Immigration Update

I'm pleased with the actions that the Obama Administration took suspending deportation activities for  undocumented youth between the ages of 16-30 if they have been good citizens and are in school or serving in the military.  I'm happy that they can apply for work authorization which is not free.  This is just making obvious what they have been doing for a long time.  They would like to spend their time deporting convicted criminals which might have a positive impact on public safety.

Others will dismiss the action as a bald faced political act.  Most things the government does has a political component along with other consequences, some intended and others not intended.  I believe that the government does a reasonable job of keeping the non citizens from voting and this administrative decision does nothing to launch a new path to citizenship and is not amnesty.  I don't think it is a game changer electorally either.

Until otherwise demonstrated, the country is deeply divided.  The 99% is divided more like 51% to 49%  on just about any issue you bring up and nobody wants to do any thing about unfunded mandates like medicare or endless wars.  The Citizen's United and the Supreme Court are the two biggest drivers of policy these days.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Two Months and Eight Days

Early voting and mail in voting will take place before November 5, 2024. And on a related front I hope people will notice that it does not take four years of partisan snark and sniping for the voting public to make a decision about who the next president will be.  I voted  in the Florida primary for the November Election on August 20, 2024. Locally, the mood of the electorate in Miami has changed.  A few weeks ago I just couldn't imagine a person born in 1942 running for reelection as president or a person with as much baggage as an ex-president running for office, who could legitimately be understood to be running for office as a strategy for not going to prison.  Assuming he would win, he could, stop any prosecutions and if he lost he could further question what democracy is.  And it is no surprise that the former president has started complaining about an election that hasn't happened and claiming that the opposition will have stolen the election if he does n...
Read more

Internet Dust Ups

 A high school classmate shared on FB, something from a 64 year old commercial pilot who had passed a exam to fly on of the latest jets in their fleet of aircraft.  I was also aware of an FAA rule about retirement at age 65 for commercial pilots.    In the U.S.,  there are no  FAA  age limits for pilots except for commercial airline pilots employed by airlines certificated under 14 CFR Part 121 . These airlines cannot employ pilots after they reach the age of 65. However, these pilots may stay on with a Part 121 carrier in some other role, such as flight engineers. I then went on a digression about the retirement of folks in professions like law or accounting.  From my own experience 30 years at a job or working for an employer is a very good time to start serious planning for the next chapter in your life.   And for my efforts at explaining my work history, working with folks who lost their jobs through no fault of their own.  I wa...
Read more

What Is Official These Days?

 I would guess most people would understand what Official means.  Just because a person holds a public office doesn't mean everything he might do is official and everything he might not do is official as well. “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness". from J. Kenneth Galbraith interview. And oh, by the way, moral justification at times isn't much more than a fig leaf, you can bet someone got screwed or got the proverbial get out of jail free card.
Read more