How reliable is the government’s economic data? Under Trump, there are real concerns

2025/03/12 Leave a comment

Legitimate worry and consistent with the apparent “wrecking ball” approach to policy and programs:

Every month, the federal government serves up a steady diet of economic reports on everything from the price of groceries to the unemployment rate. These reports are closely followed: They can move markets — and the president’s approval rating.

Businesses and investors put a lot of stock in the numbers, which are rigorously vetted and free from political spin.

Now the Trump administration is calling that trust into question.

The government recently disbanded two outside advisory committees that used to consult on the numbers, offering suggestions on ways to improve the reliability of the government data. 

At the same time, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has suggested changing the way the broadest measure of the economy — gross domestic product — is calculated.

Those moves are raising concerns about whether economic data could be manipulated for political or other purposes. 

Among those raising the alarm is Erica Groshen. She’s one of the outside experts who received a terse email last week saying her services were no longer needed, because the committee she’d served on — the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee — had been folded.

Groshen cares deeply about the reliability of government data, having previously overseen the number crunching as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

“Statistical agencies live and die by trust,” she says. “If the numbers aren’t trustworthy, people won’t use them to make important decisions, and then you might as well not publish them.”

Source: How reliable is the government’s economic data? Under Trump, there are real concerns

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Wright: Canadians don’t want to be the 51st state – and Americans don’t really want us

2025/03/11 Leave a comment

Another cathartic column for Canadians:

Canadians owe Donald Trump a debt of thanks. His musings about Canada becoming the 51st state have reminded us why we are Canadians in the first place and why we want to remain Canadians.

Still, it’s worth thinking about some of the legal steps to, and political implications of, a possible Canadian statehood.

First, Canada is a constitutional monarchy. To join the United States, it would have to become a republic. While that’s not impossible, it wouldn’t be easy. Amending the Canadian Constitution in relation to the King or Queen requires unanimous provincial consent. When was the last time all 10 provinces agreed on anything?

And what about Indigenous Peoples

Meanwhile, there are 634 First Nations governments – each with their own relationship with Canada or the Crown. Indeed, one of the mandates of the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs is to recognize and implement “treaties concluded between the Crown and Indigenous Peoples.”

If it’s difficult to imagine Indigenous Peoples agreeing to give up their treaty rights, it’s equally difficult to imagine the U.S. negotiating new treaties and nation-to-nation relationships with 634 First Nations.

For its part, Quebec will never agree to give up the substantial power and real sovereignty it has as a province, even if every other province agreed to – which they won’t. In defence of their borders and the French language, Quebecers would likely secede from Canada long before any serious move towards Canadian statehood – and who could blame them?

Of course, this assumes that American lawmakers want a 51st state – and they don’t. Certainly, Republican lawmakers don’t, for the same reason they don’t want Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. to become states.

Each state has two senators and it’s a safe bet that both Canadian senators would be Democrats or be from a separate party that would caucus with the Democrats. The GOP cannot risk becoming a minority in a closely divided Senate.

When Hawaii joined as the 50th state in 1959, there was a lot of handwringing, especially in the Jim Crow South. For example, a Mississippi senator insisted that Hawaii’s admission would mean “two votes for socialized medicine, two votes for government ownership of industry, two votes against all racial segregation and two votes against the South on all social matters.”

Canada: A potential Republican wasteland 

Republican senators have similar arguments against admitting Canada – two votes for universal, single-payer health care, two votes for abortion rights, two votes for LGBTQ+ rights, two votes for multiculturalism, two votes for science, two votes for vaccines, two votes for climate policies and two votes against tax cuts for the wealthy.

Each U.S. state also has members in the House of Representatives, according to its population. If Quebec doesn’t secede, Canada would be the most populous state in the U.S., giving it as many as 55 seats in the House which, with Canada’s admission, would have about 490 seats. If Quebec does secede, Canada would be the second most populous state, giving it as many as 45 seats.

