Category Archives: IRS White House Collusion

$$ is Behind Senator’s Yes Votes on Iran Deal

Posted on by

Traitor Senators Took Money from Iran Lobby, Back Iran Nukes

The Democrats are becoming a party of atom bomb spies.

Daniel Greenfield: Senator Markey has announced his support for the Iran deal that will let the terrorist regime inspect its own Parchin nuclear weapons research site, conduct uranium enrichment, build advanced centrifuges, buy ballistic missiles, fund terrorism and have a near zero breakout time to a nuclear bomb.

There was no surprise there.

Markey had topped the list of candidates supported by the Iran Lobby. And the Iranian American Political Action Committee (IAPAC) had maxed out its contributions to his campaign.

After more fake suspense, Al Franken, another IAPAC backed politician who also benefited from Iran Lobby money, came out for the nuke sellout.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the Iran Lobby’s third Dem senator, didn’t bother playing coy like her colleagues. She came out for the deal a while back even though she only got half the IAPAC cash that Franken and Markey received.

As did Senator Gillibrand, who had benefited from IAPAC money back when she first ran for senator and whose position on the deal should have come as no surprise.

The Iran Lobby had even tried, and failed, to turn Arizona Republican Jeff Flake. Iran Lobby cash had made the White House count on him as the Republican who would flip, but Flake came out against the deal. The Iran Lobby invested a good deal of time and money into Schumer, but that effort also failed.

Still these donations were only the tip of the Iran Lobby iceberg.

Gillibrand had also picked up money from the Iran Lobby’s Hassan Nemazee. Namazee was Hillary’s national campaign finance director who had raised a fortune for both her and Kerry before pleading guilty to a fraud scheme encompassing hundreds of millions of dollars. Nemazee had been an IAPAC trustee and had helped set up the organization.

Bill Clinton had nominated Hassan Nemazee as the US ambassador to Argentina when he had only been a citizen for two years.  A spoilsport Senate didn’t allow Clinton to make a member of the Iran Lobby into a US ambassador, but Nemazee remained a steady presence on the Dem fundraising circuit.

Nemazee had donated to Gillibrand and had also kicked in money to help the Franken Recount Fund scour all the cemeteries for freshly dead votes, as well as to Barbara Boxer, who also came out for the Iran nuke deal. Boxer had also received money more directly from IAPAC.

In the House, the Democratic recipients of IAPAC money came out for the deal. Mike Honda, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Iran Lobby backed the nuke sellout. As did Andre Carson, Gerry Connolly, Donna Edwards and Jackie Speier. The Iran Lobby was certainly getting its money’s worth.

But the Iran Lobby’s biggest wins weren’t Markey or Shaheen. The real victory had come long before when two of their biggest politicians, Joe Biden and John Kerry, had moved into prime positions in the administration. Not only IAPAC, but key Iran Lobby figures had been major donors to both men.

That list includes Housang Amirahmadi, the founder of the American Iranian Council, who had spoken of a campaign to “conquer Obama’s heart and mind” and had described himself as “the Iranian lobby in the United States.” It includes the Iranian Muslim Association of North America (IMAN) board members who had fundraised for Biden. And it includes the aforementioned Hassan Nemazee.

A member of Iran’s opposition had accused Biden’s campaigns of being “financed by Islamic charities of the Iranian regime based in California and by the Silicon Iran network.” Biden’s affinity for the terrorist regime in Tehran was so extreme that after 9/11 he had suggested, “Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran”.

Appeasement inflation has since raised that $200 million to at least $50 billion. But there are still no strings worth mentioning attached to the big check.

Questions about donations from the Iran Lobby had haunted Kerry’s campaign. Back then Kerry had been accused of supporting an agreement favorable to Iran. The parameters of that controversial proposal however were less generous than the one that Obama and Kerry are trying to sell now.

The hypothetical debates over the influence of the Iran Lobby have come to a very real conclusion.

Both of Obama’s secretaries of state were involved in Iran Lobby cash controversies, as was his vice president and his former secretary of defense. Obama was also the beneficiary of sizable donations from the Iran Lobby. Akbar Ghahary, the former co-founder of IAPAC, had donated and raised some $50,000 for Obama.

It’s an unprecedented track record that has received very little notice. While the so-called “Israel Lobby” is constantly scrutinized, the fact that key foreign policy positions under Obama are controlled by political figures with troubling ties to an enemy of this country has gone mostly unreported by the mainstream media.

