The Machiavellian way: How 'The Prince' can help women at work

  >>  Reuters

Published: 03 May 2022 

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  The female gender symbol is seen displayed on the Ernst and Young Building on International Women's Day in Times Square in New York City, New York, US, Mar 8, 2018. Reuters

When it comes to the status of women in the workplace, there are decades of talk and not enough action. The gender pay gap is still enormous, and CEOs are still overwhelmingly male, as are corporate boards.

Stacey Vanek Smith says we should look to an unlikely source to help solve this stubborn problem: Niccolo Machiavelli.

Most people remember the Renaissance-era Italian statesman from his iconic book on high-school reading lists, “The Prince.” But Smith, the NPR host and author of new book “Machiavelli for Women,” says his insights about power and survival can be just as critical for navigating the modern workplace.

“I hated that book back in college, but when I re-read it, it helped me understand why the numbers (of women in leadership positions) have been stuck for so long," says Smith, co-host of NPR’s The Indicator from Planet Money. "It offers real suggestions and effective advice about how to gain power and hold onto it, even though it’s 500 years old.”

To be sure, the connotations of the name Machiavelli are quite negative and brutal. His advice to Florence’s ruler Lorenzo de Medici derived from the historical context of regions constantly warring with each other, where the prospect of being taken over and wiped out by rivals was a very real possibility.

If you can get past the sometimes harrowing nature of his counsel, these clear-eyed strategic principles – about how to evaluate threats, overcome obstacles and survive in positions of leadership – can be helpful tools in your arsenal.

Machiavelli may not have been a military warrior, but as a diplomat he did place a high value on another power source – information. The more you have of it, the more you can use it to advance your career.

“That’s the ultimate advice, especially for women or marginalized workers,” Smith says. “Find out what the typical salary range is for the position, what your colleagues are paid, and how much experience they have. Having those facts in a game changer, because most success in negotiating comes before you even open your mouth.”

ASK FOR MORE

Part of what is holding women back in the workplace is systemic, like discriminatory attitudes. But women also do not advocate for themselves as forcefully as men do. If you’re not even asking for what you want in the first place, then any negotiation is dead on arrival.

“Men ask for raises and promotions at five times the rate that women do,” Smith says. “There is so much stuff that is out of your hands – but this is a significant part of the equation that you do have control over as an individual.”

DEMONSTRATE 'CRAZY CONFIDENCE'

Even more than actual competence, the best predictor of career success is confidence, Smith says. It’s free – but it’s definitely a skill you have to develop, since it may not come naturally.

Try to be a little like James Spader’s Robert California character from the sitcom “The Office,” Smith advises – who despite little relevant experience, applies at Dunder Mifflin and ends up being appointed CEO of the entire company within days, purely thanks to his extreme confidence.

The reason why some women shy away from asking for raises and promotions, Smith says, is that such situations are often perceived as hyper-aggressive, zero-sum games.

Instead, reframe such discussions as a win-win: It is obviously in the company’s interests that you feel valued and produce at your highest level, so work together to figure out how to make that happen.

“This is tricky for women, because there can be a backlash to too much aggression,” says Smith. “So when I started to think about negotiations in a more collaborative way, that was the most useful shift in mindset for me.”

SEIZE THE MOMENT

The pandemic has been horrible so many ways, but it also shifted the power dynamic of the modern workplace: It is now much more acceptable to work remotely and to be dealing with home and family issues at the same time.

Previously, that lack of flexibility kept some women out of leadership positions, so now that work-from-home is the new reality for many, there are new pathways to corporate power, Smith says.

“There is a new openness about how work gets done,” she says. “I’ve never seen a moment where workers have more power than they do right now.”

MY FAVORITE PART OF THE PRINCE IS MACHEVELLI'S WARNING THAT WHEN HE IS OPPOSED BY THE REBEL AND THE MASSES HE CAN ALWAYS BE OVERTHROWN. AND HE CAN NEVER PLAN FOR IT.

Philippine vote: Volunteers back reformer vs. dictator’s son

By JIM GOMEZ

1 of 15

Presidential candidate, current Vice President Leni Robredo greets supporters as a Philippine flag is waved during a campaign rally that coincides with her birthday in Pasay City, Philippines on Sunday, April 24, 2022. Followers from diverse backgrounds, families with their grandparents and children, activists, doctors, Catholic church people, TV and movie stars, farmers, students, have jammed Robredo's fiesta-like campaign rallies in the tens of thousands in recent weeks. She called the emerging movement a "pink revolution" in October because many of her volunteers were clad in that color of advocacy. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)


MANILA, Philippines (AP) — One supporter wrote a stirring campaign song that has been played nearly 4 million times on Spotify. Other volunteers are barnstorming Philippine villages, going door-to-door to endorse Vice President Leni Robredo in next week’s presidential election.

The stakes are high: If Robredo’s opponent, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., clinches the presidency, as surveys suggest, it will mark a stunning about-face for a nation where millions poured out into the streets in 1986 to force out a dictator, Marcos’s father, whose legacy continues to shadow his son.

Followers from diverse backgrounds — families with grandparents and children, doctors, activists, Catholic priests and nuns, TV and movie stars, farmers and students — have joined Robredo’s fiesta-like campaign rallies in the tens of thousands. She called the movement a “pink revolution” after the color worn by her volunteers.

The large crowds, as well as drone shots and videos posted online by followers, evoke memories of the massive but largely peaceful 1986 “People Power” uprising that toppled strongman Ferdinand Marcos in an Asian democratic milestone that awed the world.

While the rallying call then was to bring back democracy after years of a brutal and corrupt dictatorship, the battle cry of Robredo’s supporters is a promise to bring good and corruption-free governance with her as the reformist torchbearer.

“We’ve been wanting good governance, honest, hard-working government officials, who genuinely care for the people, and she’s finally here,” said Nica del Rosario, a 32-year-old musician. “Let’s not waste this chance because somebody like her doesn’t come very often.”

