El Magonista | Vol. 11, No. 26 | August 24, 2023

MEXICO CITY, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum slightly extended her lead in the race to become the Mexican ruling party's candidate for the 2024 presidential election, an opinion poll conducted through early August showed on Tuesday.

According to the July 30-Aug 4 survey by polling firm Parametria, 32% of the general public supported Sheinbaum to be candidate for the leftist ruling National Regeneration Movement(MORENA), up from 30% in a poll conducted a month earlier.

Her closest rival is ex-foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard, whose support for the MORENA candidacy held stable at 20%. Ebrard continues to be the best known candidate, although Sheinbaum has closed the gap, the survey showed.

Sheinbaum and Ebrard are comfortably the most popular contenders for the presidential candidacy, which MORENA is due to announce on Sept. 6 based on national polling to pick a winner. None of the other MORENA hopefuls reached 10% support.

MORENA is strongly favored to win the next election, buoyed by the popularity of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who - like all Mexican presidents - is limited to a single six-year term. The entry of Senator Xochitl Galvez into the race for the main opposition ticket has, however, energized MORENA'S adversaries.

The poll showed once voters expressing no preference are excluded, MORENA had 57% support. Two parties currently allied to MORENA garnered another 8%. A three-way alliance of opposition parties drew 25% in combined support.

A daily tracking poll of support for the MORENA contenders by research firm Consulta Mitofsky has also shown Sheinbaum recently advancing in the race... READ MORE

The Supreme Court could decide the fate of the DACA policy within the next two years. DACA provides protection from deportation and gives legal work authorization to roughly 600,000 undocumented individuals who came to the U.S. as young children. A pending federal court decision will likely send the case to the Supreme Court; if the Justices choose to hear the case, their ruling will likely determine once and for all if those protections can remain in place.

The Supreme Court could decide within the next year whether to hear a case about the legality of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy.

The case is awaiting a final ruling from Judge Andrew Hanen in the Texas Southern District Court; Judge Hanen previously ruled against DACA and declared the policy unlawful. The judge heard arguments in the case in early June 2023, and is expected to issue a decision any day. Legal experts generally agree that he is likely to continue his streak of ruling that DACA is illegal. Importantly, Judge Hanen’s decision cannot stop current DACA recipients from renewing their protections.

If Judge Hanen rules against DACA, the case will then go to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously ruled against DACA. Assuming the Fifth Circuit rules the same way again, the Biden Administration would then likely file a request with the Supreme Court to hear the case. Because of how the Supreme Court chooses and hears cases, the petition for certification may not be answered until 2024, and if granted, the case may not be heard and decided until at least 2025.

Considering the current makeup of the Court and its previous immigration decisions, there’s a good chance the Justices could also rule against DACA. If the Court ultimately upholds Judge Hanen’s ruling, and if the Court prohibits the government from processing DACA renewals, the 600,000 current DACA recipients could be stripped of their ability to work legally, and would be exposed to the threat of deportation.

If DACA renewals are ended, an estimated 1,000 DACA recipients would be forced out of their jobs every week for the next two years.

DACA has been in legal limbo for half a decade

For half a decade, DACA has faced protracted litigation that has created overwhelming uncertainty for current recipients, and has prevented the government from processing requests from new applicants.

The legal odyssey began in 2017 when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Trump administration was ending the DACA policy. Several lawsuits were filed to keep DACA in place, and federal judges decided in their favor, determining that the Trump administration had violated federal procedure by ending DACA without a formal process. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to review the cases; in 2020, the Court issued a 5-4 decision affirming that the Trump administration had not followed the proper procedures. This decision kept DACA in place, though the Court deliberately said nothing about the underlying legality of the policy itself. 

Meanwhile, a separate legal challenge was launched by a coalition of Republican attorneys general. They sued the U.S. government, arguing that the DACA policy is unlawful and directly harms their states. The case came before Judge Hanen in the Southern Texas District Court, and in 2021 he sided with the states. Judge Hanen asserted that DACA was illegal because the Obama administration had skirted the formal rulemaking process, and that DACA’s protections went beyond the government’s authority.

Judge Hanen’s 2021 decision prohibited the government from processing new applications, but it allowed current DACA recipients to retain their protections and to file for renewals while the Biden administration went through a new formal rulemaking process to bolster the program... READ MORE

For over 35 years, the American political system has been unable to make any significant change to U.S. immigration policy. In June 2023, a bipartisan coalition of representatives introduced the Dignity Act, a comprehensive immigration reform bill. This followed a poll showing that four out of fiveAmericans support bipartisan cooperation on immigration that would address labor shortages and inflation.

