Tag: Immigration
The bad ideas keep on coming
Two weeks have brought us these, just on the foreign policy front:
- Proposed take over Greenland, Panama Canal, Canada, and now Gaza.
- Eviscerated the world’s largest humanitarian agency, recalling all its overseas staff.
- Reached bogus deals to postpone promised tariffs on Mexico and Canada
- Failed to reach a deal with China, which retaliates.
- Arrested thousands of legal immigrants and try to deport them.
Gaza
Trump’s idea is to make Gaza “the riviera of the Middle East.” That’s not the crazy part. I’ve been there (between the two Intifadas, around 1999). Gaza would make a very nice resort community on the Mediterranean. It has beautiful beaches and a flat approach to the seaside. It could accommodate a good sized airport and seaport. When I was there, its hotels were capable of serving Kosher as well as Halal food, shipped from Israel.
But to accomplish his developer’s goal, Trump wants to remove the 2 million or so Palestinians who call Gaza home. When they visit soon, Egyptian President Sisi and Jordanian King Abdullah will tell him what they think of the idea. Neither is willing to accept large numbers of Palestinians even temporarily. Both think their more or less autocratic regimes would not survive such an influx. Neither would want to exclude the possibility of a Palestinian state in the future.
A US takeover of Gaza would require tens of thousands of troops for at least a decade of occupation. Not to mention tens of thousands of contractors to clear unexploded ordnance, clear rubble, and start reconstruction. The cost would be many billions even before beginning to construct the resort.
US occupation of Gaza would also end hopes of a Palestinian state. Hamas and Hizbollah terrorists, Houthi drones, and Iranian missiles would target the Americans. Defense would be costly. The opportunity costs of putting that many American troops into a static position in the Middle East would be astronomical.
The other real estate propositions
Trump’s other real estate propositions are no better. Greenlanders oppose becoming part of the US by a margin of more than 10/1. Canadians feel about the same way. Panama isn’t going to give up the Canal, which is not run by the Chinese, as Trump claims.
In short, none of these things are happening because they are all the fantasies of a failed real estate tycoon. Trump has been successful in tacking his name onto other people’s buildings, not in developing his own projects. That isn’t going to change.
USAID
I am no fan of USAID, but yanking its overseas personnel and abruptly closing its life-saving programs is irresponsible. Folding the agency into the State Department is not necessarily a bad idea. Canada, the UK, and Australia have all incorporated their aid agencies into their foreign ministries. But it has to be done carefully and thoughtfully, which is definitely not what we are seeing right now.
Aid should come in two varieties. One is unconditional humanitarian assistance needed to relieve human suffering. Food, water, health, and shelter for victims of natural disasters, poverty, and oppressive governments belong in this category.
The other is assistance on building governmental and nongovernmental institutions where people are striving for more open and just societies. Even if their governments are oppressive, we should be willing to consider assistance that will improve the situation. This latter type of assistance really does belong in the State Department. The humanitarian relief part should be freestanding.
Mexico and Canada
Mexico and Canada handled the tariffs well. They threatened to retaliate, then offered Trump concessions that they had already made during the Biden Administration. Canada is beefing up its border controls. Mexico has already deployed more troops to its border with the US. Trump swallowed these non-concessions and declared victory. Mexico did even better, as it got Trump to agree to limit arms trafficking from the US into Mexico. That has been a perennial Mexican complaint. Now they get to complain when the US fails to follow through.
It remains to be seen what will happen in 30 days, when the postponement of the tariffs expires. My guess is not much. Maybe another empty concession or two. Then return to the free trade agreement that Trump negotiated in his first term in office. Trump will declare it a win.
As for immigration, Southwest Land Border Encounters were way down already in November and December 2024. Trump can declare victory, ignoring the fact this was accomplished under Biden/Harris.