Not all Canadian representatives would be Democrats or from a party that would caucus with them, but the majority would be, providing the Democratic Party with control over the House of Representatives into the foreseeable future.

Finally, the White House: Does anyone really think that Canadians would vote for the Republican Party in its current incarnation? Some would, but the majority wouldn’t.

In the last federal election, about 60 per cent of Canadians voted for the Liberals, the NDP, the Bloc Québécois or the Green Party – all centre and centre-left parties. Even if Quebec secedes, most Canadian voters still lean centre or centre-left.

In America’s winner-takes-all presidential election, Canada’s roughly 50 electoral college votes would go to the Democratic candidate, not enough to guarantee a Democratic victory when approximately 590 electoral votes would be up for grabs, but enough to permanently narrow the GOP’s path to victory.

If Canada does become part of the United States, it won’t be as a state. It will be as an occupied territory and occupations never end well for the occupier – something Americans understand after 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Bottom line: Canadians don’t want to become the 51st state and the Americans don’t want us anyways, which leaves us with Donald Trump, a troll with a large following on social media trying to own the libs and get under our skin.

My advice? Ignore him and get on with the related tasks of peace, order and good government and managing the economic fallout of his tariffs.

Source: Canadians don’t want to be the 51st state – and Americans don’t really want us

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Donald Trump’s Team Takes First Steps To Cut Legal Immigration

2025/03/07 Leave a comment

Helpful analysis:

Donald Trump reduced legal immigration in his first term, and his team has taken the first steps to do so again. As president, Trump enacted policies that blocked hundreds of thousands of people from immigrating to the United States. Courts stopped some of the most restrictive proposals, but those measures could reemerge in 2025. Economists warn that America faces declining labor force growth without increasing legal immigration. Higher economic growth and living standards will become more challenging if the United States welcomes fewer legal immigrants.

Legal Immigration Declined During Trump’s First Term

Using the president’s authority and restrictive administrative measures, Trump officials reduced the number of legal immigrants admitted to the United States during his first term. According to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis, “If the FY 2016 level had continued during the four years of the Trump administration, approximately 770,000 more individuals would have immigrated legally to the United States.”

The analysis points out the numbers understate the decline because legal immigration rose for three straight years before Donald Trump became president. “The annual level of legal immigration declined by 13% (or 151,740) between FY 2016 and FY 2019 and 40% (or 476,143) between FY 2016 and FY 2020. That decline continued in FY 2021, almost four months of which took place during the Trump administration.”

While Covid-19 reduced admissions in the second half of FY 2020 (the fiscal year ended on September 30, 2020), the Trump administration furthered the reduction by stopping almost all immigrants from entering the United States. In April 2020, Donald Trump issued a proclamation that blocked the entry of all categories of immigrants, including employment-based, except the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens, certain medical personnel and individuals whose entry would be in the “national interest.”

A few months later, Trump issued another proclamation that blocked the entry of H-1B, H-2B, L-1 and most J-1 temporary visa holders through December 31, 2020. In an NFAP study, University of North Florida economics professor Madeline Zavodny concluded that the Covid-19 pandemic and Trump administration policies reduced H-1B and J-1 visas but did not help U.S. workers. “The drop in H-2B program admissions did not boost labor market opportunities for U.S. workers but rather, if anything, worsened them.”

Early Actions To Reduce Legal Immigration

On January 25, 2025, Donald Trump signed an executive order stopping all refugee admissions into the United States. In FY 2021, the Biden administration surpassed 100,000 refugee admissions. The executive order structured the process such that Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy and the president’s homeland security advisor, receives a report from cabinet officials. Refugee admissions could resume in several months, or it is possible that no refugees will come to America during Donald Trump’s second term.

