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The false promises of more immigration enforcement

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President Joe Biden has taken some steps toward reversing his predecessor’s legacy of broad, indiscriminate immigration enforcement, including a recent <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/ice-detentions-county-jails-halted/2021/05/20/9c0bdd1e-b8de-11eb-a6b1-81296da0339b_story.html">announcement</a> that it will no longer detain immigrants at two locations under scrutiny for alleged abuses.
But Republicans are adamant that increased immigration enforcement be a prerequisite to any broader immigration reform.
“There’ll be no immigration reform until you get control of the border,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2021/05/12/bipartisan-immigration-talks-thwarted-by-escalating-migration/">told Roll Call</a> last month.
There are now <a href="https://immigrationimpact.com/2021/05/20/biden-immigration-enforcement/?emci=946f0af6-03b9-eb11-a7ad-501ac57ba3ed&emdi=41dc89d1-d2bb-eb11-a7ad-501ac57b8fa7&ceid=7999755#.YKeVE6hKg-U">nearly 40 percent more people</a> in immigration detention compared to when Biden first took office, and his administration is continuing to turn away most migrants arriving on the border under <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22398712/biden-title-42-migrant-border-expel">pandemic-related restrictions</a> put in place by his predecessor, President Donald Trump, which have led to the expulsions of <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics/title-8-and-title-42-statistics">more than 350,000 people</a> this year alone.
But research shows that the threat of detention and deportation in the US doesn’t dissuade migrants from making the journey to the southern border, especially if they are victims of violence and may be seeking to escape the “devil they know” in their home countries.
“Managing migration at the border, particularly the kind of migration we’re seeing now, from a strictly deterrence, enforcement lens is just not sustainable in the long run and is not having the impact that people think it should have,” Theresa Cardinal Brown, managing director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said. “That’s why we need to rethink our paradigm for how we talk about migration and everything that we do at the border.”
The US started dramatically ramping up immigration enforcement in the 1990s with bipartisan support. The line of thinking was that making it more expensive and arduous to cross the border would dissuade more people from making the journey in the first place. It became the preferred strategy for policymakers because it was easy to sell to constituents, even though it wasn’t necessarily grounded in a deep understanding of the factors driving unauthorized immigration.
But a growing body of research shows that the threat of immigration enforcement isn’t an effective deterrent for migrants in the long run. Emily Ryo, a professor of law and sociology at the USC Gould School of Law, found in a <a href="http://email.msgsnd.com/c/eJwdjkFuhDAMRU8Dy8iOHZwssuiI9h4JSWaQICBgSo_ftJL9bX99yS95ESihn70GjWBQNJIYUKgY6fGgkd048qcT2zGs5_OsSU3b2r_8YBwTD-QMR4okueQcxMqAFCHp1C_-dV372dFHp79a3fet9hpOtR3Pdk5bvXK92vZntoFom2pskhsLAUCzVHkvi9pT6Q9f52lbsqrhyKHhfG8_a05z-Ae6PDI5SDYztffalmJYGAcmk4bYukWcKRERgBNlmYwwWKBgCgYBsRR_AfF1TCI">paper</a> published earlier this month that it has no significant effect on people’s decision to migrate from Mexico and Central America’s “Northern Triangle”: Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
In cooperation with Vanderbilt University and the Latin American Public Opinion Project, she designed an experiment that was included in the 2018-’19 AmericasBarometer survey of nearly 11,000 voting-age adults across the four countries. She divided the respondents into three groups and provided them with different prompts offering information about how many migrants are apprehended by US officials when trying to cross the border, subject to detention for an indefinite period of time, and face a lack of judicial process when it comes to their deportation. They were then asked how likely it would be that they would choose to live and work in the US in the next three years.
The patterns in responses across the groups were strikingly similar, though they were provided with different information about US immigration enforcement policy. Most said they weren’t likely to go to the US, but in all three groups, about 21 percent said they were “a little likely to go,” 10 percent said they were “somewhat likely,” and roughly another 10 percent said “very likely.”
Knowledge about US deportation and detention policy didn’t have any significant effect on their intentions to migrate. Ryo even did an analysis to account for potential differences in how persuasive the information about US policy might be for different populations, such as people experiencing crime and violence, people with family ties to the US who might be seeking reunification, and people leaving for economic reasons. It still didn’t make a statistically significant difference.
“To the extent that what we’re trying to do with our immigration enforcement policy is to deter people, my study does not support that approach in terms of use of policies like immigration detention to achieve that purpose,” Ryo said.
Another <a href="https://larrlasa.org/articles/10.25222/larr.147/">study</a>, conducted by Vanderbilt University political science professor Jonathan Hiskey and co-authors, similarly found that knowledge of heightened US deterrence efforts didn’t influence people’s decision to migrate.
They analyzed 2014 survey data from more than 3,000 people in 12 Honduran municipalities with varying rates of homicide and crime victimization. The survey was conducted just as the Obama administration was pushing its “Dangers Awareness” campaign featuring more than 6,000 public service announcements and more than 600 billboards. The overriding message was that the US would send people back to their home country if they tried to cross the border.
Most survey takers thought that crossing the border was more difficult and less safe than it was the previous year, and that it involved an increased risk of deportation and worse treatment of migrants. In that respect, the campaign had appeared to succeed in persuading Hondurans that migrating to the US was a “highly dangerous proposition with little chance of success,” according to the researchers.
You might expect that would have made them less likely to eventually migrate. But that’s not what the researchers found; the survey takers’ views of the dangers of migration to the US and the likelihood of deportation did not seem to influence their plans to migrate in any meaningful way.
Rather, the factor that was most associated with people’s desire to migrate was whether they were victims of crimes, as is the case for many asylum seekers fleeing gang violence in Honduras.
“The detention and deportation of current migrants from El Salvador and Honduras, along with the extensive publicity of these detention and deportation proceedings, is unlikely to persuade many of the individuals in these countries who are directly experiencing the tragically high levels of crime and violence,” the researchers wrote.
Knowledge of US immigration detention, however, did have an unintended effect on survey takers in Ryo’s experiment — it made them more likely to think outcomes and legal procedures in the American immigration system are unfair. That is worrisome, given that perceptions of fairness are significant predictors of people’s willingness to obey the law and cooperate with legal authorities, Ryo said.
“We really ought to be concerned about the extent to which generating these kinds of perceptions of unfairness can backfire in terms of more people disregarding our laws and undertaking that dangerous journey in order to get to our border and try to cross it,” she added.
Another unintended effect of US immigration enforcement has been the increase in the number of undocumented immigrants living in the US from roughly 3 million in 1986 to over 11 million today. Princeton sociologist Doug Massey and his co-authors found in a <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27721512/">2016 paper</a> that the rapid expansion of immigration enforcement in the years following 1986, the last time that a major immigration law was passed, actually caused more migrants to decide to settle in the US permanently.
Before then, Mexican men had moved back and forth across the border, usually looking for opportunities for temporary work and crossing in El Paso and San Diego. The US’s decision to expand immigration enforcement didn’t really alter their ability to cross the border. They weren’t much more likely to be apprehended when they attempted to cross, and even if they were discovered by US immigration officials and swiftly returned to Mexico, they could still succeed after multiple attempts.
What changed, however, was the costs and risks associated with returning to their home country and then attempting to reenter the US. Migrants had to start crossing in more dangerous regions of the border, going through the Sonoran Desert and Arizona, and came to rely more heavily on the services of paid smugglers, which became more expensive. Between 1980 and 2010, the probability that a migrant would return after their first trip to the US consequently dropped from 48 percent to zero, according to Massey’s paper.
“The combination of increasingly costly and risky trips and the near certainty of getting into the United States created a decision-making contest in which it still made economic sense to migrate but not to return home to face the high costs and risks of subsequent entry attempts,” the authors write in the paper.
In this way, immigration enforcement had the opposite of the intended effect. And the authors write that if policymakers had never increased border patrol’s funding beyond accounting for inflation, the population of undocumented immigrants living in the US likely would have “grown substantially less.”
What might reverse the trend is if the US legalizes the population of undocumented immigrants living in the US, or at least broad swaths of it, which might allow more people to return to their home country.
But first, US policymakers need to reckon with the ways existing strategies to deter unauthorized immigration haven’t worked.
“Our policymakers have not actually been very attentive to trying to better understand what the actual effects of our enforcement policies are, and that’s very problematic because tons of resources are going into implementing certain policies that actually don’t need to the outcome that we desire, and can lead to unintended consequences that we do not desire,” Ryo said.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22451177/biden-border-immigration-enforcement-detention-deportation">https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22451177/biden-border-immigration-enforcement-detention-deportation</a>

