Biden told this immigrant rights activist 'vote for Trump' in a blunt exchange. 

He voted for Biden but is ready to push him hard on immigration reform.

© Joe Raedle/Getty Images 

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden speaks to the media after receiving a briefing from the transition COVID-19 advisory board on November 09, 2020 at the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Delaware. Mr. Biden spoke about how his administration would respond to the coronavirus pandemic. 

In November 2019, on the campaign trail in South Carolina, then-candidate Joe Biden was asked a question by immigrant rights activist Carlos Rojas Rodriguez and an immigrant community member.

A tense back-and-forth ensued, with Rodriguez and Silvia criticizing the Obama administration's record on deportations and calling for a moratorium on deportations if Biden was elected.

Biden disagreed and told Rodriguez, "You should go vote for Trump."

With the Biden administration set to take office on January 20, 2021, Business Insider spoke with Rodriguez about the work ahead for immigrant rights activists.

Carlos Rojas Rodriguez made headlines in 2019 when a question about the Obama administration's immigration record received a blunt response from then-candidate Joe Biden.

Standing next to an immigrant mother and local activist named Silvia in Greenwood, South Carolina, Rodriguez translated her question to Biden. Silvia remarked that she worried about Immigration and Customs Enforcement targeting her family next, and she was concerned about Biden's defense of the Obama administration's deportation campaigns. When Silvia asked Biden if he would implement a moratorium on deportations on day one, he responded "No," and defended deportations for individuals with criminal records.

Rodriguez, however, chimed back in, this time with his own thoughts and concerns as a formerly undocumented person, reminding Biden that millions of families were separated under his administration.

In video of the encounter, audience members could be heard yelling "Give him a mic!" asking for Biden's team to give Rodriguez a mic to ask his follow-up. Biden, roaming down the school gymnasium to address Rodriguez, squarely told him: "You should vote for Trump," and proceeds to turn his back and walk away as Rodriguez says, "No, I am not going to do that. But I want to make sure that immigrant families and people like Silvia are not afraid."

"I wanted to make it clear to the public, to Biden, who was a presidential candidate then that if he were to become president at the time, that he has both legislative and also administrative actions that he can do, going through the executive branch, and also obviously through the legislative branch," Rodriguez told Business Insider of his exchange with now President-elect Biden. (And to some extent, with the recently-announced 100-day freeze on deportations, it seems that Rodriguez's message resonated.)

© Meg Kinnard/AP 

President-elect Joe Biden talks with Carlos Rojas Rodriguez objecting to his stance on deportations during a town hall at Lander University in Greenwood, S.C., on Thursday, Nov. 21, 2019. 

Biden eventually called the 3 million deportations, 1.7 million of which were of people with no criminal record "a big mistake," during a February 2020 interview with Telemundo.

"To be clear I did not vote for Trump," Rodriguez said, stating that at the time he worked for Movimento Cosecha, an immigrants rights organization, and then went on to work for Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign. In 2008, he volunteered for the Obama campaign. Carlos became a citizen in 2017 and voted in his first presidential election in 2020, voting for Biden.

Video: Biden says he will take executive action on immigration (FOX News)

Trump's immigration policies were widely derided by activists as increasingly punitive. Throughout his time in office, he consistently increased the Department of Homeland Security budgets for immigration enforcement efforts, spent over $18 billion on the incomplete border wall, and enacted a series of policies focused on detention and separation, alongside a systematic gutting of the asylum system through the Migrant Protection Protocols.

"The pain that the Latino community is going under, it is so big that we actually need all the approaches. We need executive action. We need administrative action. We need legislative action," Rodriguez added. "Unfortunately, we are dealing and I think we're going to continue to deal with the least effective Congress in modern United States history, where gridlock is what you get every day, and where compromise is seen as a sign of weakness."

At DHS, the undoing Trump policies and implementation Biden policies will be the purview of Alejandro Mayorkas if he's confirmed. Mayorkas came to the US as a refugee from Cuba and was tapped to lead Biden's Department of Homeland Security, and if confirmed he would be the first immigrant and Latino to head the agency.

And Rodriguez, while glad to see the Trump administration go, said his work will continue under a Biden administration. He singled out the addition of Cecilia Munoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under Obama, to Biden's transition team as a major cause for concern.

"Munoz was a former immigrant rights advocate who defended mass deportations and family separation under the Obama Administration and de-escalated the immigrant rights movement for eight years," Rodriguez said. "Her presence in the Biden transition team only signals that we could be very well going back to the Obama era of pro-immigrant rhetoric with anti-immigrant practices and policies which led to a record of 3 million deportations."

This tension, of being relieved to have defeated Trump but being worried about returning to Obama-era immigration policies, is playing out in his community, Rodriguez said. He added that the uplifting of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy is welcome but that there must be a pathway to citizenship for all undocumented people in the US.

"[T]he Obama and the Biden administration funded DHS budgets and ICE budgets for them to have the infrastructure to do all the things that Trump did with separating and incarcerating immigrant families," Rodriguez said. "So my biggest fear is that people feel that these cages all of a sudden disappeared, that deportations are not happening, just because you have someone who is speaking on the issue better in rhetoric, but not so much in the practice."

Rodriguez does acknowledge that there were immigration policy wins under the Obama administration, including DACA. (Mayorkas who worked for the agency during the Obama administration has been praised by immigrants rights groups for his work on DACA.)

During that time he said activists "were really catalyzed by mass mobilization, direct action, public confrontation, civil disobedience, led by directly affected folks. The common denominator there has always been public action, pressuring the Democratic Party, challenging them publicly."

Rodriguez added that what he would want to see from Biden is strong administrative relief and executive actions that include DACA and PPS and "also provide a real tangible relief for every undocumented person in the country." Rodriguez mentioned that executive actions reversing the travel ban, abolishing ICE, and enforcing a lasting moratorium on deportations are stances he will push the new administration towards.

"I am going to focus my time on making sure that we're empowering directly-affected people to take action, to be visible," Rodriguez said. "We're not going to let the Biden administration or the Democratic Party frame our fight."

Read the original article on Business Insider

U$ FOR PROFIT HEALTHCARE

Report: Noncitizens Will Account for One-third of Uninsured Population in 2024

A recent Urban Institute report found that the uninsurance rate for nonelderly people who aren’t citizens will be 39.2% in 2024, about four times higher than it is for the entire U.S. population at 9.8%.

By MARISSA PLESCIA
/ May 4, 2023 





Adults under the age of 65 who are noncitizens are expected to represent about one-third of the country’s 27 million uninsured in 2024 — even though this group only accounts for 8% of the total nonelderly population in the U.S., a new report showed.

