About Mike Quinn

Thanks to Trump, There Is No Shame In Racism

Today a father was speaking about the bullying his son endured in the public school system in Michigan. Instead of a unified sympathetic response to the shameful display of racism, someone piped up with, “So why didn’t you stay in Mexico?”

This public display of racism would have been rare in recent years past, but now has become commonplace among Trump supporters who feel it is their patriotic duty to call out minorities whenever the opportunity presents itself. The ensuing public outcry of racism and shame does not phase these people. Their president uses racial remarks and public policy to harm immigrants and minorities all the time, so their show of support is now a display of national pride for them.

How far our national reputation for standing up for the little guy and treating everyone with the same degree of fairness and justice has fallen. To be fair, the United States has never been a consistent, safe-haven for minorities, even though our Statue of Liberty reflects a different attitude. We have struggled with our relationship with immigrants throughout our entire history, with relatively brief passeges of love and respect for the people who left everything behind to make their lives in a new land.

Ever since Trump announced his run for the presidency, racism has become a front and center issue that has taken half of our nation into a direction that seeks to humiliate and deter people from coming to America. This position has been proven time and time again to be a losing position.

If it were not for immigrants, our nation would not be a quarter as powerful and strong as it is today. Nearly half of the wealthiest companies on the planet are American companies built by and staffed by immigrants. a Citigroup and Oxford University report found that two-thirds of U.S. GDP expansion since 2011 was “directly attributable to migration.”

Making immigration more difficult is like turning off future GDP growth and returning to an agricultural nation, leaving future industrial and economic growth to every other country on the planet that is more open to the hungry and energetic immigrants.

The United States is losing its position as a global economic leader, and killing immigration is why.

Another American Caught Up In Immigration Hell

I have made it well known that the basic premise of my book, “The Dishwasher’s Son” is about an American teenager being deported from the US under our extraordinarily lax and dysfunctional Immigration system. In the dedication to that book, I also mentioned this has happened Approximately 20,000 times since 2003. Just today, I read a report from GQ magazine that the

Border Patrol Has Kept a Teenage U.S. Citizen Locked Up for Nearly a Month.

“Customs and Border Protection (CPB) stopped two brothers at a checkpoint in Texas on June 27. The younger one, Marlon Galicia, was born in Mexico and entered the U.S. illegally; the older one, 18-year-old Francisco Erwin Galicia, was born in Dallas. CBP took both brothers into custody.”

Erwin Galicia had a wallet-sized copy of his birth certificate, his Social Security card, and a Texas ID that’s only available to citizens with Social Security numbers, on his person at the time of the arrest.

Now, whenever a specific portion of our society finds it necessary to carry around all of this identification on their person wherever they go, just to keep from being arrested, that should be a red flag for everyone to see. This is America, not a Nazi-occupied country.

No community of Americans should feel the need to carry around this much ID just to prove they are here legally. As many of us already know, if you carry this much identification around with you at all times, there is a good chance you will become the victim of identity theft. If Erwin were to be robbed, someone could not only steal his money, watch, cell phone, car, whatever– they could also open credit cards, buy items online, and many commit many other crimes in his name. This is the whole reason none of us carry around our Social Security numbers, birth certificates around with us. It is just too easy for someone to steal our identity, and then we would be in a form of hell that can take years to clean up. The fact that this American citizen felt the need to do this just to protect his American identification is just too sad to witness if it weren’t for the fact that even carrying all this ID didn’t help him. He still is in custody for something he isn’t capable of committing. a

The Republican party has already shown its true anti-immigration colors after years of rebuffing any and all attempts to repair our broken immigration system, and, most recently, by making asylum claims practically illegal and after yesterdays announcement of making stipulated removal a nationwide procedure, instead of just along a 100 miles of the US/Mexico border. This change also enables low-level officials to decide if someone should be deported and give them the ability to proceed with deportation immediately.