vox The false promises of more immigration enforcement

President Joe Biden has taken some steps toward reversing his predecessor’s legacy of broad, indiscriminate immigration enforcement, includ...

The ugly truth behind your fancy rewards credit card

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There is an entire ecosystem dedicated to gaming the credit card rewards system — <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/05/magazine/points-guy-travel-rewards.html">the Points Guy</a>, who has made himself a household name, and a web of <a href="https://money.com/money/collection-post/2870892/credit-card-rewards-jackpot/">websites</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@zacharyburrabel?">influencers</a> who teach all sorts of tricks and hacks. What people might not realize is that the system is already gamed, just not in the way they think: Credit card perks reward rich Americans to the detriment of the poor. The $200 in cash back you got using your fancy new rewards card often comes at the expense of someone who can’t afford it.
The US financial system is racked with inequities. Sometimes, they’re obvious: who can and can’t get approved for a loan, who has a bank account and who doesn’t. But other times, they can fly under the radar.
Many people who use rewards cards have some idea those rewards are coming from somewhere. But they likely imagine it’s the bank, not their fellow consumers and businesses, picking up the tab.
Every time a credit card is swiped, the bank charges a fee. It seems trivial, but those fees add up — enough to help pay for rewards like points-funded hotel rooms and cash back. To compensate, businesses raise prices, and so cash users (who tend to be poorer) are often subsidizing the perks going to credit card users (who tend to be richer). And the higher the rewards, the bigger the cost to the unsuspecting people paying for it.
“The American payment system has evolved into a reverse Robin Hood whereby middle-class and working-class Americans who pay with a debit card, prepaid card, or cash are subsidizing the wealthy, who pay less for everything,” said Aaron Klein, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, who has <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/how-credit-card-companies-reward-the-rich-and-punish-the-rest-of-us/">studied</a> and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/america-s-poor-subsidize-wealthier-consumers-vicious-income-inequality-cycle-ncna845091">written about</a> this issue extensively.
The catch on credit card rewards and points is that for the richest consumers, there might not be one. Instead, the catch is for everyone else.
<a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/credit-cards/where-does-money-for-credit-card-rewards-come-from">Credit card issuers</a> — think American Express, Chase, and Citi — make money in three main ways: fees, like annual ones to have the card or penalties on late payments; interest on unpaid credit card bills; and interchange fees, meaning the amount they charge every time you swipe plus a small fixed fee. Generally, issuers charge about 1 to 3 percent of the total transaction amount. These swipe fees can be big money-makers for some companies: American Express <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/how-credit-card-companies-reward-the-rich-and-punish-the-rest-of-us/">clocked</a> $24 billion in them in 2018 alone.
“The interchange is a steady, almost annuity kind of revenue stream,” said Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate and CreditCards.com. He estimates swipe fees currently average about 2.3 percent, and the more elaborate the rewards card, the higher the fees. “Merchants hate paying interchange fees, but if you don’t accept credit cards, you’re turning off a huge part of your audience.”
Part of the money that banks get from interchange fees goes back to their customers in the form of rewards. In 2018, American Express spent about $10 billion on rewards.
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<aside><q>“The American payment system has evolved into a reverse Robin Hood whereby middle-class and working-class Americans who pay with a debit card, prepaid card, or cash are subsidizing the wealthy who pay less for everything”</q></aside>
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About seven in 10 Americans <a href="https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/ownership-statistics/">have at least one credit card</a>, and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/select/how-many-credit-cards-does-the-average-american-have/">many people have multiple credit cards</a>. The <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/shoppers-love-rewards-credit-cards-retailers-hate-them-1537867801">vast majority of credit card spending takes place</a> on rewards credit cards, and over the years, rewards have become more elaborate as companies try to compete — more cash back, more perks, more miles and hotel rooms. “In some ways, the last few years have been the golden age of credit card rewards,” Rossman said.
With more credit cards and more rewards come more swipe fees. And merchants don’t want to pay those fees out of their own pockets — so they pass some of them on in prices that everybody pays, not just the credit card holders. People paying with cash or debit cards wind up footing the bill to pay for the rewards of people who pay with credit cards — people who tend to be more well-off.
“You have this phenomenon at the point of sale, which is consumers who use credit cards — and rewards cards more specifically — tend to be cross-subsidized by consumers who use cash or debit cards,” said Joanna Stavins, senior economist and policy adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, who has studied the issue extensively. “It’s specific to what you pull out of your wallet. It just so happens that payment instrument use is correlated with income pretty strongly, so higher-income consumers are more likely to hold a credit card in their wallet.”
Stavins is the co-author of a <a href="https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-department-working-paper/2020/distributional-effects-payment-card-pricing-merchant-cost-pass-through-united-states-canada.aspx">recent paper</a> from the Boston Fed that looked at who winds up paying for credit card reward purchases. They found that in the US, high-income consumers pay an average of $13 less per month through retail prices, and low-income people pay 60 cents more, because of swipe fees on merchants. Rich consumers spend more overall on fees, but it’s because they spend more in general. When it comes to a percentage of transaction values, it’s poorer people who lose out.
“So let’s say I spend $1,000 on my purchases and you spend $100. I may spend more in terms of all the different fees and surcharges and cost of credit card transactions that merchants will transfer to higher retail prices. But in terms of the percentage, I’ll pay a lot smaller fraction than you are,” Stavins said.
Planet Money on TikTok has a short video of how this all works.
A <a href="https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/public-policy-discussion-paper/2010/who-gains-and-who-loses-from-credit-card-payments-theory-and-calibrations.aspx">2010 paper</a>, of which Stavins was also a co-author, found that in this wealth transfer system, households that use cash pay about $149 on average to households that use credit cards, and each of the credit card households gets $1,133 from cash users every year. And again, because lower-income people are likelier to pay in cash than high-income people, that means the poor are losing out at the hands of the rich.
To be sure, not all rewards cards holders are alike. To really reap the benefits of rewards, Rossman emphasized, people shouldn’t carry a balance on their credit cards from month to month. Otherwise, the interest they’re charged could very well wipe out the benefits. “Some people say that if you’re using cash, you’re losing cash, and it’s a missed opportunity. But it’s only a missed opportunity if you can pay in full,” Rossman said.
