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Levi’s Brand President Says She Was Offered $1 Million to Shut Up About Being Fired Over Criticizing COVID Restrictions

Levi’s former Brand President Jennifer Sey claims she was offered $1 million dollars by the company to stay silent about why she was fired – for her criticism of COVID restrictions and particularly the closure of schools.
Sey made the assertion in an article posted to the <a href="https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/yesterday-i-was-levis-brand-president?r=rael8">Common Sense channel</a> on Substack run by Bari Weiss.
The gymnast had worked with Levi’s for two decades having previously competed at the 1986 Goodwill Games in Russia.
However, she was fired after being targeted by a mob campaign because she dared to suggest that making children wear masks and forcing them to miss school might be harmful.
“Anonymous trolls on Twitter, some with nearly half a million followers, said people should boycott Levi’s until I’d been fired,” Sey wrote. “So did some of my old gymnastics fans. They called the company ethics hotline and sent emails.”
As we previously <a href="https://summit.news/2022/01/27/speech-therapist-364-surge-in-baby-and-toddler-referrals-thanks-to-mask-wearing/">highlighted</a>, Sey is completely correct in her criticism given that speech therapists are now reporting a 364% increase in patient referrals of babies and toddlers over developmental disorders caused by mask wearing.
After CEO Charles Bergh told Sey that if she stopped speaking out, she’d eventually become the company’s next CEO, Sey briefly muted her dissent.
However, thanks to the mob pressure, Sey was told her position was “untenable” and was then offered $1 million dollars to not reveal why she was fired.
“The money would be very nice. But I just can’t do it. Sorry, Levi’s,” wrote Sey.
“I never set out to be a contrarian. I don’t like to fight. I love Levi’s and its place in the American heritage as a purveyor of sturdy pants for hardworking, daring people who moved West and dreamed of gold buried in the dirt.”
“But the corporation doesn’t believe in that now.”
“It’s trapped trying to please the mob—and silencing any dissent within the organization. In this it is like so many other American companies: held hostage by intolerant ideologues who do not believe in genuine inclusion or diversity.”
Revealing that she was also labeled “racist” for speaking out against COVID restrictions, Sey wrote that she decided to keep her voice rather than take the money.
“Early on in the pandemic, I publicly questioned whether schools had to be shut down.”
“This didn’t seem at all controversial to me. I felt—and still do—that the draconian policies would cause the most harm to those least at risk, and the burden would fall heaviest on disadvantaged kids in public schools, who need the safety and routine of school the most.”
“In the summer of 2020, I finally got the call.”
“‘You know when you speak, you speak on behalf of the company,’ our head of corporate communications told me, urging me to pipe down.”
Despite pleading that she was merely speaking in a personal capacity as “a public school mom of four kids,” Sey said the final straw was when she appeared on Fox News with Laura Ingraham and criticized further school closures.
Levi Strauss & Co. subsequently released a false statement claiming Sey had “resigned from the company.”
In reality, she was fired after intense pressure and relentless phone calls from people at every level of the company, right up to the CEO.
But remember folks, cancel culture doesn’t exist!
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source <a href="https://summit.news/2022/02/16/levis-brand-president-says-she-was-offered-1-million-to-shut-up-about-being-fired-over-criticizing-covid-restrictions/">https://summit.news/2022/02/16/levis-brand-president-says-she-was-offered-1-million-to-shut-up-about-being-fired-over-criticizing-covid-restrictions/</a>

revolution summit Levi’s Brand President Says She Was Offered $1 Million to Shut Up About Being Fired Over Criticizing COVID Restrictions

Levi’s former Brand President Jennifer Sey claims she was offered $1 million dollars by the company to stay silent about why she was fired –...