With her colleagues, del Rosario wrote and sang two campaign songs for Robredo, including “Rosas” — Tagalog for roses — a tribute to the opposition leader’s patriotic and humble brand of hands-on politics that has become an emotional anthem to her followers. The song has been streamed more than 3.9 million times on Spotify in just two months, and has been widely shared on Facebook and YouTube and driven supporters to tears at rallies.

But Robredo is fighting an uphill electoral battle against Marcos’s son and namesake, who has topped voter-preference surveys with a seemingly insurmountable lead.

Robredo remains in second place in independent surveys for the 10-way presidential race, far behind Marcos Jr., with just a week before 67 million registered voters pick the next Philippine leader on May 9.

Marcos Jr. topped the latest poll by Pulse Asia released on Monday with 56% support while Robredo received 23%. The other candidates lagged far behind in the April 16-21 survey, which polled 2,400 Filipinos of voting age nationwide with a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

Marcos Jr.’s candidacy has been bolstered by his vice presidential running mate, Sara Duterte, the daughter of outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte, who has remained popular despite his bloody crackdown on illegal drugs and dismal human rights record that has left thousands dead since 2016.

“There is still a possibility that people will change their decision,” Pulse Asia President Ronald Holmes said of voter preferences. It’s also hard to capture the effect of word-of-mouth and house-to-house campaigns, he said.

Activists who helped oust Marcos 36 years ago fear Philippine history will be upended if his son takes over a country long seen as an Asian bulwark of democracy. Marcos Jr., a 64-year-old former senator, has defended his father’s legacy and steadfastly refuses to acknowledge or apologize for the widespread abuses and plunder that scarred the Philippines during his martial law rule. Courts in the U.S. and the Philippines as well as government investigations have offered indisputable evidence of that period.

“My worst fear is the return of the Marcoses … because we will face global condemnation. People will be asking us, ‘Haven’t you learned? You said in ’86 never again and now he’s back. So what are you telling us?’” said Florencio Abad, a political detainee in the 1970s under Marcos who later served in top government posts after the dictator’s downfall and now advises Robredo’s campaign.

Robredo, 57, a former congresswoman and mother of three, is running independently and does not belong to any of the country’s entrenched political dynasties and wealthy land-owning clans.

She has been cited for integrity and simplicity in the poverty- and corruption-plagued Southeast Asian nation, where two presidents had been accused of plunder and overthrown, including the elder Marcos, who died in U.S. exile in 1989. A third was detained for nearly four years on a similar allegation but was eventually cleared.

Like her late husband, a respected politician who died in a plane crash in 2012, Robredo’s appeal lies in shunning the trappings of power. As a congresswoman, she would regularly travel alone by bus from her province to the capital and back, often at night, using the long trip to sleep.

Aside from their electoral rivalry, Robredo and Marcos Jr. are on opposite sides of history.

As a student at the state-run University of the Philippines in the 1980s, Robredo joined anti-Marcos protests that culminated in the 1986 democratic uprising.

In 2016, she narrowly defeated Marcos Jr. in a cliffhanger race for vice president in their first electoral faceoff. He waged a years-long unsuccessful legal battle to invalidate her victory for alleged fraud and still refuses to concede.

Without the enormous logistics required for a presidential campaign, Robredo did not initially plan to seek the top post but changed her mind at the last minute last year after Marcos Jr. announced his candidacy and talks to field a single opposition candidate fell apart. The emergence of campaign volunteers was a lifeline, according to her allies.

“She did not have any machinery and it was really the volunteers who were energizing the entire campaign,” said Georgina Hernandez, who coordinates nationwide volunteer efforts for Robredo.

Robredo’s army of volunteers, which Hernandez says numbers close to 2 million, initially engaged in all sorts of campaigning — from turning roadside walls into pink-colored murals with her portrait and mottos to providing free medical and legal services to running soup kitchens for the poor.

Most, however, turned to house-to-house campaigning and organizing star-studded rallies as the election day draws near, she said.

Mary Joan Buan, a volunteer campaigner who also joined the 1986 revolt, said opposing the rise of another Marcos to the presidency decades after the dictator was ousted has become more complex given a well-funded campaign to refurbish the Marcos family image that began on social media several years ago.

“Many rely on social media now and use platforms like TikTok for information so it’s doubly challenging,” Buan said while going door-to-door for Robredo in a depressed Manila neighborhood. A few residents bluntly told her group they were rooting for BBM, a popularized reference to Marcos Jr. that does not mention his family name.

University of the Philippines sociologist Randy David said the rare and spontaneous volunteer movement that emerged for Robredo is a red flag for potential tyrants.

“Traditional politicians are wary of the unlimited potential of social movements to shape electoral outcomes as well as of their capacity to take new forms and persist beyond elections,” David wrote in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a leading Manila daily. “But it is autocrats who fear them most — because they almost always carry within them the seeds of regime change.”

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Associated Press journalists Joeal Calupitan and Aaron Favila contributed to this report.

Ukraine has shown Indian diplomacy is like Indian driving—any lane, any time, US or Russia


Academics have warned that India, by following its position, risks China doing invasions along the lines of Ukraine. So, India must outline the ‘red lines’.

TARA KARTHA
2 May, 2022 09:26 am IST

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar addressing the

 Raisina Dialogue 2022 in New Delhi | Credit: ANI Photo

As they say, it’s all over bar the shouting. Not that the shouting is over, not by a long chalk. That continues as US Senators recently even called for sanctions on India over its stance on Russia.

Over the last few months, and particularly last week, Delhi has seen a barrage of veiled threats and entreaties as leaders from all major European countries and the United States descended on India to enlist its support on the Ukraine war. While these have abated somewhat as Delhi stood firm in its public stance, it is a good time to put matters straight over India’s position on Ukraine, not in terms of justification but clarity on just where we stand, and where we are likely to head over the next few months. This also means assessing some of the treasured theories and suppositions rife among ‘experts’, including demands such as Indian mediation, or warnings that India’s ‘weak’ stance would lead to China jumping in.