According to CreditCard.com’s data, more than half of people with credit card debt have had it for a year, more than a third for two years, and more than one in 10 for five years. “It’s easy to get into debt and hard to get out of it,” he said.
The US economy is stacked in favor of the wealthy and corporations in all sorts of ways, including the stock market and taxes. And the same goes for rewards cards.
Credit card rewards aren’t generally taxed like regular income, so to a certain extent, they’re even a bigger benefit than they appear on paper. In a 2019 piece for <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/america-s-poor-subsidize-wealthier-consumers-vicious-income-inequality-cycle-ncna845091">NBC News</a>, Klein offered up a concrete example: say a family spends $80,000 a year on a credit card and gets 1.5 percent cash back, translating to $1,200. By his estimate, that’s equivalent to about $2,000 in pre-tax earnings.
“Rich people get a large subsidy on everything they buy,” Klein told Vox. “The fact that they’re tax-free is a big deal also, because wealthier people pay higher income taxes, so the tax-free advantage is higher the richer you are.”
In other words, the more you spend, the better the rewards, and the better the tax break.
Klein also said that interchange fees that go up with rewards cards can disproportionately impact small businesses compared to large corporations, many of which are often able to negotiate lower fees or strike deals with big credit card companies. According to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/another-challenge-for-small-businesses-higher-card-fees-could-be-on-the-way-11586424603">the Wall Street Journal</a>, Walmart, Costco, and Amazon have all been able to leverage their size and reach to bring down their fees. “Not all businesses pay the same swipe fee, and many larger companies negotiate,” he said.
Businesses do have some options to try to lessen the blow of swipe fees — and therefore the price hikes they pass on to consumers — but they don’t always use them. Merchants can put a surcharge on purchases made with a credit card, though outside of gas stations, the practice is quite rare. They’re afraid of alienating customers, and training cashiers to make the calculations can be difficult. Alternatively, they can offer discounts to people who pay in cash.
Consumers are much more amenable to discounts than they are surcharges, Stavins noted. She also thinks merchants just being more transparent about the fee they’re paying with a credit card transaction could make a difference, even just a sign telling customers, “Hey, if you pay with a card, it costs me money.” They don’t prevent credit card use, but they try to discourage it.
Of course, not all businesses accept all credit cards, or accept credit cards at all. American Express has the reputation of having high transaction fees that many merchants avoid. And the nice rewards cards often have higher swipe fees than more basic cards issued by the same company. But once a merchant says that they’re going to accept one brand of credit card, whether it be AmEx or MasterCard or Visa, they can’t really discriminate among the cards under those brands. In 2018, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-rules-for-american-express-in-swipe-fee-antitrust-case-1529936932?mod=article_inline">the Supreme Court decided</a> that credit card issuers were allowed to bar businesses from offering consumers incentives to pay with less expensive credit cards. Essentially, if a retailer accepts one type of AmEx, it’s going to accept all of them.
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<aside><q>Lack of access to basic financial products and services can impact people’s lives in myriad ways, many of which are invisible</q></aside>
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Klein says he thinks if merchants were more easily able to discern which rewards cards to take and which to avoid, some of the poor-to-rich transfer problem could be solved. “A reasonable way for the market to help solve this problem is for the merchants to be able to say, ‘I’m not going to take the Sapphire, the swipe fee is too high,’” he said. “The economist in me is like, the market can correct this to some degree.”
The <a href="https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/visa-usa-interchange-reimbursement-fees.pdf">published fee</a> for a Visa Signature Preferred card on a restaurant charge, for example, is 2.7 percent.
Another potential policy fix would be to lower interchange fees, which <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/durbin-amendment.asp#:~:text=Understanding%20the%20Durbin%20Amendment,5%25%20of%20the%20transaction%20amount.">the Durbin Amendment</a>, part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank bill, did for debit card transactions. If swipe fees for credit cards were capped, rewards would almost certainly diminish, too. But so would the regressive nature of credit card spending.
Lack of access to basic financial products and services can impact people’s lives in myriad ways, many of which are invisible. The guy paying in cash at the local hardware store probably doesn’t realize the $20 purchase he’s making is partially subsidizing the next vacation of the guy who paid with a rewards card before him.
There are all sorts of places where it’s more expensive to have less access to financial services. During the pandemic, people without bank accounts often <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/business/banking-check-cashing-fees-alternative-accounts-20210419.html">wound up being charged to cash their stimulus checks</a>, losing out on money they were entitled to.
For many people without credit cards, the problem isn’t that they don’t want one, it’s that they can’t get one because their credit score is too low or they don’t have enough of a credit history to get approved. It’s harder for the unbanked to <a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/banking/unbanked-consumer-study/#:~:text=Unbanked%20households%2C%20which%20the%20FDIC,paying%20bills%20and%20transferring%20money.">build up savings</a>, get traditional loans, or pay basic bills. And so they wind up losing money — they turn to <a href="https://www.thebalance.com/payday-loans-beware-of-these-dangerous-loans-1289623">expensive payday lenders</a> that charge exorbitant interest rates and risk getting pulled into debt traps or resort to <a href="https://www.vox.com/22367985/paypal-venmo-financial-inequality-unbanked-underbanked">financial products</a> that charge them more specifically because they have less. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/upshot/stocks-pandemic-inequality.html#:~:text=An%20analysis%20of%20this%20data,of%20Wall%20Street%20portfolios'%20value.">Rich people reap most of the benefits of the stock market’s rise</a>, a rise that’s fueled by the productivity of workers.
To put it plainly, it’s expensive to be poor in America. And when it comes to rewards cards, it’s expensive to the benefit of the rich.
“The rewards keep getting bigger, the competition to offer large rewards generates larger swipe fees, and that generates greater income inequality,” Klein said. “Unless somebody makes a substantial change, this is going to keep going in the same direction and getting worse at a time in which income inequality and historical inequalities are some of the great challenges facing our country. We have a system hiding in plain sight offering richer people ‘free money’ paid for by those who ‘don’t qualify.’”
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22454885/who-pays-for-credit-card-rewards">https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22454885/who-pays-for-credit-card-rewards</a>