The report, published Thursday, was conducted by the Urban Institute and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. For the analysis, the researchers used the Urban Institute’s Health Insurance Policy Simulation Model, which estimates how healthcare policy options will affect cost and coverage.

It comes after the Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed a rule that would permit Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients — also known as Dreamers — to apply for coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace or through their state Medicaid organization. HHS predicts the rule could lead to 129,000 DACA recipients gaining coverage. The Urban Institute’s analysis, however, does not include the effects of the proposed rule.

The researchers found that in 2024, the uninsurance rate for nonelderly people who aren’t citizens will be 39.2%, about four times higher than it is for the entire U.S. population at 9.8%.

“As the uninsurance rate has declined, noncitizens comprise a growing share of those without coverage,” said Katherine Hempstead, senior policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in a news release. “The recent proposed rule regarding DACA recipients illustrates the need for expanding eligibility regardless of immigration status if we want to attain universal coverage.”

The report also showed that 36% of those who are noncitizens have employer-sponsored insurance, lower than the total nonelderly population in the U.S. at 54.4%.

In addition, more than 80% of uninsured noncitizens have at least one family member who is employed. However, many aren’t working for companies with employer-sponsored insurance, according to the Urban Institute.

This population is also less likely to have insurance through the government: just 16.5% of those who are uninsured and noncitizens are eligible for Medicaid, CHIP or subsidized Marketplace coverage. Two-thirds of this group are ineligible because of their immigration status.

“Despite some efforts to cover certain lawfully present noncitizens and the availability of Marketplace options, only 16.5% of uninsured noncitizens gained eligibility for Medicaid, CHIP, or Marketplace premium tax credits,” said Matthew Buettgens, senior fellow at the Urban Institute, in a statement. “States have several options to extend coverage to noncitizens and undocumented immigrants and expand overall health coverage in the United States.”

Photo: alexsl, Getty Images

Who's coming to the aid of undocumented workers amid restaurant closures and lay-offs

The hospitality industry relies on over 1 million undocumented workers, who are operating without a safety net

Kitchen workers wear surgical masks and gloves as they prepare food (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

ASHLIE D. STEVENS MARCH 31, 2020

The American restaurant industry depends on the work of millions of undocumented immigrants — from farmers to food suppliers to kitchen staff to stay running. But as many states have mandated the closure of or reduction of services provided by restaurants as a way to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus, many undocumented employees are facing layoffs and uncertain futures without any form of social safety net.

Ricardo Rodriguez is the chef and owner of WHISK in Chicago. Rodriguez was born in Mexico City and was brought to the U.S. without papers when he was 7 years old.


"I'm 35 now, so all my life, I grew up here," Rodriguez said. "The first year that DACA was passed, I applied and got approval because I met all the requirements. I was here before I was 15 and have no criminal records."

DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, was a policy approved by President Barack Obama in 2012 that allowed some undocumented individuals who had been brought into the country as children to receive a two-year period of deferred action from deportion and become eligible for a work permit.

As a DACA recipient, Rodriguez would be eligible to file for unemployment insurance — like the over three million people who applied last week — and could be eligible for the $1,200 relief checks that are part of the COVID-19 stimulus package, but undocumented kitchen workers are not.


00:0301:48


"Unfortunately, they don't have any kind of safety net," Rodriguez said. "Everybody is telling restaurant owners, 'Oh, your workers should apply for this, and they can get this and that.' We can't be like, 'Oh, they can't because they don't have papers,' so that's the situation everybody's in right now."

The Pew Research Center estimates there are 7.5 million undocumented workers in the United States concentrated in construction, agriculture, and the hospitality industry. In 2014, about 1.1 million, or 10%, of restaurant workers were undocumented.

Though some are employed through under-the-table means — like falsified social security numbers or cash-only payments — they are an integral part of the industry. From the 2014 satirical cult film "A Day Without a Mexican" to the 2017 "A Day Without Immigrants" strikes, a lot of thought has been given, at least by some, to what the country would look like without their labor.


Some organizations are trying to step in to recognize their contributions and provide some kind of financial support.

On March 18, RAISE — Revolutionizing Asian American Immigrant Stories on the East Coast, an immigrant advocacy group based in New York City — and Sahra Nguyen, the founder of Nguyen Coffee Supply, launched the Undocu Worker's Fund.


The initiative supports undocumented workers in the service industry who will not have the ability to apply for unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 health crisis and mandated restaurant closures.

"The response so far has been incredible," said Audrey Pan, a community organizer with RAISE. "We've had over 150 people reach out needing assistance. We've also had many concerned community members step up to donate, reshare our posts, and some have been inspired to start their own community funds."

According to Pan, many of the restaurant workers who have submitted an eligibility form for the Undocu Workers Fund, have reported that they don't have savings and live paycheck to paycheck. Similar initiatives have sprouted up across the United States.


In Los Angeles, Va'La Hospitality has launched No Us Without You, a food pantry for undocumented workers who are provided enough food for a family of four to eat for a week. Trigg Brown and his partners at Brooklyn's Win Son and Win Son Bakery, Josh Wu and Jesse Shapell, have launched a fund specifically aimed at gathering money to help support their employees who are undocumented for the restaurant industry.

I spoke with the organizers of nearly a dozen other independently organized restaurant industry member relief funds and food banks who said that immigration status is not a factor in how they will award their small-scale grants or distribute essentials like food and toiletries; however, they did not advertise that fact — and asked that they not be specifically named — for fear of ICE raids.

"ICE agents are continuing to make arrests in some of the regions hardest hit by the virus like New York and California," said Pan.


As the Los Angeles Times reported on March 17, David Martin, the director of Enforcement and Removal Operations for ICE in Los Angeles, said the ICE would continue to operate as usual.

"We're out here trying to protect the public by getting these criminal aliens off the street and out of our communities," he told the paper. "Asking us to stop doing that basically gives those criminals another opportunity to maybe commit more crimes, to create more victims."

This statement highlights how food banks and small-scale grants — while deeply important in the short-term — are band-aid solutions for obvious systematic issues that leave undocumented workers particularly susceptible during this point in time.

Sanaa Abrar is the advocacy director of United We Dream, the largest youth-led immigrant advocacy organization in the United States. She says that in the immediate future, undocumented workers need access to healthcare in the midst of this global pandemic.


"At this point, because of the failure of Congress to include all immigrants in a federal package, now it's on governors, and it's on state leaders to take action," Abrar said. "So one example of this that we just saw was Governor Cuomo in New York, expanded the definition of emergency Medicaid to include COVID-19 testing and treatment. Undocumented immigrants have access to emergency Medicaid in all states, but not all states identify COVID-19 testing under the emergency provisions."