While U.S. politics may continue to prevent an immigration grand bargain, there are many commonsense reforms the government could take to fill gaps in our current workforce. American policymakers need to wake up to a new reality: The country is running out of workers, and immigration must be part of the solution.

Facing food price inflation as high as 12 percent last year, Americans have begun to acutely feel the impact of labor shortages in the agricultural sector on their wallets. With an aging population and a labor force participation that has declined since the 1990s, it is clear that these shortages will only get worse over time — not only in agriculture, but also in many other sectors of the economy. Labor migration will become essential to sustaining long-term economic growth.

In 2022, the U.S. had almost twice as many job openings as unemployed workers. These trends are unlikely to change any time soon. Between 2011 and 2021, the total number of job openings increased, at an average of 12 percent per year, while the total working-age population rose only by around 3 percent per year. The COVID pandemic seems to have only worsened these trends, pushing many older Americans out of the labor force.

But there is a simple solution.

If there is an insufficient number of native-born workers to fill existing jobs, immigration from abroad is the best way to ensure the U.S. economy continues to grow. Employers make the demand for legal avenues for labor mobility clear: The number of workers on the H-2A temporary agricultural worker program has tripled between 2013 and 2021. Demand for H-2B visas, the program’s equivalent for non-agricultural sectors, is soaring as well.

These existing visa programs are targeted only at employers with seasonal needs. But many of the most critical long-term labor shortages will be in non-seasonal occupations. Immigrants already make up 38 percent of home health aides around the country. By 2060, a quarter of the U.S. population will be over 65, requiring an additional 75 percent of home health care workers. As the baby boomer generation reaches retirement age and life expectancy will increase, the U.S. will need to make it easier for foreign eldercare workers to come into the country... READ MORE

If you thought his first term was bad, wait until you see what he’s plotting for round two.

Donald Trump is reportedly planning an immigration crackdown that would make his first stint in the White House look tame.

Axios reports that Trump, if elected in 2024, is planning to increase ideological screenings of immigrants to prevent “Marxists” from entering, to designate drug cartels as “unlawful enemy combatants,” and to expand the “Muslim ban” to more countries.

“For those passionate about securing our immigration system ... the first 100 days of the Trump administration will be pure bliss—followed by another four years of the most hard-hitting action conceivable,” Stephen Miller, the anti-immigrant architect of Trump’s first term, told Axios.

Designating drug cartels as “unlawful enemy combatants” would provide a legal justification for the United States military to target them in Mexico—or so Trump imagines. It would also significantly raise tensions between the U.S. and Mexico, to say the least.

Trump also plans to complete his precious border wall, grow the dangerous floating barriers in the Rio Grande, deploy the Coast Guard and Navy to create a sea blockade to stop drug smugglers, and end “birthright citizenship” for children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants. These ideas and more stand a better chance of surviving court challenges given that the Supreme Court has become even more conservative since Trump’s first term.

Trump hopes to use the Alien Enemies Act—a long-forgotten section of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798—to quickly deport gang members, smugglers, and criminals by claiming a border “invasion” and designating people from certain countries as “alien enemies.” He also wants to make it easier to deport people and would use the FBI, DEA, and perhaps even the National Guard to find undocumented immigrants.

Trump’s plan would rush “people through the system, stripping due process protections from them, eliminating any access to legal services, and really transforming this into an assembly line deportation machine... READ MORE

When Cristian Dubon Solis was getting ready to graduate from a Boston high school in 2020, he started planning to apply to college. It was only then he realized that as an immigrant lacking permanent legal status, he wouldn’t qualify for in-state tuition at Massachusetts state universities, nor for state-sponsored financial aid.

With no way to afford a four-year school to pursue his dream major, environmental science, he put those plans on hold.

“I took a few gap years afterward,” said the now 21-year-old from East Boston, a community where about half the residents are Hispanic or Latino. Solis now advocates for young immigrants as a student coordinator for a nonprofit group called SIM, which formerly stood for Student Immigration Movement.

One of four siblings, Solis came to the United States from El Salvador at age 3. His three younger sisters were born in the U.S., he said. Family and friends didn’t discuss their immigration status, so he never heard about the tuition restrictions.

“In families of the immigrant community it’s very hush-hush, you don’t talk about it,” he said. “It’s hard to figure out what options I had or didn’t have, because nobody talked about it.”

But now Solis is about to apply to colleges in Massachusetts, including UMass-Boston.

Democratic Gov. Maura Healey signed the state budget this month with a provision that will allow certain immigrants without permanent legal status — those who have attended high school in Massachusetts for at least three years or who have earned a GED certificate — to pay in-state tuition rates at public universities. The law takes effect immediately.