The inside out of India’s ‘position’

First, India’s position has been far from static. It evolved as the conflict continued, with India’s Permanent Representative continuing to abstain from Resolutions that condemned Russia, but also refusing to support an opportunistic Russian resolution.

In the early part of the conflict, Delhi indisputably needed Russian and Ukrainian assistance to get its 22,000 citizens out, including those from 18 other countries, and so adopted a position that stressed ‘dialogue and diplomacy’ in February, together with the Prime Minister’s talks with both sides. That position continued till mid-March when the last aircraft returned. By 24 March, India abstained on a Resolution by Russia, which ironically called for ‘civilian protection’ in Ukraine, and ‘unhindered access for humanitarian assistance’, which also stressed that the issue should not be ‘politicised’.

On 7 April, India again abstained on a vote to remove Russia from the Human Rights Council, this time, however, choosing to ‘condemn’ the Bucha killings and calling for an independent investigation. India’s vote, therefore, followed an even-handedapproach even as it centralised “respecting sovereignty and territorial integrity of states” and for ‘peaceful resolution of international disputes’. This last has led many to assume that India and China’s position was the same. While Beijing’s explanation of vote did tick both these boxes, the rest of the statement noted the ‘history’ and “abandoning the Cold War mentality, abandoning the logic of ensuring one’s own security at the expense of others’ security, and abandoning the approach of seeking regional security by expanding military blocs’.

In simple words, there is no commonality between the two positions at all. In future, India’s position is unlikely to change in terms of abstention. Few remember that India also abstained on a US-sponsored Resolution 688, which was the prelude to the invasion of Iraq, at a time when India was convinced that Iraq had no ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ at all. Also were similar Resolutions on Bosnia and Libya, both of which also presaged interventions, which led to long drawn out civil warsin those countries.

This mediation thing

Having abstained, there are those who call for mediation by India, apparently due to its close proximity to Russia. There are some basic requirements that have to be met before mediation is even thought of. As a UN Guidance paper notes “Mediation is a process whereby a third party assists two or more parties, with their consent, to prevent, manage or resolve a conflict by helping them to develop mutually acceptable agreements.” In short, consent of all concerned is vital – not just one.

Assuming that Russia is ready for mediation – presumably because its most immediate needs of ‘liberating’ Donbass have been met (which was what its senior military officials hinted at earlier); assuming that Ukraine is also ready to offer ‘neutrality’ with strong guarantees (which means a virtual security umbrella from some NATO countries); both of these offer scope for mediation.

But there is a third party, which includes both Europe and the US. As of now, there is no indication at all that either is ready to encourage such an outcome. Recently, European Union President Von der Leyen stated that sanctions were designed for the long term to use as ‘leverage’ for a lasting peace. Most recently, US President Joe Biden has asked Congress for $33 billion in funds for Ukraine, out of which $20 billion is for weaponry. Such a move doesn’t seem to show any inclination to stop the war. What it does show is that it’s the US defence industry that is reaping the big money. Yes, mediation is urgent, especially to all those like India dealing with the economic shock. But no mediator worth their salt will step in if there is a sense that one side wants to ride Russia into the sunset.

China doing a Ukraine?

And finally, the China question.

Various academics have warned that India, by following its present position, risks China doing a similar invasion along the lines of Ukraine, especially in disputed areas.

First, it must be made clear that any such large-scale invasion on the lines of the Russian ingress would be met by India with not just matching force, but also opens up the threat of use of nuclear weapons. India has a ‘No First Use’ posture, which is not simply declaratory, but flows thereafter into the numbers and types of weapons it chooses to keep in its arsenal. But it can be assumed that any serious threat to its territorial integrity, which is after all the core requirement of national security, would be met with possible nuclear use, if conventional strength fails.

What is admittedly far more dangerous, and more likely, is the steady chipping away of slices of territory which may not be seen as serious enough to warrant the use of nuclear weapons. For that reason, and many others, it might be as well for India to bring out an official and public policy that outlines ‘red lines’, which if crossed, could result in drastic action, nuclear or otherwise. While it is assumed that China would not be so foolish as to risk such escalation, it is as well to ensure that any possible adventurism by even regional commanders is effectively nipped in the bud even before it is thought of.

So, what are the auguries for the future? India is likely to stay its course for all the reasons that have been discussed publicly, including weapons dependency, the need to prop up Moscow as a ‘third pole’ of reasonable strength, and the fact that Russia is involved in our most sensitive areas, including nuclear power. What is not relevant any more is any kind of a historical hangover of Russian friendship. Diplomacy at present needs an agility that cannot rest on past laurels or sentiment. Think of Indian diplomacy as something like Indian driving. Any lane, any time, as long as it gets you there, and fast.

Tara Kartha is a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi. She tweets @kartha_tara. Views are personal.

(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)

A Ukrainian woman was sent to a Louisiana detention center. Then everything changed at the border

2022/5/1 
© The San Diego Union-Tribune

Mark, 7, comforts one of his sisters at Benito Juarez, a sports complex converted into a shelter for Ukrainians, Wednesday, April 13, 2022, in Tijuana, Baja California.

 - Ana Ramirez/The San Diego Union-Tribune/TNS

SAN DIEGO — Kateryna, a 22-year-old Ukrainian woman, experienced firsthand how quickly the U.S. government can change the way it processes people who are fleeing for their lives when there is the political will to do so.

She was in Mexico performing with Nikolas Constantine, her boyfriend and ballroom dance partner, when Russia invaded her country. The couple realized that Kateryna could not return to Ukraine. Constantine is a U.S. citizen, so they decided to head for his home in the Los Angeles area.