The hidden reason Olympic sledding is so dangerous

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In recent years, the sliding community — made up of skeleton, bobsleigh, and luge athletes — has experienced a spate of brain injury-related tragedy. At first glance, the reason why seems obvious: Sleds regularly reach speeds that top 90 miles per hour and crashes are unfortunately common.
But there is growing research that shows it might be the act of sledding itself that is the main driver of brain injury. With every run, athletes are exposed to immense force and vibration, causing micro-concussions that can add up to major damage. Those concussions are mild enough that they can go undiagnosed. But among sledding athletes, the symptoms that indicate a micro-concussion — headaches, dizziness, etc. — are so common they have a special nickname: “sled head.”
There’s a lot science still doesn’t know about sled head, and about the brain in general. But from what we can tell, it’s pretty clear that sliding sports put the brain health of their athletes at risk.
Further reading:
You can find this video and the entire library of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLXo7UDZvByw2ixzpQCufnA">Vox’s videos on YouTube</a>.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/videos/22937802/sled-head-microconcussions-bobsled-luge">https://www.vox.com/videos/22937802/sled-head-microconcussions-bobsled-luge</a>

vox The hidden reason Olympic sledding is so dangerous

In recent years, the sliding community — made up of skeleton, bobsleigh, and luge athletes — has experienced a spate of brain injury-relate...

