.S. the right to seek asylum.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225158/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jean Lantz Reisz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A rising number of Americans say that immigration is the country’s biggest problem. Biden called for Congress to pass a bipartisan border and immigration bill during his State of the Union.Jean Lantz Reisz, Clinical Associate Professor of Law, Co-Director, USC Immigration Clinic, University of Southern CaliforniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2250682024-03-07T17:53:14Z2024-03-07T17:53:14ZNot just a love story: ‘Past Lives’ gives a glimpse into growing up bicultural<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/06/09/1180748796/past-lives-review-greta-lee-teo-yoo"><em>Past Lives</em></a>, a film centring on a nostalgic love story between childhood soul mates, is one of this year’s <a href="https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies">Oscar nominees for best picture</a>. </p>
<p>Although it’s been somewhat overshadowed by <a href="https://apnews.com/article/barbenheimer-barbie-vs-oppenheimer-61a6ec6c67359b851ddeccd6d655b5ab"><em>“Barbenheimer,”</em></a> <em>Past Lives</em> is worth the watch. It can provide meaningful insights on how immigrant youth grow into their cultural identity. </p>
<p>The film follows childhood sweethearts Nora and Hae Sung, who grow up together in Seoul, South Korea, then are separated when Nora’s family immigrates to Toronto. They briefly reconnect as 24-year-olds via regular video calls, but their relationship fizzles. </p>
<p>Fast forward 12 years, and Nora is now a playwright in New York living with her husband, Arthur. Hae Sung has not forgotten about Nora and decides to visit her in New York. The two face their adult lives and realities, and although they wonder about what could have been, Hae Sung ultimately returns home. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for ‘Past Lives.’</span></figcaption>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/oscar-nominees-2024-past-lives-spotlights-the-pull-of-first-love-alongside-the-yearning-for-glory-221574">Oscar nominees 2024: 'Past Lives' spotlights the pull of first love alongside the yearning for glory</a>
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<h2>Not just a love story</h2>
<p>Reviewers have dubbed <em>Past Lives</em> an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jan/22/past-lives-review-delicately-sad-romantic-drama-is-a-real-achievement">achingly sad love story</a> that makes you question where you would be now if you had ended up with the one that got away. </p>
<p>But under the surface level, the film tells a subtle tale of the sometimes <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10560-021-00807-3">chaotic and emotionally draining</a> experience of newcomer youth as they grow into their <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-6566(02)00510-X">bicultural identity</a>. Their feet are in two worlds: their heritage culture and their current culture. And they must learn to ebb and flow between these worlds effortlessly. </p>
<p>As a developmental psychologist, I saw clear parallels between Nora’s experiences with her two loves and immigrant young people’s emotional turmoil as they grow up belonging to two worlds. Hae Sung represented Nora’s ties to her Korean heritage, while Arthur represented her identity as an American. <em>Past Lives</em> draws us into Nora’s intimate experiences as she courses between these two identities as a person who is bicultural. </p>
<h2>Navigating a bicultural identity</h2>
<p>Psychology research shows that immigrant youth who feel they truly belong to both their heritage and current cultures are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022111435097">socially, emotionally and psychologically well-adjusted</a>. Referred to as bicultural competence, immigrants who can move more fluidly between their heritage and current cultures have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000467">better self-esteem and mental health</a>, and report having <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/21676968211034309">higher quality relationships with others</a>. </p>
<p>However, many immigrant children also have difficulty finding comfortable footing between these two worlds. In the film, reflecting on meeting with Hae Sung, Nora says to her husband, “I feel so not Korean when I’m with him, but also more Korean.” </p>
<p>Nora’s experiences are not uncommon among immigrant young adults who move at a young age. These individuals can feel that their heritage culture <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2009.00228.x">starkly contrasts</a> with their currently held values that are based on the culture of their adoptive country. Yet, for many immigrant youth, spending time with others who share their heritage can increase <a href="https://doi.org/10.5195/jyd.2019.708">feelings of closeness and connection</a> to their ethnic and racial identity. </p>
<p>Nora’s bilingual <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069211019466">code-switching</a> — spontaneous shifting between two languages in a single conversation — also mirrors immigrant youths’ shifting between their bicultural selves. Most immigrant bilingual youth <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X19865572">tend to code-switch easily</a>, and use the communication skill to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X19865572">mark how fluent they can be</a> in both of their cultures. </p>
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<p>Korean Canadian director Celine Song, who wrote and directed the film partly based on her own life, has <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/past-lives-final-scene-ending-celine-song-explains-1850119">actually lived the intimate bar scene</a> in the film in which Nora code-switches when talking to Arthur and Hae Sung. In recalling her own experience, Song said, “At one point I realized I was translating beyond language and culture, that I was actually translating between two parts of my own self… But both of those people are me.”</p>
<h2>Two trees in one pot</h2>
<p><em>Past Lives</em> may resonate with many immigrant adults who arrived to North America at a young age, partly because it mirrors their own experiences. The film draws upon a life lived between two cultures as the two clash and flow both literally and figuratively.</p>
<p>When explaining why she and her husband fight, Nora reflects how immigrant youth form their bicultural identity: “It’s like planting two trees in one pot. Our roots are finding their place.” For many who live between cultures, bicultural identity takes root like two plants in one pot. </p>
<p>Nora’s story evokes a reflection of the push-and-pull of heritage and current cultural values, traditions and norms among bicultural youth. So be sure to put the film on your list if you’re planning on watching your way through this year’s nominees. </p>
<p>Not into sentimental love stories? No problem. </p>
<p>Instead, watch the film with the aim of immersing yourself into a first-hand account of how immigrant youth learn to unite their loved cultures. You might find your eyes opened up to the rich, and sometimes rollercoaster, experience of a bicultural identity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225068/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hali Kil receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>The film ‘Past Lives’ provides meaningful insights on how immigrant youth grow into their cultural identity.Hali Kil, Assistant Professor, Psychology, Simon Fraser UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2210882024-03-05T20:11:23Z2024-03-05T20:11:23ZPlight of migrant laborers killed, held hostage in Middle East exposes Israel’s reliance on overseas workforce<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579960/original/file-20240305-21577-9fmlrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C143%2C7961%2C4984&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Thai foreign worker tends to an agriculture field in Beersheba, Israel.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.de/detail/nachrichtenfoto/thai-foreign-worker-tends-to-an-agriculture-field-near-nachrichtenfoto/1231752520?adppopup=true">Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>An Indian laborer in Israel was killed and several other migrant workers injured on March 4, 2024, in <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/india/indian-killed-injured-anti-tank-missile-attack-israel-north-9195933/">a missile attack launched from Lebanon</a> by Hamas-aligned Hezbollah.</p>
<p>They are not the first migrant workers in Israel to get caught up in the monthslong fighting. Dozens of other farmworkers, agricultural apprentices and caregivers from countries including Thailand, Nepal, Tanzania, Cambodia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Moldova were <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpeua8qUHmY&ab_channel=DWNews">murdered or taken hostage</a> during the Hamas attack of Oct. 7.</p>
<p>The sizable number of non-Israeli workers affected by the current war has <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/why-so-many-thai-workers-became-hamas-victims/a-67266701">surprised some onlookers</a> while shining a light on Israel’s reliance on temporary migrant workers.</p>
<p>But as researchers who study the <a href="https://cas.uoregon.edu/directory/global/all/jweise">proliferation of migrant workers</a> around the world, we know how labor migration programs have transformed nearly all societies, including <a href="https://hu-berlin.academia.edu/SShoham">Israel’s</a>. The long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict has shaped Israel’s migrant worker history – and has contributed to the globalization of the workforce in the Middle East.</p>
<h2>A global story</h2>
<p>The initial recruitment of overseas workers to Israel, which began as early as the 1970s, followed a <a href="https://www.law.uchicago.edu/bilateral-labor-agreements-dataset">post-World War II trend</a> that saw higher-income countries – such as the U.S., France and West Germany – sign labor migration recruitment agreements with poorer nations. These poorer countries, which at the time included Mexico, Spain and Turkey, among others, overcame an initial reluctance to lose part of their populace and began to see emigration as a strategy for modernization. The idea was that emigrants could learn modern farming or industrial skills overseas, while sending money back to boost development in their home communities.</p>
<p>In the 1970s and 1980s, <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/migrants-for-export">many South and Southeast Asian countries</a> began to promote the export of migrant workers as a key piece of their economic development strategies. At the same time, receiving countries <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1080/0023656032000057010">became hooked</a> on the idea of a flexible, temporary labor force that would not inflame anti-immigrant sentiment as much as more settled migrants seemingly did.</p>
<p>Israel’s relationship with Thai workers came initially by way of the United States’ support for the 1979 peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. The U.S. government <a href="https://usace.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16021coll4/id/353">recruited Thai workers</a> who had once worked on Vietnam War-era U.S. military bases in northeastern Thailand to help build a new air force base in Israel.</p>
<p>The arrival of the Thai migrant workers, along with Portuguese workers, prompted public controversy among Israeli lawmakers, trade unionists and the media about the creation of a split labor market, as research done by <a href="https://hu-berlin.academia.edu/SShoham">one of us</a> has shown. Meanwhile, others worried that the workers’ presence cut against Zionist imperatives to guarantee a Jewish majority.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in a hat handles crates being loaded onto the back of a tractor." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579954/original/file-20240305-22-j0m1i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C391%2C7241%2C4436&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579954/original/file-20240305-22-j0m1i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579954/original/file-20240305-22-j0m1i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579954/original/file-20240305-22-j0m1i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579954/original/file-20240305-22-j0m1i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579954/original/file-20240305-22-j0m1i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579954/original/file-20240305-22-j0m1i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A Thai worker labors in the field adjacent to the Gaza Strip.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/october-2023-israel-sde-nitzan-a-thai-worker-continues-to-news-photo/1719823925?adppopup=true">Ilia Yefimovich/picture alliance via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Attempting to resolve these contradictions, the Israeli government <a href="https://www.trafflab.org/shahar-shoham">started to experiment</a> with migration policies designed for a new category of workers – neither Jewish nor Palestinian – who were intended to remain separate from Israeli society.</p>
<p>A decade later, in a different political moment, these policy ideas would become concrete in a new category of person in Israel: the “<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/imre.12109">foreign worker</a>.”</p>
<h2>Growing recruitment</h2>
<p>The Israeli-Palestinian conflict drove the “foreign worker” policy forward. Though Israel was founded on the ideology of “avoda ivrit,” or Hebrew labor, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza since 1967 has led to the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian workers, who became an attractive <a href="https://cris.tau.ac.il/en/publications/power-breaking-or-power-entrenching-law-the-regulation-of-palesti">low-wage labor force</a>.</p>
<p>They soon came to <a href="https://cris.tau.ac.il/en/publications/power-breaking-or-power-entrenching-law-the-regulation-of-palesti">compose 7% of the workers</a> in the Israeli labor market as a whole, 24% of workers in the agricultural sector and 60% in the construction sector.</p>
<p>The non-citizen Palestinian workers commuted daily from the West Bank and Gaza, controlled by a <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25698">regime of permits</a> and regulations.</p>
<p>When the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada, began in 1987, some members of the Israeli public came to see such workers as a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2547185">security risk</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/oslo-accords-30-years-on-the-dream-of-a-two-state-solution-seems-further-away-than-ever-213003">1993 Oslo Accords</a>, which sought to foment “separation” between Israelis and Palestinians, further pushed Israel to minimize the dependency on non-citizen Palestinian workers.</p>
<p>To make up for the shortfall, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362022418_On_the_Establishment_of_Agricultural_Migration_Industry_in_Israel%27s_Countryside">Israeli employers</a> convinced the government to vastly expand the recruitment of temporary workers to take their place. In addition to Thailand, countries including China, India, Nepal, the Philippines, Romania and Turkey spotted an opportunity and allowed Israeli employers to recruit within their borders. By 2003, migrant workers <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/remi/2691">made up 10% of the labor force</a> in Israel.</p>
<h2>Creating marginal workers</h2>
<p>Migrant workers in Israel, like their counterparts the world over, have long since been <a href="https://www.trafflab.org/_files/ugd/11e1f0_861945c9ea904d57a359c89d44424869.pdf">vulnerable to exploitation</a>.</p>
<p>Many of their origin countries did not demand a commitment to secure their citizens’ rights in the form of a <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4168983">bilateral labor recruitment agreement</a>. And workers migrating via <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1350463042000227380">private recruitment</a> channels had to pay thousands of dollars in illegal “sign-up” fees, causing them to begin their journeys deep in debt. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Israeli government policies have attempted to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jols.12366">keep migrants outside of society by confining</a> them to specific industries, obligating them to leave the country upon completion of their labor contract, excluding them from the <a href="https://www.kavlaoved.org.il/en/a-land-devouring-its-workers-neglect-and-violations-of-migrant-agricultural-workers-right-to-health-in-israel/">public health system</a> and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article-abstract/63/3/373/2468875?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false">prohibiting</a> them from marrying or engaging in romantic relations while in Israel.</p>
<p>And authorities have paid little attention to labor standards, leaving farmworkers, for example, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/01/21/raw-deal/abuse-thai-workers-israels-agricultural-sector">vulnerable</a> to <a href="https://www.academia.edu/42386415/Giving_them_the_slip_Israeli_employers_strategic_falsification_of_pay_slips_to_disguise_the_violation_of_Thai_farmworkers_right_to_the_minimum_wage">wage theft</a>, terrible housing and exposure to pesticides without proper protection. </p>
<p>Under pressure from the U.S. government and Israeli civil society, over the past decade Israel began to sign <a href="https://www.cimi-eng.org/_files/ugd/5d35de_16d441738d06413184ba6dfa94cb0135.pdf">bilateral agreements</a> with countries sending migrants. These eliminated exorbitant recruitment fees, <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4167016">even if they failed</a> to meaningfully improve labor conditions. </p>
<p>Even so, the number of migrant workers has <a href="https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/generalpage/foreign_workers_stats/he/zarim2022.pdf">grown slowly</a> but steadily. In 2022, a total of 73,000 migrants in Israel worked as caregivers, in addition to nearly 50,000 in the construction and agriculture sectors combined. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man stands in a bombs shelter." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579974/original/file-20240305-26-efvsos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579974/original/file-20240305-26-efvsos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579974/original/file-20240305-26-efvsos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579974/original/file-20240305-26-efvsos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579974/original/file-20240305-26-efvsos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579974/original/file-20240305-26-efvsos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579974/original/file-20240305-26-efvsos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A Thai worker takes shelter in an underground bunker in Metula, Israel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/thai-workers-take-shelter-in-an-underground-bunker-after-news-photo/1720607203?adppopup=true">Marcus Yam/ LA Times via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Yet these migrants did not obviate the need to also have <a href="https://kavlaoved.org.il/en/areasofactivity/palestinian-workers/">Palestinian labor</a> in the mix. By Oct. 7, 2023, about 100,000 Palestinian workers crossed the border daily from Gaza and the West Bank.</p>