China
The 10% tariff on Chinese imports to the US is far less than Trump has sometimes bruited. Beijing was ready. It responded with both tariffs on imports to China from the US and limits on exports of rare earth metals. It also launched an antitrust investigation of Google and labeled a couple of US companies unreliable. Those latter moves are not for now important, but they may indicate one direction of Chinese policy in the future.
Americans buy a lot from China, on the order of $500 billion per year. Without equally priced other sources for the goods, the tariffs mean a $50 billion hidden tax increase on US consumers. That’s still relatively small. Wait until Trump gets to his 100% tariff.
Immigration
So far, the majority of people arrested in Trump Administration sweeps of immigrants have not been criminals. This isn’t surprising. All Administrations, including Biden’s, have kept themselves arresting and deporting criminal immigrants. Now the Administration has exceeded the capacity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities. So it is starting to release some detainees.
It is also flying hundreds on military planes out of the US to be repatriated. This is an expensive proposition. Someone will eventually tell the Defense Department to save its resources for a more useful purpose.
What could happen next?
Who knows. There is no lack of things we need to do. Trump can even be expected to stumble on a few.
Is there a better option for Iran than restoring maximum pressure? That is what the Administration is going to try to do. If that is preliminary to negotiations on both Iran’s regional malfeasance and its nuclear program, I’ll be for it.
The Administration seems headed for a tougher policy on Ukraine than many had thought possible. That’s good too, if it aims to end the Russian invasion and restore Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
But the ratio of good ideas like those to bad ones is unlikely to be high. The bad ideas keep coming because the President has so many of them.
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Disgrace everywhere you look
Less than two weeks in, the Trump Administration is proving more malicious, less competent, and more destructive than we imagined. The President can’t even pretend to mourn the victims of a plane crash. He needed to parade his racism in front of the cameras as well by blaming the crash on diversity. It turns out the Federal Aviation Administration initiated its diversity program during his own first term. His tariffs on Mexico and Canada will jack up prices and deflate the stock market by Monday.
The firing of dozens of experience prosecutors will hamper the Justice Department for years. The consequent lawsuits will cost more than the money saved by reducing the payroll. And the incompetents he’ll hire as replacements will be mostly white sycophantic males with little experience and no integrity.
The disgrace in the Senate
Some of the worst of Trump’s minions have been testifying this week in the Senate. RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Kash Patel lied and insulted their ways through hours of painful fraud and bluster. The results were embarrassing.
RFK Jr. demonstrated no knowledge and no aptitude for Health and Human Services Secretary. Gabbard couldn’t call Edward Snowden a traitor because she had defended his theft and publication of top secret documents. I wouldn’t call him a traitor either until a court tries and convicts him. But she could have just that: he should come home for trial. Kash Patel just denied saying things he has said. The FBI will be Trump’s personal police force by the time he is through with it.
The disgrace at the borders
Trump is having a hard time on immigration. Not many people are crowding the border, because Biden already fixed that. Trump is flying a few immigrants to their home countries at high cost, without demonstrating they are criminals. And to get some more attention he promises to store 30,000 of them at Guantanamo. The US Government found it difficult to imprison 800 there, most of whom turned out not to be terrorists. The GTMO military commission has convicted only eight. The yearly cost of incarceration was $10 million per detainee.
Meanwhile, the Administration has canceled permission for fully cleared refugees from Afghanistan and other war zones to enter the US. It continues to lump asylum seekers with criminals. And it has canceled temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.
The disgrace in the budget
Trump initially stopped all Federal grants and contracts, including for major programs like Medicaid and for foreign assistance. That it turned out upset Republicans, as a lot of the money goes to red states:
So now they have lifted the general stop order but are slow walking specific programs through approval. The result is enormous confusion inside the government and the organizations that receive money from it. Everyone is working feverishly to get exceptions. That is a tremendous waste of resources.
Trump tried once before to stop foreign assistance, to Ukraine in 2019. The House of Representatives impeached him for that. Congress appropriates money. It is the President’s responsibility to execute what the Congress says it is for. He has no power to divert the money without at least informing Congress, which of course Trump has not done.