How history made this Atlanta neighborhood a secession battleground

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Some residents of Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood want a divorce. For more than a year, a secessionist movement has been brewing in Buckhead, a wealthy neighborhood of about 100,000 people on Atlanta’s north side. The movement claims to have raised millions of dollars, enlisted the support of Georgia gubernatorial candidate (and former senator) David Perdue, and deeply unnerved a city already split by race and class.
On her <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-american-divorce/id1346207297?i=1000551315288">debut episode</a> as co-host of <a href="https://www.vox.com/today-explained">Today, Explained</a>, Noel King reports from Atlanta, where she talked to supporters and detractors of the secession movement. Along the way, Noel explores the claim that secession would have far-reaching implications on Atlanta’s economy and public school system.
Listen to the full episode:
The Buckhead City movement mirrors other secession campaigns in recent American history. In Louisiana, residents of an unincorporated part of Baton Rouge Parish that is wealthier and whiter than the city of Baton Rouge voted in 2019 to leave the parish and form a separate city with a separate school district. In Alaska, a conservative community in Anchorage is seeking to break off and form its own city. And in rural Oregon, some residents are hoping to join Idaho.
Those seeking to keep Atlanta together argue that the secession movement is driven in part by racism, which King explores in interviews with proponents of the campaign on Today, Explained.
In preparation for the episode, she also spoke with historian Dan Immergluck, professor of urban studies at Georgia State University, who explained Buckhead’s rise as the most privileged community in Atlanta. Their conversation helps us answer the questions: Why this community? Why now?
Below is an excerpt, edited for length and clarity.
<h4>Noel King</h4>
What do you know about Buckhead these days?
<h4>Dan Immergluck</h4>
Buckhead is a very affluent part of the city of Atlanta. It’s on the north side, the far north side of the city, and a good chunk of it is composed primarily of very large, very expensive homes on large lots, homes that were built primarily before the 1940s and often quite a bit before that. There are some of them I would call mansions. This is traditionally the neighborhood of the biggest movers and shakers in the city and sometimes in the region; CEOs, high-priced lawyers, it’s a very affluent community. And on the east side along the expressway is an intense commercial district which has large office buildings and significant numbers of apartments also known for a lively nightlife, let’s put it that way. And also a large mall: The preeminent high-end mall in the city is in Buckhead.
<h4>Noel King</h4>
In addition to CEOs, I understand some of the Real Housewives live in Buckhead?
<h4>Dan Immergluck</h4>
Yes. A lot of drama — and also influencer houses. Some of these expensive homes have spread some controversy around. You know, sometimes music stars, but also influencers who will rent a house and create some hubbub in the community.
<h4>Noel King</h4>
All right. So we’ve got a sense of what it’s like now. It has a particular history. Tell me about the history of Buckhead.
<h4>Dan Immergluck</h4>
Well, Buckhead was a high-end white suburb during much of the 20th century. The white power structure really lived in Buckhead, primarily during the 20th century, and to some degree it still does. And during the 1940s, the longtime mayor, William Hartsfield, recognized that he could build up a coalition between the white, highly educated, affluent power structure and the Black power structure, often comprised of ministers, Black leaders, and Black businessmen. And he developed this coalition that Atlanta became famous for later in the century that some people called the Atlanta Urban Regime. The city was growing, the metro was growing, and increasingly the suburbs were growing and white flight was starting. But also the suburbs were where people were moving into the region — directly to the suburbs, particularly white people.
<h4>Noel King</h4>
And they weren’t bothering with the rest of the city?
<h4>Dan Immergluck</h4>
Yes. Increasingly, they were not coming to the city. This was 10 years or so before Brown v. Board of Education. Hartsfield recognizes that he needs to think about expanding the city to keep the kind of power balance in his favor so that the city doesn’t become all Black.
And then in 1944, a really important thing happens. The Supreme Court outlaws what had been an all-white Democratic primary, so Blacks were not allowed to vote in the Democratic Party primary. And of course, this is the south in the ’40s so the Democratic Party is the dominant party. And when that gets overturned, all of a sudden Black voting power becomes much more significant. And the threat of the Black power structure taking over the mayor’s office and the City Council becomes a real threat to Hartsfield. He argues that also what could happen is that the white working-class community could somehow expand Atlanta in a way that would take power from this coalition. But really, he’s about preserving corporate white power. And so he wants to expand the city quite dramatically.
Buckhead is the real prize. This is before the commercial district is so big, but still he wants to include it because of the tax base. He also expands Atlanta westward, and in 1952, the city basically triples in size.
<h4>Noel King</h4>
I think what you’re telling me is how Buckhead became part of Atlanta. Tell me how that unfolded.
<h4>Dan Immergluck</h4>
Sure. So during the ’40s, especially with the Supreme Court decision giving Blacks the ability to vote in the Democratic primary, Hartsfield puts forward a number of proposals to expand the city to annex suburbs. Some Black suburbs, but especially white suburbs and especially Buckhead. And he fails a couple of times, but in 1950, he puts forth this big plan for expansion. And in 1951, it goes through, and the city formally annexes to about what it is now. So the city basically triples in size.
<h4>Noel King</h4>
And when Hartsfield annexed Buckhead into Atlanta, that would have added how many people to the population of Atlanta?
<h4>Dan Immergluck</h4>
It added over 100,000 people.
<h4>Noel King</h4>
And almost all of them were —
<h4>Dan Immergluck</h4>
White. Almost all of them, well, a very large percentage of them were white.
<h4>Noel King</h4>
How does that change the balance of power?
<h4>Dan Immergluck</h4>
Well, it added half a dozen white city councilmen to the City Council, for one. It gave [Hartsfield], at least for the next 20 years, iron control of the city. So it kind of locked in the Black/white urban regime. It also gave that regime power during a really important part of the 20th century, right? The middle part of the 20th century is this period where cities are growing, the middle class is growing. And unlike some cities during this period, Atlanta retains this significant upper-income population. What they don’t retain in the middle part of the 20th century as much is the kind of white middle-class and working-class population. That population definitely flees the city. They go to the suburbs, they go to the suburbs and they create a set of working-class and middle-class white suburbs.
<h4>Noel King</h4>
Okay, so this is interesting. Hartsfield annexes a rich, majority-white area. Other white people get out of Atlanta and go to the suburbs. How did the people in Buckhead feel when Hartsfield annexed them into this city that they hadn’t been part of? Was there any resistance?
<h4>Dan Immergluck</h4>
There was some resistance, but generally this is a period of time ... and there was resistance that made him fail in the ’40s the first few times. But generally, Hartsfield basically says, “Look, if we leave the city to go on that trajectory, it’s going to be a Black-run city and that will create more problems.” So he basically scares Buckhead into saying (and this is ironic given what’s going on, given how fear is being used now in the opposite direction), “Do you want the primary city in the metro in Georgia to be Black led?”
<h4>Noel King</h4>
That is an extraordinary role reversal when we consider what’s going on now. Also worth noting Atlanta is a Black-led city.
<h4>Dan Immergluck</h4>
It is, and it has been since Maynard Jackson. But it is now, for the last couple of years, a minority-Black city. So it’s still Black led. But to some degree the question is how much longer? Because the city is about 52 percent non-Black at this point. But it is a real role reversal because the annexation was driven by racism, and the drive to secede is driven by racism.
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-american-divorce/id1346207297?i=1000551315288">Listen to the full Today, Explained episode</a> about Buckhead’s secession battle on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/today-explained/id1346207297?mt=2">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3MuYXJ0MTkuY29tL3RvZGF5LWV4cGxhaW5lZA%3D%3D">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/3pXx5SXzXwJxnf4A5pWN2A">Spotify</a>, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Today, Explained is celebrating its 1,000th episode! To celebrate with us, ask your friends and family to listen — it’s a huge help to grow our show.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/2/16/22937599/buckhead-atlanta-today-explained-noel-king">https://www.vox.com/2022/2/16/22937599/buckhead-atlanta-today-explained-noel-king</a>