When I think about reading the news about several CBP facebook groups, from the very people our nation has entrusted to carry out our immigration policies, that was full of anti-immigrant messages and photos, and then hearing about the stipulated removal changes and then reading about this incident of an American citizen getting caught up in the anti-immigration hysteria, I had to ask myself,

“is this improving our immigration system, or making it worse?”

One thing is for certain: when the bottom of this garbage can full of ideas comes off, we will be left with a huge mess and Donald Trump will be blaming the Democrats for the problem as well as the lives that will be broken and lost.

 

The Invisible Wall

Recently Trump claimed to have begun building his big beautiful wall and even had a plaque dedicating this section to himself as the first section of his border wall.

Now, as a point of fact, this section of the wall was built in place of an older barrier that was dilapidated and in need of replacement and was ordered to be rebuilt by then President Obama, who also authorized the funds.

This is not a new wall.

This was not his victory.

Since we cannot trust what Trump says, let’s look at what he’s actually done.

Trump has taken money from the military budget, against the objections of the Pentagon, and is trying to repurpose those funds to build the border wall. My mother taught me that when you take something that doesn’t belong to you, without being asked, It’s called “stealing.” It also makes you wonder how much of the new and highly expanded military budget, money the Pentagon didn’t even ask for, might also be “taken” to build his wall in the future.  I thought the whole big idea of building the wall was that Mexico was going to pay for it. That’s where he got his big applause. Apparently, that line was just a ruse. We are going to pay for this wall, and we aren’t going to have a say about it.

I guess we’ll just send Mexico an invoice or something.

Without a doubt, the Trump administration cannot be trusted.

Trump has put up some pretty impressive invisible barriers, though, while at the same time built a big beautiful door to which he invites conflicts on the world stage, including the possibility of wars on various fronts.

He has reduced funding to the United Nations, tried to leverage our allies, you know the ones we worked with to keep fascism from taking over the free world for 70 years or so, into contributing more toward the UN based on his vast and highly unsuccessful Real Estate experience. The United Nations is what you would call an invisible barrier, stopping would-be dictators and fascists from invading and taking over other nations. Russia, obviously, isn’t a member.

Trump also withdrew the US from the Human Rights Council, an organization that America used to pride themselves as being a part of to make the world a better place to live. This actually paved the way for America to befriend dictators and despots who live outside the law.

Which brings us to the fact that Trump has insulted and infuriated our allies, while at the same time tried to build relationships with the world’s most notorious dictators.

Talk about a destabilizing influence.

Another invisible wall Trump has recently torn down is his threat to withdraw Hundreds of Millions of dollars of aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, with the expressed purpose of trying to get them to stop the asylum caravans coming to our southern border.

Trump, if there was a fire in your kitchen, would you turn up the heat to the stove? Grab a can of gasoline, perhaps?

People are fleeing these countries because of poverty and crime. Taking money away from these governments will NOT make this problem go away–it will make it WORSE!

What we should be doing is giving more money or support to these countries. If we could help train their police departments and help them reduce crime, while also increasing investment in these countries to fight poverty and promote a happy and thriving middle class, then fewer citizens of these countries will want to walk for months to get here. Let’s face it, walking for thousands of miles is not anyone’s Plan A–it’s a last-ditch effort to stay alive.

The money we send to these countries is an invisible wall, keeping other nations out of our back yard. Right now, without our support, these countries are open for business to any other country that wishes to help support them in their effort to create a better economy.

Now that this invisible wall is collapsing, we are going to have Chinese and Russian influences and whoever else wants to encroach upon our sovereignty at our southern border, and our former allies are going to watch from the sidelines because you told them our “Patriotism” was all we needed and they could just go jump off a bridge.

Nice Trump. What are you going to do for an encore, play the fiddle as our nation burns to the ground?