Nearly 300,000 more refugees would have entered the United States in Trump’s first term if Miller had not fought to suspend refugee admissions and then lower them to historically low levels. The 18,000-ceiling for FY 2020 was 84% lower than the 110,000 limit set in the last year of the Obama administration. The lower refugee admissions did not appear right away in immigration statistics since refugees file for permanent residence a year after entry, and many arrived before Trump took office.

In February 2025, the State Department announced a new policy that will increase visa wait times at U.S. consulates by narrowing the grounds for waiving interviews. Applicants are eligible to waive visa interviews if they “previously held a visa in the same category that expired less than 12 months prior to the new application . . . and apply in their country of nationality or residence, have never been refused a visa (unless such refusal was overcome or waived) and have no apparent or potential ineligibility.”

According to Dagmar Butte of Parker Butte, “The effect is to delay the ability of people to return to the U.S. who have approved petitions if they are changing visa categories. The wait times for interviews at many consulates are quite long.”

A January 20, 2025, executive order set the stage for a new version of the “Muslim ban.” The order states that within 60 days, various officials will submit a report to identify countries “for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries.” More broadly, the executive order calls for officials to “Evaluate all visa programs to ensure that they are not used by foreign nation-states or other hostile actors to harm the security, economic, political, cultural, or other national interests of the United States.”

“We are starting to see signs of the impact of the president’s ‘extreme vetting’ policy,” said Dan Berger of Green & Spiegel. “Officers are increasingly comparing what the individual says and has on electronic devices to other agency records and what’s on the internet. That is fair, but recently we have seen minor inconsistencies lead to denied entry.” He said it has become more difficult to tell temporary visa holders whether it is safe to travel.

A Federal Register notice announced that because of the executive order “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats,” USCIS must implement “rigorous vetting and screening of all grounds of inadmissibility or bases for the denial of immigration- related benefits.” As a result, “Execution of the E.O. requires USCIS to collect Social Media Identifier(s) on immigration forms and/or information collection systems.”

The Trump administration also plans to end parole for several hundred thousand individuals sponsored for humanitarian parole and terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, Venezuelans and others.

Using “Public Charge” To Reduce Legal Immigration

During Donald Trump’s first term, the administration published a “public charge” rule that could have lowered legal immigration levels by raising income and resource requirements for immigrants well beyond current law. Although the rule was not in effect for long due to legal action and injunctions, when the State Department followed its parameters, it contributed to reduced immigration. Admissions in the Immediate Relatives category fell by 7% between FY 2017 and FY 2018, and temporary visas for a K-1 Fiancé(e) of U.S. Citizen declined by 10,122 or 29%.

The public charge rule was an “obsession” for Stephen Miller, according to New York Times journalists Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear. Immigrants are generally ineligible for means-tested federal benefits programs unless they have worked in the United States for five years or longer in a lawful status. (State program eligibility may vary.)

The Biden administration eliminated the Trump rule and followed that by publishing its own public charge rule. The new Trump administration would need to start from the beginning on “public charge.” Trump officials must contend with the Supreme Court’s decision to end Chevron deference to federal agencies, which could help lawsuits against new measures that go beyond U.S. immigration law or regulatory authority. The Trump administration’s public charge rule read like a bill in Congress, such as by establishing income requirements that do not appear in the Immigration and Nationality Act.

In October 2019, Donald Trump issued an executive order barring immigrants from the United States without proof of health insurance or the means to buy it. The order was a pretext to block immigrants rather than an attempt to reform public health policy. Although not in effect long due to legal action, a return of the order could decimate legal admissions. The Migration Policy Institute estimated that up to 400,000 immigrants a year could be denied entry under such a mandate. It could return during a second Trump administration.

Due to the lengthy family preference backlogs, administrative measures to restrict legal immigration are most likely to reduce admissions each year in categories without numerical limits, especially the “Immediate Relatives” of U.S. citizens (i.e., spouses, parents and children under 21). Approximately 200,000 fewer Immediate Relatives of U.S. citizens immigrated between FY 2017 and 2019 than if admissions remained at the same level as FY 2016. The entry ban on people from several Muslim-majority countries contributed to the decline.