vox How history made this Atlanta neighborhood a secession battleground

Some residents of Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood want a divorce. For more than a year, a secessionist movement has been brewing in Buckhea...

Noel King Debuts as Today, Explained Co-host

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/oIfJ6IRlKyMM_UlsINznxGAoWt4=/0x83:1714x980/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23250300/Show_Featuring_VOX_TodayExplained_copy.png" /></div>
Today marks Noel King’s debut episode as co-host of Vox’s flagship daily news podcast, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Ht2ITQYRzLHxUUIFY5JLe?si=5507e9f11c4b48ec&nd=1">Today, Explained</a> alongside co-host and Vox Audio Creative Director Sean Rameswaram. In their first episode together – also the show’s 1,000th episode – King reports on a “civil divorce” underway in Atlanta.
King’s on-the-ground reporting looks at the wealthy Buckhead neighborhood where some residents are moving to secede from Atlanta proper due to rising poverty and crime rates. King spoke with community members who are pro and anti-secession. This episode provides an intimate look at an issue that illustrates the broader divisions plaguing the country from a community in Anchorage, Alaska to states like Idaho and Oregon.
King and Rameswaram will share hosting duties going forward, allowing the show to be more experimental in style and format, do more field reporting and longer-term projects, and be more responsive to listener questions and requests.
Today, Explained will be making its terrestrial radio debut this spring through a partnership with WNYC.
King joined Vox in January from NPR, where she was a co-host of Morning Edition and Up First. She was part of a team of NPR journalists who won an Edward R. Murrow Award in 2020 for their reporting along the US/Mexico border on the Trump administration’s Remain in Mexico policy. In addition, she has reported on a range of issues, from the U.S.’s 2021 election to the Arab Spring.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/2/16/22937700/noel-king-debuts-as-today-explained-co-host">https://www.vox.com/2022/2/16/22937700/noel-king-debuts-as-today-explained-co-host</a>

vox Noel King Debuts as Today, Explained Co-host

Today marks Noel King’s debut episode as co-host of Vox’s flagship daily news podcast, Today, Explained alongside co-host and Vox Audio Cr...