What he wants to do with the money is worse than his effort to slow its disbursement. He wants to extend the tax cuts for the rich approved in 2017. He also wants to pay for prestige projects his billionaire friends have been advocating. Those include sending people to Mars and buying Greenland. No doubt they will also convince him to provide cheap energy for the Artificial Intelligence projects.
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Four more years is four too many
It’s a sad day for America. Not only has Donald Trump re-entered the White House. His wealthy buddies are no longer hiding their allegiances. Elon Musk is not only supporting Alternative für Deutschland. He is copying a salute most Germans still remember with shame.
Off to the expected scams
Trump’s first moves are against immigrants and in favor of the fossil fuel industry. Ignoring the 14th amendment, he is trying to deprive people born in the US of citizenship it provides. He has also blocked asylum seekers. Raids that will round up legal as well as illegal immigrants are imminent. Trump wants to get rid of Biden’s efforts to slow global warming and accelerate oil, gas, and coal production. He is withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, which allows Washington to define its own measures to prevent climate change. He has also ordered withdrawal from the World Health Organization.
Trump is also promising Tik Tok relief from a law that provides for no possibility of relief from the president. He is pardoning 1500 criminals, most of whom attacked the Capitol violently on January 6, 2021. The Trump family has launched a crypto “memecoin” that has already put billions in his pockets. It will implode, like other such frauds, plundering late-comer investors. Trump’s threatened 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico February 1 will cause a major trade war. That will jack up inflation and impoverish many people in the Western Hemisphere.
Don’t lose sight of the baseline
Biden is leaving office with an extraordinary record of achievement. Federal and state prosecutors, including in deep red states, have found no reason to prosecute any Biden Administration political appointees. None have resigned in scandal. Biden pardoned his family not because they had done something wrong but because he rightfully feared Trumped-up charges against them. Trump’s nominee for FBI Director has promised such revenge. Note he did not pardon himself.
The economic stats at the end of 2024 are these:
- Unemployment 4.1% (12/24)
- GDP growth 3.0% (IV 24)
- Inflation 2.9% (2024)
- Budget deficit $2T (2024)
- Stock market (DJ) 43k, more or less
What are the odds that Trump will beat all these benchmarks? Close to zero. Three of them? Not much higher. We’ll have to wait and see.
Here are just a few other Biden claims:
—Strongest economy in the world —Nearly 16 million new jobs, a record —Wages up —Inflation coming down —Racial wealth gap lowest in 20 years —Historic infrastructure investments —Lower prescription drug costs —Record health insurance coverage —Most significant climate law ever —First major gun safety law in 30 years —First Black woman on Supreme Court —Help for 1 million veterans exposed to toxins —Violent crime rate at 50-year low —Border crossings lower than when Trump left office
Foreign policy
I fault Biden for his sloppy handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal and his failure to rein in Israel in Gaza. That undermined his claim that America stands up for democracy. He responded reasonably well and quickly to the fall of Assad in Syria. With Iran, Biden failed to revive the nuclear agreement. That has left a big challenge for Trump. But if Biden had succeeded, Trump would have withdrawn again.
Biden was great reunifying and rallying NATO to support for Ukraine. Fearful of provoking war between the US and Russia, however, Biden was too hesitant in providing long-range weapons. I hope Trump will give Kyiv all it needs to win. In the Balkans, Biden’s knowledgeable minions were miserably unsuccessful.
Biden was good on China, Taiwan, India, and Asia in general. But he couldn’t refocus more attention there due to events in the Middle East. We’ll have to see if Trump does better.
Next four years
Half the country did not think this was enough. They disliked Kamala Harris, an articulate, experienced, competent, Black and Indian woman. She had been a successful prosecutor and a senator. They thought they would do better with a convicted felon, womanizer, racist, and flim-flam man. I’ll be interested to hear what they have to say after four more years of his bombast.