Given the passage of the Laken Riley Act with Democratic support, Stephen Miller and other Trump officials will likely hope they can pass a bill through Congress that reduces legal immigration. One can expect efforts by Miller and colleagues to block the entry of Diversity Visa and family-sponsored immigrants through regulation or presidential proclamation or to eliminate the categories through legislation.

Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen recently wrote, “Trump is a strong supporter of legal immigration.” He cites Trump’s campaign promise to offer green cards to international students who graduate from U.S. universities. Donald Trump showed no signs of wanting to increase legal immigration in his first term. Trump’s team has already taken steps to reduce legal immigration to the United States in his second term.

Source: Donald Trump’s Team Takes First Steps To Cut Legal Immigration

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Andrew MacDougall: A lunatic running Asylum America

2025/03/07 Leave a comment

Captures the change and dangers all too well:

…Only the gatekeepers are now gone.

First, the press. A mainstream news ecosystem that was centered on cost and curation and powered by expertise (backed by civil liability) has been replaced by a “free” Attention Economy where “content” that provokes the quickest and biggest reaction wins the consequence-free prize of algorithmic amplification and the engagement (and monetization) it brings.

And the money is mostly on the Bongino side of the equation. It’s true that nobody ever really read the majority of the quality daily journalism produced by mainstream outlets; the sports, funny pages, horoscopes, and ads that used to come alongside that quality is what paid for it. Even so, under that model the people in power at least knew they were being scrutinised. 

Now you make money by what people are willing to click on — and that’s, by and large, not original journalism (even if, ahem, people are willing to pay for smart commentary). Now content creators make (big) money by mobbing up and preaching to the converted.

And this is the point of Bongino. He is there to activate his mob in support of his political master. This is also the point of Elon Musk, the serial entrepreneur and amateur ketamine and ambien enthusiast turned “efficiency” czar, who now has his fingers on the scales of information via his platform X in a way that news barons of old could only have dreamed of. They are the enforcers in Trump’s universe. They set an agenda by setting off unsourced fireworks in every direction and then watch as the universe is forced to react to their inaccurate insanities as their mobs pile in.

It’s a complete inversion of the old informational order. And it’s breaking us apart.

In the olden days, Bongino and Musk would have been the men at the end of the bar raging against the machine. They’d be the weird uncles at the family party the other family members did their best to avoid. Now they’re the stars of the show. They are tribunes for the end of the bar and weird uncle crowd, a crowd that can glom together without risking the embarrassment of floating their unorthodox views in crowds of random people. Bognino, Musk and Patel can all rage against the “deep state” and decry the treatment of groups like the January 6th rioters — and be handsomely rewarded for it.

Forget the FBI. It’s these men who are the real threat to liberty.

Source: Andrew MacDougall: A lunatic running Asylum America

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McWhorter: An Unkind Policy for a Nonexistent Problem [English as official language]

2025/03/07 Leave a comment

More good commentary by McWhorter:

“You come here, you speak our language!”

That is the elevator-pitch version of one of President Trump’s latest executive orders.

In form, it undoes the requirement, instituted under the Clinton administration, that government agencies and organizations offer services and documents in various languages.

In spirit, it does much more — and much worse.

The “English only” idea goes way back. Benjamin Franklin worried about there being too much German spoken in our country. Theodore Roosevelt was on board as well, proclaiming in 1919, “We have room for but one language in this country, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house.” The organization U.S. English, founded by Senator S.I. Hayakawa and the anti-immigration activist John Tanton in the 1980s, has been especially persistent. The group argues that elevating English to official status gives us a common means of communication, encourages immigrants to assimilate and “defines a much-needed common-sense language policy.”

This is nonsense, because we already have a common means of communication: English.

Other languages are spoken in America as well, some even passed down through generations. But Americans use English as their lingua franca regardless of whatever else they speak.