The idea has bipartisan appeal, with some conservative supporters this year saying it helps reduce workforce shortages and boost tax revenue.

In June, Nevada Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo enacted a law allowing immigrants who have been granted status under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act, or DACA program, to qualify for in-state tuition after living in Nevada for 12 months. That action expanded on a law that allowed high school graduates lacking permanent legal status to do so... READ MORE

Former President Trump wants unprecedented restrictions on immigration and the border if he's elected in 2024 — such as screening prospective immigrants for "Marxist" ideologies and a naval blockade to target drug smugglers, Axios has learned. 

Why it matters: As president, Trump built part of a border wall, began stringent wealth and health tests for prospective immigrants and limited asylum. His 2025 plan would go much further — potentially making it tougher for millions of foreigners to enter or stay in the U.S. 

Trump's plan would involve waves of harsh new policies — and dust off old ones that rarely have been enforced, if ever. It would:

What they're saying: "For those passionate about securing our immigration system... the first 100 days of the Trump administration will be pure bliss — followed by another four years of the most hard-hitting action conceivable," Trump adviser Stephen Miller told Axios... READ MORE

Consular officers denying visas and uncompetitive immigration policies have contributed to a drop in international students attending U.S. universities. Analysts say the decline harms U.S. economic efforts to attract talent and weakens America’s soft power focused on influencing future leaders in Africa and elsewhere. Researchers recommend changing U.S. policies to reverse the trend and increase the admission of international students.
 

At U.S. universities, the number of international students declined by 15% or 164,727 between the 2016/17 and 2020/21 academic years. (Source: Institute of International Education.) During the same period, at Canadian colleges and universities, the number of international students increased by 46% or 117,039. (Source: Statistics Canada.) For 2021/22, international students in the United States rose by 4%. (Statistics for Canada were not yet available.)

Indian students have fueled the rise in international students in Canada. Indian international students at Canadian colleges and universities increased by 324% or 135,294 or 324% between the 2016/17 and 2020/21 academic years, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis of Canadian government data. During the same period, at U.S. universities, the number of international students from India decreased by 10% or 18,685. (Between 2020/21 and 2021/22, Indian students rose by 19% at U.S. universities, according to the Institute of International Education.)

Far more liberalized immigration policies in Canada than in the United States appear to be a primary reason Canada has become more attractive to international students, particularly Indian students. An international student in Canada can expect a smooth transition from university to temporary work status to permanent residence. Not so in the United States.

Most H-1B registrations are rejected in the United States due to the low annual limit, and employment-based green cards for Indians can take decades in the United States due to the per-country limit and the low annual number of employment-based immigrant visas. In 2022, an exemption from yearly green card limits for foreign nationals with a Ph.D. in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields and those with a master’s degree “in a critical industry” passed the House but was blocked in the Senate and not included in the CHIPS and Science Act.

“Canada’s new program to entice H-1B visa holders to the country attracted so many applications that the 10,000 limit was reached in less than 48 hours,” a recent Forbes article noted. “The response is likely a warning sign to U.S. policymakers that many highly sought foreign-born scientists and engineers in the United States are dissatisfied with the U.S. immigration system and seeking other options... READ MORE

Gov. Greg Abbott’s intensive campaign to turn back migrants was initially welcomed on the border. But in Eagle Pass, the effort’s main focal point, residents are having second thoughts.

When Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas announced a multibillion-dollar initiative two years ago to deter migrants crossing from Mexico, the border city of Eagle Pass was seeing 1,200 people coming into town every day, and many residents welcomed the extra aid.

Hugo Urbina, who owns a pecan farm next to the Rio Grande, was unhappy with the constant foot traffic on his land, sometimes dozens of people a day. Jessie Fuentes, who owns a canoe and kayak business, did not want migrants to think America had an “open border.” The town’s mayor, Rolando Salinas Jr., saw the Border Patrol being overwhelmed.

“People cannot be arriving by the thousands without consequence,” Mr. Urbina said.

But over time, as Governor Abbott has tested the legal limits of state action on immigration — sending the National Guard and scores of state troopers to the border, and installing razor wire and floating barriers along the river — some of that popular support appears to be waning.

The recent reports of injuries and at least two deaths near the 1,000-foot string of river buoys has raised the level of concern. “He went too far,” Mr. Fuentes said.

The escalated tactics under what the state has called a “hold the line” operation has even drawn some criticism from within the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Border Patrol... READ MORE

As Los Angeles was under an unprecedented tropical storm warning and officials were urging residents not to travel, Texas dispatched its latest bus of migrants to the city.

