121
US supreme court allows Trump administration to strip Haitians and Syrians of protected status
(www.theguardian.com)
Trump is shit. The SCOTUS is shit. But this policy of arbitrary protected status for very select groups of immigrations is also shit.
Going back to the Nixon Era, we've had this policy of promising to reform immigration to make it more logical and more practical. At every turn, we invent new special categories and exceptions and weird litmus tests that make the process more and more cumbersome and byzantine. Ronald Reagan wanted to admit a bunch of anti-communist refugees as a fuck-you to the USSR. Bill Clinton wanted a Wet-Foot Dry-Foot policy to cage off certain Cuban migrants and limit their impact on the Florida voter pool. Bush Jr wanted "Guest Worker" visas to flood the labor market with the cheap laborers we'd kept at arms length under NAFTA. Obama wanted DACA exclusively for kids under a certain age, mostly because they were more photogenic than their parents.
We admit people because of some wars and some natural disasters, but deport people because of sudden shifts in foreign policy or a smear campaign by reactionary media. We grant temporary status and then yank it away, because it gives us leverage over foreign espionage agents and business interests. We demand people strictly follow a complex and contradictory set of laws, then arrest them at their Green Card hearings because it's easier than chasing down folks on expired student visas. We deny people citizenship because we don't like their social media history. We admit people because we're enthusiastic about their terminally online shitposts.
It's all garbage and easy for a court to exploit precisely because it's so confused. Rather than establishing a universal standard of basic rights for all residents, we continue to adhere to a tiered system precisely because it offers us an excuse to lock people up en mass, rob them as they try to legally cross the border, and abuse them in custody both at home and in our black sites abroad.
It all fucking sucks. And - in a better world - we'd have a party enthusiastic about wiping the whole board and laying a new universal foundation for human rights both at home and abroad. We won't. But moments like this illustrate why we should.