This culture of silence allowed the Iran Lobby to get away with taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times before the Netanyahu speech asking, “Will Congress side with our President or a Foreign Leader?”

Iran’s stooges had taken a break from lobbying for ballistic missiles to play American patriots.

Obama and his allies, Iranian and domestic, have accused opponents of his dirty Iran deal of making “common cause” with that same terror regime and of treason. The ugly truth is that he and his political accomplices were the traitors all along.

Democrats in favor of a deal that will let a terrorist regime go nuclear have taken money from lobbies for that regime. They have broken their oath by taking bribes from a regime whose leaders chant, “Death to America”. Their pretense of examining the deal is nothing more than a hollow charade.

This deal has come down from Iran Lobby influenced politicians like Kerry and is being waved through by members of Congress who have taken money from the Iran Lobby. That is treason plain and simple.

Despite what we are told about its “moderate” leaders, Iran considers itself to be in a state of war with us. Iran and its agents have repeatedly carried out attacks against American soldiers, abducted and tortured to death American officials and have even engaged in attacks on American naval vessels.

Aiding an enemy state in developing nuclear weapons is the worst form of treason imaginable. Helping put weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists is the gravest of crimes.

The Democrats who have approved this deal are turning their party into a party of atom bomb spies.

Those politicians who have taken money from the Iran Lobby and are signing off on a deal that will let Iran go nuclear have engaged in the worst form of treason and committed the gravest of crimes. They must know that they will be held accountable. That when Iran detonates its first bomb, their names will be on it.

*** How can any senator vote yes, when as of early this week:

Iran Tracker: Rouhani: “We will buy and sell weapons whenever” we want. President Hassan Rouhani discussed Iran’s military capabilities during a speech for “Defense Industry Day” in Tehran on August 22. Rouhani emphasized that Iran pursues a defensive strategy of deterrence and added, “Our policy of détente, ‘convergence,’ and confidence-building does not conflict with the defensive power of military industries in the country; if a country does not have strength, independence, or stability, it cannot pursue real peace.” Rouhani also stated:

  • On cultural power: “If a country is not prepared, dedicated, or strong with respect to cultural power, we cannot call that country strong or resisting. If a country does not have political capabilities and does not have strong diplomats for negotiating and understanding, it will be defeated.”
  • On the arms restrictions in the nuclear agreement: “The only thing that was in the [UN Security Resolution 2231] was not to build any missiles with the ability to carry nuclear warheads; we have never pursued this goal anyway.”
  • Rouhani emphasized that there are no “military-related issues that will limit the armed forces” in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
  • “We will sell and buy weapons whenever and wherever we deem it necessary… we will not wait for permission from anyone or any resolution.”
  • On strengthening Iran’s defense capabilities: “We must strengthen the defensive power of the country in order to ensure the stability of the nuclear deal and security in the country.”
  • “Before the [Islamic] Revolution, we were only consumers of weapons and foreign equipment…praise be to God, in recent years, we have made huge steps in design, construction, and equipment; we are moving towards complete self-sufficiency; every day there is a new achievement.”
  • “Today in the defense and military field our country must be strong. However, our capabilities are not against any country. We are not seeking intervention or aggression against any other country; we are equipping ourselves for defense of our country.”
  • “We [the government] must be the buyer and willing to cooperate; we must transfer this industry to sectors outside of the Ministry of Defense, especially to the non-governmental sphere.” (President.ir) http://president.ir/fa/88788

Review This 45 Item List from 1963

Posted on by

Chilling and a real conversation starter, most provocative.

Communist Goals (1963)
Documention below
Congressional Record–Appendix, pp. A34-A35
January 10, 1963

Current Communist Goals

EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Thursday, January 10, 1963

Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.

At Mrs. Nordman’s request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following “Current Communist Goals,” which she identifies as an excerpt from “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen:

[From “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen]

CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use [“]united force[“] to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.

Note by Webmaster: The Congressional Record back this far has not be digitized and posted on the Internet.

It will probably be available at your nearest library that is a federal repository. Call them and ask them.

Your college library is probably a repository. This is an excellent source of government records.

Another source are your Congress Critters. They should be more than happy to help you in this matter.

You will find the Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto interesting at this point.