But when the pair, along with Constantine's mother, tried to cross north in a car from Tijuana on March 3 at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry to present Kateryna to U.S. officers and request protection for her, Customs and Border Protection took Kateryna into custody and threatened to charge Constantine and his mother with smuggling. Eventually, Kateryna was sent to an immigration detention facility across the country in custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"You don't know what's going to happen next," Kateryna recalled of the experience. "It's just horrible."

She asked not have her full name published because her family is still in Ukraine.

How Kateryna and other Ukrainians who arrived in the first days and weeks of the escalating war were treated stands in stark contrast with how Ukrainians are being received now.

What happened to the earlier arrivals illustrates how the system usually functions if someone is able to reach U.S. soil and request asylum without being expelled. Once federal officials decided to treat Ukrainians differently from other migrants fleeing potentially deadly situations in their home countries, the entry process for them became quick, with no time in custody before being released into the United States to reunite with loved ones here.

Neither CBP nor ICE responded to requests for comment about what happened to Kateryna.

Weeks detained

After she was taken into custody at the border, CBP put Kateryna in a little room at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry and questioned her, she recalled.

Meanwhile, Constantine said, he and his mother were held in what he referred to as a cage for what felt like hours. He isn't sure exactly how much time passed, he said, because their phones were taken from them while CBP searched his mother's car.

"All these women cops were coming up to us and saying we just committed a felony, we're going to prison — 'This is going to be a permanent record. You guys are in so much trouble. We're towing your car away,'" Constantine recalled. "Finally out of nowhere, like three hours later, two cops came over and gave us our passports and said we're free to go."

"It's like they can make their own rules," Constantine added. "When you don't have a phone and aren't able to speak to your lawyer, they have full range of power over you."

CBP placed Kateryna in five-point shackles — connecting her wrists, ankles and waist — and sent her to the San Ysidro Port of Entry, she said. There, CBP kept her in a holding cell in the basement for weeks and only permitted her to call Constantine after more than a week in custody. She said she was never allowed to contact her attorney.

Along with roughly 24 other people — mostly Ukrainian and Russian — she had to sleep on the floor of the cell, Kateryna recalled. She was given a thin, metallic blanket that was not enough to keep her warm in the cell's notoriously cold temperatures. Spanish-speaking asylum-seekers have long called those cells the hielera, or ice box.

"It was so cold there that after the second day, people started getting sick," Kateryna said through a friend, translating from Russian. "Everybody was asking them to at least turn off the air conditioner, and their response was, 'We cannot turn it off because we keep it cold to kill the bacteria in the air.'"

The food portions were small, she said. She recalled one Ukrainian woman in her 60s had a heart condition but wasn't given her medication while in custody.

Constantine and his mother frantically tried to find out where Kateryna was and what would happen to her. His mother reached out to her congresswoman, Julia Brownley, D-Calif., and to the San Diego Union-Tribune. A reporter began sending inquiries to CBP about the case.

"I've never seen him so distraught in his life," said longtime friend Matteo Laudati of Constantine.

After two weeks in the port of entry holding cell, Kateryna was transferred — handcuffed on a several-hour flight — to a long-term detention facility in Louisiana in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She met dozens of other Ukrainian and Russian women there.

She tried to mentally prepare herself for staying in the facility for months, but once at South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, she was released the next day. Constantine and his mother say it was because of Brownley's efforts that she wasn't held longer.

Brownley's office confirmed that the congresswoman had quickly reached out to the White House about the case.

"As a democracy under siege, Ukraine and the Ukrainian people deserve our utmost support and aid — that includes helping Ukrainians fleeing their war-torn country settle in the United States," Brownley said in a statement.

No officer assigned

Loved ones of other early arrivals described a torturous process while they waited to hear from Ukrainians who had been taken into custody.

Maksym Armash, 22, spent a week waiting to find out what happened to his fiancé when she crossed the border to San Diego.

Armash, who lives in Virginia, is originally from Ukraine but has been a green-card holder for years. He and his fiancé had an appointment scheduled for April with the U.S. embassy in Ukraine to get her a visa to join him in the United States, but that was cancelled after Russia invaded.

As the couple tried to figure out how to keep her safe, she suggested trying to get to Armash and the United States through Mexico and requesting asylum.

On her fourth try, the fiancé and two other Ukrainian asylum-seekers managed to drive in the San Ysidro car lanes onto U.S. soil, where they were taken into CBP custody.

A week later, the fiancé ended up at South Louisiana ICE Processing Center. Armash was still in San Diego, waiting for her to come out the north side of the port of entry.

In the meantime, his sister and her family had come to Tijuana, walked up to U.S. officials and been processed into the United States in an hour, he said.

"I was so confused — like, seriously, what's wrong? What's different with my fiancé?" Armash recalled.

After a public outcry over a Ukrainian family being turned away from the border under Title 42 — a policy enacted during the pandemic that allows officials to keep asylum-seekers and other undocumented migrants off U.S. soil and expel them if they cross anyway without screening them for protection needs — U.S. policy shifted seemingly overnight.

Ukrainians are now fast-tracked through the port of entry, and they are released on the north side of the building through humanitarian parole, which gives them one-year permits to remain in the United States. Those permits are similar to the ones given to Afghan evacuees when the Taliban took over Afghanistan.

With two attorneys helping him, Armash was still unable to get in touch with his fiancé for days. Attorney Kristina Ghazaryan said she called and repeatedly left messages for ICE officials at the detention facility. ICE never called her back, she said.

"I was really unhappy with the situation because for eight days there was no officer assigned," Ghazaryan recalled.

Finally, she reached a supervisor with ICE and was able to get the case moving. Several of the women, including Armash's fiancé, were released days later with humanitarian parole.

Harder to get out

Russians fleeing their country because they disagree with the war and fear the repercussions they face as political dissidents under Putin have had a much more difficult time entering the United States than Ukrainians.

Those who have managed to get onto U.S. soil have faced similar in custody experiences as the Ukrainians who crossed early on in the invasion. But for the Russians, getting out of detention is much more complicated.