vox The ugly truth behind your fancy rewards credit card

There is an entire ecosystem dedicated to gaming the credit card rewards system — the Points Guy , who has made himself a household name, a...

There are two kinds of GOP attacks on democracy — and one is much worse

Democrats — and democracy — won what is likely to be a very temporary victory in Texas this past weekend.
On Sunday evening, Texas Republicans expected to pass <a href="https://lrl.texas.gov/scanned/87ccrs/sb0007.pdf#navpanes=0">Senate Bill 7</a>, which contains several provisions making it harder to cast a ballot in Texas. But Democrats took advantage of two procedural constraints to temporarily block the bill.
The legislative session expired at midnight, placing a hard deadline on all bills that Texas lawmakers hoped to enact, and the state House must have two-thirds of its members present to conduct business. So Democrats ran out the clock by <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/30/texas-voting-restrictions-house/">abandoning the House chamber</a> before Republicans could call a vote on the bill.
The previous day, however, something even more surprising happened. Though Republicans were united behind passing some kind of voter suppression bill, the state House and state Senate versions of the bill were quite different. On Saturday, a conference committee made up of members of both houses released the version of the bill they expected to pass on Sunday — and it stripped out many of the state Senate bill’s most aggressive provisions.
The Senate’s version of the bill, for example, would have strictly regulated where Texas’s largest counties — the ones that include big cities dominated by Democrats — are <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/4/19/22374521/texas-voting-laws-sb7-hb6">allowed to locate polling places</a>. Had this provision passed, it was expected to <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/21/texas-voting-restrictions-senate-bill-7/">shut down many polling places in Democratic areas</a> with a large share of minority voters. But this provision was stripped during the conference committee.
Similarly, the conference committee dropped a vague provision that could have removed voters from the rolls after they are ”<a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/21/texas-voting-restrictions-senate-bill-7/">otherwise determined to be ineligible to vote</a>” — it wasn’t entirely clear how this determination would have been made under the deleted provision.
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<figcaption>Observers sit in the House chamber at the Texas Capitol waiting to hear debate on voter legislation on May 6.</figcaption>
<cite>Eric Gay/AP</cite></figure>
So has the fight to protect the right to vote been won in Texas? Hardly. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to <a href="https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/05/30/house-democrats-walk-killing-gop-election-bill-special-session-looms/5274617001/">call a special session</a> to ensure that new voter restrictions are passed. It’s also possible that some of the deleted provisions will be revived in this session.
But the fact that these provisions did not make it out of the conference committee suggests that there is some internal disagreement within the Texas GOP about how aggressively it plans to restrict the franchise. And this disagreement might offer small-d democrats a path forward when the special session happens.
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of voter suppression laws. Many provisions currently being pushed by Republican state lawmakers make it harder to cast a ballot in a certain way — such as by mailing in the ballot or placing it in a drop box. Or they place unnecessary procedural obstacles in the way of voters. These provisions often serve no purpose other than to make it more difficult to vote, but they also are <a href="https://www.vox.com/22307937/voting-rights-georgia-arizona-voting-by-mail-republican-absentee-donald-trump">not insurmountable obstacles</a>.
Other provisions are more virulent. They might disqualify voters for no valid reason. Or allow partisan officials to refuse to certify an election, even if there are no legitimate questions about who won. Or make it so difficult for some voters, who are likely to vote for the party that is out of power, to cast their ballot that it’s nigh impossible for the incumbent party to lose.
These are the sorts of provisions that are most likely to rig an election. Distinguishing between the two can be helpful as voting rights advocates have to choose their battles on multiple fronts.
Last week, the Atlantic’s Ronald Brownstein reported that the Biden White House is <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/05/biden-manchin-gop-voting-rights/619003/">surprisingly sanguine</a> about the latest round of voter suppression bills making their way through various state legislatures. “Although White House officials consider the laws offensive from a civil-rights perspective,” Brownstein wrote, “they do not think most of those laws will advantage Republicans in the 2022 and 2024 elections as much as many liberal activists fear.”
He also quoted an unnamed senior White House official, who summarized the case for optimism in the face of voter suppression. “I think our feeling is, show us what the rules are and we will figure out a way to educate our voters and make sure they understand how they can vote and we will get them out to vote,” this official said.
This feeling is not unique to the Biden administration. Last March, for example, MIT political scientist Charles Stewart offered me a <a href="https://www.vox.com/22307937/voting-rights-georgia-arizona-voting-by-mail-republican-absentee-donald-trump">similarly hopeful picture</a> of state lawmakers’ ability to skew elections by changing how they are administered.
“There is very little that politicians can do to alter election administration in such a way that it would have a permanent, obvious effect on turnout or the composition of the electorate,” Stewart told me in an email, adding that “the most important factor influencing turnout, both its level and composition, are the efforts by the campaigns to turn out voters.”
Take, for example, restrictions on absentee voting. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/4/9/21214821/trump-mail-in-voting-election-fraud-evidence-coronavirus">railed often against voting by mail</a>, often spouting falsehoods about voter fraud. And Trump’s voters appear to have taken his false rhetoric to heart — Democrats were much more likely to cast their votes by mail in 2020 than Republicans.
Georgia Republicans responded to this absentee voting gap by <a href="https://www.vox.com/22352112/georgia-voting-sb-202-explained">enacting several restrictions on voting by mail</a>, and Texas appears likely to add new limits to its <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/5/22/21265163/texas-voter-suppression-age-65-ken-paxton-democratic-party-abbott">already-restrictive laws governing absentee ballots</a>.
But it’s far from clear that these new restrictions will actually benefit Republicans in future elections. As Democratic data wizard David Shor told me in March, “if you look at the seven states that went from having very little vote by mail to having massive amounts (AL/CT/MO/MS/NJ/NY/PA), they <a href="https://www.vox.com/22307937/voting-rights-georgia-arizona-voting-by-mail-republican-absentee-donald-trump">trended about 0.2 percent toward Trump</a> relative to the other 43 states.” It does not appear that higher levels of absentee voting among Democrats led to higher overall turnout among Democrats, at least relative to their Republican neighbors.
Other studies suggest that Black voters mobilize in response to attacks on the right to vote, potentially neutralizing — or, at least, mitigating — the impact of those attacks.
<div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
New working paper finds evidence of ”the resilience of Black turnout,” despite Supreme Court decision that limited voting rights. Results are consistent with other studies finding Black voters mobilize in face of ”perceived threats to the franchise.” <a href="https://t.co/mZny9433Gd">https://t.co/mZny9433Gd</a> <a href="https://t.co/Q6xqiHXS7U">pic.twitter.com/Q6xqiHXS7U</a>
— Omar Wasow (@owasow) <a href="https://twitter.com/owasow/status/1369328046134595584?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 9, 2021</a></blockquote>
</div>
