Migrants are the “lifeblood” of America, not Americans and their children, says former top Democrat Sen. Harry Reid.
“Immigrants are the lifeblood of our nation,” Reid said, ignoring the 4 million Americans who turn 18 this year in a homeland with 260 million Americans, 34 million legal immigrants and at least 11 million illegal migrants.
Migrants, he said, “are our power and our strength.”
Reid made the claim as he tried to slam President Donald Trump’s call on Oct. for a reform of the birthright citizenship rules.
Reid led the Senate Democrats until 2016. His elevation of migrants above Americans came shortly after President Donald Trump declared himself to be a pro-American nationalist.
But Reid’s praise for migrants and contempt for Americans is echoed by many Democrats, by progressive columnists, some GOP-affiliated columnists, and by many immigrant political activists.
For example, the Democrats’ leaders in the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi declared in a lengthy speech in February 2018 that:
We’re a great country because we’re constantly reinvigorated by immigrants coming to our country. Their commitment and courage and commitment to the American dream which drew them here in the first place strengthened the American dream. As newcomers with all of that hope and aspiration, they make America more American when they come here and that’s why our country will not stagnate.
…
Great things, discoveries in America came from immigrants coming here. Many of the great academic minds in our country came from another country. But then — at the same time America produced our own and that’s a pretty exciting combination.
Rep. Joe Kennedy, in an October article for Time magazine, tried to revive the claim that America is a “nation of immigrants,” not a nation of and for Americans and their children:
Few felt it as deeply as President John F. Kennedy. In his 1964 book A Nation of Immigrants, recently re-released, my great-uncle outlines the compelling case for immigration, in economic, moral, and global terms. “The abundant resources of this land provided the foundation for a great nation,” he writes. “But only people could make the opportunity a reality. Immigration provided the human resources.”
Many pro-migration advocates also argue that migrants are more important and productive than Americans:
New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote in January 2018:
Over all, America is suffering from a loss of dynamism. New business formation is down. Interstate mobility is down. Americans switch jobs less frequently and more Americans go through the day without ever leaving the house.
…
Of course [Americans] react with defensive animosity to the immigrants who out-hustle and out-build them. You’d react negatively, too, if confronted with people who are better versions of what you wish you were yourself.
In June 2017, a former Wall Street Journal writer who is now working for the New York Times declared America belongs to immigrants because immigrants make the nation more powerful. Bret Stephens wrote:
I speak of Americans whose families have been in this country for a few generations. Complacent, entitled and often shockingly ignorant on basic points of American law and history, they are the stagnant pool in which our national prospects risk drowning…
Bottom line: So-called real Americans are screwing up America. Maybe they should leave, so that we can replace them with new and better ones: newcomers who are more appreciative of what the United States has to offer, more ambitious for themselves and their children, and more willing to sacrifice for the future.
Americans have no right to America, Stephens continued, saying:
We’re a country of immigrants — by and for them, too. Americans who don’t get it should get out.
In January 2018, the Washington Post’s (WaPo) op-ed editor, Fred Hiatt, declared:
Here’s the bottom line: I think we should remain open to immigrants because it’s part of who we are as a nation, because every generation of newcomers — even, or maybe especially, the ones who come with nothing but moxie and a tolerance for risk — has enriched and improved us …
A vote to choke off immigration is a vote for stagnation and decline.
In February 2017, Bill Kristol, the editor-at-large of the D.C.-based Weekly Standard magazine, declared that population replacement would be the best for national power:
“Look, to be totally honest, if things are so bad as you say with the white working class, don’t you want to get new Americans in?
[I hope] this thing isn’t being videotaped or ever shown anywhere. Whatever tiny, pathetic future I have is going to totally collapse. You can make a case that America has been great because every — I think John Adams said this — basically if you are in free society, a capitalist society, after two or three generations of hard work everyone becomes kind of decadent, lazy, spoiled — whatever. Then, luckily, you have these waves of people coming in from Italy, Ireland, Russia, and now Mexico.
Stephens’ progressive and elitist peers have lauded the Hamilton musical, which portrays says American was founded by immigrants, not settlers, and that today’s immigrants as the rejuvenating diverse lifeblood of dull, white America. The play includes a song titled: “Immigrants (We Get The Job Done),” which glamorizes the imported, underpaid cheap-labor and sweatshops which serve Hamilton‘s wealthy ticket-buyers:
Pelso also said Americans owe a moral debt to illegals for bringing their children into the United States:
I say to their parents: Thank you for bringing these Dreamers to America. We’re in your debt for the courage it took, for you to take the risk, physically, politically, in every way, to do so.”
Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” host Joe Scarborough lit into President Donald Trump for “playing the racist card” and lining up with “some of the most abhorrent regimes in the 20th century.”
“This last week, let’s just be really blunt about it, it’s why Republicans are scared of him right now. It’s been race. He’s been playing the racist card. He said, ‘I’m a nationalist.’ David Duke comes out the next day saying, ‘Thank you. Thank you so much for finally admitting that you’re a white nationalist.’ Then you have even some Republican back-benchers that are linking George Soros and these anti-Semitic threads to the caravan. You’ve got Fox News talking about smallpox and leprosy coming up,” Scarborough stated.
“I’m sorry. I won’t say specifically what regime this is out of, but go back and read your history books and look at some of the most abhorrent regimes in the 20th century,” he continued. “Might as well be certain countries talking about gypsies. It lines up historically exactly with what certain countries were talking about when they were talking about gypsies and Jews. Mika, that doesn’t play well in Peoria. That doesn’t play well in suburban Virginia. That doesn’t even play well in western Iowa. That’s why you have Republicans now distancing themselves from Donald Trump going to Pittsburgh, and the head of the NRCC distancing himself from a Republican who basically has identified with white nationalism in western Iowa, Steve King now, for far too long.”
Scarborough concluded that Trump’s presidency “is like Charlottesville every day,” a reference to the white nationalist rally in 2017 that turned violent.
Mexican authorities arrested two Hondurans who allegedly shot at federal police officers escorting the migrant caravan across the southern state of Chiapas. The attack follows shortly after government warnings about Molotov cocktail attacks around a second caravan near the border with Guatemala.
The attack took place near Ignacio Zaragoza, Chiapas, when members of Mexico’s Federal Police were escorting the migrant caravan as part of “Operativo Caminante” or “Operation Walker” across the southern border state. According to Mexico’s Interior Secretariat, two men identified only as 22-year-old “Jerson” and 17-year-old “Carlos” spotted the group of police officers guarding the caravan and began firing at them.
The attackers’ pistol jammed, allowing police officers to arrest them without any injuries. Federal authorities seized a .380 caliber Glock with nine rounds still in the magazine.
Have any of these bastards condemned the Left-Wing nuts that have attacked conservatives?
MILWAUKEE/MOSINEE, Wis. (Reuters) – The undercurrent of rage that has been driving U.S. politics for the past few years surfaced on Wednesday in a series of suspected bombs sent to prominent U.S. Democrats and the news outlet CNN less than two weeks before congressional elections.
None of the devices went off and no injuries were reported, but a number of top Democrats were quick to label the threats a symptom of a coarsening brand of political rhetoric promoted by President Donald Trump, who also condemned the acts.
Police intercepted six suspected bombs sent to targets including Trump’s 2016 presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama and prominent political donor George Soros. Law enforcement agencies were investigating.
During his presidential campaign, Trump regularly urged his supporters to chant “Lock her up,” a threat to jail Clinton, and supported conspiracy theories that Soros plays an underhanded role in influencing U.S. politics. Trump has also disparaged the mainstream media and criticized CNN as “fake news.”
At a political rally in Wisconsin on Wednesday night, Trump sought to project a message of unity, pledging to find those responsible for the suspected bombs and calling on Americans to come together.
“You see how nice I’m behaving tonight? Have you ever seen this?” he asked the crowd in Mosinee, Wisconsin. “We’re all behaving very well and hopefully we can keep it that way.”
Democrats were having none of it, saying the Republican president had little credibility to act as a unifying figure.
“President Trump’s words ring hollow until he reverses his statements that condone acts of violence,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement earlier in the day.
“For years now, Donald Trump has been calling for the jailing of his critics and has lauded violence against journalists,” said U.S. Representative Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Democrat. “The danger of right-wing extremism cannot be ignored and more attention must be paid to it before even worse violence occurs.”
Politicians from both major parties have made condemning the harsh tone of politics part of their everyday stump speeches.
Republicans have criticized Democrats and liberal activists as a “mob,” decrying protesters crowding the U.S. Capitol to oppose Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and confronting and chastising Republican lawmakers in restaurants and other settings. Scenes of small-scale violence also marked Trump’s 2017 inauguration.