They are generally held in ICE custody until they pass screening interviews that are the first step in the asylum process. Then, they get documents telling them to appear in immigration court for further proceedings on their asylum cases. The Ukrainians do not have immigration court cases.

Margaret Cargioli, directing attorney with Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said she'd had several issues trying to reach a Russian husband and wife after they went into the port of entry.

Cargioli declined to explain how the couple managed to get into the port of entry to get processed for asylum. They entered on the same day that a group that had been camped by the pedestrian entrance to San Ysidro Port of Entry was quietly processed by officials.

The attorney called the port of entry to speak with her clients and was told to call back that evening. When she called back, she was able to speak with the wife for a few minutes to go over what to expect and what information she had sent to CBP in an email. In the middle of their conversation, a CBP officer told her that she couldn't discuss her client's upcoming screening interview with the woman and hung up.

Cargioli called back several times with no answer. She finally reached a supervisor who accused her of coaching her client.

"He said, 'You're her attorney in court. If we had everyone here speak to an attorney we'd never get our work done,'" said Cargioli, who took notes on the conversation.

Despite Cargioli's insistence that her client had a right to speak with her, the supervisor told her she would have to wait until the client moved to ICE detention.

The wife was sent to Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego while the husband ended up in a facility in Mississippi. Asylum-seeking adult family members have often ended up separated in different detention centers, which can complicate their asylum cases because they lose the ability to call each other as witnesses.

Even after they were in ICE custody, confusion among staff at the detention center about her client's right to a free legal call delayed Cargioli's ability to communicate with the wife by a day, the lawyer said.

Cargioli said she has experienced these kinds of challenges since she started working with clients at the border a few years ago.

Unclear future

Before the pandemic completely shuttered asylum processing at ports of entry, most asylum-seekers who arrived without children were required to stay in ICE detention facilities for months and often for the duration of their cases.

But for Ukrainians who have come to the U.S.-Mexico border in the past couple of weeks, the experience has changed dramatically.

They do not spend time in custody. Rather, buses drive them from a sports complex owned by the city of Tijuana that has turned into a shelter to a special entrance at the San Ysidro Port of Entry that remains closed to other pedestrians. Within a matter of hours, they walk out the other side to volunteers waiting with hot meals and offers of options for temporary housing and travel to their final destinations around the United States.

According to a volunteer at a booth checking in new arrivals to the sports complex shelter, CBP has been processing between 300 and 600 Ukrainians per day.

Ghazaryan said she is no longer receiving frantic phone calls from people asking for help getting their Ukrainian loved ones out of custody. But Russians who manage to cross the border are still likely to end up in detention, at least temporarily, if they do not have children.

And for nationalities including Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans and Haitians who have generally not been able to request asylum in years because of Title 42, it is not yet clear which version of asylum processing will receive them once that policy ends on May 23.

For Kateryna and her loved ones, her small taste of the treatment that asylum-seekers have long received at the U.S.-Mexico border was enough to convince them that it was not something that anyone fleeing for their life should have to experience.

"It's almost like an endurance test to see if you're strong enough — it's honestly disgusting," Laudati said in a group call. "(Officials) treat them like they've committed a murder."

"They break you down," Constantine agreed.

"It feels really scary," Kateryna added.

Biden welcomes Ukrainian refugees, neglects Afghans, critics say

Many human rights advocates hail the administration’s response to the exodus triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while others feel deeply frustrated that those left behind in Afghanistan have not received equal attention

By Abigail Hauslohner

WASHINGTON POST
April 28, 2022

President Biden’s aggressive push to admit up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees has generated resentment among those clamoring for his administration to help extract the tens of thousands of Afghan citizens desperate to escape Taliban rule now eight months after the calamitous end of America’s war there.

The Department of Homeland Security this week unveiled its program to accelerate the admissions process for Ukrainians, allowing U.S.-based family members, organizations and other groups to apply, using a dedicated website, for specific individuals to gain entry into the United States. As of Wednesday night, the agency said it had received 4,000 requests.

The announcement was cheered by human rights advocates who have pressured the president to expand U.S. capacity to bring in refugees fleeing conflict. But critics have questioned why his administration has so far not exhibited such urgency in helping those left behind in Afghanistan — many of whom worked for or alongside the U.S. government throughout the 20-year war.

“The juxtaposition of the administration’s response to Ukraine and their response to Afghanistan is pretty stark,” said Adam Bates, policy counsel at the International Refugee Assistance Project.

Thousands of Afghans were evacuated to the U.S. Will America let them stay?

Biden’s “Uniting for Ukraine” program aims to ease requests for humanitarian parole, a two-year legal status, after which Ukrainians who wish to remain in the United States permanently must apply for asylum or another immigrant status. It carries no fees, entails less-onerous paperwork compared to the government’s traditional parole program, and applicants visiting the website are assured, “We anticipate that the process will be fairly quick.” To be eligible, Ukrainians must have “resided in Ukraine immediately prior to the Russian invasion” in February and suffered displacement as a result.

It’s a lot like the approach many military veterans groups, Afghans and refugee advocates have been “begging” the Biden administration to implement since well before the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in August, Bates said. “On the one hand, this Uniting for Ukraine program shows how quickly and efficiently the U.S. government, and the Biden administration in particular, can protect vulnerable people when they’re committed to doing that,” he added. “It also demonstrates that a lot of the things the administration said to justify not providing protections to Afghans were simply not true.”

The administration says it evacuated more than 76,000 Afghans to the United States last year as U.S. troops and diplomats departed Kabul and in the weeks that immediately followed. About 2,000 additional Afghans have arrived since then, the administration says, though it’s unclear how many people the U.S. government has helped escape after the final military transports left Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Administration officials firmly dispute critics’ assertions that Biden has established different standards for the two groups in need. “The magnitude and speed of the displacement of Ukrainians caused by Russia’s unprovoked war have required a swift, significant, and coordinated international response,” said one individual who, like some others, responded to questions via email and on the condition of anonymity, citing internal rules. “Welcoming Ukrainian refugees will not limit our ability to welcome Afghans and other individuals looking for refuge in this country.”