In 19th-century Italy, it was a different story. Piedmontese to the north and Sicilian to the south had so little in common with Tuscan in the middle that they qualified as different languages altogether. What Italians had was what the Strother Martin character in the film “Cool Hand Luke” famously called a failure to communicate. So when the regions were unified into a single nation, elevating one dialect — Tuscan — above the others was necessary.

Not here. For one thing, it is unclear just where in this country Trump thinks people are being raised without the ability to communicate in English. All I can think of is Haredi Jewish communities, where life is conducted in Yiddish and some children do not really learn to speak English. But something tells me they are not the ones on Trump’s mind.

Then there’s the claim that this order will compel immigrants to learn English, and the implication that people who fail to do so are shirking a basic American duty. This attitude is based on ignorance about how people acquire language.

In our midteens — after the end of what linguists call the critical period — our ability to master a new language starts to atrophy. I once lived next door to a couple that had just arrived from Israel. Their 2-year-old knew no English at all and used to squeak “khatul!” whenever he saw the cute black cat I had back then. A few years later he sounded like Macaulay Culkin. That’s how it is for little kids. Those who start living in English at, say, 16 will learn to speak fluently but probably retain a slight accent, and when tired might flub the occasional idiom. Adults starting from zero encounter almost inevitable limits. A brilliant Slav I know came to North America at about 50. His English was great, but with a strong accent and a tendency now and then to render things the way his native language would, such as designating me “an early-waking-up person.” This was normal.

Learning a new language, after all, isn’t just a matter of dutifully memorizing the words for things; you also have to learn how to put them together. Example: A native Spanish speaker is learning English. She’s at an American club and wants to say, “The guy who brought me can’t dance!” (Quick, show music geeks, what’s that from?) First she has to know that the past tense of “bring” is not “bringed” but the hopelessly random “brought,” and that in English we put the direct object (“me”) after rather than before the verb. Or, the woman is a native English speaker at a club in Beijing, new to Mandarin but trying to say the same thing. In Mandarin she’d have to say, “The take-me-come-in-guy can’t dance.”

That’s all part of why immigrants in late middle age or beyond, if they live in communities where almost everyone speaks their native language, may never really find their footing in English. In my neighborhood, where I am frequently assumed to be Dominican, barbers address me in Spanish and older Latinos, especially women, approach me asking me to point them in the right dirección. According to the English-only idea, those older ladies are a problem in some way. How?

Imagine a native Mandarin speaker who is new or newish to English. Let’s say she can get by just fine while navigating a menu or engaging in brief exchanges. Grand. But if she were being admitted to a hospital, taking a citizenship test, voting or doing anything else involving detail or urgency, she would want to be able to use, hear or read her native language. To deny her that is pointless and unfeeling.

But that is precisely what Trump’s executive order will do. In all those settings where ordinary people interact with government functions, nonnative speakers will be forced to muddle through in English alone, regardless of whether that produces any clarity for them — or for the government branch in question.

The only silver lining to all this is that to a considerable extent, modern technology will render the new rule powerless. Google Translate and other apps can now translate straight from the page, as well as interpret between you and another speaker in real time. The executive order “Designating English as the Official Language of the United States” will largely kneel to the power of the iPhone.

But what matters is the spirit of the thing. The English language is under not the slightest threat in America, and providing services in other languages for adults past the critical period is kindness, not disloyalty. A punitive yawp that English be “official” in this country is jingoistic trash talk in the guise of statesmanship.

By the way (alerting the Oxford English Dictionary as well as the upcoming Oxford Dictionary of African-American English!), we now have an even earlier example of the use of “woke” than the one my colleague Emily Berch unearthed two weeks ago. On Sept. 12, 1925, the Black journalist C.F. Richardson wrote, “Until we wake up, ‘stay woke’ (meaning to stay on the job at all times) and exert our full strength and power for our best interests, we shall forever be regarded, and treated as human slaves by the governing class and those in official positions.” Thanks to Fred Shapiro for this discovery (and check out his New Yale Book of Quotations).