AS you can see, international relations, or a lack thereof, form an invisible barrier to threats from foreign nations. We had some pretty good ones, but Trump doesn’t like those. He likes the ones he can touch and put his name on. The problem is, those kinds of walls don’t work like you think they will. Just ask Rome, China, or Germany, and all the other countries that tried to build physical barriers to keep threats out. Invisible barriers work better than physical ones. They also make more friends, and that’s one thing we could sure use more of these days.

 

Seniors Embracing Cultural Dress at Prom

Many teens around the nation are wearing “traditional” gowns and formalwear showing off their cultural heritage and looking very stylish.

See the link below to the Yahoo.com article that shows beautiful pictures that reflect the pride and beauty of some of the various cultural styles that are making their way to one of the most important nights in a young person’s lives.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/da-culture-teens-embracing-heritage-prom-night-205541160.html

Border Patrol Detained Two U.S. Citizens

A U.S. Border Patrol agent overhead two women, who both were U.S. citizens, speaking Spanish in a Montana gas station and detained them for almost an hour.

Lucky for them, speaking Spanish is not a crime. Unfortunately, it seems being Mexican is.

Full story at the Chicago Tribune.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-border-agent-montana-20180520-story.html

The Real National Border Emergency: Brought to you by Trump & GOP

There is a real national emergency at our southern border with Mexico, but it’s not the one Trump is promoting—it’s the one he is creating himself. The fact that the GOP is backing him up on his wild lies makes them complicit.

Many news reporting agencies have documented that in 2018 the Trump administration introduced a “zero-tolerance” policy calling for the prosecution of all individuals who illegally enter the United States. The devastating effect has been the following:

  • Parents have been separated from their children.
  • There was no plan to reunite children with their parents until after a major backlash from the public.
  • Minor children were locked up far longer than legally allowed.
  • More than 4,500 incidents of child abuse against minors in immigration custody have been reported.
  • Twenty-two immigrant deaths in US immigration custody in the past two years has also been documented.
  • The emotional effects of this separation and abuse on these children will be revealing itself for decades to come. Traumatized children tend to exhibit mental and emotional problems as adults. This horrific abuse will likely affect their entire lives.

As if these tragedies weren’t bad enough, the Trump administration continues to persecute immigrants and asylum seekers by:

  • Reducing the number of courts and judges that hear asylum cases which increased incarceration periods and reduced asylum approvals to hereto unheard of numbers.
  • Denying an overwhelming majority of asylum seekers cases making it almost impossible for asylum seekers to achieve protection against threats back home.
  • Sending asylum seekers to a foreign country that we have no control over housing, feeding, medical care or even communications to await their status hearings.

The thinking of the Trump administration with this policy shift was that by destroying families, the will of people to come here would be reduced. Breaking this logic down, it reads—if you are afraid for life as well as that of your children, don’t come here.

The big question is; since when did women & children become a threat to national security? 

Well, they aren’t, which is why Trump makes up lies about MS13, drugs and human trafficking adding into the mix. To gain more support for his border wall, he tries to frighten us with the bogeyman. 

No one cannot trust a pathological liar for a President. But he is much more than that. He is also a Hypocrite, just like all the other sons of immigrants who call for an end to “Chain Migration.” 

If Chain migration is so bad for America, as Donald Trump states, then as our elected leader he should be willing to send his wife Melania’s parents back to their home country. That is what great leaders do; lead by example. The fact that he won’t ever do this proves that either he is not the great leader he thinks he is, or Trump does believe in uniting and protecting families. Instead of promoting an immigration policy that is in conflict with his personal history and making him look untrustworthy, Trump should embrace family-based immigration policies. 

Trump also employed many undocumented workers at his golf courses, and probably in his construction crews as well, so his stand against illegal immigration falls flat. If it’s okay for him to do it, why should it be illegal for others? The fact that he fired these immigrants recently is only for damage control. He has never even apologized to the American people for the “oversight”. Let’s forget it ever happened, right Donald?