SpaceX and our space junk problem

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It’s been a bit of an up-and-down month for SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket ship and satellite internet company.
The bad news: A solar storm sent 40 of its Starlink satellites plunging back to Earth. They’ll <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/09/science/spacex-satellites-storm.html">burn up</a> in the Earth’s atmosphere, costing the company as much as $100 million and casting fresh doubts on Musk’s big plans for the satellite internet on top of those recently expressed by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/28/tech/elon-musk-china-spacex-satellite-collision-intl-hnk/index.html">China</a> and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/spacexs-plans-to-send-thousands-more-satellites-into-orbit-worry-nasa-11644921000?mod=rss_Technology">NASA</a>. The good news? <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/an-old-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-will-soon-crash-into-the-moon/">All</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jan/26/out-of-control-spacex-rocket-on-track-to-collide-with-the-moon">of</a> <a href="https://gizmodo.com/a-spacex-rocket-is-going-to-slam-into-the-moon-1848424992">those</a> <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2022/01/31/can-elon-musk-get-sued-for-crashing-a-rocket-on-the-moon/">reports</a> that a SpaceX rocket was about to crash into the moon were wrong: The rocket belongs to someone else.
The error highlights the <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22589197/space-travel-tourism-bezos-branson-rockets-blue-origin-virgin-galactic-spacex">growing problem of all the junk</a> we, as a planet, shoot into space and how we deal with it (or not, as the case may be). Not everything we send up comes down, and some of it gets lost. That’s especially true once it leaves Earth’s orbit because there’s no one officially tracking our space litter out there. Basically, we’re leaving it up to a handful of dedicated astronomers who do it as a hobby.
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One of those astronomers is Bill Gray. He developed software called Project Pluto, which is used to track objects in space. A few weeks ago, he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/26/science/spacex-rocket-crash-moon.html">announced</a> that part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket would crash into the moon on March 4. Numerous news stories followed (Musk-related disasters tend to grab headlines), but any hopes that Musk would get knocked down a peg came crashing back to Earth a few days ago. Gray announced that he made a mistake: The wayward object is most likely the booster for China’s Chang’e 5-T1 <a href="https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=2014-065A">rocket</a>, which was launched in 2014.
Perhaps surprisingly, this case of mistaken identity isn’t hard to make, even for the relatively few people who track these kinds of things all the time. Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, explained that it’s difficult to pinpoint an uncontrolled object’s exact path through space. There are plenty of variables out there that can change the object’s trajectory, and even a small change adds up over time and distance.
Also — and this is the heart of the problem — we aren’t really tracking these things anyway.
We have a good idea of what’s orbiting the Earth, especially if those objects are sending signals back to us or if they’re in a position to endanger anything or anyone in Earth orbit (or on the Earth itself). And we know where important scientific things like <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/24/22895050/nasa-jwst-space-telescope-final-orbit-lagrange-point">space telescopes</a>, <a href="https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/current-satellite-missions/currently-flying/dscovr-deep-space-climate-observatory">deep space weather satellites</a>, and <a href="https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/">probes</a> are.
But a piece of space debris — a discarded rocket stage, let’s just say — floating around well beyond Earth’s orbit is more of a curiosity than a concern. Since there aren’t any rules for tracking the stuff we launch into deep space, the only information we may have to go on is launch data and observations from astronomers who happen to catch it on its merry way across the night sky, assuming it’s even close enough to be visible.
The rocket mix-up happened years ago, Gray told the New York Times. He <a href="https://projectpluto.com/temp/dscovr.htm">computed the orbit</a> of an object first observed in March 2015 and found that it had passed the moon about a month earlier. That matched with what he believed was the flight path of a <a href="https://www.space.com/28481-spacex-launches-dscovr-satellite.html">recent SpaceX launch</a>, so Gray was fairly certain the object was a discarded rocket booster from that launch.
