By Immigration Reporter Emma Goldman
with Izzy Stone in Washington
Perpetually annoying and shape-shifting Senator Kyrsten Sinema is back, like a speck of dust, in the public eye with her announcement that she is now Independent. Not of integrity or shame (we knew that already) but of political affiliation.
Billions of pixels have been excited with speculation about what this means. The answer to any casual observer is clear: she is desperately trying to cling to her Senate seat by extorting the Democratic Party. Facing certain defeat in the Arizona Democratic primary at the hands of any real Democrat, she now will run as an independent in a three-way race. If the Democrats run someone plausible against her (hi, Arizona congressman Rubin Gallego!), the threat is that she will split the non-lunatic vote and allow Kari Lake to take the Senate seat with maybe 40% of the vote.
The gun-at-the-head-threat to Democrats is clear: if you don't support me, you get a lunatic and possibly lose the Senate.
It's obvious enough to Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent:
Sinema’s gamble appears to be that Arizona Democrats would be loath to run a candidate against her. Under this thinking, with Sinema running in a three-way race, the Democratic vote would split and a MAGA Republican (such as Lake) would more likely prevail.
But Arizona Democrats are signaling that they won’t let that pressure dictate their actions, making a three-person race more likely....With our politics growing ever more polarized, a Kari Lake-type Republican could hold most of the MAGA and GOP base and a Gallego could get most Democrats. Independents (most of whom lean one way or the other, despite their fabled image, especially these days) could mostly split between those two, leaving Sinema with little support, even as an incumbent.
The Arizona polling data seem to bear out the emptiness of Sinema's threat:
Kyrsten Sinema has an 18% favorable rating in Arizona right now.
— Drew Linzer (@DrewLinzer) December 9, 2022
Democrats: 5% fav, 82% unfav
Independents: 25% fav, 56% unfav
Republicans: 25% fav, 45% unfav
(Normally this is paywalled here so just screenshots) pic.twitter.com/kC54Iy6hwL
18%. That's a favorability rating somewhere between those twin Arizona plagues: scorpions and STD's.
But we're not primarily interested in how soon Kyrsten can pursue her true calling of selling homemade ben-wa balls at the Scottsdale Crafts Faire. The matter before us is her efforts to pursue her supposed vocation as a non-partisan “Problem Solver.” If you can't wait to get back to a bunch of skinny guys running around Arabia in their footer bags, we'll give you the spoiler: they suck.
Greg Sargent has re-entered the chat, this time not to his advantage:
A big question is whether 10 GOP senators will support reforms being negotiated by Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). The compromise would create a path to citizenship for 2 million “dreamers” brought here as children and invest a lot of money to speed the processing of the asylum seekers overwhelming infrastructure at the southern border.
Right now, negotiators are discussing including $25 billion to $40 billion in funds for border security and other border-related reforms, sources familiar with the talks tell me. Will Republican senators really forgo this opportunity?
Now that we've learned what's really in the bill, we sure hope so.
The “Dreamers” are of course the people brought here as children by their desperate parents fleeing poverty, violence, and oppression in any number of mostly Western Hemisphere hellholes like El Salvador or Haiti. They're adults now with a tenuous immigration status: able to work and live without fear of being rousted by the ICE body-snatchers, but without any path to citizenship or long-term protection from future depredations by white bigots like Stephen Miller. Our failure to resolve their uncertain status by letting them become citizens is undoubtedly on the top-ten list of national shames.
In 2018, Democrats offered a compromise: citizenship for the Dreamers in exchange for big bucks to build Trumpy's idiotic vanity wall. The wall was a waste of money and resources and an environmental disaster in the making, but maybe worth it to protect the futures of these Dreamers.
Now “Problem Solvers” like Sinema and garden-variety white plutocrat Thom Tillis have a new compromise. Instead of a wall, they want “other border-related reforms” to use Greg's innocuous vague description.
There's no bill text to analyze yet, but it appears that Sinema et al. are trying to gut the already-collapsing asylum system in exchange for protecting Dreamers whom everyone knows are never leaving the country anyway.
Tell us more Greg:
One of the Tillis-Sinema framework’s most fundamental goals is to reduce the incentives for the very type of migration that Republicans rail about. Conservatives often claim that many migrants seek asylum mainly to be released into the interior while awaiting hearings, and then disappear.
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| Bar asylum seekers from entering? What could go wrong? |
Conservatives also often claim that Hillary Clinton was running a pedophilia ring out of a Connecticut Avenue pizzeria, but that didn't persuade Greg to outlaw pizza.
In fact, asylum seekers released into the country with future hearing dates show up for their hearing (when they are properly notified of their time and place, which happens sometimes) 83% of the time, and 96% of the time when represented by counsel. If they don't show up, they are ordered removed anyway and their names given to the body-snatchers.
So there's no problem to solve here. Not that that would deter the Problem Solvers. Their plan involves locking up asylum seekers (including women and children) because of what conservatives “claim.” Or, in Greg's sunny summary, “Asylum seekers would be detained at the outset while benefiting from increased legal representation and being subject to quicker processing.”
Asylum cases are like other cases: they are complex, fact-intensive, and involve extensive efforts to marshal evidence They also provide no right to counsel so for example an unaccompanied five-year-old can be and is represented by her blankie. The current system isn't doing a good job adjudicating asylum claims, to put in mildly, and the experiments with quickie hearings have proven disastrous.
But wait – as with anything entrusted to the Problem Solvers, it gets worse:
While this system is built out, the government would retain for at least a year the power to expel migrants — similar to the authority regarding covid under the federal Title 42 health rule — without letting them apply for asylum at all.
At least a year? That sounds ominous, given that after 100 years, the immigration system has yet to be satisfactorily “built out.”
What was Title 42? Besides a flagrant violation of international law, that is. Let's ask the American Immigration Council:
The United States has long guaranteed the right to seek asylum to individuals who arrive at our southern border and ask for protection. But since March 20, 2020, that fundamental right has been largely suspended. Beginning on that date, both migrants seeking a better life in the United States and those wanting to apply for asylum have been turned away and “expelled” back to Mexico or their home countries. These border expulsions are carried out under...section 265 of Title 42—which the former Trump administration invoked to achieve its long-desired goal of shutting the border to asylum seekers. Over 1.8 million expulsions under Title 42 have been carried out since the pandemic began....Despite the claim made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that this order was necessary from a public health perspective to protect the United States,..[r]eports indicate that CDC scientists expressed opposition to the invocation of Title 42, arguing that there was no public health rationale to support it.
So repeal in fact of the right of asylum is the price the Problem Solvers want us to pay to protect Dreamers (who aren't going anywhere anyway)?
We think not (even if Greg seems intrigued by the deal).
We think that true compromise can't be based on tormenting desperate asylum seekers and violating international law. Fortunately at least a few Democrats are wise to the scam:
Chuck Schumer has at least indicated he is open to the Problem-Solvers' immigration reform travesty. Maybe he should think about what would have happened to Anne Frank had it been in effect in 1938, which is exactly what did happen to her: she was barred from refuge in the United States.
We'd like to think we're better than that now, but if the Problem Solvers have their way, they will have proven we are not.
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