<h2>In harm’s way</h2>
<p>Since Oct. 7, Israeli authorities have ended those Palestinians’ work permits and tried to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-plans-bring-more-foreign-workers-construction-sector-report-2024-01-01/">recruit thousands of new workers</a> to the fields and construction sites to make up for the shortfall. </p>
<p>Malawi, a country that <a href="https://www.academia.edu/8987110/Independent_Africans_Migration_from_Colonial_Malawi_to_South_Africa_c_1935_1961">came to depend</a> on migrants’ economic remittances decades before Thailand did, has sent 700 farmworkers and <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/malawi-parliament-allows-labor-export-to-israel-/7490863.html">promises</a> another 9,000 on the way – notwithstanding <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLjNqFY4_Dk">criticism</a> from voices within the African nation itself. </p>
<p>In India, which had long sent caregivers to Israel, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi <a href="https://www.bwint.org/cms/india-unions-denounce-govt-plan-to-send-migrant-construction-workers-to-israel-3017">ignored internal criticism</a> and sent Israel more workers in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, including <a href="https://www.livemint.com/news/india/who-was-pat-nibin-maxwell-indian-from-kerala-killed-as-hezbollah-launches-airstrikes-in-israel-11709631189269.html">Pat Nibin Maxwell</a>, the man killed in the March 4 Hezbollah attack.</p>
<p>Workers like Maxwell are now being sent to work near the borders of Lebanon and Gaza, laboring in agricultural communities vulnerable to Hamas and Hezbollah attacks that have been <a href="https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-03-04/ty-article/0000018e-09d0-d6be-afff-4dd174310000">depleted by the evacuation</a> of Israeli residents.</p>
<p>Though foreign governments are able to guarantee their citizens few protections in Israel, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/02/17/1229525320/india-israel-hamas-war-jobs-migrant-workers">thousands have queued up</a> in their home countries in search of a contract. </p>
<p>Once in Israel, they join the vast majority of migrant workers who have elected to remain in the country despite the Oct. 7 attack and its aftermath.</p>
<p>Like millions of migrant workers the world over in search of economic progress or survival, they have calculated, for now, that earning higher wages abroad is worth taking significant personal risks. </p>
<p>While helping keep the Israeli economy running during wartime, these migrant workers remain in the path of rockets – as the death of Pat Nibin Maxwell has illustrated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221088/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shahar Shoham previously worked at Physicians for Human Rights-Israel </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Weise does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The contours of the Middle East conflict have long influenced Israel’s migrant worker policy.Julie Weise, Associate Professor of History, University of OregonShahar Shoham, Doctoral Candidate in Global and Area Studies at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University of BerlinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2231512024-03-04T13:36:15Z2024-03-04T13:36:15ZA far-right political group is gaining popularity in Germany – but so, too, are protests against it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578973/original/file-20240229-18-u1ukal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People in Hamburg, Germany, protest against right-wing extremism and the AfD party on Feb. 25, 2024. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/at-a-demonstration-against-right-wing-extremism-on-february-news-photo/2033875417?adppopup=true">Hami Roshan/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hundreds of thousands of people have been <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2024/02/19/we-are-the-firewall-thousands-protest-against-far-right-in-german-city-wolfsburg">protesting across cities in Germany</a> since early 2024, standing up against the Alternative for Germany party, a relatively new, far-right, nationalist party that is known as the AfD. </p>
<p>What has driven so many Germans to suddenly protest against a small, extremist political party?</p>
<p>The protesters in Germany are directly responding to the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/turning-back-clock-germanys-afd-economy-2024-02-01/">AfD’s radical policy</a> positions and the fact that it is currently in second place <a href="https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/germany/">in the polls</a> for the upcoming federal election, which will take place on or before Oct. 26, 2025. </p>
<p>While the AfD did not win any parliament seats in its first federal election in 2013, the group’s popularity <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/german-election-far-right-afd-loses-nationally-but-wins-in-east/">has been rising</a>. The AfD held about 13% of the seats in parliament from 2017 through 2021 and was the third-largest party in parliament. Since 2021, it has held about <a href="https://www.bundestag.de/en/parliament/plenary/distributionofseats">11% of the seats</a>. </p>
<p>After the next federal election, the AfD could become the second-largest party. While this limited power would not let it enact any extreme policies that could potentially reduce freedom and respect for civil liberties in Germany, the AfD could use its position in parliament to disrupt the policymaking process, criticize establishment parties and attract new voters for future elections.</p>
<h2>What is the AfD and why is it so controversial?</h2>
<p>Several politicians and journalists formed the AfD in direct response to the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-eurozone-crisis-and-implications-for-the-united-states/">Eurozone crisis</a> of the 2010s. </p>
<p>That crisis was triggered by several European governments in the European Union, including Greece, Portugal and Ireland, that developed large budget deficits.</p>
<p>The European Union’s 27 member countries promise to be <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/main-elements-fiscal-reforms-agreed-by-eu-governments-2023-12-20/">fiscally responsible</a>. Otherwise, poor public management in one country could trigger an economic crisis throughout the entire European Union.</p>
<p>This is what happened during the Eurozone crisis. Poor public management in some member-states led to a European-wide crisis. </p>
<p>To mitigate the crisis, other European governments had to bail out other governments. The AfD’s founding members were <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/turning-back-clock-germanys-afd-economy-2024-02-01">outraged that Germany</a>, as a leading member of the European Union, would become in part responsible for financially rescuing them. </p>
<p>Over time, the AfD has not only become increasingly skeptical of the European Union, but it has also become very clearly <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37274201">anti-immigration</a>. Compared to other countries in Europe, Germany has a relatively large immigrant population. As of March 2023, about <a href="https://apnews.com/article/germany-migration-immigration-9948d6e87835242f9f7867d7ef817287">23% of the people</a> who live in Germany either are immigrants or their parents are or were. Germany is also the <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/us/countries/germany">largest host country</a> for refugees in Europe.</p>
<p>The true extent of AfD’s anti-immigration policies came to light in January 2024, when a German <a href="https://correctiv.org/en/top-stories/2024/01/15/secret-plan-against-germany/">investigative news report</a> revealed that high-ranking AfD members attended a secret meeting with neo-Nazi activists to discuss a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/10/politicians-from-germany-afd-met-extremist-group-to-discuss-deportation-masterplan">master plan</a>.” </p>
<p>According to this plan, the German government would deport immigrants en masse to their countries of origin. This plan also included deporting <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/world/germany-afd-secret-meeting-deportation/">non-German-born citizens</a> of Germany. </p>
<p>The meeting was especially controversial because a few members of the Christian Democratic Union, one of Germany’s long-standing conservative parties, were also in attendance. </p>
<p>Once the investigative report became public, the AfD publicly <a href="https://apnews.com/article/germany-far-right-deportations-parliament-7a29129a6f50853791004d21ffea2a92">distanced itself</a> from the meeting and the plan. </p>
<p>Yet, it has been hard for the party leaders to convince the public that they do not support the supposed mass deportation policy, in part because high-ranking AfD members have suggested <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67948861">such policies</a> in the past. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578974/original/file-20240229-24-3k65fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A white, bald middle aged man points his finger and stands at a podium that has the words 'AfD' and German writing on it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578974/original/file-20240229-24-3k65fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578974/original/file-20240229-24-3k65fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578974/original/file-20240229-24-3k65fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578974/original/file-20240229-24-3k65fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578974/original/file-20240229-24-3k65fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578974/original/file-20240229-24-3k65fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578974/original/file-20240229-24-3k65fj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Markus Frohmaier, a leader of the AfD political group in Germany, speaks to party members at a conference on Feb. 24, 2024.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/february-2024-baden-württemberg-rottweil-markus-frohnmaier-news-photo/2028779666?adppopup=true">Christoph Schmidt/picture alliance via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Germans’ response to the AfD</h2>
<p>Once news of the mass deportation meeting circulated in mid-January, hundreds of thousands of people throughout Germany <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/01/21/1225882007/tens-of-thousands-protest-in-germany-against-the-rise-of-the-far-right">began to protest</a> against the AfD and its anti-immigration policies. </p>
<p>Many of the protesters are also protesting to defend democracy and human rights in Germany. </p>
<p>Protesters have compared the AfD’s growing prominence to that of the Nazi party. They have been carrying signs that say the “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/nazis-no-thank-you-germans-take-streets-call-afd-ban-2024-01-17/">AfD is so 1933</a>,” “<a href="https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/2024-01-22/ty-article-magazine/.premium/will-germanys-far-right-party-be-banned-after-bombshell-fascist-mass-deportation-plan/0000018d-3112-d268-addd-3b7b21960000">No Nazis</a>” and “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/support-germanys-far-right-afd-reaches-six-month-low-after-protests-2024-01-30/">Deport the AfD</a> Now.” </p>
<p>They believe the only way to prevent the rise of a far-right party again in Germany is to protest the far-right movement before it becomes too popular.</p>
<p>Symbolically, the protesters are protesting under the slogan “<a href="https://apnews.com/article/germany-afd-far-right-protests-bundestag-berlin-90d8497434a424ded198ce3d6d5fabb9">We are the firewall</a>” to illustrate how they are protecting Germany from the rise of far-right nationalists once again.</p>
<p>Some are also pushing for the German government to ban the AfD. Yet, while Germany has <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/germanys-laws-antisemitic-hate-speech-nazi-propaganda-holocaust-denial/">laws against extremist groups</a> that were developed after World War II, it is unclear whether such laws should be used to ban the party, as some observers <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/08/germany-ban-far-right-afd-panel">caution that banning</a> the AfD might backfire and make it more popular.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579046/original/file-20240229-26-b9o5ls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large crowd of people stand close together with umbrellas and hold signs. One of them says 'No tolerance for intolerance.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579046/original/file-20240229-26-b9o5ls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579046/original/file-20240229-26-b9o5ls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579046/original/file-20240229-26-b9o5ls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579046/original/file-20240229-26-b9o5ls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579046/original/file-20240229-26-b9o5ls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579046/original/file-20240229-26-b9o5ls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579046/original/file-20240229-26-b9o5ls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Demonstrators in Hamburg protest right-wing extremism and the AfD on Feb. 25, 2024.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/at-a-demonstration-against-right-wing-extremism-on-february-news-photo/2033875510?adppopup=true">Hami Roshan/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What the AfD can still accomplish</h2>
<p>While the AfD is currently posing an electoral threat to more mainstream parties in Germany, it is unlikely that it will take control over the German government any time soon. </p>
<p>Germany is a multiparty system; no single party can control German politics at any given time. Parties must share power when governing the country.</p>
<p>It is unlikely that any of the current establishment parties will work with the AfD to govern Germany, primarily because the AfD supports policies that are <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/german-election-what-do-the-terms-right-and-left-mean-if-both-cdu-and-spd-are-in-the-center/a-37601594">so far removed</a> from what typical German parties would find acceptable. </p>
<p>Additionally, the Christian Democratic Union is currently the most popular party, according to opinion polls. CDU members have previously emphasized that they <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/germany-cdu-leader-rules-out-cooperation-with-far-right-afd/a-66642647">will not cooperate</a> with the AfD in any circumstance. </p>
<p>And other <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/centrists-alarmed-as-poll-shows-growing-support-for-german-far-right-party">establishment parties</a> and <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/frank-walter-steinmeier/t-17345761">politicians have also</a> distanced themselves from the AfD.</p>
<p>Yet, while the AfD may not be able to make sweeping policy changes in the short run, it does pose an electoral threat to the establishment parties in Germany. As such, other German parties may start to alter their own policy platforms to appease some potential AfD voters. </p>
<p>The Christian Democratic Union is already proposing to send asylum seekers to other countries while their <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-conservatives-angela-merkel-migration/">applications are being processed</a>. However, their ability to make this policy change is unlikely, as it would require changes to European Union law.</p>
<p>In the long run, if the AfD is able to continue to grow in popularity at the local level, this may help it grow its voter base and become more successful in federal elections. </p>
<p>The AfD is more popular in states in <a href="https://theconversation.com/german-election-continuing-popularity-of-far-right-afd-has-roots-in-east-west-divide-167844">eastern Germany</a>, especially among voters who feel disenchanted with the reunification of communist East Germany and West Germany in 1990, and disenchanted with the drawbacks of Germany being a leading member of the European Union. </p>
<p>Some people fear that if the AfD continues to grow, it could undermine democracy in Germany, much like far-right populist parties have recently done in other <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/hungarys-democratic-backsliding-threatens-the-trans-atlantic-security-orde">democracies in Europe</a> and <a href="https://time.com/6245795/brazil-bolsonaro-lula-trump-insurrection/">in the rest of the world</a>.</p>
<p>And as democracy continues to decline in Europe and globally, protections for civil liberties and political rights will continue to <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/article/new-report-global-freedom-declines-17th-consecutive-year-may-be-approaching-turning-point">decline as well</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223151/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie VanDusky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hundreds of thousands of people in Germany are taking to the streets to push back against the far-right, nationalist policies of the AfD, which currently holds 11% of the seats in parliament.Julie VanDusky, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Boise State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2213862024-02-29T21:10:19Z2024-02-29T21:10:19ZHow open source tech can make Canada’s immigration system fairer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576272/original/file-20240216-18-bub7fp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C58%2C5573%2C3673&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Even modest contributions to open source technology can result in substantial value and high societal return on investments.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Federal immigration minister Marc Miller recently announced the government is implementing a <a href="https://theconversation.com/international-students-cap-falsely-blames-them-for-canadas-housing-and-health-care-woes-221859">two-year cap</a> on the number of international students admitted into Canada. </p>