It was only after he announced that a SpaceX rocket was going to crash into the moon that he realized it wasn’t launched toward the moon at all, so it likely wasn’t the object. But China’s Chang’e 5-T1 rocket launched in October 2014 was sent toward the moon, making it the new (and current) most likely suspect. Also helpful, McDowell said: An amateur radio satellite from Luxembourg <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/first-privately-funded-moon-mission-ride-chinese-rocket-180953094/">hitched a ride</a> on that rocket booster, providing several days of orbital data. Once the SpaceX rocket was ruled out, they realized they were likely looking at the Chinese rocket instead.
If this all seems like a disturbing amount of guesswork, fortunately, when it comes to stuff that could crash into the Earth, we’re a <a href="https://www.vox.com/a/asteroid-day">little more diligent</a>. Self-interest, along with the knowledge of what <a href="https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/dinosaur-extinction.html">likely happened</a> to the dinosaurs, is a powerful motivator. Which is why, since 1998, NASA has been operating the <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/keeping-an-eye-on-space-rocks">Center for Near-Earth Object Studies</a>, which tracks potentially hazardous objects so we can identify and, if necessary, stop collisions that would otherwise be catastrophic. More specifically, the center watches for asteroids and comets that are large enough and will pass close enough to our planet — less than 4.6 million miles is considered “close” — to pose a potential threat to it.
Other than that, NASA told Recode that it’s really in the business of tracking space debris only when that debris could endanger NASA’s assets. The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies did end up helping to figure out who the rocket likely belongs to, but that was only in response to the attention it got over its impending demise. The United States Space Force also tracks orbital debris but didn’t respond to request for comment on if or how it tracks debris in lunar orbit.
“Things that are more than, say, 100,000 kilometers up? Space Force doesn’t care,” McDowell said. “It’s a sufficiently small amount of traffic. There’s not really a risk of them hitting each other.”
This won’t be the first time a man-made object has crashed into the moon. While purposely crashing objects into planetary bodies seems more in the fictional realm of a James Bond villain, <a href="https://www.cbr.com/gi-joe-dumbest-cobra-plots-ever/">Cobra Commander</a>, or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFtR9bQupak&ab_channel=UnitedGlobalPictures">George Méliès</a>, it does happen. Last November, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/24/science/nasa-dart-mission-asteroid.html">NASA launched a rocket</a> into an asteroid to see if we can push asteroids off course if one ever threatens to hit Earth. And, in 2009, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/overview/index.html">NASA</a> threw a rocket into a moon crater to see if there was any water in the crater. And there are several more missions to various planets from multiple countries that end with the spacecraft crashing into the bodies they’re orbiting after they run out of fuel or complete their missions.
Unintentional crashes are rarer, but we had a fairly recent example back in 2019, when an Israeli company’s moon mission ended with the lander crashing, possibly spilling on its surface the <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/8/6/20756844/tardigrade-moon-beresheet-arch-mission">thousands of tardigrades</a> that were along for the ride. Oops. Prior to that, we <a href="https://www.livescience.com/65218-moon-crash-beresheet.html">hadn’t had</a> an accidental moon crash since 1971. At least, not one that we know of.
“This is probably not the first time that this has happened,” McDowell said. “It’s just the first time that we’ve been paying enough attention to notice.”
What we now think is the Chang’e 5-T1 rocket booster is set to hit the moon on March 4 at around 7:30 in the morning. If you’re hoping to see it, you’re out of luck: It will hit the far side of the moon, which means it won’t be visible to us now or ever. The moon’s rotation is <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/never-see-far-side-moon">locked with the Earth’s</a>, so we always see the same side of it. But it is possible that some of the objects in lunar orbit will get an image of the crater it leaves. NASA told Recode that its lunar orbiter won’t be in a position to see the impact, but it will look for the crater. It could take “weeks or months” to find it.
McDowell said he hopes this incident will make the general public aware of the gaps in our knowledge when it comes to man-made objects floating around deep space, wherever they are. He’d like to see an international database of all launches with their trajectories, as well as funding for at least one person to track them. That’s going to be especially important in the coming decades as the amount of lunar traffic increases and the number of countries and private companies creating it do, too. We have a chance now to prepare for later.
“It’s getting confusing out there. Let’s get organized,” McDowell said.
As for the location of that SpaceX rocket that was initially blamed for the upcoming moon crash? We can only guess at it. Perhaps we’ll see it again someday, but no one seems to know for sure.
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source <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22937555/spacex-moon-space-junk">https://www.vox.com/recode/22937555/spacex-moon-space-junk</a>