But not every provision of the latest round of voter suppression bills can be overcome either by vigilant voters or by smart campaigns.
Georgia’s new law, for example, permits state-level Republican officials to <a href="https://www.vox.com/22352112/georgia-voting-sb-202-explained">take over local election boards</a> in Democratic strongholds such as Atlanta. That matters because these local boards can potentially <a href="https://www.ajc.com/politics/georgia-bill-would-shift-power-over-elections-to-gop-appointees/VPNVO2W4TBBTFKGA7Z2GZIEQEE/">close polling places, disqualify voters, or even refuse to certify an election result</a>. Voters who do everything right might nonetheless have their ballots disqualified.
Similarly, a provision of the Texas bill that survived the conference committee requires county election officials to “develop a remediation plan” to conduct “<a href="https://lrl.texas.gov/scanned/87ccrs/sb0007.pdf#navpanes=0">voter roll maintenance</a>” if the “county has a number of registered voters equal to or greater than the number of people eligible to register to vote in the county.” Counties that do not comply with this provision may face fines of $1,000 a day.
There’s nothing nefarious about a county’s list of registered voters exceeding the number of eligible voters in that county — people move and people die, and they typically do not notify election officials when they do so. But this provision of the Texas bill risks purging voters from the election rolls who complied with the law governing voter registration, and who have every right to vote. As my colleague Zack Beauchamp <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/4/19/22374521/texas-voting-laws-sb7-hb6">wrote about the provision</a>, “voting rights activists worry that this is a backdoor effort to revive a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/05/28/727528998/texas-voting-chief-who-led-botched-voter-purge-resigns">2019 voter purge struck down in court</a>, an effort that tried to kick tens of thousands of recently naturalized voters off the rolls by using outdated citizenship status for them.”
State lawmakers in 2021, moreover, haven’t even begun to consider the most common kind of law that seeks to make the results of an election impervious to the will of the voters: gerrymandering. The Census Bureau expects to <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/statement-redistricting-data-timeline.html">provide states with the data they need</a> to draw new congressional and state legislative districts this fall. Once that data is available, states like Georgia and Texas are likely to draw maps that seek to entrench Republican rule as much as possible. (Democrats also engage in gerrymandering, but blue states are more likely to use independent commissions to draw district lines, or to <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/redistricting/redistricting-systems-a-50-state-overview.aspx">have other safeguards that limit partisan redistricting</a>.)
Gerrymanders can potentially make the fight to control a legislative body all but impervious to the will of the voters. In 2018, for example, Democratic candidates for the Wisconsin state assembly received 54 percent of the popular vote, but <a href="https://www.vox.com/21336225/voting-rights-senate-electoral-college-gerrymandering-supreme-court">Republicans won nearly two-thirds of the seats</a>.
To be clear, the point of drawing a distinction between voter suppression tactics that can be overcome through campaigning and voter education and the sort that can only be overcome through legal means, such as a federal voting rights statute, isn’t to diminish outrage over the first kind of law. An attack on democracy is still an attack on democracy, even if it is ineffective.
Rather, the point is that defenders of democracy should be especially vigilant in seeking to defeat the second kind of law using whatever means are available to them.
For the moment, federal voting rights legislation is effectively being blocked by Democratic senators such as Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), who <a href="https://www.vox.com/22319564/filibuster-reform-manchin-democrats-nuclear-option">insist on preserving a filibuster rule</a> that allows Republicans to veto nearly all federal bills. Should these senators relent — or should Democrats gain seats in the Senate despite the GOP’s anti-democratic tactics — congressional Democrats will still face a difficult intraparty negotiation over how to address voting rights.
Yes, the House did pass the For the People Act, a comprehensive voting rights bill, earlier this year. But it’s relatively easy to pass an ambitious bill through one house of Congress when it has little chance of becoming law. It’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/22346812/voting-rights-bill-hr1-for-the-people-act">much harder to convince a majority of the legislature to pass the same bill</a> when the lawmakers will have to live with whatever new law they enact. And, of course, if any bill has a shot of passing the current Congress, it must win the approval of conservative Democrats such as Manchin and Sinema — the former of whom has signaled that he would <a href="https://www.vox.com/22434054/joe-manchin-voting-rights-act-for-the-people-john-lewis-preclearance-filibuster-senate">prefer a different approach</a> to the one taken by the For the People Act.
If Democrats are able to pass a less ambitious voting rights bill than the For the People Act, they would be wise to identify which state-level voter suppression tactics can be overcome through campaigning and voter education, and which ones are likely to skew elections unless Congress intervenes — and to focus on defeating the latter sort of tactics.
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<figcaption>House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic caucus gather for a press conference addressing the passage of the For the People Act on March 3.</figcaption>
<cite>J. Scott Applewhite/AP</cite></figure>
Similarly, several major companies denounced Georgia’s voter suppression law, and more than 100 corporate executives reportedly met to <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2021/4/5/22368566/corporate-response-georgia-sb202">discuss how to defeat similar attacks on democracy</a>. These companies are likely to have more leverage over Republican state lawmakers than, say, Democratic state lawmakers or voting rights groups. And, while they may not have enough leverage to kill a voter suppression law outright, they may be able to pressure Republican lawmakers into removing some of the most aggressive provisions.
Finally, Democratic lawyers have limited resources to challenge anti-democratic laws. And judges who support voting rights may wish to weaken such laws but may also be cautious about handing down a pro-democracy decision that would be reversed by higher courts — including a Supreme Court that is <a href="https://www.vox.com/21211880/supreme-court-chief-justice-john-roberts-voting-rights-act-election-2020">quite skeptical of voting rights</a>.
But lower courts can still play an important role in protecting voting rights — in the past several years, for example, state and federal judges in states like Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/11/20857934/republican-gerrymandering-north-carolina-michigan">weakened or outright dismantled gerrymanders in those states</a>. The Supreme Court is likely to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/5/8/22422768/supreme-court-voting-rights-florida-georgia-ron-desantis-john-roberts-suppression-crawford-shelby">impose new limits on the judiciary’s power to protect democracy</a>, but sufficiently cautious judges may be able to neutralize some of the most aggressive attacks on the franchise.
The Republican Party wields a tremendous amount of power in the United States, in the Senate, in state legislatures, and especially in the judiciary. It is likely that many of the GOP’s attempts to restrict the franchise will endure.
But that doesn’t mean that all of these laws will survive intact. Both the Democratic Party and small-d democrats have limited ability to challenge such laws. But if they are fortunate, they may be able to eliminate at least some of the worst provisions.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22463490/voting-rights-democracy-texas-georgia-suppression-jim-crow-supreme-court-sb7">https://www.vox.com/22463490/voting-rights-democracy-texas-georgia-suppression-jim-crow-supreme-court-sb7</a>