<p>This comes amid the government’s broader changes to the immigration system to streamline the types of people who can settle in Canada. Last year, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada introduced <a href="https://www.canadavisa.com/eecategories.html">category-based draws</a> for permanent residence applicants. The new requirements are designed to prioritize applications from health-care and STEM professionals, and other in-demand workers.</p>
<p>While Canada has plans to welcome <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/notices/supplementary-immigration-levels-2024-2026.html">485,000 permanent residents this year</a>, these recent policy shifts signal the government wants to restrict the type of people who can come here. </p>
<p>However, does Canada’s immigration system unfairly exclude the people who could make meaningful contributions to our society and economy? </p>
<h2>Immigration policies favour the rich</h2>
<p>Governments, businesses and universities might be tempted to roll out the red carpet for richer immigrants who bring their wealth to Canada and benefit the country by simply spending their money here. However, policy should be focused on attracting smart and innovative people, regardless of their net worth, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5890.1999.tb00001.x">as they are far more valuable in the long term</a>. </p>
<p>Research shows that skilled workers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jinteco.2015.04.002">boost the productivity of their local peers</a>. It is also well known that immigrants play an important role in creating value for firms and can also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2019.1331">attract foreign companies</a> to a country. </p>
<p>Research from the United States indicated that more than <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=990152">25 per cent of tech companies established between 1995 and 2005</a> had an immigrant as a key founder. Similarly in Canada, semi-skilled and high-skilled immigration have a <a href="https://doi.org/10.54609/reaser.v26i2.423">positive effect on our economic growth</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576270/original/file-20240216-20-vytbjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman works on a laptop holding a book in her hand." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576270/original/file-20240216-20-vytbjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576270/original/file-20240216-20-vytbjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576270/original/file-20240216-20-vytbjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576270/original/file-20240216-20-vytbjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576270/original/file-20240216-20-vytbjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576270/original/file-20240216-20-vytbjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576270/original/file-20240216-20-vytbjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Despite Canada’s points-based system that ranks potential immigrants, smart, capable people can easily fall through the cracks if they don’t meet financial, employment or formal educational requirements.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Canada has a number of immigration streams. Perhaps the most straightforward is <a href="https://ircc.canada.ca/english/helpcentre/answer.asp?qnum=653&top=6">Canada’s investor visa</a>, which allows foreign entrepreneurs to gain permanent residency and, eventually, citizenship. Immigration programs <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/express-entry/documents/proof-funds.html">like Express Entry</a> require applicants to demonstrate they have a minimum amount of money. Others like the <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/express-entry/eligibility/federal-skilled-workers/six-selection-factors-federal-skilled-workers.html">skilled worker program</a> favor those who have attained certain levels of higher education.</p>
<p>This means that current immigration policy can often favor the rich because it is easier to assess a person’s bank statements than it is to assess their talents or intelligence. </p>
<p>Despite <a href="https://ircc.canada.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/crs-tool.asp">Canada’s points-based system that ranks potential immigrants</a>, smart, capable people can easily fall through the cracks if they don’t meet financial, employment or formal educational requirements. These are people who lack the money and educational certificates to earn a lot of immigration points.</p>
<p>Yet some of them may have already created millions of dollars of value with their contributions to open source (OS) technology that you and I use every day.</p>
<h2>Open source to the rescue</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.jims.e-migration.ro/Vol17_No2_2023/JIMS_Vol17_No2_2023_pp_80_118_QIAN.pdf">A new study</a> by my colleague Jun-Yu Qian from Western University and I shows that there is another way to find the value of contributions of people wishing to come to Canada. Immigrants could be assessed based on their contributions to open source development.</p>
<p><a href="https://itsfoss.com/what-is-foss/">Free and open source software</a> (FOSS) refers to programs that can be used, studied, copied, modified and redistributed with few or no restrictions. The core idea of open source development is that if you make an improvement in software or hardware, you must share it back with the community. The result is often rapid churn in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/MRA.2016.2646748">innovation</a> in a <a href="https://www.appropedia.org/Create,_Share,_and_Save_Money_Using_Open-Source_Projects">wide array of areas</a>.</p>
<p>Open source tech developed by people from all over the world has enormous impact on the economy. Today, open source software is in <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/supercomputers-all-linux-all-the-time/">supercomputers</a>, <a href="https://www.rackspace.com/en-gb/blog/realising-the-value-of-cloud-computing-with-linux">90 per cent of cloud servers</a>, <a href="https://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market-share">82 per cent of smartphones</a> and <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/open-source-ai">most artificial intelligence</a>. </p>
<p>More than 90 per cent of Fortune 500 companies <a href="https://fortune.com/2013/05/06/how-linux-conquered-the-fortune-500/">use the open-source software</a>. To put it plainly, if you use the internet, you use open source technology every day. </p>
<p>On the hardware side, there are now <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mechatronics.2013.06.002">millions of free designs</a> that consumers can download and <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies5010007">3D print</a> or <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ohx.2020.e00139">digitally manufacture</a> to save money compared to conventionally manufactured products. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576271/original/file-20240216-20-olb4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sign saying Canada arrivals in english and french" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576271/original/file-20240216-20-olb4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576271/original/file-20240216-20-olb4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576271/original/file-20240216-20-olb4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576271/original/file-20240216-20-olb4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576271/original/file-20240216-20-olb4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576271/original/file-20240216-20-olb4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576271/original/file-20240216-20-olb4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Canada has a number of immigration streams, but immigration policy often favours those who are wealthy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In our paper, we calculated the value on an individual open source project based on how many times it was downloaded and multiplied that by what the substituted cost is on the open market. Similarly, we calculated the fraction of the total value an individual contributor made to a massive collaboration project, like <a href="https://www.linux.org/">Linux</a>, <a href="https://www.android.com/intl/en_ca/">Android</a>, <a href="https://www.arduino.cc/">Arduino</a> or <a href="https://theecologist.org/2010/jul/20/will-reprap-machine-bring-new-manufacturing-and-end-consumerism">RepRap</a>.</p>
<p>We found that even modest contributions to open source technology can result in substantial value and high societal return on investments. These values could be used to determine the contribution an individual has made to open source tech development when assessing their ability to live in and support themselves in Canada.</p>
<h2>Investing in immigrants</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1973162">Studies have shown</a> how immigrants are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9914.2007.00389.x">consistently</a> providing <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2138164">positive return on investment</a> for their adoptive countries. Simply put: immigrants bring more economic value than they cost. </p>
<p>In the study, we found the median contributor to <a href="https://www.openoffice.org/">Open Office</a> (a free office suite that can replace Microsoft’s offerings) made only a tiny contribution to the code (0.00716 per cent) but provided significant financial savings.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.jims.e-migration.ro/Vol17_No2_2023/JIMS_Vol17_No2_2023_pp_80_118_QIAN.pdf">mechanisms we introduced</a> could serve as tools to utilize contributions by potential immigrants. Making this kind of change to immigration policy would go some way to benefiting smart people willing to work hard and make open source contributions, and the countries lucky enough to attract them.</p>
<p>With the help of the open source development, countries like Canada can widen the net and attract highly innovative people to come and live here, even if they don’t have the formal qualifications.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221386/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua M. Pearce does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Valuing open source development is a way to attract talented people that are major drivers to economic growth.Joshua M. Pearce, John M. Thompson Chair in Information Technology and Innovation and Professor, Western UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2235202024-02-29T13:42:41Z2024-02-29T13:42:41ZThis is Texas hold ‘em – why Texas is fighting the US government to secure its border with Mexico<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578702/original/file-20240228-28-s1zpjo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Texas National Guard troops try to untangle a migrant caught in razor wire along the Texas-Mexico border on Jan. 31, 2024. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/texas-national-guard-troops-try-to-untangle-an-immigrant-news-photo/1976393392?adppopup=true">John Moore/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are both traveling to Texas border towns on Feb. 29, 2024, and are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/26/biden-trump-border-immigration/">expected to fault each other</a> for chaos in border enforcement and the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/migrant-encounters-at-the-us-mexico-border-hit-a-record-high-at-the-end-of-2023/">high number of undocumented migrant crossings</a>.</p>
<p>Their dueling visits follow a failed Senate proposal to tighten border security and make it tougher for people to get asylum in the U.S. They also coincide with Americans’ rising <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/02/27/immigration-americans-top-problem-us-poll-election">concern about immigration</a>.</p>
<p>Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been battling with the Biden administration since 2021 over the state’s ability to secure its border with Mexico. Under Abbott’s leadership, <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/republicans-governors-national-guard-and-the-texas-border-what-to-know-/7467727.html">Texas has sent Texas National Guard</a> troops and state troopers to its 1,254-mile-long border with Mexico. Texas is the only border state that has built its own wall, partially dividing itself from Mexico. Texas has also constructed <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/02/09/news/texas-on-track-to-build-more-border-wall-in-state-than-trump-gov-abbotts-says/">more than 100 miles</a> of other barriers along the border.</p>
<p>I <a href="https://www.bakerinstitute.org/expert/mark-p-jones">am a scholar of</a> Texas politics and government at Rice University’s Baker Institute. Texas’ attempts to control its border with Mexico and intervene on immigration issues – historically both the responsibility of the federal government – derive in part from the fact that many Texans believe that their Lone Star State is unique. </p>
<p>Texas, for starters, is the largest U.S. state among the lower 48, geographically speaking, and the second-most populous after California. It has a distinct state culture and the history of being an independent republic. </p>
<p>Today, Texas is the most powerful and influential red state pushing back against the Biden administration on many policy issues. It is also home to a small but growing political movement advocating for Texas to secede from the U.S. and become an independent country.</p>
<p>There is a great deal of truth to the popular saying that everything is bigger in Texas.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578708/original/file-20240228-28-ctnbfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man is seen from the side, holding both an American flag and a Texas flag, which is red and blue with one white star." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578708/original/file-20240228-28-ctnbfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578708/original/file-20240228-28-ctnbfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578708/original/file-20240228-28-ctnbfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578708/original/file-20240228-28-ctnbfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578708/original/file-20240228-28-ctnbfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578708/original/file-20240228-28-ctnbfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578708/original/file-20240228-28-ctnbfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People protest Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s immigration and border policies in Eagle Pass, Texas, in February 2024.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/counter-protesters-wave-flags-across-the-street-from-local-news-photo/1978653675?adppopup=true">Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Border security battles</h2>
<p>Texas is now enmeshed in a series of skirmishes with the Biden administration over border security and immigration. Abbott, bolstered by the unanimous support of Texas Republicans who dominate the state legislature, and <a href="https://uh.edu/hobby/txprimary2024/">Republican voters</a>, has made Texas more involved in day-to-day border security and immigration enforcement than any state in recent history. </p>
<p>In December 2023, Abbott signed controversial new state legislation that makes it a state crime to cross the border without a visa. This legislation, which goes into effect in March 2024, also gives <a href="https://www.keranews.org/texas-news/2023-12-18/gov-abbott-signs-bill-that-makes-unauthorized-entry-a-state-crime">Texas authorities</a> the <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/15/texas-immigration-law-sb4-border-court-hearing/">right to deport undocumented migrants</a> – which is generally considered the federal government’s responsibility. </p>
<p>Abbott’s border security interventions are funded by a 2021 state initiative called <a href="https://gov.texas.gov/operationlonestar">Operation Lone Star</a>. During the program’s first two years, Texas spent <a href="https://www.governing.com/now/2-years-and-4b-later-what-we-know-about-operation-lone-star">US$4.4 billion</a> on a multifaceted strategy that includes, for example, sending Texas <a href="https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-expands-border-security-operations-in-eagle-pass#:%7E:text=The%20Texas%20Military%20Department%20acquired,created%20by%20the%20Biden%20Administration.">National Guard troops</a> to the border. In some cases, these National Guard <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4416126-texas-us-legal-standoff-eagle-pass-border/">troops have blocked U.S. Border Patrol agents</a> from patrolling the border. </p>
<p>Now, Texas is spending <a href="https://everytexan.org/2023/10/27/third-special-spending-updated-spending-limits-mean-more-options-for-lawmakers/">$5.1 billion</a> on trying to patrol the border from 2023 through 2025. </p>
<p>This doesn’t include the additional $1.5 billion Texas has allocated for expansion of its <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/border-wall-deportation-bills-18480062.php">border wall</a> over the next few years. </p>
<p>Since 2022, Texas has sent more than 100,000 immigrants who arrive in Texas to <a href="https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/texas-transports-over-100000-migrants-to-sanctuary-cities">liberal cities like New York and Chicago</a>. </p>
<p>And in 2023, Texas constructed a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/texas-buoys-border-immigration-12bc8abddef1c9384b25222b92d0840b">buoy barrier in the middle of the Rio Grande</a>, although a federal appeals court ruled in December that Texas must <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/01/politics/federal-appeals-court-orders-texas-to-remove-controversial-border-buoys-from-rio-grande/index.html">remove those barriers</a> from the river. </p>
<p>The Biden administration has <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/biden-lawsuit-border-law-18588009.php">challenged</a> virtually all of these actions in court.</p>
<p>The federal government argues that Texas’ border and immigration activity is unconstitutional, since only the federal government can enforce immigration law. The <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4416126-texas-us-legal-standoff-eagle-pass-border/">federal government maintains</a> that the new Texas immigration law that allows state authorities to deport migrants also would interfere with the federal asylum process. </p>