Oh — and as for the origin of “The guy who brought me can’t dance!” the answer is the 1941 musical “Best Foot Forward,” with songs by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane and book by John Cecil Holm.

Source: An Unkind Policy for a Nonexistent Problem

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Trump’s ‘Gold Card’ Visa Idea Not a Hit With Voters

2025/03/06 Leave a comment

Can recognize a scam when they see one, at least in this particular immigration space:

President Donald Trump’s suggestion to replace an existing visa program for foreign investors with a $5 million “gold card” visa hasn’t won majority support.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 41% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of Trump’s “gold card” visa plan, including 22% who Strongly Approve. Forty-seven percent (47%) disapprove, including 33% who Strongly Disapprove. Another 13% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Source: Trump’s ‘Gold Card’ Visa Idea Not a Hit With Voters

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment Tagged with ,

Trump’s early immigration enforcement record, by the numbers

2025/03/05 Leave a comment

Good set of data from the first month:

….The Trump administration has struggled to increase deportation levels even as it has opened up new pathways to deport migrants of other nationalities to Mexico and Central America.

Trump deported 37,660 people during his first month in office, Reuters reported in February, far less than the monthly average of 57,000 removals and returns in the last full year of Biden’s administration.

The figures include both ICE “removals” and more informal U.S. Customs and Border Protection “returns” to Mexico.

A senior Trump administration official and experts said deportations were poised to rise in coming months as countries accept more deportees. But initial figures suggested Trump could struggle to match higher deportation rates during the last full year of the Biden administration when large numbers of migrants were caught crossing illegally, making them easier to deport.

The Trump administration has not yet released detailed deportation data that would show how many of those deported were arrested by ICE in the interior of the U.S., as opposed to those arrested at the border and quickly processed for deportation.

The Trump administration rolled back Biden-era extensions of Temporary Protected Status for people from more than 1 million people from Venezuela and Haiti, potentially broadening the pool of people who could be deported.

The Trump administration swiftly struck or expanded agreements with Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, and Costa Rica to take deportees from other nations. The deportations to Panama have raised concerns about treatment of the migrants, including that of more than 100 sent to a camp near the Darien Gap jungle.

Trump ordered the U.S. military to assist with deportation operations, leading to military deportation flights to Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and India.

Source: Trump’s early immigration enforcement record, by the numbers

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Trump tariffs drowning out immigration coverage

2025/03/05 Leave a comment

Just a note to readers that I am finding fewer articles of interest in my various feeds to post, given the understandable focus on the Trump administration’s tariffs along with its many reversals of domestic and foreign policies.

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Trump Administration Bends U.S. Government in Extraordinary Ways towards Aim of Mass Deportations

2025/03/01 Leave a comment

Good analysis by MPI:

Invoking the specter of “invasion,” the Trump administration has set out to build a fundamentally new, all-of-government machinery to fulfill President Donald Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportations of resident unauthorized immigrants and new irregular arrivals.

To carry out this enterprise, the administration has enlisted federal agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) that have previously never played significant roles—or any, in the case of the IRS—in immigration enforcement. It also has directed other federal law enforcement entities, including prosecutors, to prioritize deportations. And it has significantly increased the military’s involvement by deploying sizeable numbers of troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, for the first time using military aircraft to carry out deportation flights, and, also in a first, detaining noncitizens arrested inside the United States at the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Reaching beyond the federal ambit, the administration is also doubling down on its pressure on state and local authorities to conduct immigration enforcement actions traditionally reserved for federal agents, and is seeking or threatening to penalize those that offer resistance. And it has made cooperation on immigration a high priority in foreign affairs, taking an iron-fist approach to negotiations with foreign counterparts. Facing U.S. threats to impose tariffs, end foreign assistance, and take over the Panama Canal, Mexico and a number of other Latin American countries have agreed to implement migration controls, with some also agreeing to hold third-country nationals removed from the United States. So far, these countries have sought to appease the Trump administration, but policy implementation has been measured and strategic. Mexico, for example, has refused to accept deportees arriving on military planes and has also threatened reciprocal tariffs on U.S. imports should the Trump administration impose tariffs as early as March 4.