Pan agrees this is an important step, and suggests others.

"Right now, what we need to do is to demand our governments to extend emergency relief measures such as grants, free testing, and paid sick leave to all residents, regardless of immigration status," she said. "Cities also need to develop relief packets that include a moratorium on rent, mortgage, and utility payments to abate financial strains on households amid the growing economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic."

Undocumented workers, she said, need to be included in these bills.
"They are a vital part of our society and are our community members," she said.

PATHETIQUE
Senate Democrats hit roadblock in bid to help millions become U.S. citizens

David Shepardson
Sun., September 19, 2021

U.S. Democratic senators face reporters following weekly

 policy lunch on Capitol Hill in Washington


By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Senate Democrats hit a major roadblock on Sunday in their effort to allow millions of immigrants to legally stay in the United States, after the Senate Parliamentarian ruled against attaching the measure to a $3.5 trillion spending bill, lawmakers said.

The provision aimed to give a path to citizenship for millions, including so-called Dreamer immigrants, brought to the United States as children, who are protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Farmworkers, essential workers and immigrants with temporary protected status, which gives work permits and deportation relief to those hailing from nations hit by violence or natural disasters, also stood to benefit.

In a statement, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats were "deeply disappointed in this decision but the fight to provide lawful status for immigrants in budget reconciliation continues."

Senate Democrats have prepared alternate proposals and aimed to hold further meetings with the Senate parliamentarian, Schumer added.

A legislative remedy has become all the more pressing since a July court ruling that struck down DACA, which now protects around 640,000 young immigrants.

Sunday's ruling was "deeply disappointing," a White House spokesperson said, but added, "We fully expect our partners in the Senate to come back with alternative immigration-related proposals for the parliamentarian to consider."

On Twitter, Senator Chuck Grassley, the Judiciary Committee's top Republican, praised the parliamentarian's ruling, saying, "Mass amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants isn’t a budgetary issue appropriate for reconciliation."

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, "Democrats will not be able to stuff their most radical amnesty proposals into the reckless taxing and spending spree they are assembling behind closed doors."

An estimate in Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough's ruling, obtained by Reuters, showed the step would have helped about 8 million people become lawful permanent residents, including about 7 million now deemed to infringe the law.

MacDonough said that if the reform were allowed to proceed in a budget bill a future Senate could then rescind anyone's immigration status on the basis of a majority vote.

That would be a "stunning development ... and is further evidence that the policy changes of this proposal far outweigh the budgetary impact scored to it," she added.

"It is not appropriate for inclusion in reconciliation."

Lawful permanent status allows people to work, travel, live openly in U.S. society and become eligible, in time, to apply for citizenship, MacDonough said.

As the Senate's parliamentarian, MacDonough, in the job since 2012 under both Republicans and Democrats, advises lawmakers about what is acceptable under the chamber's rules and precedents, sometimes with lasting consequences.

Chosen by the Senate majority leader, the holder of the job is expected to be non-partisan.

Early this year, MacDonough barred inclusion of a minimum wage hike in a COVID-19 aid bill.

Most U.S. Senate bills require support from 60 of the 100 members to go to a vote. Budget reconciliation measures, however, can clear the chamber on a simple majority vote, in which case Vice President Kamala Harris could break the tie.

The proposed designation of essential workers covered 18 major categories and more than 220 sub-categories of employment, MacDonough said in the ruling.

DACA beneficiaries receive work authorization, access to driver's licenses and better access, for some, to financial aid for education, but not a path to citizenship.

The law protects primarily young Hispanic adults born in Mexico and countries in Central and South America who were brought to the United States as children.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg and Susan Cornwell Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Daniel Barenboim plays Beethoven Sonata No. 8 Op. 13 (Pathetique)

 

Worsening distress among Latinos in the United States

Researchers find the threat of deportation leads to psychological distress among both Latino citizens and noncitizens.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

LEHIGH UNIVERSITY

Changes to the social and political landscape between 2011-2018, with dramatic events such as DACA rule changes, new presidential leadership, immigration bills and more, have left one major threat looming— deportation. 

How this threat has impacted the mental health of some undocumented Latino immigrants in the United States has been previously studied, but new research has found it’s not just undocumented immigrants who feel at risk. 

Analyzing data from 2011-2018, Amy Johnson, assistant professor of sociology at Lehigh University, and a team of research collaborators have found an increase over time in psychological distress among Latinos, both citizens and noncitizens, in the U.S. 

The study, “Deportation Threat Predicts Latino U.S. Citizens and Noncitizens’ Psychological Distress, 2011-2018,” co-authored by Johnson, Christopher Levesque, assistant professor of law and society and sociology at Kenyon College, Neil A. Lewis, Jr., associate professor of communication and social behavior at Cornell University, and Asad L. Asad, assistant professor of sociology at Stanford University, is forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). 

Looking at Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), for example, the researchers found when President Obama announced temporary reprieve from deportation for some undocumented immigrants, it relieved distress for naturalized citizens. 

This same pattern occurred following the announcement of Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA). Oppositely, the dramatic societal event of the Trump presidency triggered anxiety and depressive symptoms among Latino noncitizens, worsening well-being. 

While there are direct impacts of changes to the federal administration and its policies, it’s not just presidential elections that matter, the research determines.

Beyond the federal level, the researchers find that day-to-day environments about immigration and immigration enforcement also impact psychological distress. For example, ICE’s detainer requests to local police, or even conversations online. 

“How people are talking about immigration and how salient immigration and deportation are to day-to-day life is potentially equally as important to distress as these more dramatic changes and events, like the Trump election or DACA,” Johnson explains.

It’s important to note that U.S.-born Latinos are not susceptible to deportation, but these events still impact their psychological health as well. Using Google Trends, the researchers show that U.S.-born Latinos experienced higher distress in periods where there are spikes in Google searches to topics related to deportation and immigration. 

Latinos across all citizenship statuses are responding to this feeling of deportation threat in a negative way, the researchers find. But the exact pathway through which that happens depends on citizenship status.

“The fact that racial and ethnic divisions are so prominent that even citizens feel the threat of deportation, and distress related to deportation threat, is really striking,” says Johnson. 

Although the impact of deportation threat could increase during the highly polarizing 2024 election year, it’s not just federal policy to consider as a solution, the researchers emphasize. Creating a sense of cultural belonging is essential as well. 