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It’s been a bit of an up-and-down month for SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket ship and satellite internet company. The bad news: A solar storm se...

Immigrants could help the US labor shortage — if the government would let them

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/FFkvDCtbyRUC9sGM0iokG1r4mt8=/0x0:4800x2513/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23248342/1238190289.jpg" /></div>
Amid nationwide labor shortages in critical industries, more than a million immigrants are waiting on the US government to issue them work permits. Without these permits, many could lose their jobs, and some already have.
Biraj Nepal, a Nepali asylum seeker living in Woodland, California, has been working as a software engineer in the IT department of a bank for the last four years. Nepal went on unpaid administrative leave starting on January 26 because his work permit expired and the government has yet to process his renewal application. That has left his employer in a lurch: There’s long been a shortage of IT workers, and the pandemic accelerated that trend as companies went remote. Now, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/29/labor-outranks-cyber-threats-as-biggest-concern-for-tech-companies-.html">nearly a third</a> of IT executives say that the search for qualified employees has gotten “significantly harder.”
If Nepal isn’t issued a new work permit within 90 days of taking administrative leave, his company will, by law, no longer need to hold his job for him and will likely look for a contractor to fill his role. Under normal circumstances, that wouldn’t be a concern; work permits are meant to be issued quickly so that immigrants can be self-sufficient even while they are waiting on other applications for visas and green cards, which can take months or years to process. But the backlog at US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has reached crisis level.
“It’s a critical situation here. I’m in a financial crisis,” Nepal said. “We are being punished by the government without doing any crime.”
It only takes about <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-wont-force-feds-to-speed-up-work-permit-renewals-for-asylum-seekers/">12 minutes</a> for an official to review an application for a work permit, but an overstretched USCIS still hasn’t been able to keep up. It’s a symptom of broader dysfunction in America’s legal immigration system, which has not seen major reform in decades and was a <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/president-trump-reduced-legal-immigration-he-did-not-reduce-illegal-immigration">target</a> of former President Donald Trump.
USCIS is now taking about eight months to a year to issue work permits at the National Benefits Center, its main processing center. Federal law directs that the agency take no longer than 180 days to process those applications. It was <a href="https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/historic-pt">abiding by that timeframe pre-pandemic</a>, but that’s <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-wont-force-feds-to-speed-up-work-permit-renewals-for-asylum-seekers/">not a hard legal requirement</a>. It’s taking so long to issue new permits that, according to the <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/Quarterly_All_Forms_FY2021Q4.pdf">latest available data</a> from the agency, the backlog stood at more than 1.48 million pending applications as of the end of September. The agency doesn’t track the number of people who have lost their jobs as a result.
This bureaucratic backlog is a problem for immigrants who are applying for work permits for the first time and for those who are seeking to renew their employment authorization. The permits are typically valid for two years and are automatically extended for 180 days, but after that, an immigrant can no longer legally work.
The delay is affecting a range of immigrants, from asylum seekers to beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. There were <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm">nearly 11 million</a> open jobs as of the end of December, many in industries ranging from tech to trucking that need every worker they can get right now. Those industries heavily <a href="https://www.vox.com/business-and-finance/2021/10/26/22733082/labor-shortage-inflation-immigration-foreign-workers">rely on immigrant workers</a>, and due to pandemic-era policies that have prevented <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/02/11/opinion/one-clear-answer-us-labor-shortages-let-more-immigrants/">some 2 million new immigrants</a> from coming to the US, the available supply of those workers is smaller than it otherwise would be. The US needs to leverage its existing immigrant workforce, but the work permit backlog is standing in the way.
“We’ve now heard from 2,000 of our members who have lost their jobs or are about to lose their jobs because they haven’t gotten their work permits renewed. That’s something that the government could easily resolve,” said Conchita Cruz, co-founder and co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, a membership-based advocacy group for asylum seekers.