vox There are two kinds of GOP attacks on democracy — and one is much worse

Democrats — and democracy — won what is likely to be a very temporary victory in Texas this past weekend. On Sunday evening, Texas Republic...

Guaranteed income is graduating from charity to public policy

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It seems like everywhere you look in the US these days, new guaranteed income pilot programs are springing up. Over the past month or so, they’ve launched in <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/njs-largest-city-launches-6000-guaranteed-income-pilot-program/3046337/">Newark, New Jersey</a>, <a href="https://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/op-ed/article251414503.html?bm-verify=AAQAAAAD_____226REin4GrBsibXvWcykIsUysN6mVB55DSnMFl8BbBBwVEikUUyMXklR2KpXPuX8xz21pJdbkBtW26ap4KSigaHX8V2Cvxu-pezP4BTiOs-PkuM8-M8_Y5B6CnCL8v6JNM17IrSEJO_6Xb7d5j0FY4IVr3Q-JZiyN-hAtX3f3ldyF0qIHj58Y2oFB6QDjCxqpWy8uWP6vZLAm4ASwYfo1NEFjnRSxz-J3cSl4eyvQA8kb8WZTLwU1xeTe7Y4xIV2GQa4u_i9jhv__OKTt9AJdP3QxJpPVl3uB6VSg4jzXyZ8C728g">Tacoma, Washington</a>, <a href="https://yourhub.denverpost.com/blog/2021/05/denver-to-be-first-city-piloting-a-guaranteed-basic-income-for-individuals-experiencing-homelessness/277413/">Denver, Colorado</a>, <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/4/19/cambridge-guaranteed-income-pilot/">Cambridge, Massachusetts</a>, and <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/la-county-approves-pilot-program-for-guaranteed-basic-income/2598398/">Los Angeles County, California</a>.
“Guaranteed income” is similar to, but not quite the same as, universal basic income (UBI). Whereas UBI aims to offer enough money for a basic subsistence living to every single adult, guaranteed income might provide a more modest amount — less than enough to live on — to a more targeted group of people (say, the lowest-income people in the population). It can still be life-changing for those who receive it.
So it was a big deal when California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on May 14 that he’s including <a href="https://abc7.com/universal-basic-income-california-newsom/10634360/">$35 million</a> in his state budget to help pay for local governments to launch their own guaranteed income pilots targeting low-income families. (Individual cities or counties are expected to supplement the funding for the pilots through taxpayer dollars or private donations.)
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That announcement was dubbed “monumental” by Michael Tubbs, the former mayor of Stockton, California, who spearheaded a <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22313272/stockton-basic-income-guaranteed-free-money">successful 2017 pilot program</a> there <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/10/8/20902839/universal-basic-income-stockton-trial?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Future%20Perfect%206-1-21&utm_content=Future%20Perfect%206-1-21+CID_d302679f2f771461d9fff8920e3cd5cd&utm_source=cm_email&utm_term=offering%20500%20to%20some%20residents">offering $500 to some residents</a> with no strings attached, and who last year <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/7/21/21327413/basic-income-guaranteed-income-ubi-michael-tubbs-keisha-lance-bottoms-eric-garcetti">created the organization Mayors for a Guaranteed Income</a>. In an emailed statement, Tubbs said Californa’s investment marks “the largest commitment of recurring cash in a state budget — and the first time a state has ever supported guaranteed income pilot funding.”
I called Tubbs to talk about why this is a major inflection point in the movement for guaranteed income and how the idea of giving people “free money” is graduating from <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/19/21112570/universal-basic-income-ubi-map">Silicon Valley-funded charity trials</a> to government policy. Direct cash payments have gained popularity as a policy tool during the pandemic — and for good reason: As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/us/politics/stimulus-checks-economic-hardship.html?partner=slack&smid=sl-share">a new analysis of Census Bureau surveys</a> shows, Americans experienced dramatic declines in food shortages, financial instability, and anxiety after receiving stimulus checks. Such findings can help build broad support for a guaranteed income.
A transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, follows.
<h4>Sigal Samuel</h4>
Do you have the sense that the idea of “free money” is growing up?
<h4>Michael Tubbs</h4>
Yes. I remember when we announced Stockton’s pilot in 2017, everyone looked at me like I was crazy. But I think we’ve seen, particularly in the last year where our main response to the pandemic was cash — from stimulus checks to unemployment insurance to child tax credits — that that was literally how we made it through the Covid-19 pandemic. So I think it’s absolutely become more mainstream.
Now you have 53 mayors across this country who are saying they’re supportive of a guaranteed income. In 2017, there was one.
<h4>Sigal Samuel</h4>
Funding for these pilots used to come mainly from Silicon Valley technologists and their foundations. I’m thinking of charitable giving from people like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey or Facebook co-founder <a href="https://voxcom.cmail20.com/t/d-l-qdhfhl-jytjceij-m/">Chris Hughes</a>. Now with California’s announcement, funding is starting to come from states, too — so “free money” is moving from the realm of charity into the realm of policy. Is that a big milestone?
<h4>Michael Tubbs</h4>
Absolutely! When we started the pilot in Stockton, I said it’s not going to be sustainable with philanthropic dollars, with kindness dollars. At some point it’s going to have to come from all of us, from tax dollars. And maybe we should have a conversation about our tax code, so those who are able to give money can give, but through the tax system.