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found rising anger would be a factor driving voters on the Nov. 6 elections when Democrats are seeking to regain control of at least one of the two chambers of Congress.
HEATED TONE
Trump sometimes invokes images of violence in remarks to his supporters. Last week, he reiterated his support for a Montana congressman who body-slammed a reporter in 2017. In August, Trump warned that if Democrats gained control of Congress, they would “quickly and violently” overturn his agenda.
Last year, he said there were bad people on both sides of a clash in Charlottesville, Virginia, between white supremacist groups and counter-protesters.
Some of the people who received suspicious packages, including Obama, Clinton and former Attorney General Eric Holder, have been targeted by online groups such as QAnon that push vast conspiracy theories saying Democrats are behind international crime rings.
Posts on online message boards dismissed the cluster of suspected bombs as a “false flag,” an allegation that a widely covered news event was a politically motivated hoax.
Paul Achter, a professor of rhetoric at the University of Richmond, said Trump’s frequently violent tone increased the likelihood of violent actions.
“Verbal abuse has consequences,” Achter said. “Just because Trump did not send a bomb or beat up a reporter or shoot up a newsroom doesn’t excuse this kind of speech.”
But Republican U.S. Representative Steve Scalise, who was wounded last year by a gunman who opened fire on Republican lawmakers during a baseball practice, said it was a mistake for Democrats to criticize Trump for the suspected bombs.
Two more suspicious packages found – FBI
“I think it was important that the President did come out with a statement the way he did – strongly,” Scalise said in a statement. “I heard silence a lot of times, when Republicans were under attack, from Democrat leaders. We all should be calling this out, whether a Republican or Democrat is under attack.”
How in the HELL is this the USA’s problem. Close the damn border and send their asses back to the hell hole they came from.
CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico (AP) — Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, a growing throng of Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the U.S. border early Sunday in southern Mexico.
Their numbers swelled to about 5,000 overnight and at first light they set out walking toward the Mexican town of Tapachula, 10 abreast in a line stretching approximately a mile.
This Is A Damn Invasion.
Kate Linthicum
✔@katelinthicum
I’m only just realizing the massive scale of this caravan as they march north into Mexico. It’s several thousand people. Just look.
Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, a growing caravan of Central American migrants on Sunday resumed their advance towards the US border in southern Mexico.
Their numbers swelled to about 5,000 overnight and at first light they set out walking.
It was not immediately clear where the additional travelers had materialized from since about 2,000 gathered on the Mexican side Saturday night. They seemed likely to be people who had been waiting on the bridge over the Suchiate River or in the Guatemalan town of Tecun Uman and who decided to cross during the night.
At dawn there were still an estimated 1,500 migrants on the Guatemalan side hoping to enter legally.
They marched on through Mexico like a rag tag army of the poor, shouting triumphantly slogans like “Si se pudo!” or “Yes, we could!”
As they passed through Mexican villages on the outskirts of Ciudad Hidalgo, they drew applause, cheers and donations of food and clothing from Mexicans.
Maria Teresa Orellana, a resident of the neighborhood of Lorenzo handed out free sandals to the migrants as they passed. “It’s solidarity,” she said. “They’re our brothers.”
Olivin Castellanos, 58, a truck driver and mason from Villanueva, Honduras, said he took a raft across the river after Mexico blocked the bridge. “No one will stop us, only God,” he said. “We knocked down the door and we continue walking.” He wants to reach the U.S. to work. “I can do this,” he said, pointing to the asphalt under his feet. “I’ve made highways.”
The migrants, who said they gave up trying to enter Mexico legally because the asylum application process was too slow, gathered Saturday at a park in the border city of Ciudad Hidalgo. They voted by a show of hands to continue north en masse, then marched to the bridge crossing the Suchiate River and urged those still on it to come join them.
The decision to re-form the migrant caravan capped a day in which Mexican authorities again refused mass entry to migrants on the bridge, instead accepting small groups for asylum processing and giving out 45-day visitor permits to some. Authorities handed out numbers for people to be processed in a strategy seen before at U.S. border posts when dealing with large numbers of migrants.
But many became impatient and circumventing the border gate, crossing the river on rafts, by swimming or by wading in full view of the hundreds of Mexican police manning the blockade on the bridge. Some paid locals the equivalent of $1.25 to ferry them across the muddy waters. They were not detained on reaching the Mexican bank.