“We concretely show that the deportation-focused approach to immigration that the U.S. has been taking is psychologically damaging even to U.S. citizens,” says Johnson. “Moving forward, we can make the argument for policy change around deportation, but equally so, we can advocate for cultural practices of inclusion and belonging.”

---

JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

ARTICLE TITLE

Deportation Threat Predicts Latino U.S. Citizens and Noncitizens' Psychological Distress, 2011-2018

US Federal judge reinstates DACA, orders Homeland Security to quickly accept new applicants

A New York federal judge on Friday restored the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — which President Donald Trump has tried to end — in a court ruling that would swiftly grant thousands of immigrants whose parents brought them to the U.S. as young children the ability to continue to work and study in the country.

© Provided by NBC News

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis said in his six-page ruling that he was fully reinstating the DACA program based on the terms established under former President Barack Obama's administration. Trump tried to end the program in September 2017, and this past July Chad Wolf, the acting secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, suspended DACA pending a “comprehensive” review.

However, Garaufis also ruled in November that Wolf has not been acting lawfully as the chief of Homeland Security and that, as such, his suspension of protections for a class of migrants brought to the United States illegally as children is invalid

The judge reaffirmed that position in his Friday ruling. Although Trump formally nominated Wolf for the job in summer, Wolf has yet to get a full vote in the Senate, keeping his role as "acting."

He also ordered DHS to post a public notice by Monday prominently on its website to accept first-time applications, renewal requests and advance parole requests based on Obama-era rules and to ensure that work permits are valid for two years.

This is the latest blow to the Trump’s administration’s efforts to halt the program. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that the Trump administration wrongly tried to shut down the program. The president’s administration then began rejecting new applicants to the program this summer about a month after the High Court blocked the White House from ending the program completely.

In its ruling, the high court found that his administration was “arbitrary and capricious” in its attempt to end the Obama-era program. Existing applicants also must reapply every year, but remain in the program.

The National Immigration Law Center called the ruling a "major victory" in a tweet on Friday.

"This is a major victory for immigrant youth, led by immigrant youth. We would not be celebrating this day were it not for our courageous plaintiffs that fought to affirm that their #HomeIsHere," the organization said. "This is a day to celebrate, and we look forward to working with the incoming Biden administration to create a permanent solution for immigrant youth and communities."

Trump’s presidency is a symbol of the last gasp of white supremacy

Published on June 26, 2020 By Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute


When President Donald Trump first began talking about ending “chain migration” in 2017, media outlets pointed out that his own parents-in-law had likely obtained lawful permanent residency through their daughter Melania—a naturalized U.S. citizen. At the same time that Trump was ranting on Twitter, “CHAIN MIGRATION must end now! Some people come in, and they bring their whole family with them, who can be truly evil. NOT ACCEPTABLE!” his wife’s parents were in the process of becoming U.S. citizens after five years as so-called “green card” holders.
When the coronavirus pandemic was declared, Trump saw his chance to attack immigration policies that reunite families, and in April 2020 he announced a 60-day ban on green cards that impacted people like his parents-in-law were when they lived in their home country of Slovenia. At the time he announced the ban, I was in the process of applying for my own elderly parents to obtain lawful permanent residency in the United States, just as Melania Trump must have done only a few years ago.

Under existing immigration law, U.S. citizens have been able to sponsor their spouses, children, siblings, and parents, to obtain green cards, or permanent residency. Since his presidency began, Trump has wanted to limit that sponsorship to only spouses and children under 21. To that end, he backed the RAISE Act, which would effectively have done through legislation what his unilateral ban accomplished through executive order under cover of the COVID-19 crisis



When the 60-day ban was up in June 2020, Trump extended it to the end of the year and added a number of other visas to the list, including H-1B visas for foreign workers, to match the outlines of the failed RAISE Act. The White House claims that the ban will keep 525,000 foreign workers out of the country and make those jobs available to U.S. workers at a time of mass unemployment. One immigrant advocacy group pointed out that Trump’s ban is designed to favor immigrants from Western Europe.

The ban is the brainchild of Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who entered the White House with Trump and is considered to be the “driving force” behind Trump’s racist anti-immigrant agenda. Miller began his job with a wish list of the types of immigration and immigrants he wanted to ban, both undocumented and legal. He is considered the “architect” of the Trump administration’s most cruel policy—separating parents from their young children after they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Since 2017, he has been the brains behind Trump’s “Muslim ban,” the restrictions of refugee quotas, the cancelation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and more. Today, under cover of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump has been busy deporting young immigrant children in violation of the United States’s own anti-trafficking laws.

Miller’s uncle David Glosser wrote about the hypocrisy of his nephew’s agenda, saying that had the United States adopted Miller’s anti-immigrant wish list when his ancestors were escaping the Nazis, the family would have perished. America’s immigration policies have long served white elites like the first lady, but the rest of us have often been deprived of accessing those same policies.

For all of Trump’s talk about prioritizing American workers, he has already carved out exceptions for “any alien seeking to enter the United States to provide temporary labor or services essential to the United States food supply chain.” In other words, there are some jobs that Americans are too good for and that only low-wage immigrant labor will do. The Washington Post pointed out, “So far this year, the Trump administration is approving H-2A visas at a rate 15 percent faster than last year, and it took steps to make it easier for farmers to hire temporary farmworkers even after the pandemic began.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has decried Trump’s new ban, saying, “Putting up a ‘not welcome’ sign for engineers, executives, IT experts, doctors, nurses and other workers won’t help our country, it will hold us back.” Indeed, at a time when health care workers especially are in short supply, and more than 15 percent of all doctors and nurses nationwide are immigrants, it is unclear how a ban on H-1B visas that limit such workers into the country until December will help Americans. Jobless Americans are hardly going to rush to medical and nursing schools, incur huge debts, fast-track their degrees at an unheard-of rate, and emerge as fully-fledged professionals in time to handle the expected surge of new COVID-19 cases.

It is also unclear how preventing U.S. citizens like me from bringing my retired elderly parents will help American workers. My parents plan to bring their entire life savings with them to spend on private health insurance and other basic needs until the end of their lives, thereby creating jobs and stimulating the U.S. economy. More importantly, they will be able to spend the golden years of their lives with their daughter and family, instead of alone and isolated. But to Trump, my parents do not deserve the same treatment as his in-laws did.

As the immigrant advocacy group Value Our Families declared recently, “Immigration is not just about the economy. Our system is designed to unify family members and is a legal right for many Americans.” Trump has trampled over that right and the rights of so many people over and over since he took office. His trampling of rights is precisely why millions of Americans—comprising a minority, albeit a significant one—voted for him in 2016 and plan to vote for him a second time. Trump did not come into office in spite of demonizing immigrants—he was elected because he repeatedly dehumanized non-Americans, particularly brown-skinned ones. He brought with him Steven Bannon, a man who said he was a fan of The Camp of the Saints, a horrendously racist tome written by the late French author Jean Raspail, that depicted ugly caricatures of Indian immigrant hordes destroying the European way of life.