<p>In response, Texas says that its border and immigration work is legal, in part because the federal government cannot adequately secure the border. Abbott and other Republicans characterize migrants crossing into Texas as an “invasion,” which they say gives Texas the right to defend itself, as <a href="https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-issues-statement-on-texas-constitutional-right-to-self-defense">they say the U.S. Constitution allows</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578723/original/file-20240228-24-kgno9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A middle aged white man in a white shirt sits in a. wheelchair and shakes the hand of a soldier who wears a camo uniform, in a row of other people in camp." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578723/original/file-20240228-24-kgno9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578723/original/file-20240228-24-kgno9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578723/original/file-20240228-24-kgno9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578723/original/file-20240228-24-kgno9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578723/original/file-20240228-24-kgno9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578723/original/file-20240228-24-kgno9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578723/original/file-20240228-24-kgno9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Texas Governor Greg Abbott tours the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass in May 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/texas-governor-greg-abbott-tours-the-us-mexico-border-at-news-photo/1240862283?adppopup=true">Allison Dinner/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What’s unique about Texas</h2>
<p>Understanding Texas’ particular history and Texans’ sense of pride for their state helps to better understand the context behind this current conflict. </p>
<p>In Texas, you can’t travel far without seeing the Texas flag fluttering outside of houses and business storefronts. It is quite common to see people carrying Texas flag-themed koozies, or wearing Texas flag shirts and hats. </p>
<p>Texas is one of the only U.S. states that went directly from being an independent republic – from 1836 to 1845 – to getting statehood. More than <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/texas-day-by-day/entry/220">nine out of 10 Texans</a> voted for Texas to become part of the U.S. in 1845. </p>
<p>Texas has also been led continuously by a Republican governor since 1992, when George W. Bush was first elected. No Democrat has won any statewide race in Texas since 1994. </p>
<p>Today, Texas’ executive branch – led by Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton – is the country’s most powerful and vocal opponent of the Biden administration. </p>
<h2>A push to secede</h2>
<p>While the Texas state government is challenging the federal government’s immigration and border powers, there has also been a <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/15/texas-secession-texit/">rise in support for</a> a political group called the <a href="https://tnm.me/">Texas Nationalist Movement</a>, which since 2005 has been advocating for Texas to secede from the U.S.</p>
<p>Texas’ Republican political leaders have not embraced this secession movement, often called “TEXIT.” Recently, Matt Rinaldi, the ultra-conservative chair of the Texas Republican Party, kept a Texas secession proposition <a href="https://www.tpr.org/government-politics/2023-12-28/texas-gop-rejects-ballot-question-asking-if-state-should-secede">off the Republican primary ballot</a>. </p>
<p>Abbott and other Texas Republican politicians agree with former conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who <a href="https://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2010/02/scalia-no-to-secession-025119">wrote in a letter in 2006,</a> “If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.”</p>
<p>But these same Republicans still want Texas to have greater state autonomy from the federal government. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578703/original/file-20240228-22-c5eetx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The words 'Greetings from Texas' are seen on a colorful illustration, with a large red star, blue bulls and smaller images of fruit and flowers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578703/original/file-20240228-22-c5eetx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578703/original/file-20240228-22-c5eetx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578703/original/file-20240228-22-c5eetx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578703/original/file-20240228-22-c5eetx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578703/original/file-20240228-22-c5eetx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578703/original/file-20240228-22-c5eetx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578703/original/file-20240228-22-c5eetx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A vintage postcard from the 1950s offers greetings from Texas, often known as the Lone Star State.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/vintage-illustration-of-greetings-from-texas-the-lone-star-news-photo/583785842?adppopup=true">Found Image Holdings/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Texas pride</h2>
<p>Abbott and other Texas Republicans continue to assert their right to secure the border and deport undocumented immigrants because they say the federal government is failing to do either effectively. </p>
<p>In addition, Republicans continue to use immigration and border security as a top issue to rally Republican and independent voters heading into the 2024 election. </p>
<p>And, while TEXIT is not going to happen, Texas Republicans will continue to vigorously promote Texas autonomy, appealing to their voters’ Texas pride. </p>
<p><em>This article was updated to reflect that Texas is one of the only states to have first been a republic.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223520/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark P Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Texans’ belief in their state’s exceptionalism has helped fuel support for the Republican state government trying to take border security and immigration enforcement into its own hands.Mark P Jones, Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies & Baker Institute Political Science Fellow, Rice UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2220322024-02-28T17:09:36Z2024-02-28T17:09:36ZW.E.B. Du Bois’ study ‘The Philadelphia Negro’ at 125 still explains roots of the urban Black experience – sociologist Elijah Anderson tells why it should be on more reading lists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576236/original/file-20240216-26-ucw3z0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A mural dedicated to Du Bois and the Old Seventh Ward is painted on the corner of 6th and South streets in Philadelphia.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-view-of-the-mural-commemorating-the-seventh-ward-on-news-photo/502954290">Paul Marotta/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>W.E.B. Du Bois is widely known for his civil rights activism, but many <a href="https://doi.org/10.7709/jnegroeducation.87.3.0230">sociologists argue</a> that he has yet to receive due recognition as the founding father of <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-sociology-a-sociologist-explains-why-floridas-college-students-should-get-the-chance-to-learn-how-social-forces-affect-everyones-lives-222365">American sociology</a>. His groundbreaking study, “<a href="https://www.pennpress.org/9781512824346/the-philadelphia-negro/">The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study</a>,” was published in 1899 and exhaustively detailed the poor social conditions of thousands of Black Philadelphians in the city’s historic Seventh Ward neighborhood.</em> </p>
<p><em>We spoke with <a href="https://sociology.yale.edu/people/elijah-anderson">Elijah Anderson</a>, Sterling Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies at Yale University, about the importance of Du Bois’ seminal study and why it’s still relevant for Philadelphians 125 years later.</em></p>
<p><strong>How did the ‘Philadelphia Negro’ study come about?</strong></p>
<p>Much of Philadelphia’s elite of the day believed that the city was going to the dogs, and that the reason was the huge influx of Black people from the South. Susan Wharton, a philanthropist and the wife of Joseph Wharton – after whom the Wharton School is named – and then-provost at the University of Pennsylvania Charles Harrison invited Du Bois to come to Philadelphia to study Philadelphia’s Black population and try to find answers to this problem.</p>
<p>Du Bois accepted their offer, which came with a small stipend, and came to Philadelphia along with his new bride, Nina Gomer. They settled in the Old Seventh Ward in a local settlement house, located at Sixth and Waverly streets, down the street from Mother Bethel AME, the famous Black church. Du Bois then set about studying the Seventh Ward, known for its concentration of the Black population. These people lived in the alleys and streets adjacent to the wealthy white people for whom they worked as servants. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Family portrait of W.E.B. Du Bois, his wife Nina, and their baby son Burghardt in 1898." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577096/original/file-20240221-20-awssda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577096/original/file-20240221-20-awssda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577096/original/file-20240221-20-awssda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577096/original/file-20240221-20-awssda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577096/original/file-20240221-20-awssda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577096/original/file-20240221-20-awssda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577096/original/file-20240221-20-awssda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Family portrait of W.E.B Du Bois, his wife, Nina, and their baby son Burghardt in 1898.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-i0389">W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, 1803-1999, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Due to Du Bois’ upbringing and Harvard education, his bearing was that of the elite. While conducting his field work, he at times dressed in spats and a suit and tie. </p>
<p>Du Bois approached his subjects as an objective social scientist. He wanted to understand the condition of Philadelphia’s Black population and then provide his report to the white elite whom he believed would use his work to improve the condition of Black people, both within Philadelphia and beyond. </p>
<p><strong>Can you explain his idea of the benevolent despot?</strong></p>
<p>This term is based on Du Bois’ original premise: that the inequality between the living conditions of Blacks and whites could be rectified by the wealthy people who controlled the city. He regarded these leaders as despots due to the power they wielded, but also believed them to be benevolent as well as rational. Du Bois observed the Irish and Scottish immigrants who were employed in certain industries. He wondered why these companies would fail to employ Black people, as well, and concluded that they must simply be ignorant. After all, in his mind, these were benevolent people as well as rich and powerful – and most importantly, they were rational. So why would they employ the Irish and Scots, but not the Black people? This was a critical question for Du Bois, and one he was determined to answer through his study.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576238/original/file-20240216-30-6f7ir.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover of 'The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study' by W.E.B. Du Bois" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576238/original/file-20240216-30-6f7ir.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576238/original/file-20240216-30-6f7ir.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576238/original/file-20240216-30-6f7ir.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576238/original/file-20240216-30-6f7ir.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576238/original/file-20240216-30-6f7ir.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576238/original/file-20240216-30-6f7ir.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576238/original/file-20240216-30-6f7ir.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elijah Anderson wrote the introduction to the 1995 and 2023 editions of ‘The Philadelphia Negro.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pennpress.org/9781512824346/the-philadelphia-negro/">University of Pennsylvania Press</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, as the study progressed, Du Bois began to realize that the problem was much more complicated than he’d originally assumed. He realized that the so-called benevolent despots may not be so benevolent after all, focusing on their own financial interests. These included pitting Irish and Scottish workers against Black people to keep wages low, but also a simple preference of white workers over Black workers.</p>
<p>Halfway through the study, Du Bois pours out a soliloquy of disappointment. He declares that there is, in fact, no benevolent captain of industry, because if such a person existed, he wouldn’t let these Black boys and girls fester in poverty and crime. </p>
<p>He writes:</p>
<p>“If now a benevolent despot had seen the development, he would immediately have sought to remedy the real weakness of the Negro’s position, i.e., his lack of training; and he would have swept away any discrimination that compelled men to support as criminals those who might support themselves as workmen.</p>
<p>"He would have made special effort to train Negro boys for industrial life and given them a chance to compete on equal terms with the best white workmen; arguing that in the long run this would be best for all concerned, since by raising the skill and standard of living of the Negroes he would make them effective workmen and competitors who would maintain a decent level of wages. He would have sternly suppressed organized or covert opposition to Negro workmen.</p>
<p>"There was, however, no benevolent despot, no philanthropist, no far-seeing captain of industry to prevent the Negro from losing even the skill he had learned or to inspire him by opportunities to learn more.”</p>
<p>This is also where Du Bois began to see and clarify the situation as a problem of racism. He doesn’t use the word “racism” – that word did not exist at the time – but he speaks in terms of racial preferences and discrimination. </p>
<p><strong>How are his findings relevant to Philadelphians today?</strong></p>
<p>“The Philadelphia Negro” remains a powerful work. It depicts the social organization of the Black community, and especially the Black class structure of Du Bois’ day. It also utilizes the technique we know today as “<a href="https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8wc8v8cv">cohort analysis</a>” – the idea that social conditions affecting a group are also impactful to the individual, and that what happens to the group is a function of historic moments of society. </p>
<p>Du Bois’ ethnographic descriptions of Black people living in isolated communities after the end of slavery and migrating to these cities presages the dire conditions in inner-city communities of today, many of which are still largely Black. </p>
<p>Additionally, the role of European immigration in Du Bois’ day played a critical role in undermining the position of Black people in society. In the context of “white over Black,” each successive wave of immigration from Europe since the end of the Civil War typically worked to undermine the position of the emerging Black middle class. </p>
<p>Du Bois pointed this out back in 1899. He observed that employers preferred white immigrants from Europe over Black people. The benevolent despot Du Bois hoped to reach ignored his work, with implications for Philadelphia race relations to this day.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577092/original/file-20240221-24-gr3t9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="W.E.B. Du Bois seated at desk in office at Atlanta University in 1909" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577092/original/file-20240221-24-gr3t9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577092/original/file-20240221-24-gr3t9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577092/original/file-20240221-24-gr3t9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577092/original/file-20240221-24-gr3t9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577092/original/file-20240221-24-gr3t9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577092/original/file-20240221-24-gr3t9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577092/original/file-20240221-24-gr3t9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">W.E.B. Du Bois seated in his office at Atlanta University in 1909.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://credo.library.umass.edu/cgi-bin/pdf.cgi?id=scua:mums312-i0393">W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, 1803-1999, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>How did it inform your own work as a sociologist?</strong></p>
<p>When I was a sociology graduate student at the University of Chicago in the 1970s, “The Philadelphia Negro” was not required reading. But later, I taught a summer course at Northwestern University about Du Bois and, like so many young Black scholars of my generation, I was deeply inspired by his work.</p>
<p>Afterwards, when I was recruited by Swarthmore College – located 11 miles outside Philadelphia – I felt honored to reside near the city where Du Bois had conducted his work. I often traveled to Philadelphia to walk through the neighborhoods where he’d worked. Ultimately, the University of Pennsylvania – the very place that had originally recruited Du Bois to conduct his study – offered me a position. I moved to the city and began conducting ethnographic studies. In some sense, I followed in the footsteps of Du Bois. </p>
<p>In fact, my entire body of ethnographic work grows out of some of the questions Du Bois raises, and the unresolved problems he uncovers. “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3638183.html">Streetwise</a>” focuses on the sociology of gentrification and its implications for both white and Black people living in gentrifying neighborhoods. “<a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/Code-of-the-Street/">Code of the Street</a>” addresses the violence that occurs in inner-city neighborhoods, as well as the issue of policing and the abdication of the police. After that, I began to deal with some of the issues that brought different races together. “<a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393340518">The Cosmopolitan Canopy</a>” is an ethnographic study of Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square and the Reading Terminal Market and Center City.