Sairy Bueso, a 24-year old Honduran mother of two, was another migrant who abandoned the bridge and crossed into Mexico via the river. She clutched her 2-year-old daughter Dayani, who had recently had a heart operation, as she got off a raft.
“The girl suffered greatly because of all the people crowded” on the bridge, Bueso said. “There are risks that we must take for the good of our children.”
In addition to those who crossed the river, immigration agents processed migrants in small groups and then bused them to an open-air, metal-roof fairground in Tapachula, where the Red Cross set up small blue tents on the concrete floor.
Mexico’s Interior Department said it had received 640 refugee requests by Hondurans at the border crossing. It released photos of migrants getting off buses at a shelter and receiving food and medical attention.
At least half a dozen migrants fainted in the crush.
Some tore open a fence on the Guatemala side of the bridge and threw two young children, perhaps age 6 or 7, and their mother into the muddy waters about 40 feet below. They were rafted to safety in on the Mexican bank.
Mexican workers handed food and bottled water to the migrants on the bridge. Through the bars, a doctor gave medical attention to a woman who feared her young son was running a fever.
Sustenance also came from Guatemalan locals — for Carlos Martinez, a 24-year-old from Santa Barbara, Honduras, the plate of chicken with rice was the first bite to eat he’d had all day.
“It is a blessing that they have given us food,” Martinez said. “It gives me courage to keep waiting, as long as I can.”
Migrants cited widespread poverty and gang violence in Honduras, one of the world’s deadliest nations by homicide rate, as their reasons for joining the caravan.
Juan Carlos Mercado, 20, from Santa Barbara, Honduras, says corruption and a lack of jobs in Honduras has stymied him. “We just want to move ahead with our lives,” he said Sunday. He said he’d do any kind of work.
The caravan elicited a series of angry tweets and warnings from Trump early in the week, but Mexico’s initial handling of the migrants at its southern border seemed to have satisfied him more recently.
“So as of this moment, I thank Mexico,” Trump said Friday at an event in Scottsdale, Arizona. “I hope they continue. But as of this moment, I thank Mexico. If that doesn’t work out, we’re calling up the military — not the Guard.”
“They’re not coming into this country,” Trump added.
“The Mexican Government is fully engaged in finding a solution that encourages safe, secure, and orderly migration,” State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Saturday, “and both the United States and Mexico continue to work with Central American governments to address the economic, security, and governance drivers of illegal immigration.”
After an emergency meeting in Guatemala, presidents Hernandez of Honduras and Jimmy Morales of Guatemala said an estimated 5,400 migrants had entered Guatemala since the caravan was announced a week ago, and about 2,000 Hondurans have returned voluntarily.
Morales said a Honduran migrant died in the town of Villa Nueva, 20 miles from Guatemala City, when he fell from a truck.
Nellie Ohr, the wife of Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, claimed spousal privilege on Friday in order to avoid certain questions from House Republicans about the controversial anti-Trump dossier.
While describing her as cooperative in the voluntary appearance, Republican and Democratic lawmakers told Fox News that Ohr took spousal privilege, which Republicans said did not allow them to get to core questions about the salacious dossier, and how it got into the hands of the FBI.
Nellie Ohr worked for Fusion GPS, the research group that commissioned the dossier.
Glenn Simpson, Fusion GPS’ co-founder, earlier this week invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions during a separate Capitol Hill appearance before congressional investigators. Bruce Ohr has previously testified about his contact with Simpson during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The dossier, authored by former British spy Christopher Steele and commissioned by Fusion GPS, was paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign through law firm Perkins Coie. It included salacious and unverified allegations about Trump’s visit to Russia before he was president and has become a central focus as lawmakers investigate the origins of the Russia investigation.
The Ohrs’ role also has become a key focus for Republican congressional investigators as they investigate the origin of the FBI’s Russia investigation. They alleged in a January 2018 House Intelligence Committee FISA memo that Ohr was the backchannel for Steele after he was fired by the bureau in November 2016 over his contacts with the media.
Bruce Ohr previously told the FBI about his wife’s work for Fusion GPS, as well as his reservations about the credibility of the document and Steele’s animus for then-candidate Donald Trump. However, this was not shared with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when the dossier was used to help secure a surveillance warrant for then-Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Congressional Republicans argue the dossier was improperly used to obtain that warrant and subsequent renewals.