Trump’s presidency is a clear symbol of the last gasp of white supremacy angrily asserting its power over a country that, in spite of centuries of institutional policies designed to privilege whites, is becoming browner every year. As someone who spent the last 30 years of my life navigating the intricacies and obstacles of the U.S. legal immigration system, I am one of the relatively privileged ones, especially when compared to the traumatized undocumented children who have been separated from their desperate parents, or the refugees fleeing violence whose legal right to seek asylum has been decimated. And yet today, even I remain separated from my parents.

Trump’s unilateral ban on green cards and immigrant work visas upends congressional legislative oversight. California Representative Judy Chu (who happens to be my representative) last year introduced the Reuniting Families Act to streamline legal immigration pathways and make them more humane. So far the bill has 78 sponsors.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court, which far too often tilts rightward, slapped back against the president’s egregious attacks on DACA registrants. In a 5-4 decision on June 18, justices voted to keep the Obama-era program intact, offering some measure of relief to the 650,000 young immigrants who have been able to defer deportation and legally work in the United States. Justice Sonia Sotomayor correctly pointed out that Trump’s decision to cancel DACA was marked by “impermissible discriminatory animus.”

Trump has expressed such “discriminatory animus” to non-white Americans since the beginning of his candidacy and presidential tenure. Through his anti-immigrant policies, he is keeping families like mine separated. He has made no secret that his goal is to preserve white domination in America, and it is for that reason he has enjoyed the fervent, irrational, cult-like following of millions of Americans terrified at the prospect of equality with non-whites.

Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Why We’re Fighting for a World Without ICE
Under the cover of post-9/11 antiterrorism, the Department of Homeland Security has unleashed a carceral assault on immigrant families and children


UnitedWeDream.org





This article is part of Abolition for the People, a series brought to you by a partnership between Kaepernick Publishing and LEVEL, a Medium publication for and about the lives of Black and Brown men. The series, which comprises 30 essays and conversations over four weeks, points to the crucial conclusion that policing and prisons are not solutions for the issues and people the state deems social problems — and calls for a future that puts justice and the needs of the community first.

By Cristina Jiménez Moreta and Cynthia Garcia

Immigrant youth and our families courageously left everything behind in our countries of origin to move to the United States. Some of us fled poverty, military coups, violence, and wars, while others simply wanted to go after a better life. While adapting to a new place, we’ve experienced some of the worst this country has to offer: workplace exploitation, wage theft, racial profiling, fear of deportation, and police violence. But as part of the immigrant youth movement at United We Dream (UWD), we’ve also experienced the power of people coming together, taking action, and winning change.

The seeds of our movement began with the idea that we have to protect and defend our families from deportation and fight for our right to access higher education. In the early 2000s, tens of thousands of undocumented students were graduating from high school each year. All of us lived with the fear of deportation and the looming possibility that our families could be torn apart, while simultaneously facing barriers to college education, exploitation at work, and a future filled with uncertainty.

This fear of deportation was heightened after September 11, 2001, as we witnessed how immigration enforcement and national security were being conflated in new and troubling ways. In the name of fighting terrorism, President George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2002, within which immigration and immigrants were considered matters of national security. This not only led to increased racial profiling and xenophobia, but as a result, local and federal law enforcement were targeting Muslims, Black immigrants, and non-Muslim immigrants of color at higher rates, often leading to detention and/or deportation.

Nationwide, thousands would be implicated by the post-9/11 enforcement regime, which produced an expanding infrastructure that supported local and federal law enforcement efforts to criminalize, target, detain, and deport immigrants. Within this infrastructure, we saw the increase in racial profiling, greater policing of Black and Brown communities, enhanced militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, and the implementation of racist federal policies, such as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, which targeted immigrants from 25 countries.

Among the thousands who were affected by the post-9/11 regime were Kamal Essaheb and Walter Barrientos in New York and Marie Gonzalez in Missouri — three young undocumented immigrants who were threatened with deportation.

Their deportation cases spurred some of our first advocacy efforts that would eventually carry us forward in later forming UWD in 2008. Together, along with activists and organizers from across the country, we mobilized people to write letters and telephone elected officials to demand that the government allow Kamal, Walter, and Marie to stay in the United States, winning extensive media attention. Although Marie’s parents were deported, our organizing efforts stopped the deportations of Marie, Walter, and Kamal. This was a bittersweet moment in our fight to protect immigrants, as it further exposed the human impact of the enforcement regime in not only deporting immigrants but also tearing apart families.


In the early 2000s, tens of thousands of undocumented students were graduating from high school each year. All of us lived with the fear of deportation and the looming possibility that our families could be torn apart, while simultaneously facing barriers to college education, exploitation at work, and a future filled with uncertainty.

This moment also taught us that people closest to the pain are closest to the solutions our communities need. At the time, undocumented immigrants publicly fighting against deportations were unheard of. Yet, in defiance of conventional wisdom, undocumented youth and their families launched campaigns to share their stories, pressure those with decision-making power, and win deportation relief. It was clear that our movement had the power to create real change.

This was even more evident in 2012, when the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was created as a direct result of our organizing efforts. Under the Obama administration, enforcement programs and collaboration between ICE and local police were aggressively expanded, leading to an increase in the number of immigrants being detained and deported even for minor violations, such as traffic infractions. Under the political calculation that ramping up enforcement would bring members of Congress from both parties to the negotiating table, the Obama administration deported a record number of immigrants from the United States. During Obama’s eight years in office, more than 3 million individuals and families were deported and separated from their loved ones. His administration failed to pass legislative immigration reforms, while the enforcement regime steadily grew in resources and power.

As organizers and directly affected people, we recognized this as a moment of leverage: By sharing our stories, we could pressure President Obama to take action. Our movement successfully created the conditions that led President Obama to implement DACA, which protected close to 800,000 young immigrants from deportation. The program continues to be the most significant policy breakthrough and victory on immigration in almost three decades. By sharing our stories and leading direct action and civil disobedience to get ICE agents out of our communities, we recognized the power we had in winning protection from deportation through policy changes.

This and other victories have strengthened our movement and brought hope to our communities — but as we have seen, mass detention and deportation have not stopped. ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the two agencies primarily responsible for immigration enforcement, have continued to carry out a racist and white supremacist agenda, targeting immigrants — particularly Black and Brown immigrants — for detention and deportation with little oversight or accountability. Clearly our fight is not over.

