immigrants

The choice comes down to what kind of future we want. Kamala Harris represents a path forward with thoughtful, fact-based solutions to the challenges we’re facing—whether it’s keeping inflation in check, creating future-ready jobs, or maintaining America’s leadership on the global stage.

This incident makes me well understand the reluctance and fear of non-natives in this country to even try to speak English. Some time ago, I was teaching an English as a Second Language class, and some of my students shied away from speaking at all. They most likely believed their heavy foreign accents would unjustly subject them to ridicule and make them seem unintelligent. They might have feared their classmates would have the audacity to laugh at them even as some of those students also kept silent when it was their turn to speak.

Experts were quick to criticize this strategy, noting that the drawing of districts based on voting-age citizens would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites. This is a conclusion that the GOP’s own master strategist Thomas Hofeller arrived at during his 2015 study of gerrymandering which, in a bonkers turn of events, we only know about because his estranged daughter found thumb drives with her father’s work after he died and provided them to Common Cause, which challenged he citizenship question in federal court citing Hofeller’s own study.

Before then, the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 eliminated national origin quotas but set worldwide limits on the number of persons that could migrate to the U.S. This act is likely one of the biggest causes of the “hispanization” of North America because it established a system of family-based and employment-based preference for issuing visas. It was the driving force behind the enormous influx of immigrants from Mexico and Central America during the 70s and 80s, a period that is considered the crux of Latin American immigration. 

It took two days on the bus for Catalina Cespedes and her husband Teodolo Torres to get from their hometown in Puebla - Santa Monica Cohetzala - to Tijuana. On a bright Sunday in May they went to the beach at Playas de Tijuana. There the wall separating Mexico from the United States plunges down a steep hillside and levels off at the Parque de Amistad, or Friendship Park, before crossing the sand and heading out into the Pacific surf. 

If America was once a country that opened its doors to immigrants and refugees, today its policies stand in stark contrast to this tradition, and its premise of open societies and sustainable, equitable growth are undermined by ineptitude and barely veiled racist intentions. It’s a country in which the immigrant becomes the enemy. To be sure the voice of opposition to the Trump White House and its assaults on civil liberties are reassuring.

When Donald Trump invited Carlos Slim, one the world’s richest men and the single-largest investor in the New York Times, to dinner at his Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, it became clear that Trump’s admiration for Mexican “leaders” meant businessmen, not politicians. “What President-elect Trump wants to do in coming closer to the Mexican business community has an impact, not only nationally but regionally with Latin America, and opens the doors for good business relations overall,” said Larry Rubin, president of the American Society of Mexico. 

Two years ago, the German government enacted the “blue card” system for non-EU nationals who are willing to stay and live permanently in Germany to replenish its dwindling labor force. Similar to a green card in the United States, an immigrant is eligible to apply for a blue card if he or she has a confirmed job offer or a valid work contract with a sponsoring employer, holds a university degree, and earns an annual salary of at least 35,000 euros.