The numbers tell a more complicated story.

DHS says that since July, a few weeks before the Afghan government’s collapse, it has received 45,000 applications for humanitarian parole from those unable to evacuate on a U.S. military flight. Because there is no dedicated resource like Uniting for Ukraine to facilitate Afghans’ applications, their requests have flooded the government’s general humanitarian parole program. The associated fee is $575 per applicant — or, as critics note, more than what the World Bank estimates an average Afghan earned annually before the U.S. withdrawal.

This process also requires applicants to prove they are under direct threat, advocates say. “You basically have to show that you, as an individual human being, are being targeted somehow by the Taliban. And that’s obviously a very difficult thing to establish — you know, unless the Taliban sends you a letter or something,” Bates said.

Matthew Bourke, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Homeland Security division that processes parole applications, said the agency has significantly expanded its processing capacity but that it has reached decisions on only 2,470 Afghan requests so far. Most were denied, he said.

“That’s more than $25 million that the Biden administration took from desperate Afghan refugees … to basically not process their humanitarian parole applications and to reject the overwhelming majority of the ones they do process,” Bates said.

Bourke said the figure was probably less than $25 million because some of the 45,000 parole applications were filed by the U.S. government on behalf of individual Afghans while others who’ve applied were granted fee waivers.

To Ukrainians who sought humanitarian parole before the creation of Uniting for Ukraine and who previously paid the processing fee, “we will refund fees paid in this circumstance,” the administration’s website says.

To Afghans and others, U.S. officials say humanitarian parole was never meant to bypass the traditional refugee program, which is the main pathway available to those seeking protection in the United States. Officials admitted 161 Afghans that way from October through March, according to the latest figures published by the State Department. It admitted 704 Ukrainian refugees during the same period.

“We have taken concrete steps to rebuild and enhance the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program to support increased admissions numbers across refugee populations,” a State Department spokesperson wrote in an email. “The Administration is committed to significantly increasing the number of refugees we resettle from Ukraine and around the world,” the official said.

U.S. to accelerate processing for Afghans evacuated to Qatar, but thousands more remain in limbo

Those with ties to U.S. organizations or individuals might be eligible for a “Priority 2” designation, established by the administration last summer in response to the volume of Afghans in need of refuge, though officials say it could take more than a year for people to be processed this way. Afghans who worked directly for the U.S. government might be eligible for Special Immigrant Visas, but that path to the United States also can take months or years.

Because there is no longer a U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, none of these applications can be processed while individuals are there, officials said. And while Ukrainians have been largely welcomed into neighboring European countries where they do not need visas, the obstacles to leaving Afghanistan are formidable, advocates say.

“It’s a very difficult process right now,” said Shala Gafary, managing attorney for the Afghan Legal Assistance project at Human Rights First. Getting to neighboring Pakistan requires money and a visa — and making it past the Taliban, who rights groups have accused of targeting people associated with the United States.

“You can imagine a mom with a couple of small kids. How is she supposed to get to Pakistan when the Taliban is not allowing women to travel by themselves without being accompanied by a male guardian?” Gafary said.

Biden administration officials were quick to counter their critics by pointing to the mammoth evacuation effort undertaken as the United States exited Afghanistan. “We are proud to have welcomed more than 78,000 Afghans in the United States since August 2021,” the State Department spokesperson said. “Our commitment to resettling Afghans — particularly those who served on behalf of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan — remains steadfast.”

Advocates contend the administration has an obligation to rescue more, saying the U.S. exit from Afghanistan was so poorly planned and executed that thousands under grave threat from the Taliban couldn’t make it inside Kabul’s airport as the evacuation was underway. Others, including many Afghan military pilots, escaped but now are in the United States without their spouses or children.

Humanitarian parole applications have become the go-to move for those left behind because there weren’t any other viable options, advocates said. That the Biden administration created Uniting for Ukraine “for a population that has, let’s be honest, a lot of options … feels like a slap in the face,” Gafary said.



By Abigail Hauslohner is a national security reporter at The Washington Post. In her decade at the newspaper, she has been a roving national correspondent, writing on topics ranging from immigration to political extremism and the pandemic, and covered the Middle East as the Post's Cairo bureau chief. Twitter

US talk of ‘victory’ against Russia has some allies nervous

  >>Steven Erlanger, Jane Arraf and Marc Santora, The New York Times 

Published: 02 May 2022 10:28 AM BdST Updated: 02 May 2022 10:28 AM BdST

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  Workers repair damaged train lines in Bucha, Ukraine, on Sunday, May 1, 2022. Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi travelled to Ukraine’s capital over the weekend, leading the second senior US delegation to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky in a week and declare support for his country’s fight to beat back the Russian invasion.

With each visit — the secretaries of state and defence travelled to Kyiv last weekend — the promise of US commitment to a Ukrainian victory appears to grow, even as how the US defines victory has remained uncertain.

On Sunday, a day after her visit to Ukraine, Pelosi told a news conference in Poland: “America stands with Ukraine. We stand with Ukraine until victory is won. And we stand with NATO.”

Pelosi, the second in line to succeed President Joe Biden, is the highest-ranking US official to visit Kyiv since the war began, and her words carry weight, seeming to underscore an expanded view of US and allied war aims.

Her visit, with a congressional delegation, followed a joint visit to Kyiv by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin only last Sunday. Austin caused some controversy and debate afterward when he appeared to shift the goal of the war from defending Ukraine’s independence and territorial sovereignty to weakening Russia.

“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine”, Austin said, implying that the US wanted to erode Russian military power for years to come — presumably so long as President Vladimir Putin of Russia remains in power.