Now having state-infused dollars saying it’s important for the government to study this — it gets us one step closer to a policy.
<h4>Sigal Samuel</h4>
So what do you think should now be the role for the Silicon Valley tech bro megadonors? Do you want them to remain invested and interested in donating to this cause but not be the main funders anymore?
<h4>Michael Tubbs</h4>
No, I’m different than a lot of people. To me, it’s how you use the money. I think it’s great and I’ve been so blessed to have the support of folks like Jack Dorsey and Chris Hughes. I think they’ve been good models. Chris has set up a whole organization [the <a href="https://www.economicsecurityproject.org/">Economic Security Project</a>] around advocacy and research and policy — like, how do you make this a policy? Jack has supported the research and advocacy efforts.
I think it’s all about figuring out how do we move from pilot to policy. And when the conversation comes about how do we raise revenue — having these same folks also lead [the conversation] about the ways we should increase revenue, which may include increasing their taxes slightly, and asking them to own that and say, “Yes, this is important.”
I think it’s one thing for me with no money to talk about “yes, we should increase the marginal tax rate; yes, we should look at the capital gains tax; yes, we should look at everything at our disposal to pay for this” — and it’s another thing for someone who’d actually be impacted by that to lead on that. For me, that would be a great sign of leadership.
<h4>Sigal Samuel</h4>
When thinking about universal basic income versus guaranteed income, do you see one as more ideal than the other? In your mind, is the ultimate goal to end up with UBI as federal policy, but you’re just starting with guaranteed income because it’s easier to sell people on?
<h4>Michael Tubbs</h4>
My whole focus is I am committed to getting rid of poverty. Getting a guaranteed income is something that seems much more politically feasible in this moment, and it helps me achieve my objective.
I will say, though, that with automation and the way work will change, at some point this country will have to reckon with the idea of a universal basic income. UBI makes sense, and it’s going to make even more sense as we see automation [causing job] displacement. But guaranteed income makes a lot of sense today. I want to make sure we get to those who absolutely need it today and then we build to a point where we get it to everyone.
I think a guaranteed income puts us in a better position to implement a universal basic income.
<h4>Sigal Samuel</h4>
So you see it as a stepping stone?
<h4>Michael Tubbs</h4>
Yes, I see it as a stepping stone. But in terms of my main objective, it is the stone.
<h4>Sigal Samuel</h4>
UBI has typically been framed as a response to automation-induced joblessness, but guaranteed income is framed these days more as a way to address economic and racial inequality. How did that framing come about?
<h4>Michael Tubbs</h4>
Mayors for a Guaranteed Income was created as a response to the murder of George Floyd. A year ago when George Floyd was murdered, I was still mayor and I was talking to some of my mayor friends about how Dr. [Martin Luther] King called for a guaranteed income in 1967, which was another time of racial unrest in this country. He looked at the protests, at the uprisings, and he talked about a guaranteed income. I told them [the mayors], this is what we’re called to do in this moment. We can respond to the demands of our constituents, which aren’t just about police brutality but also about the violence of poverty, about structural violence.
We know that financial insecurity is a widespread issue in this country, but it’s acutely an issue in communities of color. We saw the ways in which Covid-19 exacerbated and showed how all our systems have failed people of color. That’s why we started Mayors for a Guaranteed Income ... because guaranteed income is also about building economic resilience. So when pandemics happen, when calamity happens, people are in a better position to pivot.
<h4>Sigal Samuel</h4>
Do you view <a href="https://voxcom.cmail20.com/t/d-l-qdhfhl-jytjceij-c/">Biden’s child tax credit</a>, which makes money available to all parents as a monthly check (though only for the duration of the pandemic crisis), as a form of guaranteed income?
<h4>Michael Tubbs</h4>
Absolutely. That is a big, big deal. It’s a guaranteed income for families with children. It’s amazing. And it needs to be permanent — that’s the first fight that we all should be focused on.
<h4>Sigal Samuel</h4>
And how bullish does it make you about the prospects of guaranteed income becoming federal policy in the near future? Is that realistic?
<h4>Michael Tubbs</h4>
It’s already federal policy for a year — we just have to make it permanent! And Sen. [Cory] Booker, Sen. Sherrod Brown, and others are really <a href="https://voxcom.cmail20.com/t/d-l-qdhfhl-jytjceij-q/">fighting to make this child tax credit permanent</a>.
And there are bills in Congress talking about guaranteed income. Then-senator, now-VP [Kamala] Harris had her LIFT Act — $500 a month every month to every family making $100,000 or less — which is a form of guaranteed income [though one where <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/19/17995374/kamala-harris-lift-act-basic-income-cash-eitc">recipients must be working</a> to benefit]. And Rep. [Bonnie] Watson Coleman, Rep. [Ilhan] Omar, and others have <a href="https://voxcom.cmail20.com/t/d-l-qdhfhl-jytjceij-a/">put forward guaranteed income bills</a>.
So I do think it’s realistic. Not only realistic — it’s a necessity. This could be our generation’s Social Security.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2021/6/3/22463776/guaranteed-universal-basic-income-charity-policy">https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2021/6/3/22463776/guaranteed-universal-basic-income-charity-policy</a>