Click here to see them listed with brain-challenging comments.

Documentation

Webmaster Forest Glen Durland found the document in the library.
Sources are listed below.
The quote starts on page 259.
Microfilm:

California State University at San Jose
Clark Library, Government Floor
Phone (408)924-2770
Microfilm
Call Number:
J
11
.R5
Congressional Record, Vol. 109
88th Congress, 1st Session
Appendix Pages A1-A2842
Jan. 9-May 7, 1963
Reel 12
The book was found in the off campus stacks, was ordered and checked. The quote below was checked against the original and is correct. The few errors in the copy from the Congressional Record are shown in [ ] .
The quote starts on page 259.

California State University at San Jose, Clark Library stacks call number:
Naked Communist
HX
56
S55

Book title page:
Skousen, W. Cleon. Naked Communist
Salt Lake City, Utah: Ensign Publishing Co.
C. 1961 , 9th edition July 1961.

CBO revises US Treasury runs out of money Nov.~Dec.

Posted on by

Okay in the massive field of candidates running for president, who is talking about running out of money?

CBO projects that if the debt limit is unchanged, the measures that the Treasury has been taking to avoid breaching that limit will be exhausted sometime between mid-November and early December, and the Treasury will then run out of cash.

Summary

The debt limit—commonly referred to as the debt ceiling—is the maximum amount of debt that the Department of the Treasury can issue to the public and to other federal agencies. That amount is set by law and has been increased over the years in order to finance the government’s operations. In March, the debt ceiling was reached, and the Secretary of the Treasury announced a “debt issuance suspension period.” During such a period, existing statutes allow the Treasury to take a number of “extraordinary measures” to borrow additional funds without breaching the debt ceiling. The Congressional Budget Office projects that if the debt limit remains unchanged, those measures will be exhausted and the Treasury will run out of cash between mid-November and early December. At such time, the government would be unable to fully pay its obligations, a development that would lead to delays of payments for government activities, a default on the government’s debt obligations, or both.

According to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates, this year’s deficit will be noticeably smaller than what the agency projected in March, and fiscal year 2015 will mark the sixth consecutive year in which the deficit has declined as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) since it peaked in 2009. Over the next 10 years, however, the budget outlook remains much the same as CBO described earlier this year: If current laws generally remain unchanged, within a few years the deficit will begin to rise again relative to GDP, and by 2025, debt held by the public will be higher relative to the size of the economy than it is now.

CBO’s economic forecast, which serves as the basis for its budget projections, anticipates that the economy will expand modestly this year, at a solid pace in calendar years 2016 and 2017, and at a more moderate pace in subsequent years. The pace of growth over the next few years is expected to reduce the quantity of underused resources, or “slack,” in the economy, lowering the unemployment rate and putting upward pressure on compensation as well as on inflation and interest rates.

The Budget Deficit for 2015 Will Be Smaller Than Last Year’s

At $426 billion, CBO estimates, the 2015 deficit will be $59 billion less than the deficit last year (which was $485 billion) and $60 billion less than CBO estimated in March (see table below). The expected shortfall for 2015 would constitute the smallest since 2007, and at 2.4 percent of gross domestic product, it would be below the average deficit (relative to the size of the economy) over the past 50 years. Debt held by the public will remain around 74 percent of GDP by the end of 2015, CBO estimates—slightly less than the ratio last year but higher than in any other year since 1950.

Outlays

Federal outlays are projected to rise by 5 percent this year, to $3.7 trillion, or 20.6 percent of GDP. That increase
is the net result of a nearly 10 percent jump in mandatory spending, offset by lower net interest payments and discretionary outlays.

CBO anticipates that mandatory outlays will be $199 billion higher in 2015 than they were last year. Federal spending for the major health care programs accounts
for a little more than half of that increase: Outlays for Medicare (net of premiums and other offsetting receipts), Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and subsidies for health insurance purchased through exchanges and related spending are expected to be 
$110 billion (12 percent) higher this year than they were in 2014.

In addition, outlays related to the government’s transactions with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for higher education programs will be greater than the amounts recorded last year. Those increases will be partially offset by increased receipts from auctions of licenses to use the electromagnetic spectrum and by reduced spending for unemployment compensation.

Even though federal borrowing continues to rise, CBO expects that the government’s net interest costs will fall by nearly 5 percent this year—mainly because lower inflation this year has reduced the cost of the Treasury’s inflation-protected securities.