In one positive development Sunday, the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross helped organise what was described as an “ongoing” evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal steel works in Mariupol, where they have been taking shelter with a dwindling number of Ukrainian soldiers who have refused to surrender to the Russians. Between 80 and 100 civilians arrived in a convoy of buses at a temporary accommodation centre 18 miles east of the city, in the village of Bezimenne.

The evacuation appeared to be the fruit of a visit to both Putin in Moscow and Zelensky in Kyiv last week by António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, who called the war in Ukraine “an absurdity.” Guterres and the Red Cross have been working to get humanitarian aid and supplies of food and water to civilians trapped by the fighting; any serious peace negotiations still appear far off.

In a Twitter message, Zelensky applauded the evacuation of what he said was a “first group of about 100 people”, and said that “tomorrow we’ll meet them in Zaporizhzhia.”

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, said in a statement that it would not provide details of the effort while it was continuing; further evacuations are expected to resume Monday.

Russian forces have not yet been able to finally take the last slice of Mariupol, which no longer matters militarily but which has been an inspiring symbol of Ukrainian bravery, morale and resistance that is bound to go down in Ukrainian history.

But if there is a new allied consensus about supplying Ukraine with heavier and more sophisticated weapons for the latest stage of the war in eastern Ukraine, there is no allied consensus about switching the war aim from Ukraine to Russia.

There is a sense in Europe that “the US is dragging everyone into a different war”, said François Heisbourg, a French defence analyst, citing similar comments by Biden about “the butcher of Moscow” and how “Putin must go.”

Some wonder what Washington is trying to say — or do.

“To help Ukraine prevail is not about waging war against Russia for reasons related to its governance”, Heisbourg said. “Regime change may be a vision, but not a war aim.”

He and others said that such talk from Washington plays perfectly into Putin’s narrative that NATO is waging war against Russia, and that Russia is fighting a defensive war for its survival in Ukraine. That may give Putin the excuse on May 9, the annual celebration of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, to declare this “special military operation” a war, which would allow him, if he chooses, to mobilise the population and use conscripts widely in the battle.

Talk of victory over Russia “gives easy ammunition to the other side and creates the fear that the West may go further, and it’s not what we want”, said Ulrich Speck, a German analyst. “We don’t want to cut Russia into pieces.”

Gérard Araud, a former French ambassador to the US and the UN, commented on Twitter: “The support to Ukraine in its modalities and its objectives should be agreed at a political level between allies. Right now, we are sleepwalking to nobody knows where.”

In response, Moscow has raised the tone of its own rhetoric.

On Wednesday, Putin said that any countries who “create a strategic threat to Russia” during this war in Ukraine can expect “retaliatory strikes” that would be “lightning-fast.” Days before, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said that “NATO is essentially going to war with Russia through a proxy and arming that proxy.”

Putin’s military, having lost what Britain estimates to have been at least 15,000 killed in action — that is more than in the Soviet Union’s entire war in Afghanistan — has been struggling to cut supply lines of Western arms, munitions and heavy weapons to Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine.

On Sunday, the Russians said they had bombed a runway and a munitions dump at a military airfield near Odesa that was storing Western arms, and Russia has been attempting to attack roads and especially railway terminals, since most heavy weapons are traveling east by rail. The Russian aim is to slowly cut off or encircle the bulk of Ukraine’s army east of the Dnipro River and starve it of new supplies.

But that grinding effort is going slowly, with fierce artillery battles and high casualties on both sides.

It is not just Ukraine’s military that is being starved of supplies. There is now a shortage of gasoline and diesel, at least for civilian use, stemming from Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports and attacks on refineries and fuel depots. Long lines for gasoline have been seen even in cities like Lviv, and there are concerns about the impact of the shortages on agriculture, even in fields untouched by the war.

A report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said that only one-fifth of almost 1,300 large agribusinesses surveyed by the government in mid-March had enough fuel to operate the farm equipment needed to plant corn, barley and other crops this spring, which is already causing rising food prices in countries far from Ukraine.

In a possible indication of flagging Russian morale, the chief of staff of the Russian armed forces, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the country’s top uniformed officer, made a visit to a dangerous front-line position in eastern Ukraine this weekend in an effort to “change the course” of Russia’s offensive there, according to a senior Ukrainian official with knowledge of the visit.

Ukrainian forces launched an attack on a Russian headquarters in Izium on Saturday evening, but Gerasimov had already left to return to Russia, the official said. Still, some 200 soldiers, including at least one general, were killed, the Ukrainian official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military operation. A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that Gerasimov had been in eastern Ukraine but did not confirm the rest of the Ukrainian account.

Fighting has intensified around the large eastern city of Kharkiv in recent days as Ukrainian forces have attempted to push away Russian units. Though the gains have been small, they are emblematic of both the Ukrainian and Russian forces’ strategy as the war drags into its third month, one that focuses on a village at a time and leverages concentrated artillery fire to dislodge one another.

Ukraine’s military said in a statement Saturday that it had been able to retake four villages around Kharkiv: Verkhnya Rohanka, Ruska Lozova, Slobidske and Prilesne. The claims have been hard to verify since much of those areas are currently closed to the media; on Sunday, Ukraine announced that it had rebuffed Russian advances toward villages in the Donbas, but that, too, could not be confirmed.

Ukrainian forces were also suspected of another attack over the border near the Russian city of Belgorod, a staging area for Russian forces, where a fire broke out in a defence ministry facility, the regional governor said.

The Russian forces in control of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson and its surrounding province started to enforce a transition to the Russian ruble from Ukrainian currency Sunday, a move that Ukrainian officials have described as part of an attempt to scrub a part of the country clean of its national identity and embed it in Moscow’s sphere of influence.

At the same time, the Ukrainians reported Sunday that nearly all cellular and internet service in the area was down. The Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior accused Russian forces of cutting service, saying it was an attempt to keep Ukrainians from seeing truthful information about the war.