vox Guaranteed income is graduating from charity to public policy

It seems like everywhere you look in the US these days, new guaranteed income pilot programs are springing up. Over the past month or so, t...

Theodore Shoebat debates American convert to Eastern Orthodoxy

armageddon Theodore Shoebat debates American convert to Eastern Orthodoxy

I recently debated an American convert to Eastern Orthodoxy and it was interesting to say the least: [embedded content] source https://...

136 Children Kidnapped From Islamic School In Nigeria

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="136 Children Kidnapped From Islamic School In Nigeria" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-06/6q41n6jg_nigeriaschoolafp650_625x300_03_June_21.jpg" title="136 Children Kidnapped From Islamic School In Nigeria" /></div>
Nigeria: The Niger state government said it did not pay ransoms.
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Abuja:
Gunmen seized 136 children from an Islamic seminary in central Nigeria at the weekend, the state government said, the latest in a string of such incidents plaguing Africa's most populous nation.
The Niger state government first reported the raid on the school in the town of Tegina on Monday, but did not indicate the number of children seized.
Armed gangs are terrorising inhabitants in northwest and central Nigeria by looting villages, stealing cattle, and taking people hostage.
More than 700 children and students have already been kidnapped by gunmen for ransom since December.
"Niger State Government has confirmed the number of students abducted by bandits at the Salihu Tanko Islamic School, Tegina... to be 136," the local government wrote on Twitter late on Wednesday.
The state deputy governor Alh Ahmed Mohammed Ketso said that security agencies were "doing their best but don't have enough logistics," adding that more help was needed to equip them to confront the criminals.
The attackers did release 11 of the pupils who were "too small and couldn't walk" very far, the authorities previously said.
The Niger state government said it did not pay ransoms.
"We are trying to negotiate to see how we can bring them back safely," the deputy governor said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/nigeria-136-children-kidnapped-from-islamic-school-2455421">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/nigeria-136-children-kidnapped-from-islamic-school-2455421</a>

news world 136 Children Kidnapped From Islamic School In Nigeria

Nigeria: The Niger state government said it did not pay ransoms. Abuja: Gunmen seized 136 children from an Islamic seminary in central ...