CBO anticipates that discretionary spending, which is controlled through annual appropriations, will be about 1 percent less in 2015 than it was in 2014. By the agency’s estimates, defense outlays will drop by more than 2 percent, whereas nondefense discretionary outlays will be only slightly below last year’s amount.

Revenues

Federal revenues are expected to climb by 8 percent in 2015, to $3.3 trillion, or 18.2 percent of GDP. Revenues from all major sources will rise, including individual income taxes (by 10 percent), corporate income taxes (by 8 percent), and payroll taxes (by 4 percent). Revenues from other sources are estimated to increase, on net, by 5 percent. The largest increase in that category derives from fees and fines, mostly as a result of provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Many more details here.

 

Sue Compete America, a Good Place to Start

Posted on by

Imagine your own government working against it’s own citizens. Now as you read on, listen for what all politicians have to say on the matter of college educations, employment and then immigration.

Pursuit of Happiness for who exactly, worse U.S. students cannot even get a seat in a college class as foreign students have them.

Compete America posts their principles on their website. The page is titled “Compete America’s 2011 Principles for U.S. Job Creation, Innovation and Economic Growth Through Employment-based Visa Reform”, so admittedly this demonstrates the efforts against U.S. citizens. Want to know what companies participate and are members? Click here and you will see corporations you know well like Boeing, Microsoft, Coca~Cola, and even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

                                            

Okay now read on to learn how bad this is and what questions and actions we need to take.