Year after year, failure at the immigration-policy negotiation table has been followed by near-silent acceptance of growing annual budgets and authority for ICE and CBP. Together, the two agencies employ more than 80,000 people, with a massive budget of $25.3 billion in 2020 ($8.4 billion for ICE and $16.9 billion for CBP), which is more than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. Yet, while resources for the deportation force have grown, schools and hospitals in our communities often remain underfunded and suffer from a lack of federal support.

The deportation force of ICE and CBP, built by administrations on both sides of the aisle, has been completely unleashed under the Trump administration. ICE and CBP have carried out a list of attacks against immigrant communities, including putting children in cages; targeting immigrants in their workplaces, schools, places of worship, hospitals, and homes; and breaking down doors and abducting parents from their children. But the Trump administration hasn’t stopped there.

Throughout his four years in office, Trump consistently tried to dismantle DACA, reduce refugee programs, and detain and deport an increasing number of immigrants. Under his administration, we have seen 57 immigrants, including children, die in detention camps, the deportation of a woman who served as a key witness into reports of sexual assault and harassment inside ICE facilities, reports of forced hysterectomies being performed on immigrant women, and eight immigrants who have died as a result of Covid-19 while in ICE custody.

Facing these and a number of other attacks, UWD has fought tirelessly to protect and demand justice for immigrant communities. Over the past decade, UWD alone fought on behalf of more than 1,000 people threatened by deportation. Facing hundreds of calls per week on our community “Migra Watch” free hotline, UWD community organizers responded to immigrant families reporting interactions with ICE and CBP agents and needing help when their friends and loved ones faced detention and deportation.

In one instance, Tania, a cancer survivor in Georgia, was taken to a detention camp after a traffic stop. ICE agents kept Tania locked away for four months, away from her children and the cancer treatment she needed to live. UWD has fought on behalf of individuals like Hector, who was taken away after being stopped for expired tags on his license plate, and high school students like Dennis, who was dragged away by ICE agents after reporting being bullied at school.

Our history and the present moment have shown us that the risk of harm, detention, and deportation will always exist wherever police and federal law enforcement do. Our vision is for all people in this country, regardless of immigration status, to be able to live freely, with full dignity, and thrive. To get there, we must unite in the larger struggle against white supremacy and racism, which are rooted in interlocking systems of policing, mass incarceration, and immigration enforcement that, by design, target and further dehumanize immigrants, especially people of color.

At the same time, we must also acknowledge the historic erasure of Black and Indigenous people from immigration conversations and center these communities in our fight for immigrant justice. The United States’ legacy of genocide and colonialism cannot be ignored, as the impact of this continues to be felt today. We have seen indigenous immigrants die as a direct result of the U.S. immigration system’s failure to provide interpretation and translation services to immigrants who speak indigenous languages. In 2018, two children from indigenous Maya communities in Guatemala died in CBP custody after not receiving proper medical attention, as medical services were not translated in Q’eqchi’ and Chuj, the two indigenous languages that the children and their families spoke.

This is why, over the past decade, UWD leaders have made the demand of abolition and justice for all central to our vision, work, and movement strategy. Grounded in our lived experience, we know that ICE and local police work together to racially profile immigrants. For many in our communities, a traffic stop or any other contact with local police is the first entry point into the deportation pipeline.

Thus, when we call for the abolition of ICE, we are also calling for the abolition of enforcement on all levels and the systems that support it, from detention facilities to prisons. The abolition of ICE is inherently tied to the abolition of all other forms of enforcement and incarceration. Hence, UWD stands unequivocally with the Movement for Black Lives and its demands to defund the police, because we know that the police, ICE, and CBP work together to disproportionately target Black and Brown immigrants. We also know that the same people who profit from the mass incarceration of U.S.-born Black and Brown people also profit from immigrant detention and deportation.

We are engaged in a lifelong journey toward racial, gender, and economic justice. With each victory, our sense of what is possible should grow and our understanding of the vulnerabilities of our adversaries should deepen. A world where our communities do not have to live with the fear of deportation and detention is possible. A world in which we and others in the movement have abolished ICE — and where the safety, health, education, and well-being of our communities is a priority. We have witnessed and participated in a movement of undocumented people who have transformed the politics and policy of immigration with a bold vision of freedom and dignity for all people, regardless of immigration status. That movement has proven that when we follow the leadership and vision of those closest to the pain and injustice, a new world is possible.



Cynthia Garcia is an out, queer, undocumented womxn living in Oklahoma City. She serves as the national campaigns manager for community protection at United We Dream, where she runs a nationwide hotline of support for immigrants whose family members have been abducted by ICE agents and teaches them how to organize and fight back. Cynthia is herself protected from deportation because of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Cristina Jiménez Moreta is a community organizer, strategist, and freedom fighter who is a co-founder of United We Dream (UWD). Cristina migrated to Queens, New York, from Ecuador with her family at the age of 13 seeking a better life and grew up undocumented. She is the former executive director of UWD. Under her leadership, UWD grew into a powerful grassroots network of 800,000 members across 28 states.

El Paso Residents Say “Border Crisis” Is Manufactured, Reject Militarization


Border militarization, not immigration, is what is making El Paso unsafe, residents say.

By Sam Carliner ,

TRUTHOUT

PublishedOctober 16, 2023

A Texas National Guard soldier stands vigil at a makeshift migrant camp near the U.S.-Mexico border fence on May 11, 2023, in El Paso, Texas.

JOHN MOORE / GETTY IMAGES
Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political struggle. If you think our work is valuable, support us with a donation of any size.

El Paso, Texas, has increasingly become the subject of an intense national conversation.

The New York Times, The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal report that migrant surges are straining the city, the country and the economy. These are just three headlines from a barrage of coverage of the “crisis” at the border.

Nastassia Artalejo, an El Paso resident whose family has lived in the city for generations, is sick of hearing her home described this way.

“It’s really frustrating to be here and see and hear so many polarizing opinions,” Artalejo said. “So much of what is talked about in the media is from a third-party or outsider perspective, as opposed to the opinion being from someone that actually lives here.”

RELATED STORY

“A Cruel Policy”: AOC Asks Biden to Reverse Course on Building Trump Border Wall
The Biden administration announced this week that it’s planning to waive dozens of laws to build Trump’s border wall.
By Sharon Zhang , TRUTHOUTOctober 6, 2023

Ivonne Diaz, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient and immigrant rights activist, expressed similar frustration.