The pandemic is partly to blame. Monthslong USCIS office closures and staff shortages have created a backlog of more than <a href="https://www.boundless.com/blog/uscis-wastes-200k-green-cards-backlog-triples/">8 million applications</a> across all types of immigration benefits — including green cards, visas, and protection from deportation — and most work permit applicants have to be photographed and fingerprinted in person. USCIS was also plagued by a <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/uscis-severe-budget-shortfall">budget crisis</a> under the Trump administration, and work permit applications spiked last fiscal year to an all-time high of 2.6 million, straining the agency’s capacity.
Under President Joe Biden, USCIS has taken some measures to combat the problem, though has stopped short of automatically extending the validity period of expired work permits as advocates have requested. It <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/news/alerts/uscis-temporarily-suspends-biometrics-requirement-for-certain-form-i-539-applicants">temporarily waived fingerprinting requirements</a> for some applicants, exempted spouses of certain visa holders from having to apply separately for work authorization, and <a href="https://rollcall.com/2022/02/08/immigration-agency-extends-work-permit-validity/">extended the validity period</a> of newly issued work permits from one to two years for some immigrants who have been admitted to the US on humanitarian grounds. It has also hired new staff, including 200 people in the agency’s asylum division, to address the backlog. But it’s not clear why the agency hasn’t also adopted the extension policy that activists have called for.
Earlier this month, a federal court <a href="https://immigrantjustice.org/press-releases/court-vacates-two-trump-era-rules-denied-work-authorization-asylum-seekers">vacated two Trump-era rules</a> that had restricted access to work permits for asylum seekers, meaning that their applications could be processed more quickly going forward.
“Agency personnel is addressing outstanding processing issues and making changes to underlying procedures to achieve new efficiencies while ensuring the integrity and security of the immigration system. This includes improving processing times and decreasing pending cases,” said Matthew Bourke, a USCIS spokesperson.
But the backlog remains too large to be solved quickly by USCIS’s new policies or the court decisions. That would require additional regulatory action: In addition to extending the validity of expired work permits, the government could also streamline the application form for work permits to speed up processing, Cruz said. That could help immigrants who can’t afford to wait much longer for their applications to be approved.
Nepal is one among many who has already lost work as a result of the delays. His wife’s work authorization also expired, so she can’t work either. And they just depleted their savings to buy a house and now have a mortgage to pay, in addition to a US-citizen daughter to support and another baby on the way. And there aren’t many other job opportunities in his field within commuting distance of their new home.
“If this situation continues, then we will be homeless, helpless,” he said. “We cannot stay in this stressful situation.”
Even if he is eventually able to return to his job, he and his company have to bear the costs of lost productivity while he hasn’t been able to work. Those costs are even higher in fields like medicine, where there are too few staff to treat high volumes of patients during the pandemic.
Heghine Muradyan, an Armenian asylum seeker living in Los Angeles, is a second-year resident in intensive care units and in the ER, where she has been treating Covid-19 patients. She went on unpaid leave from her job starting in October for nearly two months after her work permit expired, and about six months after applying for a new permit. She was going to lose her spot in her residency program if she couldn’t get back to work within 12 weeks, so she applied for food stamps in anticipation of the worst. Her son and elderly parents depend on her financially.
“I was really scared. If we had to wait that long, we could have lost everything,” Muradyan said.
Her absence, coming at a time when many hospitals are short on staff, also made it difficult for her employer to find another resident who could cover her patients.
She called USCIS’s offices every day to check on the status of her renewal application. She even applied to expedite her application but was rejected. And when she went into a USCIS office for an interview, an officer told her that she didn’t get any special prioritization as a doctor. (The agency has since implemented free expedited processing for health care workers who have applied to renew their work permits.)
“The officer told me that it doesn’t matter what I do. There’s a long line and I have to wait,” she said.
By the time her work permit was finally approved, she had been waiting eight months. She was back at work in early December, but only after personal hardship and sacrificing her patients’ care. Others, like Nepal, are still waiting on USCIS. And in the meantime, they — and all those who depend on their expertise — will have to continue to bear the costs of USCIS’s backlog.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22933223/work-permit-uscis-backlog-immigration-labor-shortage">https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22933223/work-permit-uscis-backlog-immigration-labor-shortage</a>

vox Immigrants could help the US labor shortage — if the government would let them

Amid nationwide labor shortages in critical industries, more than a million immigrants are waiting on the US government to issue them work ...