Most recently, in 2022, I published “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo119245209.html">Black in White Space</a>,” a fine-grained ethnographic portrait of how systemic racism operates in everyday life. </p>
<p>All these books, based on studies that were conducted in Philadelphia, stem from the inspiration of reading Du Bois as a graduate student.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576852/original/file-20240220-20-uaxpth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="View of empty street in Kensington neighborhood of North Philadelphia" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576852/original/file-20240220-20-uaxpth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576852/original/file-20240220-20-uaxpth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576852/original/file-20240220-20-uaxpth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576852/original/file-20240220-20-uaxpth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576852/original/file-20240220-20-uaxpth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576852/original/file-20240220-20-uaxpth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576852/original/file-20240220-20-uaxpth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Philadelphia has more residents living in poverty than any other big city in the U.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/buildings-stand-in-the-neighborhood-where-the-west-news-photo/1308933509">Spencer Platt/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Why should Philadelphians read this book?</strong></p>
<p>The book is a seminal work, and while it has influenced many Black sociologists, it has <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520286764/the-scholar-denied">not yet received the attention it deserves</a>. However, an increasing number of scholars, both Black and white, are beginning to grapple with Du Bois’ work.</p>
<p>Philadelphians should read this book to become enlightened about the city’s history and how it relates to the dire circumstances of the city’s impoverished population of today. </p>
<p>The Philadelphia economy is undergoing a <a href="https://selectgreaterphl.com/doing-business/economic-overview/">period of profound transition</a>, from an economy based on manufacturing to one based increasingly on service and high technology, including robotics, computers and social media. Jobs and financial opportunities are <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2022/02/how-the-pandemic-has-affected-philadelphias-economy-and-jobs">sent away from Philadelphia</a> to non-metropolitan America and to underdeveloped nations around the world. As a result, many residents of the city have become dislocated economically; <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-poverty-rate-big-city-20230914.html">22% of the city’s population is impoverished</a>, and a <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/assets/2017/11/pri_philadelphias_poor.pdf">majority of them are Black</a>. Hence, the condition of the disenfranchised underclass whom Du Bois regarded as the “submerged tenth” has become remarkably more complicated and dire.</p>
<p>This complex mix of factors creates a good deal of crime and alienation, which feeds into the dominant narrative that our cities are falling apart – and that it’s the fault of this disenfranchised underclass, this “submerged tenth.” This is blatantly incorrect. The problems facing today’s poor inner-city residents stem from <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo119245209.html">systemic racism</a> and <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo13375722.html">the structure of capital</a>, not the individuals trapped inside that structure. </p>
<p>Strikingly, despite being written over a century ago, “The Philadelphia Negro” anticipates not only the condition of today’s poor inner-city Blacks, but also the unwillingness or the inability of today’s “benevolent despots” to rectify or even address the situation. We see Du Bois’ “submerged tenth” in today’s drug dealers, drug addicts and the persistently impoverished Black community. And we see his not-so-benevolent despots in politicians who would rather blame the victims than take any steps to improve their lot.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222032/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elijah Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Over a century ago, white Philadelphia elites believed the city was going to the dogs – and they blamed poor Black inner-city residents instead of the racism that kept this group disenfranchised.Elijah Anderson, Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, Yale UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2192982024-02-26T13:39:42Z2024-02-26T13:39:42ZAnti-immigrant pastors may be drawing attention – but faith leaders, including some evangelicals, are central to the movement to protect migrant rights<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577394/original/file-20240222-26-s3kxsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=63%2C7%2C4623%2C3224&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A 2010 protest in Phoenix by faith groups against Arizona's new immigration law.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ArizonaImmigration/fbdf5704f5544e0393349bd76c9c70fb/photo?Query=southern%20border%20jesus&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=901&digitizationType=Digitized&currentItemNo=36&vs=true&vs=true">AP Photo/Matt York, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A convoy of far-right Christian nationalists calling themselves “God’s Army” have been <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/02/02/eagle-pass-texas-border-convoy/">staging rallies on the southern U.S. border</a> against migrants. </p>
<p>Under the banner “Take Our Border Back,” rally participants are using dehumanizing language about an “invasion” and citing the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/replacement-theory-isnt-new-3-things-to-know-about-how-this-once-fringe-conspiracy-has-become-more-mainstream-183492">great replacement</a>” conspiracy theory, which claims that a cabal of Western elites and Jews are promoting migration in order to replace white people and their political power with nonwhite immigrants.</p>
<p>Several prominent figures in the Christian right have offered <a href="https://relevantmagazine.com/current/nation/james-dobson-gives-into-fear-at-the-border-update">faith-based justifications</a> for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/12/10/why-franklin-graham-says-donald-trump-is-right-about-stopping-muslim-immigration">anti-immigrant rhetoric</a> and policies. The Christian right has asserted the need to protect the American culture and families from the alleged dangerous influence of Islam and from the supposed wave of hardened criminals crossing the southern border. Indeed, opinion surveys consistently show that white Christians, especially evangelicals, are among the most likely groups in the U.S. <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-98086-7#:%7E:text=This%20book%20examines%20the%20historical,between%20elites%20and%20laity%20within">to hold anti-immigrant sentiments</a>.</p>
<p>Yet our work with faith-based, pro-immigration advocacy groups points toward a different reality. As we argue in our new book, co-authored with sociologist <a href="https://www.nancywyuen.com/">Nancy Wang Yuen</a>, “<a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479816422/gods-resistance/">God’s Resistance: Mobilizing Faith to Defend Immigrants</a>,” faith leaders, including some evangelicals, are central to the current movement to protect immigrant rights, and they have been for over a hundred years. </p>
<h2>Faith-based movements for immigrant rights</h2>
<p>Historically, Latinx Christian leaders <a href="https://utpress.utexas.edu/9780292718418/">have been at the forefront of immigrant rights</a> in the U.S.. For example, Mexican-American Catholic leaders of the Jim Crow era such as <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/perales-alonso-s">Alonso Perales</a> <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/calleros-cleofas">and Cleofas Calleros</a> applied Catholic social teaching, such as the inherent equality of all human beings, to civil rights struggles. </p>
<p>They founded leading organizations like the <a href="https://lulac.org">League of United Latin American Citizens</a> and the <a href="https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h4322.html">National Catholic Welfare Conference</a>, which played key roles in landmark civil rights cases, such as <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/mendez-v-westminster/">Mendez v. Westminster and Hernandez v. Texas</a>. </p>
<p>Mendez v. Westminster ruled in 1947 that segregation of Mexican-American children in schools is unconstitutional, which paved the way for the 1954 historic Brown v. Board of Education anti-segregation ruling. Hernandez v. Texas <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/hernandez-v-texas">ruled in 1954</a> that Mexican Americans and all other racial groups in the United States had equal protection under the 14th Amendment. </p>
<p>Many people also don’t realize the centrality of Christian spirituality in the immigrant-led farmworkers movement in the 1960s. Key labor leaders such as Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta incorporated Catholic social teaching as well as religious symbols and practices in their successful unionization of farmworkers. For example, Chavez <a href="https://theconversation.com/pilgrimage-and-revolution-how-cesar-chavez-married-faith-and-ideology-in-landmark-farmworkers-march-200043#:">led a 25-day “peregrinación</a>” – a pilgrimage – in California from Delano to Sacramento, under the banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a star of David, and a cross, which ended on Easter Sunday. This pilgrimage was a key turning point in the success of the movement. </p>
<p>In the 1980s, faith leaders in the U.S. and Central America joined together in the <a href="https://perspectivasonline.com/downloads/sacred-resistance-the-sanctuary-movement-from-reagan-to-trump/">Sanctuary Movement</a> to effectively challenge the Reagan administration’s asylum policies toward those fleeing the civil wars in central America. The movement ultimately led to changes in asylum law; those fleeing the wars were <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/central-americans-and-asylum-policy-reagan-era">eventually allowed to apply for asylum</a>. It also was partially responsible for the termination of U.S. military funding for wars in El Salvador and Guatemala. </p>
<p>Some of the largest and most influential immigrant rights organizations that exist today, like the Southern California-based <a href="https://www.carecen-la.org/">Central American Resource Center</a>, <a href="https://www.chirla.org/">Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights</a>, and <a href="https://ndlon.org/">National Day Laborers Organizing Network</a>, were founded by Latinx people of faith during this era.</p>
<p>Our book documents this history and also analyzes the key role of faith-based organizations in challenging the Trump administration’s crackdown in immigration enforcement, which led to <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/us-immigration-system-changes-trump-presidency">record-high levels of immigrant detention and family separations</a>. </p>
<p>We conducted case studies of six faith-based immigrant advocacy organizations in Southern California from 2018 to 2020, two of which are multi-faith, two evangelical, one Catholic and one mainline Protestant. We found that faith groups possess unique advantages, which when working in coordination with secular organizations, add significant power to the movement for immigrant rights. </p>
<h2>Religious language about justice</h2>
<p>Christian scriptures, symbols and rituals can vividly express ideals of the “Kingdom of God” or “Beloved Community” in which all people are equally valued and have the right to thrive and be safe from violence. </p>
<p>We saw how this religiously inspired vision can provide motivation, clarity, hope and endurance in the long and often discouraging task of mobilizing for social change. Religious or spiritual practices provide strength in particular to marginalized communities, which an emerging group of scholars is calling “spiritual capital.” <a href="https://www.csulb.edu/college-of-education/equity-education-and-social-justice/page/lindsay-perez-huber">Lindsay Perez-Huber</a>, a professor of education and counseling, in her study of undocumented Chicana students, <a href="https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.79.4.r7j1xn011965w186">defines spiritual capital</a> as “a set of resources and skills rooted in a spiritual connection to a reality greater than oneself.” In other words, religious beliefs and spirituality can be a source of resilience when people need to persevere and resist in the face of injustice. </p>
<p>In pleas to officials, and during speeches at trainings, rallies and protests, we consistently heard references to sacred scriptures. We heard the biblical command in the book of Leviticus that “the foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born.” Advocates passionately recounted the experience of Jesus’ family as refugees fleeing state violence to Egypt, and references to Jesus’ statement in the book of Matthew that “I was an immigrant and you welcomed me.” </p>
<p>We also saw religious rituals combined with nonviolent direct action in fasts and hunger strikes, prayer vigils and worship songs at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities and offices, calling on the power of God to set the captives free. For these participants, they were not only engaging in an act of political protest, but personally connecting with God’s spirit for justice in the world. </p>
<h2>Faith as a bridge across social groups</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577372/original/file-20240222-16-ttlo1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C8%2C2955%2C1985&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People, dressed mostly in shorts and T-shirts, stand in a line while a woman hands out packets to them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577372/original/file-20240222-16-ttlo1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C8%2C2955%2C1985&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577372/original/file-20240222-16-ttlo1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577372/original/file-20240222-16-ttlo1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577372/original/file-20240222-16-ttlo1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577372/original/file-20240222-16-ttlo1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577372/original/file-20240222-16-ttlo1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577372/original/file-20240222-16-ttlo1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A church member hands out food to migrants on May 10, 2023, in Brownsville, Texas.</span>
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<p>Our book also shows that faith-based groups bring immigrants into contact with non-immigrants, church attenders in contact with activists, and activists in contact with politicians who have faith commitments. These connections are crucial for building a broad movement for change. </p>
<p>Among the things we documented were church volunteers becoming personally connected to asylum seekers, detainees and their families as they helped provide access to housing, basic needs, jobs, transportation and legal support. </p>
<p>We witnessed faith leaders connecting undocumented young people with public officials who influence the policies that affect their lives, telling their personal stories to those decision-makers. </p>
<p>Faith leaders also had ongoing “ministerial” and “discipleship” relationships with fellow Christian believers who are ICE officials, members of congress, and city council members. These relationships influenced these officials at different times in key policy decisions. </p>
<p>In summary, our research shows that despite media attention to anti-immigration Christian groups, faith leaders and faith-based organizations have also played a central role in past and current movements for immigrant rights. Faith-rooted organizing has unique strengths that add significant power to movements for social change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219298/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brad Christerson received funding from The Louisville Institute to conduct this research. He is on the board of Matthew 25/Mateo 25, and has volunteered for CLUE and We Care, organizations that were part of this study.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra has received funding from the Louisville Institute to conduct this research. She is on the Board of Matthew 25/Mateo 25. She worked for CLUE from 2000-2011. Matthew 25/Mateo 25 and CLUE are organizations analyzed in the book.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Chao Romero received funding from the Louisville Institute for this research. </span></em></p>Religious beliefs can provide motivation, hope and endurance in the long and often discouraging task of mobilizing people for social change.Brad Christerson, Professor of Sociology, Biola UniversityAlexia Salvatierra, Academic Dean, Centro Latino & Associate Professor of Mission and Global Transformation, Fuller Theological SeminaryRobert Chao Romero, Associate Professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2241552024-02-22T09:03:49Z2024-02-22T09:03:49ZGrattan on Friday: Unshackle immigration from Home Affairs and give it its own department<p>The arrival of a boat on the coast of north-western Australia last week predictably set off an opposition political feeding frenzy. Peter Dutton was quick to claim the Albanese government had “lost control” of the border. </p>
<p>But a boat (or even two – there was another landing late last year) does not an armada make. Australian authorities might need to lift their detection game – no doubt they are getting that message – but so far there is not evidence of a new wave of people smuggling. </p>
<p>Further arrivals would change the dynamics but, in the absence of that, the opposition needs to be careful of overreach, for a couple of reasons. </p>
<p>One is that it’s irresponsible, thinking of Australia’s national interest, to be in effect telling the people smugglers there are fresh opportunities for them. Signals are important: for example, there’s a suggestion last year’s release of the immigration detainees (in the wake of the High Court decision) fed into the people smugglers’ pitch. </p>
<p>Secondly, the border issue is unlikely to play as strongly with voters these days. Kos Samaras of the RedBridge Group, a political consultancy that does regular research, says: “The political heat that was associated with the politics of boat people in the early 2000s is all gone. I think that we’re dealing with a different generation of politics now, and Australians generally just don’t get all that worried or concerned about what sort of people will stumble onto our shores and walk into a town looking for food.”</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-antony-green-kos-samaras-and-tim-costello-on-dunkley-contest-223961">Politics with Michelle Grattan: Antony Green, Kos Samaras and Tim Costello on Dunkley contest</a>
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<p>With eyes firmly on their pockets, people are likely to see excessive rhetoric about boats for what it is, a scare tactic. </p>
<p>The issue of boat arrivals should be distinguished from immigration, which is current in many people’s minds and related to debates around housing and cost of living.</p>
<p>Both issues, however, do take us to the question of the Home Affairs Department, a behemoth encompassing the Australia Border Force, immigration, citizenship and multiculturalism, and cyber security. ASIO sits in the Home Affairs portfolio too, although it is not responsible to the department secretary. The department is overseen by cabinet minister Clare O'Neil, with a junior minister, Andrew Giles, having responsibility for immigration, citizenship and multicultural affairs. </p>
<p>Put bluntly, the department has been a nest of trouble. There are very strong arguments for breaking it up. </p>
<p>The department has been scandal-ridden. A recent report by Dennis Richardson, former head of Foreign Affairs, Defence and ASIO, documented how it failed to do due diligence on contracts. The revelation of extraordinary texts by its former secretary, Mike Pezzullo, led to his dismissal last year. </p>
<p>The Home Affairs empire was trimmed when Labor took office. The Australian Federal Police and a couple of other crime-fighting agencies were moved to the Attorney-General’s portfolio. ASIO would fit more appropriately there too, but Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus lost that battle. </p>
<p>Pezzullo ran the Home Affairs Department with an iron rod and morale was at rock bottom. There are mixed views about whether his successor, Stephanie Foster, who had been the department’s associate secretary, is a strong enough leader for the demands of this very tough job. </p>