“When I meet with people that don’t live here and are visiting for the first time, they say it’s nothing like [they’ve] been hearing,” Diaz said. “El Paso is not like how they put it in the news.”

Both acknowledged the large number of migrants making their way to the U.S.-Mexico border. Neither feels that the increase in migrants is fueling violence or chaos in the city. However, Artalejo, Diaz, and several other residents of El Paso had a lot to say about how the response to migrants and the mainstream rhetoric about the city is changing their home.

“More and more military is coming into the city,” Artalejo said. “It’s not making us safer. It’s making the city more violent.”

“What They’re Trained to Do Is Kill People”

El Paso is not just any border city. It is the second-most crossed point of entry into the United States. As the U.S. government has steadily developed more restrictions to entry into the country, El Paso has also become a hub for various federal agencies to police migration. It is also a military city, located right next to Fort Bliss, an Army base spanning 1.12 million acres across Texas and New Mexico. For decades it has been the norm for residents of El Paso to see these various federal agents and soldiers operating in and around the city.

There have been several points in the city’s history where residents have noticed a surge in the presence of these forces.

In 2021, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, deploying Texas National Guard troops to the border. Other Republican governors from 14 different states have sent their states’ soldiers to the border as part of the operation. While these Republicans justify the deployments by arguing that the Biden administration has had lenient border policies, the president has actually continued many of the anti-immigrant laws passed by the Trump administration. Recently, Biden waived 26 federal laws to construct a border wall in South Texas which will run through public lands and habitats for endangered species. In May, the federal government deployed an additional 1,500 soldiers to the border. A fact sheet published by the White House in March boasts: “Over the past two years, the Biden-Harris Administration has secured more resources for border security than any of the presidents who preceded him, deployed the most agents ever — more than 23,000 — to address the situation at the border…”

“More and more military is coming into the city,” Artalejo said. “It’s not making us safer. It’s making the city more violent.”

Diaz said that the presence of federal agents and soldiers is intimidating, especially for immigrants living in El Paso.

“I have to drive by the border and I see more persons and it doesn’t make me feel safer,” Diaz said. “Especially me having DACA. I can only imagine having people who are still undocumented here.”

Robert Heyman, strategic advisor at the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, which advocates for immigrant rights and provides legal services to low-income immigrants, has lived in El Paso for decades and witnessed various ways that border enforcement has ramped up.

“Especially in these moments of national moral panic around the border, things that would not be acceptable in other parts of the country are done to folks living at the border,” Heyman said.

Heyman compared the current militarization of El Paso to the 1990s. During that decade, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton oversaw several initiatives which increased the presence of Border Patrol and U.S. military forces around the U.S.-Mexico border. These operations increased the number of migrant deaths, but it wasn’t until U.S. Marines deployed at the border killed an 18-year-old American citizen that the military suspended its policing of the border.

While the recent National Guard deployments have yet to produce a similar example of U.S. troops killing a U.S. citizen on domestic soil, there have been two instances this year of soldiers injuring people while policing the border. In January, a soldier shot and injured a migrant, and in August another soldier shot at a Mexican citizen across the border.

Heyman did not mince words criticizing the deployment of soldiers to the border.

“The U.S. military has different soldiers in different roles, but a core tenet of what they’re trained to do is to kill people,” Heyman said. “When you start putting them into roles that require different skill sets that are fundamentally misaligned with that, you really start creating risks.”

Artalejo’s family history makes her uniquely aware of these risks.

“Obviously, it’s significantly more militarized now, but there’s always been a really large military presence in El Paso for as long as the city has been a legitimate city,” Artalejo said.

She described how during World War II, two soldiers stationed at Fort Bliss had been drinking late at night at a bar across from the apartment complex where her great-grandfather lived with his wife and kids. The soldiers and two women ended up loudly playing Marco Polo outside of the building, prompting Artalejo’s great-grandfather to come outside and tell them to quiet down so his kids could sleep. One of the soldiers used a pair of brass knuckles to hit Artalejo’s great-grandfather in the head, killing him.

“My family was left without a parental or father figure,” Artalejo said. “Just a single mother with lots of children.”

One of those children was her grandfather, who passed the story down to her. She felt it was important for people to understand that the base, not just border enforcement operations, is central to the militarization of the city and the violence that it entails.
“We Had to Be the Order”

El Paso has always been militarized to some degree, but 2016 placed it at the center of national politics and unleashed violent dynamics which continue to shape the city.

Donald Trump infamously launched his presidential campaign by calling immigrants “drug dealers,” “criminals” and “rapists,” and promised to build a wall to keep migrants out. As president, Trump enacted many brutal policies including family separation. He also talked about migrants as “invaders” posing danger to the United States.

The El Paso community witnessed the logical result of Trump’s provocative rhetoric in 2019 when Patrick Crusius came to their city. Inspired by Trump’s fearmongering about migrants, Crusius shot up a Walmart parking lot, killing 23 people and injuring another 22.

Trump activated many white supremacists throughout the country. He also activated many immigrant rights organizers who remain at the forefront of aiding migrants coming to El Paso. One such organizer is Juan Paul Flores Vazquez, a DACA recipient whose family came to the United States from Mexicali. Trump’s attacks on immigrant rights inspired Flores Vazquez to move to El Paso in 2018 to organize against these attacks. He reflected on the sense of danger that came with Trump’s presidency.


“The feds were lurking around alleys and streets, snatching people of all ages.”

“There was always a lingering feeling of dread,” Flores Vazquez said. “I immediately saw how that affected the border and our community right from the jump.”

He has continued his activism through the group Undocumented 915 which provides news and community alerts for El Paso’s undocumented community, and provides donations including food and clothing for migrants arriving in the city. He said there has not been much of a difference under the Biden administration. The migrants coming to El Paso still rely on local activists to help them find shelter, food, legal assistance, and other needs that the government does not provide. The federal agencies continue to harass migrants and activists in the city.

Flores Vazquez described some of the repression he witnessed around a migrant shelter earlier this year.

“The feds were lurking around alleys and streets, snatching people of all ages,” he said. “There [were] multiple videos from security cameras of local businesses that would catch Border Patrol being aggressively violent with young people … There’s a couple videos being leaked. Imagine all the stuff we don’t get to see.”

Juan Ortiz is an organizer at Casa Carmelita, a migrant shelter in El Paso. Ortiz’s family is Rarámuri, one of several communities indigenous to the land that the U.S.-Mexico border cuts across. During the Trump administration, Ortiz felt personally connected to the administration’s family separation policies because his sister-in-law was undocumented and he worried she could be separated from her kids. Through Indigenous rights activism, immigrant rights activism and mutual aid, he proudly continues what he describes as El Paso’s rich history of leftist activity, which has included the 1917 Bath Riots, the Chicano rights movement and recent activity to support migrants. He has seen his share of repression, but says that some of the worst he’s ever witnessed has been in El Paso.