Hollywood actor Angelina Jolie, who has been a special representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees since 2011, made her own surprise visit to Ukraine over the weekend, visiting the western city of Lviv to meet displaced Ukrainians from the east who have found refuge there, including children undergoing treatment for injuries sustained in Russia’s missile strike on the Kramatorsk railway station in early April.

Pelosi was accompanied by legislators whose comments largely echoed her own.

“This is a struggle of freedom against tyranny”, said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. “And in that struggle, Ukraine is on the front lines.”

Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo, a veteran and a member of the House intelligence and armed services committee, said his focus was on the supply of weapons. “We have to make sure the Ukrainians have what they need to win”, he said. Praising Ukrainian bravery, he said, “The United States of America is in this to win, and we will stand with Ukraine until victory is won.”

But as ever, what is meant by “victory”, whether it involves pushing Russia entirely out of Ukraine or just blocking its advance until its offensive runs out of steam and negotiations ensue, remains an open question. So does the equally central question of what Putin decides is victory enough for his own war of choice.

©2022 The New York Times Company

'Absolutely tragic': Doctors tie Trump's 30-foot border wall to surge in injuries and deaths

Jessica Corbett,

 Common Dreams
May 02, 2022

Border Wall (AFP)

Doctors in Southern California are connecting former President Donald Trump's efforts to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall that "can't be climbed" with soaring rates of serious injuries and deaths among migrants.

"We had come to save our lives, not to risk them in such an awful way."

Seven physicians at the University of California, San Diego detailed new statistics and their observations about local trauma cases in a research letter published Friday in the journal JAMA Surgery.

Under Trump, a 30-foot wall was installed across more than 400 miles, often replacing shorter barriers. The doctors focused on admissions to their trauma center after the new wall went up in California's Imperial and San Diego Counties.

Before the higher barrier was built, "there were 67 fall admissions from the border wall compared with 375 during the after period," the letter states, explaining that "this increase of more than five times is still significant" when the doctors factor in average apprehensions by U.S. immigration officials.

After the wall was raised, there was also a jump in deaths—from zero to 16.

"Once you go over 20 feet, and up to 30 feet, the chance of severe injury and death are higher," Dr. Jay Doucet, chief of the trauma division at UC San Diego Health, told The Washington Post. "We're seeing injuries we didn't see before: pelvic fractures, spinal cord injuries, brain injuries, and a lot of open fractures when the bone comes through the skin."

As the newspaper reported:

At Scripps Mercy Hospital, the other major trauma center for the San Diego area, border wall fall victims accounted for 16% of the 230 patients treated last month, a higher share than gunshot and stabbing cases, according to Vishal Bansal, the director of trauma.
"I've never seen anything like this," Bansal said in an interview. "This is crazy." His trauma ward treated 139 border wall patients injured by falls last year, up from 41 in 2020.

Hector Almeida, a 33-year-old dentist from Cuba who was sent to UC San Diego Health after fracturing his left leg Monday, told the Post that "I never expected we would have to climb the wall."

According to the paper, "Smugglers led his group to the wall with a ladder and told them to climb up and slide down the other side, said Almeida, who said he saw one woman fall and break both legs, and an older man with a severe head injury."

The San Diego Union-Tribune shared what happened to a Mexican family trying to flee drug cartel violence after they were turned away by U.S. officials under the Title 42 policy while seeking asylum at the San Ysidro Port of Entry:

On a foggy night in mid-March, several family members from the Mexican state of Michoacán followed smugglers' instructions to climb the first of two border barriers to reach U.S. soil near San Diego.

One of the women felt her grip slipping on the first fence from the moisture in the air as she struggled over. When she approached the second wall, looming 30 feet above her, she realized it would be impossible for her to get over safely. As she panicked, the smugglers told her to wait to the side for Border Patrol to get her so that other migrants could cross.

It was only after she reached the Border Patrol station that she learned that her 14-year-old daughter, whom the smugglers sent with an earlier group, had fallen from the 30-foot wall.

"It was the worst night of my life," said the woman, whose daughter remains mostly bedridden after spending a week in the hospital with a fractured skull, neck, and back. "We had come to save our lives, not to risk them in such an awful way."

Along with the human impact, the rise in falls has taken a financial toll. The letter notes that "the increased hospital costs of the surge in admissions exceeded $13 million in 2021 dollars."

The surge also coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic, which has strained the U.S. healthcare system, the paper points out, adding:

The care of these injured immigrants is not only a humanitarian problem but also a public health crisis that further worsened trauma center bed capacity, staff shortages, and professionals' moral injury. Most of these patients had significant brain and facial injuries or complex fractures of the extremities or spine, with many requiring intensive care and staged operative reconstructions. Lack of health insurance made most patients ineligible for rehabilitation facilities or post-discharge physical therapy, further lengthening prolonged hospital stays.

"This isn't a fracture you get when you fall off your bike, and you get a cast on it," Dr. Amy Liepert, medical director of acute care surgery at UC San Diego Medical, told the Union-Tribune. "These are bones broken in multiple pieces that need to be pinned back together, sometimes with external fixation devices."

The letter says that the Title 42 policy enabling U.S. officials to swiftly expel many migrants like the family from Michoacán "may have increased the numbers and desperation of persons crossing the border away from ports of entry and increased the number of falls."

The Title 42 policy was implemented under Trump and continued under Biden, who plans to end it next month—though some lawmakers are pushing to extend it with a bill that critics say "ignores individuals and families in desperate need of safety and their right to seek protection from persecution."

The doctors' paper asserts that "future border barrier policy decisions should include assessment of the impact of increased injuries on the local healthcare systems as well as humanitarian consequences."

As for the existing segments of the wall raised under Trump, Jules Kramer of the Minority Humanitarian Foundation, a San Diego nonprofit that has cared for injured migrants, told the Post that "it's absolutely tragic, and it's not deterring anyone—it's only harming people."