<p>A central problem is that the department’s component parts are a bad fit. There seems an overwhelming case for separating immigration, citizenship and multicultural affairs into their own department with cabinet status. </p>
<p>That way, immigration could be viewed essentially as an economic department and cast in more positive terms, to promote nation building. This was how it was seen in earlier times. </p>
<p>At present, immigration suffers from being in the more negative national security environment that dominates Home Affairs. </p>
<p>Former senior bureaucrat Paddy Gourley, an expert on the public service, has argued that “the grandest failure of Home Affairs and its leaders has been the diminution of immigration as a principal function of the federal government”.</p>
<p>A freestanding department would allow “a clear-eyed, high-priority concentration on immigration policy and service delivery free of the distractions and distortions to which it is vulnerable in Home Affairs”, Gourley wrote on <a href="https://insidestory.org.au/its-time-to-abandon-the-home-affairs-experiment/">Inside Story in November</a>.</p>
<p>Equally, multiculturalism requires a lot more attention, especially at the moment. </p>
<p>Multiculturalism has been a great success story of Australia’s immigration program, celebrating diversity while also promoting unity and commitment to common Australian values. </p>
<p>But the community frictions prompted by the Israel-Hamas conflict have highlighted that at times the tensions that lurk in a multicultural society can test its cohesion. Crises abroad can cause local divisions to flare dangerously. At present the Albanese government is seriously worried about community harmony. </p>
<p>The level of anti-Semitism we’re currently seeing in this country is deeply disturbing, striking fear into many Jewish Australians. Meanwhile, many in the Islamic community, with family or friends in Gaza, are traumatised, plus there’s been a rise in Islamophobia. And the regular pro-Palestinian demonstrations since the start of the current Middle East conflict have, on occasion, tested authorities. </p>
<p>Reacting to these challenges is not likely to get any easier. A separate immigration department could mean more bureaucratic attention and resources for engagement with the various multicultural communities. </p>
<p>On another front, prospective citizens are not receiving the attention they deserve. Peter Hughes, a one-time deputy secretary in immigration, has condemned “the outrageously long time it takes to process applications for Australian citizenship”.</p>
<p><a href="https://johnmenadue.com/reviving-australian-citizenship/">Writing for Pearls and Irritations</a> last month, Hughes said a person who’d met all the requirements, including the four-year residential qualifying period, could expect to wait up to 15 months for a decision and another six months for a conferral ceremony. Imagine the outcry if it took this long to get a passport for an overseas trip, Hughes added.</p>
<p>This week Anthony Albanese hosed down speculation that there could be an election this year. He intends to run full term – the election is due by May next year. </p>
<p>At some point the Prime Minister may consider freshening his team. This is not a prediction, but a reshuffle would provide the ideal opportunity to split the Home Affairs Department and rescue immigration from what often seems its also-ran bureaucratic status.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224155/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Home Affairs’ department has been a nest of trouble. There are very strong arguments for breaking it up. With an election just a year out perhaps the Prime Minister may want to freshening his team?Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2239572024-02-21T04:06:34Z2024-02-21T04:06:34ZBy boat or by plane? If you’re seeking asylum in Australia, the outcome is similarly bleak<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576913/original/file-20240221-18-tl88st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C0%2C4071%2C2299&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/refugees-boat-floating-on-sea-341539700">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last week, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-18/asylum-seekers-moved-to-nauru-mid-political-row/103481494">39 foreign nationals</a> arrived in a remote part of Western Australia by boat. This revived dormant debates about border security.</p>
<p>People without visas come to Australia by air and sea, though we only ever seem to hear about the latter. Unlike unauthorised air arrivals, unauthorised maritime arrivals (people without visas that arrive by boat without permission) are given high media visibility. This feeds a narrative that the country has lost control of its borders, which in turn creates a political problem for the government of the day. </p>
<p>But behind the headlines, what actually happens when people arrive in Australia without permission, whether by boat or by plane?</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/boat-arrivals-sent-to-nauru-and-sovereign-borders-commander-warns-against-politicising-the-issue-223822">Boat arrivals sent to Nauru, and Sovereign Borders commander warns against politicising the issue</a>
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<h2>What is Australia obligated to do?</h2>
<p>Anyone who’s not an Australian citizen is required to have authorisation in the form of a visa to enter and remain in the country. </p>
<p>What Australia can do to deal with unauthorised arrivals is limited by its international treaty obligations. The United Nations Refugee <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/au/about-unhcr/who-we-are/1951-refugee-convention">Convention</a> and <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/protocol-relating-status-refugees">Protocol</a> oblige Australia to refrain from sending “refugees” (as defined in those treaties) to places where they will face a real chance of persecution. </p>
<p>Under other treaties to which it is a party, Australia is also obliged to refrain from sending anyone, not just refugees, to places where they will face a real risk of certain serious human rights violations. </p>
<p>These treaty obligations are referred to as “non-refoulement” or protection obligations. People who claim the benefit of such protection obligations are called asylum seekers.</p>
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<h2>What happens to asylum seekers when they arrive?</h2>
<p>The processes for people arriving by boat or plane have similarities, but are slightly different.</p>
<p>Australian policy is for unauthorised air arrivals to be given a screening interview to ascertain whether they could be entitled to Australia’s protection under international law. If not, they are returned to their most recent country of departure. Those who are found to have a possible case are given access to the protection visa application process. </p>
<p>The protection visa is Australia’s main domestic mechanism for implementing its international protection obligations. People who initially entered Australia on a valid visa can also apply for a protection visa. Most applicants fall into this group. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/who-counts-as-a-refugee-four-questions-to-understand-current-migration-debates-219735">Who counts as a refugee? Four questions to understand current migration debates</a>
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<p>Australia imposes penalties on airlines that bring non-citizens without valid visas here. It also posts its officials at overseas airports to help airlines identify people without visas so they can be refused boarding. As a result, there are <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/foi/files/2022/fa-220600105-document-released-part-3.PDF">very few</a> unauthorised air arrivals to Australia.</p>
<p>Like people who come by plane, unauthorised maritime arrivals go through a screening process. </p>
<p>Those who are deemed not to be asylum seekers are returned to their most recent country of departure. This is usually, but not always, Indonesia. </p>
<p>Unless the responsible minister grants an exemption, unauthorised maritime arrivals who are found to have a possible asylum claim must be transferred to a regional processing country to have their asylum claims determined there. </p>
<h2>How has regional processing worked?</h2>
<p>Regional processing has a complicated history.</p>
<p>In late 2001, the Coalition government under John Howard entered arrangements with Nauru and Papua New Guinea (PNG) to take unauthorised maritime arrivals to those countries to process their asylum claims. Those arrangements were ended by Labor shortly after it won government in November 2007. </p>
<p>However, a resurgence of unauthorised maritime arrivals led the Gillard Labor government to enter a new set of arrangements with Nauru and PNG in late 2012. These allowed Australia to transfer unauthorised maritime arrivals to processing centres in those countries to have their asylum claims considered by their governments. </p>
<p>The 2012 arrangements left open the possibility that transferees who were found to be refugees might be resettled in Australia. However, when boats kept arriving, the Rudd Labor government decided to get even tougher. In 2013, it <a href="https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20130730234007/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/79983/20130731-0937/www.pm.gov.au/press-office/transcript-joint-press-conference-2.html">announced</a> future unauthorised maritime arrivals would never be resettled in Australia.</p>
<p>After its election in September 2013, the Coalition government implemented Operation Sovereign Borders, which has been continued by the current Labor government. Many activities come under the Operation Sovereign Borders banner, including the interception of unauthorised maritime arrivals at sea by the Australian navy. Regional processing is now also characterised as being part of the program.</p>
<p>The regional processing arrangement with PNG <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220105030919/https:/minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/KarenAndrews/Pages/finalisation-of-the-regional-resettlement-arrangement.aspx">ceased</a> at the end of 2021. As of November 16 2023, there were still <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/operation-sovereign-borders-offshore-detention-statistics/2/">64 transferees</a> remaining in PNG. However, the Australian government’s position is that responsibility for these people lies entirely with PNG and not with Australia.</p>
<p>Nauru is still a <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2023L00093">regional processing country</a> but under a new agreement. At the time it was signed in late 2021, there hadn’t been any transfers for years. However, it was <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20211218062006/https:/www.dfat.gov.au/geo/nauru/memorandum-understanding-between-republic-nauru-and-australia-enduring-regional-processing-capability-republic-nauru">considered important</a> to maintain an “enduring regional processing capacity” on Nauru as a deterrent to people smugglers. </p>
<p>As previously, the Nauruan government is responsible for processing the asylum claims of transferees and managing them until they depart Nauru or are permanently settled there. However, Australia has contracted and is <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/foi/files/2023/fa-221201134-document-released.PDF">paying</a> the processing centre’s service providers.</p>
<p>On June 25 2023, it was reported there were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/25/last-refugee-on-nauru-evacuated-as-australian-government-says-offshore-processing-policy-remains">no transferees</a> remaining in Nauru. This did not mean that a durable solution had been found for everyone who had been transferred to Nauru up until that time. While some people had been resettled in third countries, others had simply been brought to Australia with the legal status of “transitory persons”. This status prevents them from applying for a visa to remain in Australia unless granted ministerial permission to do so. </p>
<p>Australia’s options for resettling this cohort are limited. It has at its disposal the remainder of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/01/white-house-australian-refugees-deal-resettle-extreme-vetting">1,250 refugee places</a> promised by the United States in November 2016 and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/24/australia-agrees-450-refugees-can-be-resettled-in-new-zealand-nine-years-after-deal-first-offered">450 refugee places</a> over three years promised by New Zealand in 2022. Even if all these places are used, hundreds of people will remain in limbo.</p>
<h2>What happens to last week’s arrivals?</h2>
<p>Since Operation Sovereign Borders began, boats have either been intercepted at sea or have managed to make landfall in Australia <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/api/qon/downloadattachment?attachmentId=dc14c17a-6ca6-4082-8f77-c15a72b19314">every year</a> except 2021. </p>
<p>However, between the start of Operation Sovereign Borders and the end of August 2023, <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/api/qon/downloadattachment?attachmentId=dc14c17a-6ca6-4082-8f77-c15a72b19314">only two</a> out of the 1,123 boat passengers involved to that point had ever been accepted for regional processing. Both cases were in 2014. </p>
<p>This statistic raised serious concerns about the reliability of the screening process as the people screened included many from known refugee producing countries. </p>
<p>Given this history, it was a little surprising when the Australian government transferred <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-27/nauru-new-group-detained-processing-centre/103014910">11 unauthorised maritime arrivals</a> to Nauru in September 2023. A further 12 were transferred to Nauru in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/23/wa-border-force-custody-12-asylum-seekers-nauru">November 2023</a>. The 39 people found in Western Australia have just been transferred there too. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/aus-nz-refugee-deal-is-a-bandage-on-a-failed-policy-its-time-to-end-offshore-processing-180241">Aus-NZ refugee deal is a bandage on a failed policy. It's time to end offshore processing</a>
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<p>It seems the screening process has been abandoned or has been vastly improved. While the most reliable way for Australia to meet its international protection obligations would be to give all unauthorised maritime arrivals access to its protection visa application process, giving them all access to regional processing is certainly better than sending them back to their country of departure. </p>
<p>However, resettlement in Nauru of those found to be refugees is not realistic. The country, which has a population of approximately 13,000 people, is only <a href="https://www.adaptation-undp.org/explore/asia-and-pacific/nauru#:%7E:text=Nauru%20is%20an%20isolated%2C%20uplifted,120%20and%20300%20metres%20wide.">2,200 hectares</a> in land area. To put this in context, Melbourne airport <a href="https://www.melbourneairport.com.au/corporate/master-plan">is larger</a> than Nauru. </p>
<p>There is no reason to believe it will be any easier to find third country resettlement for transferees in the future than it has been up to now. For most, the only way out of limbo will be to return home, as eight of those transferred to Nauru in September have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/jan/22/australia-asylum-seekers-nauru-returned-home-country">already done</a>. Regional processing continues to be a policy failure for which vulnerable people will pay the price.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223957/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Savitri Taylor has received funding from the Australian Research Council in the past. She is a member of the Committee of Management of Refugee Legal and a member of the Kim for Canberra party. Views expressed in this article are her own and not attributable to any organisations with she is associated.</span></em></p>With the arrival of 39 foreign nationals in Western Australia, debate around boat arrivals has been re-ignited. What happens if you come by plane instead?Savitri Taylor, Associate Professor, Law School, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2225802024-02-13T20:22:20Z2024-02-13T20:22:20ZImmigrants do work that might not otherwise get done – bolstering the US economy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574706/original/file-20240209-22-8e58kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=46%2C303%2C6889%2C4215&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hundreds protested peacefully in Immokalee, Fla., against a state law enacted in 2023 that imposes restrictions on undocumented immigrants.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Florida%20Day%20Without%20Immigrants/f748660925de4eb49e9de66ebcb24178?Query=immigrant%20workers&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1114&currentItemNo=9">AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Although Congress is failing to pass laws to restrict the number of migrants arriving in the U.S., a majority of Americans – about 6 in 10 – <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3889">believe there’s an immigration crisis</a> along the Mexico-U.S. border. Politicians who want fewer people to move here often cast those arriving without prior authorization as a <a href="https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/lawmakers-push-north-star-act-in-effort-to-make-minnesota-sanctuary-state-republicans-warn-of-economic-burden/">burden on the economy</a>.</p>
<p>As an <a href="https://stockton.academia.edu/RamyaVIjaya">economist who has researched immigration and employment</a>, I’m <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2024-02/59710-Outlook-2024.pdf">confident that economic trends</a> and research findings contradict those arguments.</p>
<p>The U.S. is <a href="https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/understanding-americas-labor-shortage">experiencing a labor market shortage</a> that is likely to last well into the future as the U.S.-born population gets older overall, <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2023/article/labor-force-and-macroeconomic-projections.htm">slowing growth in the number of workers</a>.</p>
<p>Rather than a drain on the economy, an uptick in immigration presents an opportunity to alleviate this shortage. Data from <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2020.1759815">my own research</a> and studies conducted by other scholars show that immigrant workers in the U.S. are more likely to be active in the labor market – either employed or looking for work – and tend to <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-immigrant-workforce-supports-millions-of-u-s-jobs/">work in professions with</a> the most unmet demand.</p>
<h2>Help really wanted</h2>
<p>The U.S. had <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/jolts.pdf">9 million job openings</a> in December 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The government agency also found that there were <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm">6.1 million unemployed people</a> actively seeking paid work.</p>
<p>Economists generally compare the two numbers to calculate the labor shortage. It currently stands at nearly 3 million workers, and the bureau expects this gap to grow as <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecopro.pdf">the population ages and people have fewer children</a> over the next decade.</p>
<p>In other words, the U.S. faces a long-term shortage of people looking for employment.</p>
<p>That shortfall would be much bigger without foreign-born workers, who accounted for a <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2023/foreign-born-workers-were-a-record-high-18-1-percent-of-the-u-s-civilian-labor-force-in-2022.htm">record high of 18.1%</a> of the U.S. civilian labor force in 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.</p>
<p><iframe id="aLpRY" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/aLpRY/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>More likely to be active in the workforce</h2>
<p>Another reason why immigrants can help fill that big hole in the U.S. labor market is that so many of them tend to be employed or are looking for work. </p>
<p>About <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/forbrn.pdf">65.9% of all people who were born elsewhere</a> were either employed or actively looking for work as of 2022, in comparison to 61.5% of people born in the U.S. </p>
<p>This difference has been <a href="https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2022/11/the-foreign-born-labor-force-of-the-united-states">consistent since 2007</a>, according to research by the Peterson Foundation, a think tank that focuses on long-term budget problems.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2020.1759815">study I conducted a few years ago</a>, I found that immigrants who arrive in the United States as refugees fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries are eventually more likely to be employed or looking for work than people who are born in the U.S.</p>