NationalReview: American technology workers won a big victory in the federal courts this month. The D.C. District Court ruled that a STEM-related visa program created by the Department of Homeland Security was potentially damaging to the domestic labor market and also in violation of federal rule-making procedure. For the plaintiffs in the case, the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, however, the fight against BigTech lobbyists and Homeland Security has only just begun. DHS’s so-called Optional Practical Training (OPT) program allows foreign nationals to live and work in the U.S. on a student visa even after graduation. In a rule promulgated by DHS in 2008, foreigners graduating in a STEM field at a U.S. school had these authorizations extended to nearly two and a half years after their graduation. U.S. employers love this because, on top of the longer work period, they have a greater chance to transition them into the H-1B program, a “professional specialty worker” visa that can last up to an additional six years. Also, employers receive a tax benefit for hiring OPT participants over Americans, as they do not have to pay Medicare and Social Security taxes for aliens on student visas.
Plaintiffs’ counsel, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (which I work for), argued in court that the OPT extension, created not by statute but entirely by DHS, was really just a way to circumvent the existing H-1B cap of 65,000 annual visa grants set down by Congress years before.
Helpfully for us, DHS had already admitted that this was the purpose for the extension. As it explained in the agency rule creating the extension, “the H-1B category is greatly oversubscribed,” which, as a result, has “adversely affected the ability of US employers to recruit and retain skilled workers.” With the H-1B cap having been held up by Congress over the last few years, DHS did the next best thing. As H-1B guru Norm Matloff describes in a blog post discussing our case, the agency simply went ahead and created “a de facto expansion of H-1B.”
Let me digress for a moment on the H-1B lottery and the “oversubscription” issue. Unlike other visas, the fees for H-1B applications are refundable; there is no penalty for oversubscribing. As a consequence, heavy H-1B users, such as the outsourcing firms that supply BigTech companies as well as BigTech companies themselves, always apply for more visas than they really want in order to get close to their target. David North at the Center for Immigration Studies explains the process here. So when you hear in the press and elsewhere that “petitions have outstripped slots yet again by two-to-one,” the numbers are merely a reflection of companies’ trying to game the lottery system.
As Matloff explains, OPT is “just as harmful as H-1B.” The two programs are now similar in size, and the benefits to BigTech are also similar. Like H-1B holders, OPTs are younger than most American technology workers, and therefore cheaper. Citing the “prevailing wage” rules that technically exist for H-1Bs, Matloff notes that “the legal wage floors for H-1Bs depend on experience” (the worker’s age, in other words), “so hiring young H-1Bs in lieu of older Americans is legal.” As he says with cases such as SoCal Edison and Disney, “age was the key factor underlying the wage savings accrued by hiring H-1Bs.” See this link for information on a similar suit against Google based on age discrimination (which the company has since settled).
In the case of OPTs, however, this “wage floor” isn’t even available; being recent graduates, they’re all young (and cheap). Further, OPT participants are even cheaper to employ because, as stated earlier, aliens on student visas are exempted from Social Security and Medicare.
Fundamentally, the OPT program, like H-1B, allows BigTech firms to flood the labor market, creating artificial competition and pressuring the standard of living we’ve earned through decades of hard-fought democratic and labor reforms. The cost savings, meanwhile, get siphoned up by private technology firms, many of which grew out of taxpayer-funded military programs. Thankfully, much of this wasn’t lost on the judge. DHS had asserted that our plaintiffs didn’t have standing to sue because (a) they couldn’t prove an OPT participant actually took one of their jobs (an impossible and unfair demand) and, in the alternative, (b) the plaintiffs were currently employed and so couldn’t show any injury — all are employed, mostly in contract positions. The judge knocked down both arguments by pointing out that “an influx of OPT computer programmers would increase the labor supply, which is likely to depress plaintiff’s members’ wages and threaten their job security, even if they remain employed” (emphasis added).
More concrete evidence was also offered. Plaintiffs showed examples of job advertisements where only OPT participants were requested to apply. As Matloff likes to note, these companies are not just using H-1Bs and OPT participants to replace American workers, as in the SoCal Edison and Disney cases; they’re also hiring them instead of American workers. And many times, it isn’t “highly skilled” types that are being imported but simply “ordinary people, doing ordinary work.” The benefits of circumventing the H-1B program are apparently big. Arguing that DHS’s chosen 29-month extension period was an arbitrary and therefore invalid decision, plaintiffs showed the court that industry lobbyists CompeteAmerica, lobbyists from Microsoft and the Chamber of Commerce, and others had all been in contact with DHS requesting the same 29-month extension. And showing just how eager it was to comply, DHS implemented the rule without going through the statutorily mandated notice-and-comment period, a window of time in which the public can criticize agency action.
DHS tried to argue in court that skipping the process was necessitated by a looming “fiscal emergency” in the U.S. economy that could be ameliorated only by letting “tens of thousands of OPT workers” join the tech industry. Whose economic analysis did DHS cite to back this up? Studies from the technology industry itself. Ultimately, although the court knocked down the OPT extension on procedural grounds, the victory is only temporary. DHS can open up the rule to notice-and-comment and try again.
Further, the judge rejected our argument that the program violates the law on other, more substantive (and less procedural) grounds. According to congressionally made statute (Immigration and Naturalization Act § 1101(a)(15)(F)(i)), student visas cannot be allocated for working purposes and may be allocated only to “bona fide students . . . solely for the purpose of pursuing such a course of study . . . at an established . . . academic institution” (emphasis added). But again, OPT, entirely a DHS creation, purports to let student-visa holders join the workforce. By ignoring the stipulations of Congress, the program exceeds DHS’s statutory authority.
By giving DHS the authority to redefine what a “student” is, the court is allowing the agency to set the duration and conditions of a student’s stay, potentially letting them occupy the labor market for years upon years. Good for the foreign “student,” good for the trillion-dollar

tech industry, but bad for the American worker. — Ian Smith is an attorney who works for the Immigration Reform Law Institute.

Oh Look, an Illegal Immigrant Summer Camp

Posted on by

As written on this blog that we must watch Germany when it comes to protests over immigration, it appears that things are spooling that activism here in America is in our future.

Who would imagine summer camp involves teaching activism and we are to accept this as a good thing?

This summer camp just churned out 80 activists

LATimes: Growing up in wealthy Marin County, Yaqueline Rodas didn’t know many people like herself: a young immigrant from Guatemala in the country without legal status. She knew even fewer political activists.

So it was with amazement and a little anxiety that she found herself standing one morning in June in a circle with 82 strangers, each of whom had also been brought to the U.S. illegally as a child, and each of whom was now officially an activist-in-training.

It was the first day of Dream Summer, an annual program that brings young immigrants from across the country to Los Angeles for a 10-week crash course designed to produce the next generation of immigrant rights leaders.

As the students sipped coffee and exchanged shy introductions in a meeting room in the basement of a Koreatown church, Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center, which organized the program, explained the objective.

“It is to build a powerful social justice movement that will transform this country,” Wong said. He cracked a smile: “No pressure.”