Donald Trump has stated on many occasions that our immigration laws are highly broken. Focusing on a wall instead of immigration reform is just a political ruse. 

Walls don’t work. Ask China or the Romans, two famous examples of militarizing borders. Walls didn’t stop the Huns from invading China or the Barbarians from invading Rome. We could also ask the Germans why they tore down their wall, the most fortified and guarded wall in recent history. Thousands of people escaped East Germany in spite of those efforts. All walls are breach-able. Building a wall won’t stop immigration by itself. Walls are tools, not solutions.

In truth; a set of fair and just immigration laws in conjunction with support for our neighbors to combat gangs and crime would go a lot further to slowing down immigration from our neighbors into our country. 

Improved investment in jobs and a stable economy would further reduce strain at our southern border. Families and a rich history with the geography that gave them birth are a huge reason most people love the countries they already live in. Why would anyone want to make a long and treacherous journey to live somewhere else if they could live free and happy lives at home?

America has spent Billions of dollars and thousands of American lives defending citizens of foreign nations from oppression and death around the world. We should be able to do better for our neighbors here at home for less money and with far less human casualty. 

We are the great United States of America. Shouldn’t we expect more from ourselves than just a simple wall?  

Even US military Generals agree there is no military threat at our southern border. On the insistence of Trump and with the full support of the GOP, the only military at the border is ours—we are literally at war with ourselves. 

Trump and the Republicans should be ashamed of themselves. Real people are dying, families are being destroyed, and young lives are being permanently damaged while Trump tells us that fictional bad guys are storming our borders and a wall will fix everything. Only an idiot would think that solving all of our immigration problems were really as simple as building a wall.

The national emergency at the border is real; Trump created it, the Republicans support it—only we can end it. 

America: the Mother of all Glass Houses

Proving, once again, that America is the mother of all glass houses when it comes to immigration and our national identity.

An American Crisis of the Soul

For years now the far right has waged a war on American values in the name of American values in order to confuse their ideological goals with the very definition of what it means to be American. By now it is obvious to most of the people on earth that they have annexed the Republican party and are having their way with our nation.

The far right have used the GOP to beat Bill Clinton over the head with his affair with Monica Lewinsky and a supposed Whitewater real estate investment scandal that never produced any real evidence. They continue to impose a poor image on Hilary Clinton over these same issues, even though our current president gets a huge pass on hard evidence of worse offenses on the same issues.(Stormy Daniels & Trump Tower Washington & Moscow for just a few examples.)

The GOP rode Barrack Obama so hard during his 8 years in office that I was embarrassed for our nation. Donald Trump and his racist far-right “birther” movement tried to cast doubt about his citizenship and therefore authority to govern. Far-right racist cartoons casting President Obama and his wife in humiliating ways, Republican senators professing to seek to limit his term to 4 years almost immediately after inauguration. The GOP in Congress was so anti-Obama they were the least productive in history during his term in office, openly vowing to reduce his influence on America to as little as possible while at the same time blaming him for not getting much done in office. To this day Trump is erasing what little he did get done. (Blame Obama is a recurring GOP theme.)

Now we have a President who never gave us a look at his tax returns, keeping his past international and investment ties a secret unlike all presidents before him since 1976 except one. He has had multiple marriages, which would have been a non-starter before 2016, but somehow was forgiven, just like his infidelities and self-admitted sexual assaults. Trump’s verbal abuse of American Heros who “didn’t get captured” didn’t get him cut from the list of GOP hopefuls, although if Obama had said it, I’m sure someone else would have become president. There are so many verbal abuses and insults Trump has issued that I’m sure everyone else in America is aware of and is a shame to our national reputation. Also the fact that in his first months in office he has redefined our allies as delinquent bill payers and promoted autocrats and demi-gods as supposed well-respected members of society worthy of admitting into international organizations. Now, Trump is telling us that all the women and children fleeing death and destruction in their central American countries are a national crisis that needs our military and a huge wall to protect us from. Machine guns, tear gas, and barbed wire vs diaper wielding moms. Let’s not talk about our broken immigration system and how to fix it, though. A wall will do it all if you believe Trump.