PS: Let me be clear: four more yours is four too many. But the last thing I would want is to see the Vice President in the Oval Office. He is arguably worse.
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Defending against Trump’s worst moves
I’ve already said what could go wrong in 2025. I’m not inclined to change any of that. If anything, the past two weeks has confirmed much of what I said on January 3. Trump has doubled down on his stupid proposals for Greenland, Panama (where China does not operate the Canal), and Canada. That is smokescreen. He is preparing to meet Presidents Putin and Xi. Those meetings have often led to unwarranted concessions on Trump’s part. Despite rumors of Trump’s dissatisfaction with Musk and MAGA’s attacks on him, Elon remains strong. He has also moved rightwards, to open racist and sexist tropes as well as support for fascists in Europe.
We are now a mere week from Inauguration Day. The issue now is how to defend against Trump’s worst moves.
Defeat these nominees
Presidents have more leeway on foreign than most areas of domestic policy. Unless it involves foreign aid, the President can do just about anything he wants abroad. This applies in particular to the US military and national security issues in general. It is crucial that the Secretary of Defense be someone trustworthy, reliable, and honest. Trump’s nominee, Pete Hegseth, is none of those things. Republicans willing to think about the risks should also be willing to vote against him.
The same applies to Tulsi Gabbard, the nominee for Director of National Intelligence. While that job is not the most important in the intel community, she is a disaster waiting to happen. She has been a shill for Syrian President Assad and Russian President Putin. As a candidate for an intel position, she would not get even a low-level a security clearance. She certainly shouldn’t get a top level one for the government’s main coordinator of 17 intel agencies.
One domestic policy issue on which a President can have his way is prosecutions. The nominee for FBI Director, Kash Patel, has spend the last four years listing Trump opponents he wants prosecuted. He has also fantasized about Trump’s revenge in, of all things, a children’s book. He should be blocked from confirmation by any Republican Senator who believes in the rule of law.
Other Trump nominees are dangerous. Pam Bondi as Attorney General and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services are both incompetent and deluded. But both jobs are pretty well insulated by law and regulation from the worst of what they want to do. They will try to change both the laws and the regulations. It will be up to Congress and the courts to restrain their worst instincts.
Hope Rubio and Waltz prevail
I don’t like any of Trump’s nominees, but some are better than those above. Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor and Marco Rubio as Secretary of State are within the spectrum of respectable. Both have been strong supporters of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon. Both have said they want to end the Ukraine war soon. Those wouldn’t be my positions, but they are not outlandish.
The problem is that these more respectable and knowledgeable names are not alone. Trump has also named Ric Grenell to handle Ukraine. Grenell is a failed Trump-appointed ambassador in Germany, special envoy for the Balkans, and Acting Director of National Intelligence. Trump has nominated Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Steve Witkoff as special envoy for the Middle East. Huckabee is an evangelical Christian and supporter of Netanyahu’s Greater Israel ambitions. Witkoff’s views on Israel don’t seem to be know. He is a New York lawyer and real estate tycoon.
I suppose in other circumstances this variety of nominees would garner praise. But there is a real risk that Waltz and Rubio are fig leaves intended to hide the junk. Grenell tried to partition Kosovo during the first Trump Administration. He will no doubt try that with Ukraine as well, if he gets a chance. None of the nominees seem prepared to rein in Israel. But Huckabee and Witkoff would be more likely than Rubio and Waltz to give Netanyahu a blank check. The portfolios of Rubio and Waltz will include relations with the Arab Gulf.
The problem from hell
Trump’s worst instincts have manifested on immigration. He has promised mass deportation. There can be no doubt that his nominees want to do it. Stephen Miller as White House deputy chief of policy and Tom Homan as border czar as have impeccable anti-immigration credentials. No one would accuse them of insincerity on the issue. But Homan has been trying to lower expectations. This is an area where law and regulation do constrain the new administration.