Finally, the administration has achieved something that several of its predecessors could not: Getting Congress to act on immigration legislation. The White House scored a victory when, within a few days of the inauguration, Congress in a bipartisan fashion passed the Laken Riley Act, the first stand-alone immigration legislation in nearly two decades. The law dramatically increases mandatory detention of noncitizens accused of certain criminal offenses.

The orchestrated, whole-of-government machinery displayed by this administration in its first month—accompanied by a muscular, carefully crafted messaging campaign—has the closest parallels with the actions that occurred in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when broad swaths of the federal government were repurposed to serve the national security mission. The fundamental difference is that post-9/11 actions were a response to an actual attack on U.S. soil, whereas today’s rhetoric of “invasion” and the arrival of foreign “military-age” men intent on building an “army” is not matched by reality. While encounters of asylum seekers and other migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border reached record levels in fiscal year (FY) 2021 and FY 2022, there is no evidence so far of a significant threat to national security or general public safety. And, in fact, irregular crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border significantly declined during 2024, and in particular during the latter half of the calendar year….

Source: Trump Administration Bends U.S. Government in Extraordinary Ways towards Aim of Mass Deportations

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Trump to sell citizenship via his ‘gold cards’ for $5m to foreigners who create jobs

2025/02/27 2 Comments

Cue all the oligarchs and other questionable individuals, but disturbingly appropriate for the Trump administration (most business and citizenship immigration programs make limited if any contribution to local economies and employment).

To use Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick’s description of the EB-5, this replacement will likely generate even more “nonsense, make-believe and fraud:”

President Donald Trump announced a new path to U.S. citizenship: a pricey gold card.

The U.S. is going to “sell” gold cards for $5 million, Trump announced in the Oval Office Tuesday.

“We’re going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 million and that’s going to give you [permanent resident] Green Card privileges, plus it’s going to be a route to citizenship,” the president said. He branded it as “somewhat like a Green Card, but at a higher level of sophistication.”

“Wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card,” he continued. “They’ll be wealthy and they’ll be successful and they’ll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people. And we think it’s going to be extremely successful and never been done before.”

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick clarified the Trump administration plans to terminate a somewhat similar EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program and “replace it with the Trump gold card.” 

The EB-5 program allows investors to apply for permanent residence in the U.S. if they “make the necessary investment in a commercial enterprise in the United States” and plan to create or preserve 10 permanent full-time jobs.

The EB-5 program was “full of nonsense, make-believe and fraud,” Lutnick continued. “It was a way to get a green card that was low priced.”

Once vetted, gold card holders “can invest in America and we can use that money to reduce our deficit,” he added.

The president predicted that the gold card will bring in “very high level people” who create jobs. With these cards, “you’re getting big taxpayers, big job producers, and we’ll be able to sell maybe a million of these cards, maybe more than that,” Trump said.

The Kushner family was sharply criticized eight years ago after the sister of Jared Kushner, then senior White House adviser to his father-in-laws Donald Trump, traveled to Beijing to tempt wealthy Chinese with an EB-5 Green Card with an investment in one of the Kushner family’s real estate projects — an offer that a former White House ethics lawyer under George. W. Bush called “corruption, pure and simple.”

The new citizenship pathway comes as the Trump administration cracks down on immigration into the U.S. The president even issued an executive order to end birthright citizenship. An appeals court last week rejected the Trump administration’s request to pause a lower court judge’s order halting the president’s executive order.

Source: Trump to sell citizenship via his ‘gold cards’ for $5m to foreigners who create jobs

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

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