<h2>More home health aides and janitors</h2>
<p>Some of the labor market’s biggest shortages are especially acute in professions that tend to attract immigrants, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-daunting-economics-of-elder-care-are-about-to-get-much-worse-83123">such as home health aides</a>.</p>
<p>The health care and social services sector as a whole has about <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.a.htm">1.8 million</a> open jobs, the largest number of job openings currently available.</p>
<p>This is followed by professional and business services with 1.7 million open jobs. This <a href="https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag60.htm">category encompasses everything from legal services to janitorial work</a>, including cleaning and grounds maintenance.</p>
<p>Currently, about <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/forbrn.pdf">22% of employed immigrants work</a> in one of those two high-demand categories or another service occupation.</p>
<h2>Making it easier to age in place</h2>
<p>A team of economists has found that the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/roie.12607">cost of home health care and support services is lower</a> than average in places with large numbers of immigrant service workers. This in turn makes it more likely that older adults can avoid institutionalization and stay in their own homes. </p>
<p>But, to be sure, immigrant workers providing these vital community support services often <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/amajethics.2022.890">endure exploitative</a> working conditions. </p>
<p>The labor market data not only makes it clear that the U.S. economy can absorb large numbers of immigrants, but it shows that these newcomers could be a much-needed solution to a labor supply crisis.</p>
<p>And yet people arriving in the U.S. as political asylum applicants are enduring <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/23/one-answer-to-the-migration-crisis-jobs/54096526-f974-11ed-bafc-bf50205661da_story.html">backlogs and facing hurdles in securing employment authorization</a>, which is delaying their entry into the workforce.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t it make more sense for Congress to expand pathways for legal employment access for migrants? From an economic perspective, that seems to be the most prudent course of action.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222580/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ramya Devan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite widespread fears about immigrants being a burden, even those arriving as asylum applicants are more likely to work than the US-born population.Ramya Devan, Professor of Economics, Stockton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2230722024-02-13T13:21:23Z2024-02-13T13:21:23ZImmigration reform has always been tough, and rarely happens in election years - 4 things to know<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575094/original/file-20240212-24-rrmn75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Migrants cross the border from Mexico into Texas on Feb. 6, 2024. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/migrants-cross-the-border-to-usa-through-gate-36-and-to-be-news-photo/1983631787?adppopup=true">Christian Torres/Anadolu via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Immigration is already a major polarizing issue in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Arrests for <a href="https://apnews.com/article/immigration-border-crossings-mexico-biden-18ac91ef502e0c5433f74de6cc629b32">illegal border crossings</a> from Mexico reached an all-time high in December 2023, and cities like New York and Chicago are struggling to provide housing and basic services for tens of thousands of <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/04/texas-migrants-new-york-bus-companies-lawsuit/#:%7E:text=As%20of%20Dec.,33%2C600%20migrants%20to%20New%20York.">migrants arriving from Texas</a>. </p>
<p>In early February 2024, a group of senators <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-unveils-118-billion-bipartisan-bill-tighten-border-security-aid-2024-02-04/">proposed new immigration legislation</a> that would have slowed the migrant influx at the border. The bill would have made it harder for migrants to both apply for and receive asylum, which is the legal right to stay in the U.S. because of fear of persecution if they return back home. <a href="https://apnews.com/article/congress-border-deal-rejected-lankford-immigration-045fdf42d42b26270ee1f5f73e8bc1b0">But the bill</a>, like others proposed in recent years, quickly faltered after Republicans opposed it. </p>
<p>This is far from the first time that Democrats and Republicans have failed to pass legislation that was intended to improve the country’s immigration system. </p>
<p>I am a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Y1qVRfUAAAAJ&hl=en">scholar of immigration and refugee policy</a>. Here are four key reasons why meaningful immigration policy change has been so difficult to achieve – and why it remains a pipe dream:</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575096/original/file-20240212-20-e4zl2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People wearing dark clothing and jackets reach for and hold bags of bread." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575096/original/file-20240212-20-e4zl2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575096/original/file-20240212-20-e4zl2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575096/original/file-20240212-20-e4zl2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575096/original/file-20240212-20-e4zl2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575096/original/file-20240212-20-e4zl2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575096/original/file-20240212-20-e4zl2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575096/original/file-20240212-20-e4zl2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Newly arrived migrants receive a meal from a church in Manhattan on Jan. 24, 2024. According to New York Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, 172,400 migrants have arrived in the city since the spring of 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-mostly-newly-arrived-migrants-receive-an-afternoon-news-photo/1958071905?adppopup=true">Spencer Platt/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>1. Immigration reform has always been hard</h2>
<p>The U.S. has faced major roadblocks every time it has tried to achieve immigration reform. </p>
<p>For decades after World War II, presidents, lawmakers and activists tried and failed to revamp the nation’s immigration system to remove <a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/erika-lee/america-for-americans/9781541672598/?lens=basic-books">racist quotas based on national origin</a>, set in the 1920s, that restricted all but northern and western Europeans from immigrating to the U.S. </p>
<p>Change finally came in 1965, when Congress passed the <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/laws-and-policy/legislation/immigration-and-nationality-act">Immigration and Nationality Act</a>. This required extensive negotiations. The final bipartisan bargain <a href="https://www.npr.org/2015/10/03/445339838/the-unintended-consequences-of-the-1965-immigration-act">removed racist quotas but appeased those who wanted to restrict immigration</a> by prioritizing new immigrants’ connections to family already in the country – a preference that lawmakers thought would favor Europeans.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691088051/dividing-lines">last big immigration reform</a> happened in 1986, when Congress passed the <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/irca">Immigration Reform and Control Act</a>. Year after year, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Congressional bills to address the porous border with Mexico and the undocumented immigrant population living in the country went nowhere. After many false starts, an uneasy Left-Right majority finally agreed in 1986 on a package that sanctioned employers who hired undocumented immigrants, provided legal status to roughly 3 million undocumented migrants, created a new farmworker program, and increased border security resources.</p>
<p>For almost four decades, Washington has been stuck in neutral on this issue.</p>
<h2>2. The US is more polarized on immigration than ever before</h2>
<p>Americans have been at odds over how to handle immigration since the nation’s founding. But partisan and ideological polarization over border control and immigrants’ rights <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo221112082.html">is greater today</a> than any other time.</p>
<p>Over the past 20 years, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-politics-of-immigration-9780190235307?cc=us&lang=en&">Democratic and Republican voters</a> and politicians alike became more firmly <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo28424644.html">aligned with rival</a> pro- and anti-immigration rights movements.</p>
<p>In 2008, 46% of Republicans and 39% of Democrats said they thought immigration to the U.S. <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/395882/immigration-views-remain-mixed-highly-partisan.aspx">should be decreased</a>. In 2023, GOP support for decreased immigration soared to 73%, compared with just 18% of Democrats who said they wanted that. Today, Republicans are almost three times as likely as Democrats to see unauthorized immigration as a very big national problem – <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/06/21/inflation-health-costs-partisan-cooperation-among-the-nations-top-problems/">70% versus 25%</a>.</p>
<p>Despite growing polarization, leaders from both parties have tried a few times in recent decades to work together on bipartisan reform. </p>
<p>In 2006, former President George W. Bush, a Republican, joined Senators Edward Kennedy, a Democrat, John McCain, a member of the GOP, and other lawmakers in a coalition that pushed for comprehensive immigration reform. Like the 1986 reform, their proposal included stronger border security measures, a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants and a new, expansive program for employers to legally host foreign workers. </p>
<p>Right-wing pundits and anti-immigrant activists vigorously mobilized <a href="https://cis.org/Historical-Overview-Immigration-Policy">against the legislation,</a> and the GOP-controlled House of Representatives killed the bill.</p>
<p>In 2013, a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/06/24/getting-to-maybe">bipartisan group of politicians called the “Gang of Eight”</a> spearheaded a new reform. Their bill reflected a familiar package: a new path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, more work visas for skilled foreign immigrants, and a guest worker program. The <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/immigration-bill-2013-senate-passes-093530">Senate passed the legislation</a>, but the <a href="https://www.salon.com/2007/06/26/immigration_22/">measure then died</a> in the House. The Republican majority there refused to vote on what they considered an amnesty bill.</p>
<p>Partisan warfare over immigration reached a fevered pitch during the Donald Trump presidency. Liberals, for example, rallied against Trump’s <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/01/a-weekend-of-protest-against-trumps-immigration-ban/514953/">ban on immigrants from some Muslim countries</a>, and conservatives fretted over <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trump-the-migrant-caravan-and-a-manufactured-crisis-at-the-us-border">caravans of migrants crossing into the country</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575364/original/file-20240213-30-wm3195.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Kyrsten Sinema wears a red dress and red framed glasses and gestures with her hands, while people stand around her and hold out phones and tape recorders." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575364/original/file-20240213-30-wm3195.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575364/original/file-20240213-30-wm3195.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575364/original/file-20240213-30-wm3195.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575364/original/file-20240213-30-wm3195.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575364/original/file-20240213-30-wm3195.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575364/original/file-20240213-30-wm3195.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575364/original/file-20240213-30-wm3195.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">US Senator Kyrsten Sinema, one of the co-sponsors of the Senate bi-partisan border and immigration bill, speaks to reporters in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 5, 2024.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sen-kyrsten-sinema-speaks-to-reporters-at-the-u-s-capitol-news-photo/1988744214?adppopup=true">Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. There’s little bipartisan agreement over what the problem actually is</h2>
<p>Most Americans generally agree that the nation’s immigration system is broken. Yet different political groups cannot agree on what exactly is wrong and how to solve it.</p>
<p>For some Republicans, including former Trump, the problem is lax border control and permissive policies that allow dangerous migrants to enter and stay in the country. Right-wing politicians and commentators, like Tucker Carlson, have exploited these anxieties, warning that large-scale immigration will <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/15/us/replacement-theory-shooting-tucker-carlson.html">“replace” white Americans</a>. Their solution is to militarize the nation’s borders, deport undocumented immigrants living in the country, and make it harder for people to legally stay in the country. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.hoover.org/research/mobility-socialism-how-anti-immigration-politics-advances-socialism-and-impedes-capitalism">There are also conservatives</a> who think immigration is consistent with the principles of individual liberty, entrepreneurship and national economic growth. They support more visas for highly skilled newcomers, especially those with strong science and technology backgrounds.</p>
<p>Democrats <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/09/08/republicans-and-democrats-have-different-top-priorities-for-u-s-immigration-policy/">aligned with the immigrant rights</a> movement believe that the country is obliged to address the humanitarian needs of migrants seeking asylum at the southern border. They argue that millions of undocumented people <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520287266/lives-in-limbo">living in the shadows</a> of American life creates an undemocratic caste system, and they think this can be solved by creating pathways for most undocumented immigrants to get legal permanent residency. </p>
<p>Moderate Democrats <a href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2024/02/07/kyrsten-sinema-border-bill-impact-arizona-election/72509061007/">advocate tougher restrictions to address migrant surges</a> that overwhelm Border Patrol agents and other officials along the U.S.-Mexican border. Their solutions include hiring thousands of new immigration officers, strengthening physical and technological barriers along the border, and making the asylum program more efficient. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575097/original/file-20240212-16-pkh45o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Joe Biden wears dark sunglasses and a suit and walks, in front of men in green uniforms, along a large fence. The sun shines through it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575097/original/file-20240212-16-pkh45o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575097/original/file-20240212-16-pkh45o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575097/original/file-20240212-16-pkh45o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575097/original/file-20240212-16-pkh45o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575097/original/file-20240212-16-pkh45o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575097/original/file-20240212-16-pkh45o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575097/original/file-20240212-16-pkh45o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Joe Biden walks along the U.S.-Mexico border fence in January 2023 in El Paso, Texas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-joe-biden-walks-along-the-us-mexico-border-fence-news-photo/1246095870?adppopup=true">Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. Immigration reform is especially messy in a presidential election year</h2>
<p>Presidential election years are fertile ground for politicking on immigrants and borders, but not lasting policy reform.</p>
<p>In 2021, President Joe Biden and his supporters introduced an <a href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2024/02/07/kyrsten-sinema-border-bill-impact-arizona-election/72509061007/">immigration bill</a> that would offer a pathway to legal residency for nearly all undocumented immigrants. But the measure never gained the 60 votes necessary to win passage in the Senate. </p>
<p>Now, Biden finds himself <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4394262-biden-approval-rating-on-handling-immigration-reaches-all-time-low-poll/">underwater with voters, including Democrats, on immigration</a> and the perceived chaos at the border. </p>
<p>Eager to protect themselves in the 2024 election and to alleviate the headaches that migrant surges at the border present, Biden and other top Democrats temporarily set aside past blueprints for legalizing undocumented people and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-unveils-118-billion-bipartisan-bill-tighten-border-security-aid-2024-02-04/">joined Republican negotiators</a> in advancing one of the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/border-deal-to-cut-illegal-immigration-is-released-after-months-of-talks-26a66211">toughest border security measures</a> in decades. This bill, which the Senate introduced on Feb. 5, 2024, would have dedicated US$20.2 billion to strengthen border security, and it would have made it much harder for immigrants to apply for or receive asylum. </p>
<p>Republican border hawks had long demanded more restrictive immigration rules. But they did not embrace this deal. When Trump eviscerated the legislation, intent on keeping problems at the border as a campaign issue, Republican members of Congress lined up to quickly kill the legislation.</p>
<p>The death of the bipartisan Senate border deal is a triumph of election-year grandstanding over governing. Yet its demise also reflects a much longer trend of ideological conflict and partisan warfare that has made congressional gridlock on immigration reform a defining feature of contemporary American politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223072/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Tichenor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Immigration reform has always been hard to accomplish. As the U.S. enters an election year, bipartisan reform now appears out of reach.Daniel Tichenor, Professor of Political Science, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2186552024-02-12T13:58:39Z2024-02-12T13:58:39ZFears about falling birthrate in England and Wales are misplaced – the population is due to grow for years to come<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564946/original/file-20231211-21-wqu4sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=366%2C1633%2C5276%2C2497&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/row-multiethnic-babies-sitting-side-by-144900970">sirtravelalot/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The number of babies born in England and Wales in 2022 <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthsummarytablesenglandandwales/2022">fell by 3.1%</a> compared to the previous year. The average age of parents is also at a record high, as people choose to delay having children. The average age of mothers <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthcharacteristicsinenglandandwales/2021">is now nearly 31</a>.</p>
<p>To some, this is alarming. MP Miriam Cates, for example, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/06/give-women-the-choice-to-have-more-babies/">has written that</a> “the economic consequences of this shift are mind blowing”. </p>
<p>Worries about a low birthrate often include that there won’t be enough young people to support an ageing population through pensions and social care, or that a population decline will <a href="https://www.cityam.com/britain-birth-rates-economy-risk-men/">affect the economy</a>. Some worry that a falling population will lead to higher immigration, and present this as <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/06/give-women-the-choice-to-have-more-babies/">something to be avoided</a> by increasing the birth rate. </p>