In the meanwhile, an intramural verbal spat has erupted between longtime MAGAtes like Steve Bannon and newcomers, especially Elon Musk. Musk and other tech giants want to keep or even increase H1B visas they use to import cheap foreign labor. Trump does likewise for his hotels and resorts. Musk and company will win this one, but the result will be an even more draconian crackdown on asylum-seekers. The MAGAtes regard them as “illegal” immigrants, though entering the US to seek asylum is legal.
The irony is that the US needs immigrants. Not only is the current labor market tight. We are not reproducing enough to grow the population at the rate needed to fund Social Security and other programs. Colleges are closing and we soon won’t have enough graduates. So while Republicans quarrel over H1Bs, the funding and personnel shortfalls get worse.
Immigration is the problem from hell because there is no political formula for doing what is needed. We need reform that will provide the person power while cracking down on real illegality.
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Immigration is clear, national security not
Trump’s appointments so far merit a first look. What do they suggest about the direction of the next Administration?
Deportation is for real
The appointments of Steven Miller as deputy chief of staff, Tom Homan as “border czar” (a White House appointment?), and Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary send a clear message. They suggest that Trump is doubling down on deportation of undocumented immigrants. He proposes to start with those who have criminal convictions, in the US or abroad. But is a small percentage of the targeted population. Any convicted in the US are deported upon release. US Border Patrol has arrested about 17000 “criminal noncitizens” so far this year.
Focus on immigrant criminals was an election-year gimmick. Trump is really after the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the US who are not criminals. He wants to use the US Army to support that effort, which is estimated to cost more than $300 billion. Crime rates in this undocumented immigrant population are lower than among American-born citizens.
The disruption to the US economy, especially in some of the areas that voted most heavily for Trump, is likely. Especially if Homan follows through on threats to conduct workplace raids and deport whole families, massive economic damage will ensue.
Foreign policy is unclear
The signals on foreign policy are less clear. The named National Security Advisor, Michael Waltz, is a former Green Beret and China hawk. He is called a Ukraine skeptic, but that is vague. Would he advise against continued assistance to Ukraine in current circumstances? Or would he want it augmented to ensure a negotiated settlement on Ukraine’s terms?
The nominee for Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is similarly ambiguous. He favors a negotiated end to the war that maintains Ukrainian sovereignty. It is not clear what that means, though the Kyiv Post assumes it means concession of some territory to Russia in exchange for peace. Rubio is also an Iran hawk who favored the disastrous 2018 withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. That diplomatic malpractice resulted in Iran becoming a nuclear threshold state today.
The alternatives to Waltz and Rubio, even though both have become Trump sycophants, could have been worse. Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn is a nut job. Ric Grenell, a former Trump ambassador in Berlin and momentarily Director of National Intelligence, is a grifting dimwit. Grenell may still be in the running for a high position at State or elsewhere, so no one should assume yet that he is out of the running completely. He never had the stature to be Secretary of State, but that would not have prevented Trump from nominating him. He has strong business ties to Jared Kushner. That could be his trump card.
Defense: even more unclear
Trump hasn’t named a Secretary of Defense yet.* If it is to be Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, fans in Kosovo will cheer. The Kosovo Security Force collaboration with the Iowa National Guard has been consistently fruitful. It has also spun off academic, government, and commercial cooperation.
But there are lots of other candidates according to Fox News, including Grenell. Whoever gets the job will face enormous challenges. Defense of US interests abroad requires that Washington remain committed to NATO and other alliances in the Pacific. Trump has continued to be more critical of allies than of Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin has denied Trump urged the Russian President to show restraint in Ukraine. That could suggest the beginning of some strain between Trump and Putin, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
A bit better than last time around, but not for Gaza and Lebanon
Trump’s appointments so far have all been loyalists, to him personally and to election denial. But they are also people who are arguably more suitable than some of his previous choices. He is getting through the process quickly and cleanly. There are lots of rumors, but little hesitation or confusion. Trump chief of staff Wiles is doing her job well.