Thanks, GOP. You’ve ruined my country. I won’t support you any longer until you start treating Americans as the people you are supposed to represent, not the people you can lie to and steal from. I would rather vote for a goat in a tree than a member of your shameful organization.

You’ve given this nation’s reputation a bruising, worse than a black eye, with all you’ve done to restructure the world’s relationships to your own liking, as well as lie to your country on a daily basis about everything that means anything to your people and use foreign nations to help you win your seat at the table. The fact that you keep bragging about “your base” really tells us everything we need to know about you.

We’re ALL supposed to be your base.

You are the President of the United States of America, but you are governing like the Divided States of Trump. You’ve given our nation social syphilis. Luckily there’s a cure if you catch it in time.

Donald Trump is a huge anti-immigrant President- Huge

Donald Trump is running headlong towards the Guinness Book of World Records for what the US administration that hinders immigration, legal or otherwise, into this country. He has done so much to undo our progress on the immigration problem in the year he has led our nation that it is anyone’s guess how far this man will go to make this country White again.

The US has historically produced some pretty horrific immigration legislation over the years, including; the 1798 Aliens and Sedition Act that required immigrants to have lived in this country for 14 years prior to being allowed citizenship, the 1892 The Geary Act that Prohibited the coming of Chinese Persons into the United States for an additional 10 years, the 1917 Asian Exclusion Act that created an Asian ‘Barred Zone” that excluded people from certain asian countries from coming into the US, and many more.

Don’t be surprised to see some of these ideas return to the discussion of what to do about our “immigration crisis.”

IT should stand to reason that this administration may want to actually roll back our immigration laws to 1790 and re-establish the 1790 Immigration act that establishes citizenship to free white persons who have established residency for at least 2 years and have committed no crimes.

Geneologist disproves immigration assimilation myth

Geneologist Jennifer Mendelsohn disproved a common myth about immigrants refusing to assimilate into American Society. After a sad debate between immigrant basher barbie Tomi Lauren and Fox host John Kelly, Jennifer Mendelsohn researched Ms Lauren’s ancestors and found that they, too, didn’t speak english after immigrating to the US. While this won’t stop Tomi Lauren from bashing immigrants, it does prove that assimilation is not an instant gratification subject.

This generational process is actually very common with immigrants. The first generation usually sticks with their native tongue because learning a new language, especially one as complicated as English, can be daunting and if you do it poorly you can feel you are seen by others as either stupid, lazy or foolish. It is not easy to move to a foreign country. Why would anyone want to risk ridicule in their new home? An easy strategy is to be quiet, keep your head down and don’t make any problems.

When these first generation immigrants have children, the kids go to school and learn english like everyone else. They also speak their native tongue to communicate with their family members at home.

When these children have children, they mainly speak english at home and rarely take the time or effort to learn their old native tongue. The family is now so assimilated that their former nationality is almost forgotten, save for their older relatives and perhaps the pride they carry coming from a rich and beautiful country. This scenario has been playing out over and over again for hundreds of years in just about every country around the world.

Whenever someone talks badly about integration or assimilation, they are really just making an argument about immigrants without really knowing the facts.  Most myths about immigrants or even about foreign cultures are blind ignorant gossip used for no other purpose than to keep the races or cultures separate.

Now who wants a country full of thousands of small communities who don’t communicate with each other, mistrust each other and blame each other for their problems? Sounds like a pretty crummy way to live if you ask me.

It is much better to let everyone assimilate into the country at their own pace, bringing with them the rich traditions, foods, fashions and cultures that make this world so interesting and flavorful, thereby enriching our country to the n-th degree. Where else on earth can you travel the world without leaving the country? For many of us, this will be as close as we get to world travel. We should be grateful.