<p>But the population of the UK <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/bulletins/nationalpopulationprojections/2021basedinterim">is rising</a>, as is the world’s population, and they will probably both continue to rise for years to come. </p>
<p>Everyone has the right to decide when and if they want children. Policies should enable free and informed choices. But individuals shouldn’t be responsible for controlling a country’s future population and economic prospects through childbearing.</p>
<p>Instead of targeting specific birth numbers, we should focus on supporting parents and planning for future population changes.</p>
<h2>Long-term trends</h2>
<p>The figure of 2.1 children is often given as the average number of children required in order for a population to replace itself over the long term. In fact, fertility rates in England and Wales have not been that high <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthsummarytablesenglandandwales/2022">since 1972</a> – more than 50 years ago – and yet the population has not decreased. </p>
<p>The birth rates in the UK are similar to long-term trends experienced by many places in the world. In Europe, the highest fertility rate according to 2021 data is <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Fertility_statistics#live_births_per_woman_in_the_EU_in_2021">1.84 in France</a>. In England and Wales <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthsummarytablesenglandandwales/2021">the average is 1.61</a>, which is actually higher than the EU average of 1.53. </p>
<p>Within this context it is clear that current birth rates, while low, are not wildly out of the ordinary. And in fact, projections suggest <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/bulletins/nationalpopulationprojections/2021basedinterim">an extra 6.6 million people</a> will be living in the UK by 2036. </p>
<p>But it’s important to note that this is a projection based on assumptions about future births, deaths and migration. Projections are not predictions – and migration is particularly hard to predict given how much it depends upon changing policies. </p>
<h2>The role of immigration</h2>
<p>The growth in the UK’s population will be driven largely by immigration, as it has been since the 1990s. Immigration has played a hugely important role in sustaining the UK’s population, economic growth, and workforce. Some people are concerned that immigration contributes to housing shortages and puts pressure on public services. </p>
<p>But evidence suggests that <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/articles/internationalmigrationandthechangingnatureofhousinginenglandwhatdoestheavailableevidenceshow/2017-05-25">there is no direct relationship</a> between international migration and housing demand. And while it is hard to estimate the impact of migrants on the economy, we do know that <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/income-tax-national-insurance-contributions-tax-credits-and-child-benefit-statistics-for-non-uk-nationals-2019-to-2020/income-tax-national-insurance-contributions-tax-credits-and-child-benefit-statistics-for-non-uk-nationals-2019-to-2020">migrants pay more</a> in income tax and national insurance than they claim in tax credits and child benefits; many migrants are <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-funds/public-funds-accessible">not actually eligible to claim public funds</a> due to their immigration status.</p>
<p>Dismissing immigrants erroneously places more value on the lives of those who are born in the UK, despite the fact that <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/ethnicity/bulletins/ethnicgroupenglandandwales/census2021#ethnic-groups-in-england-and-wales">one in four people</a> in England and Wales do not classify themselves as “white British”. <a href="https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/uk-attitudes-to-immigration-among-most-positive-internationally-1018742-pub01-115">Survey data also suggests</a> that public attitudes to immigration have become much more positive in recent years. </p>
<p>In addition, many fears about a falling birth rate concern its impact on an ageing population and the economy. The foundation of our pensions and social support system is that a society needs enough people of working age to support the needs of those who are too old (or too young) to work.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Grandmother holding baby" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565775/original/file-20231214-19-oit2hi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565775/original/file-20231214-19-oit2hi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565775/original/file-20231214-19-oit2hi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565775/original/file-20231214-19-oit2hi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565775/original/file-20231214-19-oit2hi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565775/original/file-20231214-19-oit2hi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565775/original/file-20231214-19-oit2hi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Babies born today won’t contribute to the pensions of the elderly for around two decades.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/grandmother-kissing-her-baby-grandson-indoors-404522878">Martin Novak/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the UK, most “baby boomers” – the people born in a post-war peak in the birth rate – have reached pension age, requiring more working people to support them. </p>
<p>Higher fertility rates might be a long-term solution to this issue, but it takes a very long time for babies to reach working age, and in the meantime they require a great deal of social support in the form of childcare, healthcare and education. An increase in the fertility rate today would not have much impact on the working age population for at least 20 years. </p>
<h2>Returning to work</h2>
<p>Labour shortages are not always a result of a lack of births, either. Indeed, the prohibitive cost of childcare means that many parents, especially women, struggle to return to work after having children or do not return in their full capacity. </p>
<p>Over <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/economicinactivity/datasets/economicinactivitybyreasonseasonallyadjustedinac01sa">1.5 million people</a> are economically inactive, 85% of them women, because they are looking after family. This means that having more babies might even exacerbate labour shortages, or lead to people with important skills not making use of them in the workforce. </p>
<p>It is notoriously hard, not to mention ethically problematic, to change fertility rates through direct government policy. And, importantly, the ability to decide if, when and how often to have children is a fundamental human right. </p>
<p>Instead, policies should focus on supporting children and families. The demographic future is not easy to manipulate, so we must plan for it rather than attempt to tinker with fertility rates.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218655/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melanie Channon receives funding from UKRI. She is Honorary Secretary of the British Society for Population Studies and a non-exec director of Bath Social and Development Research Ltd. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bernice Kuang works on an Economic and Social Research Council funded project.</span></em></p>Birth rates are falling – but the population in England will continue to rise.Melanie Channon, Reader in Social Policy, University of BathBernice Kuang, Postdoctoral research associate, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2167002024-02-12T13:25:17Z2024-02-12T13:25:17ZA brief history of Dearborn, Michigan – the first Arab-American majority city in the US<p>Dearborn, Michigan, is a center of Arab American cultural, economic, and political life. It’s home to several of the country’s oldest and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/4462?login=false">most influential mosques</a>, the <a href="https://arabamericanmuseum.org/">Arab American National Museum</a>, dozens of now-iconic Arab <a href="https://halalmetropolis.org/story3">bakeries and restaurants</a>, and a vibrant and essential mix of Arab American <a href="https://www.accesscommunity.org/">service and cultural</a> organizations. </p>
<p>The city became <a href="https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2023/09/26/census-data-shows-arab-american-population-in-dearborn-now-makes-up-majority-of-people-living-there/">the first Arab-majority city in the U.S.</a> in 2023, with roughly 55% of the city’s 110,000 residents claiming Middle Eastern or North African ancestry on the 2023 census.</p>
<p>One of us is an <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/old-islam-in-detroit-9780199372003?cc=us&lang=en&">author</a> and <a href="https://umdearborn.edu/people-um-dearborn/sally-howell">historian who specializes in the Arab and Muslim communities of Detroit</a>, and the other is a <a href="https://umdearborn.edu/casl/centers-institutes/center-arab-american-studies/faculty-spotlight-amny-shuraydi">criminologist</a> born and raised in Dearborn who conducts research on the <a href="https://umdearborn.edu/people-um-dearborn/amny-shuraydi">experiences and perceptions of Arab Americans</a>. We have paid close attention to the city’s demographic shifts. </p>
<p>To understand Dearborn today, we must start with the city’s past. </p>
<h2>Ford and Dearborn are in many ways synonymous</h2>
<p>Dearborn owes much of its growth to automotive pioneer Henry Ford, who began building his famous <a href="https://www.thehenryford.org/visit/ford-rouge-factory-tour/history-and-timeline/fords-rouge/">River Rouge Complex</a> in 1917. Migrants from the American South alongside immigrants from European and Arab countries settled <a href="https://lebanesestudies.ojs.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/mashriq/article/view/63">Dearborn’s Southend</a> neighborhood to work in the auto plant.</p>
<p>While most early 20th-century Arab immigrants to the United States were Christians, those who moved to Dearborn in the 1920s were mainly Muslims from southern Lebanon.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/726343326" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A history of Dearborn in photos by local photographer Millard Berry.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Life downwind of the world’s largest industrial complex proved challenging. But the real threat this diverse population faced in the 1950s through the 1970s was from a city-led rezoning campaign designed to turn the Southend over to heavy industry. </p>
<p>Most of the white ethnic groups in the neighborhood had churches and business districts scattered around Detroit, which <a href="https://lebanesestudies.ojs.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/mashriq/article/view/63/538">facilitated their departure</a> from the Southend. But for Arab American Muslims, this community, with its mosques and markets, was indispensable as they began to welcome distant kin from the Middle East after <a href="https://immigrationhistory.org/item/hart-celler-act/">U.S. immigration laws</a> relaxed in the 1960s. </p>
<p>Fleeing <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3012042">civil war in Yemen</a> and the <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469630984/the-rise-of-the-arab-american-left/">Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories</a> in 1967, these new Arab immigrants breathed new life into Dearborn. In 1973, they filed a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1791528153904541635&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr">class-action lawsuit</a> against the city that eventually saved their neighborhood.</p>
<p>When the <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469630984/the-rise-of-the-arab-american-left/">Lebanese civil war</a> broke out in 1975, the Southend again welcomed a new generation of refugees and migrants. By the 1980s, this mix of first- and second-generation Arab Americans had begun to spill into other neighborhoods in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/4462?login=false">East Dearborn</a>. New mosques began opening in the 1980s, and Arab entrepreneurs began investing in neglected commercial corridors. </p>
<p>But Arab Americans frequently <a href="https://lebanesestudies.ojs.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/mashriq/article/view/63/538">faced discrimination</a> in the housing market and in the public schools, which struggled to address the needs of a large cohort of English language learners. </p>
<h2>Overcoming discrimination</h2>
<p>Tensions came to a head in 1985, when Michael Guido won a mayoral race in which the “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/decades-after-the-arab-problem-muslim-and-arab-americans-are-leading-political-change-in-metro-detroit">Arab problem</a>,” as his <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/3040/Arab_Problem_%282%29.pdf?1707574613">campaign literature</a> described it, pitched the interests of the white working class against new Arab migrants. </p>
<p>Arab American activists responded by pushing for more city services in East Dearborn and running for office. Republican <a href="https://findingaids.lib.umich.edu/catalog/umich-bhl-2015006">Suzanne Sareini</a> was the first Arab American elected to the City Council in 1990. </p>
<p>But with at-large elections, those with <a href="https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1047&context=pad">more Arab-sounding names</a> were at a disadvantage. It took another 20 years, when Arabs became the plurality of the population, before other Arab Americans joined Sareini on the council. </p>
<p>Following the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11, Dearborn became a target for anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia, <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/12638">government surveillance,</a> and harassment. <a href="https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/arab-detroit-911">The city became a fixation of national media</a> seeking to make sense of its growing Muslim American minority. </p>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137290076_6">Anti-Muslim activists </a> regularly staged <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/02/pastor-bikers-plan-rally-against-mosque/9858613/">Quran-burnings</a>, paraded around ethnic festivals with the <a href="https://www.dearbornfreepress.com/2012/07/01/protestors-disrupt-arab-festival-with-pigs-head-on-pole/">heads of</a> <a href="https://www.dearbornfreepress.com/2012/07/01/protestors-disrupt-arab-festival-with-pigs-head-on-pole/">pigs on spikes,</a> and threatened to <a href="https://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/2011/01/dearborn_mosque_concerned_abou.html">bomb local mosques</a>. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, the Arab American community continued to grow and diversify. Iraqi and Syrian refugee populations began to arrive in the 1990s and 2010s, respectively, following wars in their homelands. <a href="https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/5cd95a380e2646d78b425ca308902458">They settled in Dearborn</a> and on its periphery in Detroit and neighboring suburbs. </p>
<p>Together, this new cohort of Arab Americans joined the established community in fighting back against president Donald Trump’s <a href="https://immigrationhistory.org/item/muslim-travel-ban/">Muslim travel ban</a> and other policies that discriminated against refugees, migrants and Muslims by <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/4/10/us-democrats-introduce-bill-to-repeal-trumps-travel-ban">building alliances with Democrats</a> and engaging the broadening civil rights coalition, represented by groups such as Black Lives Matter and the Women’s March. </p>
<p>Rep. <a href="https://tlaib.house.gov/">Rashida Tlaib’s</a> landmark election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018 as the first Palestinian American woman and one of the first two Muslim American women reflects this growing progressive political base for Arab Americans. Her district includes Dearborn and parts of Detroit and other suburbs.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574778/original/file-20240211-24-o6qb9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A smiling woman with black hair and glasses claps as she walks down a hallway wearing a lanyard." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574778/original/file-20240211-24-o6qb9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574778/original/file-20240211-24-o6qb9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574778/original/file-20240211-24-o6qb9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574778/original/file-20240211-24-o6qb9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574778/original/file-20240211-24-o6qb9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574778/original/file-20240211-24-o6qb9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574778/original/file-20240211-24-o6qb9o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rashida Tlaib arrives on Capitol Hill for a new members briefing in 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/incoming-representative-rashida-tlaib-arrives-for-a-house-news-photo/1061905936">Brendan Smialowski /AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>New leadership</h2>
<p>Reflecting the increasing demographic and political clout of the Arab population in Dearborn, <a href="https://cityofdearborn.org/government/meet-the-mayor-3">Abdullah Hammoud</a> became the city’s first Arab American elected mayor in 2021. </p>
<p>Hammoud’s priorities have included creating the city’s first <a href="https://cityofdearborn.org/news-and-events/city-news/2483-mayor-hammoud-announces-inaugural-director-of-dearborn-department-of-public-health">Department of Public Health</a>, introducing <a href="https://cityofdearborn.org/2-uncategorised/2642-dearborn-public-health-announces-new-narcan-vending-station-to-address-opioid-crisis?highlight=WyJkaW5nZWxsIiwiZGluZ2VsbCdzIl0=">Narcan vending</a> machines to address the opioid crisis, fighting for <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/city-of-dearborn-files-lawsuit-against-scrap-yard-over-hazardous-air-pollution-violations/">clean air in the Southend</a>, and hosting <a href="https://halalmetropolis.org/story1">Ramadan festivities</a> and an <a href="https://arabamericannews.com/2023/05/01/dearborn-mayor-abdullah-hammoud-hosts-first-eid-al-fitr-breakfast-in-the-city/">Eid al-Fitr breakfast</a>. He’s also shown outspoken support for the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ahammoudmi/p/CjB9JfxLz54/?img_index=1">LGBTQ+ community</a>. </p>
<p>Hammoud <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/dearborn-mayor-abdullah-hammoud-responds-after-house-censures-rep-rashida-tlaib-over-israel-comments/">objected publicly</a> to the congressional censure of Tlaib in 2023 following her remarks about the violence in the Gaza Strip. He also <a href="https://twitter.com/AHammoudMI/status/1750961949674762260">called for an unequivocal cease-fire in Gaza</a> at a time when other Democratic leaders were silent.</p>
<p>Dearborn often becomes a topic of global media interest during election years or at times of conflict in the Middle East. That has certainly been true during the ongoing attacks on the Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>The Wall Street Journal recently published an editorial labeling the city as America’s “jihad capital,” which led to public threats against the city that forced Hammoud to <a href="https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/02/03/us/dearborn-michigan-mayor-wsj-opinion/index.html">increase police patrols</a>. </p>
<p>Public officials, from <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/2024/02/05/arab-american-leaders-demand-apology-retraction-after-wall-street-journal-piece/72479221007/">local leaders</a> to <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1754206954715513083">President Joe Biden</a>, have rallied around the city and asked the paper to rescind the editorial and to apologize. </p>
<p>So far, it has not.</p>
<p>The more interesting story about Dearborn, however, is what happens when the national spotlight is turned off. Then, as we have witnessed decade after decade, <a href="https://twitter.com/AHammoudMI/status/1753926374341915131?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet">the city’s residents</a>, Arab and non-Arab, <a href="https://wdet.org/2023/06/06/detroit-today-how-dearborn-is-growing-its-population-opposite-of-state-trends/">new and old</a>, work to make their home a better, safer, healthier place to raise their families and their voices.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216700/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nothing to disclose.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amny Shuraydi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The city often becomes a magnet for anti-Arab sentiment during election years and global conflicts; however, the more interesting story is what happens in the city when the spotlight is turned off.Sally Howell, Professor of History, University of Michigan-DearbornAmny Shuraydi, Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Michigan-DearbornLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.