Dream Summer, which concluded its fifth year Thursday with a graduation ceremony in downtown Los Angeles, has already changed the immigrant rights movement. Its alumni include many leading “Dreamer” advocates, including several who led the push for President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. (DACA, as it is known, granted temporary deportation protection to more than half a million young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.)

The program includes two weeks of workshops in Los Angeles on topics as varied as public speaking, the immigrant detention system and the history of the NAACP. Participants also spend eight weeks in internships at social justice organizations around the country.

The idea is for them to learn what has worked for other social movements. But the program’s biggest value, those involved say, may be the connections forged by young immigrants from different regions with similar backgrounds, similar frustrations and similar dreams.

“Look around the room,” Wong urged the students that first day in June. “Now you’re a part of a whole network, a whole community.”

Rodas, who applied for the program on a whim after a classmate at UC Santa Barbara recommended it, said the summer had changed her sense of place in the world.

It helped her realize that there were others like her who had experienced discrimination, and who also were bothered by their parents’ struggle to find well-paying work. And it helped her find a purpose.

“Now I know I want to do something to help my community,” said Rodas, who spent the summer helping immigrants without legal status sign up for health insurance.

Chando Kem, 21, spent the first few days of the program commuting from his home in Long Beach. But soon he was spending nights on the floor of the hotel rooms of the out-of-town participants to maximize the time with his new colleagues.

During his internship, at the Filipino Migrant Center in Long Beach, Kem was asked to produce video testimonials featuring immigrants who had experienced wage theft. During the process, he realized that he should interview his own father for the film.

When his family arrived from Cambodia, when Kem was 7, his dad worked at a Chinese restaurant where he was underpaid and denied proper lunch breaks, Kem said. “Before I thought, ‘OK, this is the way things are,'” he said. “Now it’s like no, that’s wrong.”

The organizers of Dream Summer say it was born out of failure and frustration.

They started the program in 2011 after Congress failed to pass the federal Dream Act, which would have given people who came to the United States before the age of 16 a pathway to citizenship. Opponents said it would have rewarded immigrants who broke the law.

That year, several of the program’s young participants were placed with campaigns working on behalf of the California Dream Act. It passed later that year, allowing youth to apply for state financial aid at universities.

Other Dream Summer alumni would go on to lead efforts against Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known for controversial policies targeting immigrants in the country illegally, and to take on Obama’s deportation record. One graduate, Lorella Praeli, is now Latino outreach director for Democratic hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The program is not only for new activists.

At 33, Paulo Jara-Riveros was one of the oldest participants this summer. Brought to the U.S. from Peru at age 15, he returned to Peru to pursue his studies in 2011.

Two years later, Jara-Riveros was a part of a major protest in which two dozen young people with long ties to the U.S. surrendered to federal authorities at the Texas-Mexico border to protest American immigration policies. Jara-Riveros, a transgender man who says he faced discrimination in Peru, has applied for asylum and is waiting for a ruling in his case.

This summer he worked for a health organization that serves transgender immigrants. The experience was emotionally trying, he said. His takeaway: Activists must also tend to their own needs.

“Sometimes when you’re working in activism you get caught up in the work and you forget to take care of yourselves,” he said.

For Miguel Bibanco, a 20-year-old from Fresno, the program was not just about changing immigration policy. It was also about modeling an ideal society. He pointed to workshops that highlighted the experiences of minorities within the immigrant community, including lesbians, gays and transgender people and immigrants from Asia.

“It’s not just Latinos,” Bibanco said. “If we want a society that is inclusive, we need to start by including them in the activism process.”

On Thursday, he and Rodas snacked on taquitos and quesadillas at the program’s graduation ceremony, held at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

As the participants posed for pictures with their diplomas, they heard from Los Angeles City Councilman Gil Cedillo, who wrote the California Dream Act while he was a state assemblyman.

Cedillo evoked the heated rhetoric nationally around immigration. This summer, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has ratcheted up his crusade against illegal immigration, calling this month for a revocation of the constitutional amendment that guarantees citizenship to those born in the U.S.

“We’re being vilified,” said Cedillo, who called this “one of the most critical times in our country.”

He told the participants in the program that they were model members of the community. They were “hopeful, not hateful,” he said, “optimistic, not pessimistic.”

“Thank you,” he said. “You’ve shown up.”