“I call it a police city-state now,” Ortiz said. “When the youth had a lot of rallies around George Floyd … at one point, they had a rally downtown and there was so much presence.… It was different colors and shades of uniforms but everyone looked like they were prepared for war.… You couldn’t tell who was military, who was Border Patrol, who was police.”

He added that during the protests against racist police violence in 2020, white supremacist militias also flocked to the city.

While federal agencies and militarized forces proliferate in El Paso, the city remains one of the poorest zip codes in the United States. The city’s poverty stands in stark contrast to the estimated $333 billion that the federal government has spent on immigration enforcement since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003.

Flores Vazquez spoke about how this money could have helped shelter migrants, as well as the city’s houseless population.

“[A housing complex] which has been abandoned for years just caught on fire,” Flores Vazquez said. “One of the things that everyone’s been saying is, ‘Wow, they could’ve used all that money they’ve been spending on building a fortress around the border, and invested it in reopening some of those complexes for migrants or for people who are just out in the street.’”

Ortiz feels that how most people talk about the situation at the border fuels the dynamics that are hurting the city. He wishes that more people would look to the example the El Paso community has set by assisting migrants.

“People need to understand it’s a human-created, policy-created crisis,” Ortiz said. “Create the machinations that create the chaos, and then point to it and say chaos.… The system was always going to be the chaos, so we had to be the order. The people on the border are the order.”

Hot-button words trigger conservatives and liberals differently

by Yasmin Anwar, University of California - Berkeley
  

Graphic shows differences in liberal and conservative brain responses to news media Credit: Yuan Chang Leong

How can the partisan divide be bridged when conservatives and liberals consume the same political content, yet interpret it through their own biased lens?

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University scanned the brains of more than three dozen politically left- and right-leaning adults as they viewed short videos involving hot-button immigration policies, such as the building of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, and the granting of protections for undocumented immigrants under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Their findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, show that liberals and conservatives respond differently to the same videos, especially when the content being viewed contains vocabulary that frequently pops up in political campaign messaging.

"Our study suggests that there is a neural basis to partisan biases, and some language especially drives polarization," said study lead author Yuan Chang Leong, a postdoctoral scholar in cognitive neuroscience at UC Berkeley. "In particular, the greatest differences in neural activity across ideology occurred when people heard messages that highlight threat, morality and emotions."

Overall, the results offer a never-before-seen glimpse into the partisan brain in the weeks leading up to what is arguably the most consequential U.S. presidential election in modern history. They underscore that multiple factors, including personal experiences and the news media, contribute to what the researchers call "neural polarization."

"Even when presented with the same exact content, people can respond very differently, which can contribute to continued division," said study senior author Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. "Critically, these differences do not imply that people are hardwired to disagree. Our experiences, and the media we consume, likely contribute to neural polarization."


Specifically, the study traces the source of neural polarization to a higher-order brain region known as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which is believed to track and make sense of narratives, among other functions.

Another key finding is that the closer the brain activity of a study participant resembles that of the "average liberal" or the "average conservative," as modeled in the study, the more likely it is that the participant, after watching the videos, will adopt that particular group's position.

"This finding suggests that the more participants adopt the conservative interpretation of a video, the more likely they are to be persuaded to take the conservative position, and vice versa," Leong said.

Leong and fellow researchers launched the study with a couple of theories about how people with different ideological biases would differ in the way they process political information. They hypothesized that if sensory information, like sounds and visual imagery, drove polarization, they would observe differences in brain activity in the visual and auditory cortices.

However, if the narrative storytelling aspects of the political information people absorbed in the videos drove them apart ideologically, the researchers expected to see those disparities also revealed in higher-order brain regions, such as the prefrontal cortex. And that theory panned out.
 

Study shows conservative-liberal disparity in brain response to hot-button vocabulary.

 Credit: Yuan Chang Leong

To establish that attitudes toward hardline immigration policies predicted both conservative and liberal biases, the researchers first tested questions out on 300 people recruited via the Amazon Mechanical Turk online marketplace who identified, to varying degrees, as liberal, moderate or conservative.

They then recruited 38 young and middle-aged men and women with similar socio-economic backgrounds and education levels who had rated their opposition or support for controversial immigration policies, such as those that led to the U.S.-Mexico border wall, DACA protections for undocumented immigrants, the ban on refugees from majority-Muslim countries coming to the U.S. and the cutting of federal funding to sanctuary cities.

Researchers scanned the study participants' brains via functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) as they viewed two dozen brief videos representing liberal and conservative positions on the various immigration policies. The videos included news clips, campaign ads and snippets of speeches by prominent politicians.

After each video, the participants rated on a scale of one to five how much they agreed with the general message of the video, the credibility of the information presented and the extent to which the video made them likely to change their position and to support the policy in question.

To calculate group brain responses to the videos, the researchers used a measure known as inter-subject correlation, which can be used to measure how similarly two brains respond to the same message.

Their results showed a high shared response across the group in the auditory and visual cortices, regardless of the participants' political attitudes. However, neural responses diverged along partisan lines in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, where semantic information, or word meanings, are processed.

Next, the researchers drilled down further to learn what specific words were driving neural polarization. To do this, they edited the videos into 87 shorter segments and placed the words in the segments into one of 50 categories. Those categories included words related to morality, emotions, threat and religion.

The researchers found that the use of words related to risk and threat, and to morality and emotions, led to greater polarization in the study participants' neural responses.

An example of a risk-related statement was, "I think it's very dangerous, because what we want is cooperation amongst the cities and the federal government to ensure that we have safety in our communities, and to ensure that our citizens are protected."

Meanwhile, an example of a moral-emotional statement was, "What are the fundamental ethical principles that are the basis of our society? Do no harm, and be compassionate, and this federal policy violates both of these principles."

Overall, the research study's results suggest that political messages that use threat-related and moral-emotional language drive partisans to interpret the same message in opposite ways, contributing to increasing polarization, Leong said.

Going forward, Leong hopes to use neuroimaging to build more precise models of how political content is interpreted and to inform interventions aimed at narrowing the divide between conservatives and liberals.


Bringing people on both sides of the aisle together on climate change
More information: Yuan Chang Leong et al, Conservative and liberal attitudes drive polarized neural responses to political content, PNAS first published October 20, 2020; doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2008530117

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Provided by University of California - Berkeley