The bus — the ninth sent by Texas since mid-June — arrived at Union Station around 6:45 p.m. Monday carrying 37 migrants. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass slammed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott afterward, calling the move “evil.”

“As I stood with state and local leaders warning Angelenos to stay safe and brace themselves for the worst of the coming storm,” Bass said in a news release, “the Governor of Texas sent families and toddlers straight for us on a path through extreme weather conditions.”

She continued: “If anybody understands the danger of hurricanes and thunderstorms, it’s the Governor of Texas — who has to deal with this threat on an annual basis. This is a despicable act beyond politics.”

Aboard the bus were 16 families, including 14 children and an infant, according to the immigrant rights group the L.A. Welcomes Collective. Twenty of the migrants came from Venezuela, with the others hailing from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras and Ecuador.

“Migrants were immediately taken to a receiving site in Chinatown where they were offered urgent humanitarian support services, including food, clothing, hygiene kits, health checkups, and immigration-specific legal orientations,” the collective said.

Some of the passengers were reunited with family members or sponsors.

Activists echoed Bass on Monday, calling the transportation of migrants during the region’s recovery from Hilary “reprehensible.”

“It displays a complete and total lack of common humanity,” Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said in a release... READ MORE

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s man-made killing traps on the Rio Grande have taken border enforcement to new levels of barbarity.

Since border militarization began in the 1990s, anti-immigrant hardliners could deflect blame for hundreds of yearly deaths at the U.S.-Mexico border, pointing to natural dangers in the region’s deserts and rivers. Now, as bodies are discovered around saw-equipped buoy barriers and barbed wire water traps of Operation Lone Star, the illusion of innocence has been blown away.

Could Abbott face a backlash among Texas Latino voters, as Republican Gov. Pete Wilson faced three decades ago with California Latinos for his vicious attacks on immigrants? Some of Abbott’s supporters are souring on his recent enforcement actions. One Abbott supporter with property on the Rio Grande, Magali Urbina, told the Texas Tribune this month that she was deeply disturbed to see a pregnant woman push through concertina wire in the water, her arms cut and bloodied.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who met with Urbina and other residents about their concerns, told me that many Texans who want strong border security are upset about the cruelty. “There’s a difference between immigration enforcement and treating people like animals,” he said.

Last month, Abbott’s flesh-piercing floating barriers prompted a lawsuit by the Justice Department. State authorities have claimed a body caught in the buoys drowned upstream and floated there. Earlier this month, a 3-year-old girl died in a Texas-backed bus ride to Chicago, raising more questions.

Despite the outrage, it’s not clear that Abbott will lose substantial ground with Latino voters. The Latino population in Texas is more conservative than California’s. Lone Star State Latinos are more likely to own homes and less likely to be foreign-born than Golden State Latinos. With regional roots dating as far back as the 1500s, Texans of Latino ancestry will often identify as Tejano above all. They are less likely to see themselves in immigrants... READ MORE

In “Past Lives,” playwright turned filmmaker Celine Song’s tenderhearted debut feature, cosmic forces align to bring together two former childhood sweethearts as adults.

Nora (played by Greta Lee) left South Korea for Canada with her family as a 12-year-old, while Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) stayed behind wondering if they would ever see each other again. Two decades later, they are finally in the same physical location again. Now a successful writer, Nora is married to a white American man. Hae Sung, in a serious relationship with a Korean woman, leads a self-described “ordinary” existence.

Their reunion in New York City doesn’t result in the rekindling of a romance, but in Nora confronting a sorrowful loss of self that she can only appreciate in the presence of this man she once knew as a boy. Hae Sung represents the last link to a version of herself partially left somewhere else, a seed of a life that could’ve been but never blossomed in her homeland.

Although not strictly autobiographical, key story elements in “Past Lives” were derived from Song’s thoughtful consideration of her own immigrant experience. In many regards, Nora serves as a fictional stand-in for the real-life Korean-born writer-director.

Similar to Nora and Song, I migrated from Mexico to the U.S. when I was in my early teens. What’s particular about having left your home country at that transitional age is that you were old enough to have forged significant bonds and enduring memories there, yet young enough that a new culture can still shape you into someone else entirely.

For us, South Korea or Mexico are not conceptual spaces that we solely know through our parents’ recollections or as occasional visitors. Instead, these countries are the context where foundational experiences occurred. Even if the place of our birth is now mostly part of a distant past, emotional remnants of those days linger indelibly in our subconscious.

“If you leave something behind, you gain something too,” Nora’s mother tells Hae Sung’s mother early in the film about their decision to leave. Migration entails an uprooting with the intention of flourishing elsewhere, but no one can fully prepare you for the gradual transformation you will undergo as the years mount in your adopted environment... READ MORE