In late breaking news, former Arkansas Governor Huckabee will be ambassador to Israel. That confirms what sensible people knew. Trump will back Netanyahu 100%. Not because of the Jews, who voted overwhelmingly for Harris, but because of the Christian Evangelicals. The wars in Gaza and Lebanon will end only when Netanyahu wants them to. Trump will back Netanyahu even more than Biden did.
*After I published this, Trump announced a Fox News talking head, Pete Hegseth, as his pick for Defense. I know nothing about him but what I read on Wikipedia. I respect his military service, but he hardly seems even close to the qualifications required of a Defense Secretary. And lobbying for pardons for convicted war criminals is disqualifying. He is certainly far below Joni Ernst in stature. Trump’s nominee to head the CIA, is John Ratcliffe. He had trouble winning Senate confirmation as Director of National Intelligence in the first Trump administration. Ratcliffe is notable for his lack of professional intelligence qualifications and partisan posturing.
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Four more bad reasons to vote Trump
I somehow managed yesterday in citing ten reasons to vote for Trump to skip an obvious one: immigration. It merited mention, not least because it a very bad reason to be voting for Trump.
We need the labor
The United States needs more immigrants, not fewer. The tight labor market is driving up wages and productivity. That is welcome after many years that they lagged the increase in returns to capital. Incomes have been rising faster than prices since the epidemic. But there are limits. The US fertility rate (average number of children per woman over a lifetime) is down to 1.6. This is insufficient to sustain a stable population size. The resulting aging of the population increases the demands on Social Security and Medicare while decreasing their revenue streams.
Immigration can help to alleviate these problems. Immigrants to the US are younger on average and have more children than people born in the US. They help to pay the bills of those reaching retirement age, also relieving labor market pressure.
We need the entrepreneurs and executives
Immigrants are also disproportionately entrepreneurs. They do not on the whole take jobs from native-born Americans but create jobs for everyone:
…immigrants act more as “job creators” than “job takers” and play outsized roles in US high-growth entrepreneurship.
This is important, as US economic growth depends heavily on new, small companies. And small companies grow. Immigrants founded nearly 45% of the Fortune 500.
It is of course also true that immigrants play important roles in managing major corporations. The tech sector is rife with immigrant executives. Eighty per cent of privately held billion dollar companies have immigrants in a senior role. The American economy today depends on immigrant managers.
Getting rid of them isn’t possible
The Obama and Biden Administrations focused deportation on people who posed security risks. The Trump Administration did not have clear priorities. Biden has removed (often by expulsion rather than deportation) many more immigrants than Trump did.
That doesn’t mean Trump isn’t going to try to do what he said he would do. He has pledged to round up and expel millions. Trump’s effort would cost many billions and involve hiring ten thousand new immigration officials.
Even beginning that process will unleash chaos in the American economy, further tighten the labor market. It will also discourage immigration that we need for the purposes cited above. Trump’s election will slam down an economy that is landing softly.
There is a bipartisan solution already drafted that Trump won’t support
Republicans and Democrats have already agreed to a bipartisan immigration bill. Trump blocked its approval in the Congress. But the new Congress can revive the plan and pass it. Harris has pledged to sign it.
If elected, Trump will need to insist on something “better.” He is unlikely to get it if the Democrats control one of the Houses. Only Harris guarantees that immigration will be dealt with quickly on a bipartisan basis in the new Congress.
I could go on. World population growth is also slowing markedly. There soon won’t be as many people wanting to immigrate anywhere than there once were. Trump’s anti-immigrant efforts will encourage people to go elsewhere. That will not be good for a country that depends heavily on immigrant labor, entrepreneurs, and executives. We’d be well-advised to forget Trump’s grandiose plans and grab the bipartisan solution.
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