Trump struggles with the basics on history and civics in DACA tweet

[Belsnickel]

(02-16-2018, 03:00 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: The ridiculous court stay on the DACA ending order that trump signed ruined he deal.

They won’t work together unless they have a gun to their head. Another case of the court overreaching. They need to impeach several federal judges. DACA isn’t even constitutional yet the court defends it lol.

Impeach these fools.

I would argue that Congress has been working quite well on a solution and that Trump is trying to get more on his side of the scales in the compromise. Whether you agree with the policies or not, there have been bipartisan efforts that could've passed muster prior to Trump's veto threat based on preliminary whip counts. The Republicans, in an attempt to not show too much division, had some switch their votes to kill the bill(s) so they wouldn't send it to be vetoed by their own party's POTUS.

As to constitutionality, a lot of debate on that. I don't think anyone on this message board could say definitively one way or the other given the differing opinions among constitutional scholars.

[GMDino]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/questions-linger-about-how-melania-trump-a-slovenian-model-scored-the-einstein-visa/2018/02/28/d307ddb2-1b35-11e8-ae5a-16e60e4605f3_story.html?utm_term=.a3b1239bd7bf

Quote:Questions linger about how Melania Trump, a Slovenian model, scored ‘the Einstein visa’



In 2000, Melania Knauss, a Slovenian model dating Donald Trump, began petitioning the government for the right to permanently reside in the United States under a program reserved for people with “extraordinary ability.”


Knauss’s credentials included runway shows in Europe, a Camel cigarette billboard ad in Times Square and — in her biggest job at the time — a spot in the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated, which featured her on the beach in a string bikini, hugging a six-foot inflatable whale.


In March 2001, she was granted a green card in the elite EB-1 program, which was designed for renowned academic researchers, multinational business executives or those in other fields, such as Olympic athletes and Oscar-winning actors, who demonstrated “sustained national and international acclaim.”


“We called it the Einstein visa,” said Bruce Morrison, a former Democratic congressman and chairman of the House subcommittee that wrote the Immigration Act of 1990 defining EB-1.
 

The year that Knauss — now first lady Melania Trump — got her legal residency, only five people from Slovenia received green cards under the EB-1 program, according to the State Department.

In all, of the more than 1 million green cards issued in 2001, just 3,376 — or a fraction of 1 percent — were issued to immigrants with “extraordinary ability,” according to government statistics.


Melania Trump’s ability to secure her green card not only set her on the path to U.S. citizenship, but put her in the position to sponsor the legal residency of her parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs. The Washington Post reported earlier this month that the couple are now close to obtaining their own citizenship.


[Melania Trump’s parents are legal permanent residents, raising questions about whether they relied on ‘chain migration’]


President Trump has proposed ending the sponsorship of relatives such as parents, slamming as “chain migration” the decades-long ability of U.S. citizens to assist relatives in obtaining legal residency.


“CHAIN MIGRATION must end now! Some people come in, and they bring their whole family with them, who can be truly evil. NOT ACCEPTABLE!” Trump tweeted in November.

Michael Wildes, an attorney for Melania Trump and her family, declined to comment on whether she sponsored her parents for green cards. He said he was not surprised that so few immigrants from Slovenia obtained EB-1 immigrant visas in 2001 because the requirements are stringent.
Melania Trump’s profile as a model in New York rose after she began dating Donald Trump. (Lawrence Lucier/Getty Images)


“Mrs. Trump was more than amply qualified and solidly eligible,” he said. But he declined to discuss the qualifications that the first lady cited in her petition for permanent residency.


“There is no reason to adjudicate her petition publicly when her privacy is so important to her,” Wildes said.


A White House spokeswoman for the first lady referred questions about her immigration process to Wildes.


Immigration experts said the president’s efforts to restrict legal immigration spotlight lingering questions about how the first lady and her family members obtained residency in the United States.


The biggest one: How did she convince immigration authorities that she qualified for the EB-1 program?


Morrison, the former congressman and immigration expert, said that Melania Trump’s resume in 2001 seems “inconsistent” with the requirements of the visa.

To obtain an EB-1 under the extraordinary ability category, an immigrant has to provide evidence of a major award or meet at least three out of 10 criteria. Among them: evidence of commercial successes in the performing arts, evidence of work displayed at artistic exhibitions and evidence of original contributions to a field.


“What did she submit?” asked David Leopold, an immigration lawyer and a past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “There are a lot of questions about how she procured entry into the United States.”


The process of deciding who meets the “extraordinary ability” standard is subjective, said Sarah Pierce, an immigration expert at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank. But it is generally thought that only the top 2 percent of people in their field would qualify, she said, adding that the “quintessential award you want to put on the application is Nobel Prize.”


The first lady came to the United States from Slovenia in 1996, first briefly on a visitor’s visa and then on work visas, according to Wildes.

Initially, she was not widely known in the highly competitive New York fashion world, according to people in the industry.
“She was never a supermodel; she was a working model — like so many others in New York,” said one person who knew her in the 1990s and requested anonymity to discuss the first lady’s early years in the United States.


In 1998, at age 28, she began dating Trump after meeting him at a party, an association that raised her modeling profile. She started appearing on Page Six of the New York Post and in other celebrity columns on the arm of the real estate developer.


At the time, she was modeling on a work visa for skilled immigrants. Melania Trump received five H1-B visas between October 1996 and 2001, Wildes has said.


[Melania Trump shares more immigration information but no documentation]


Under her husband’s administration, such temporary visas have been harder to get, dropping by more than 50,000 in 2017 compared with the previous year, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

In January 2000, in perhaps her most widely known photo shoot, Melania Trump appeared on the cover of British GQ magazine. She was photographed nude on a fur rug on Donald Trump’s private jet under the headline: “Sex at 30,000 feet. Melania Knauss earns her air miles.” (The magazine cover is noted, among others, in her official biography on the White House website.)


The accompanying article predicted that the political aspirations of Trump — then making a bid for the Reform Party nomination — could transform his Slovenian girlfriend into the first lady of the United States one day.


“I will put all my effort into it,” she told the magazine, “and I will support my man.”

[Belsnickel]

(03-01-2018, 09:37 PM)GMDino Wrote: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/questions-linger-about-how-melania-trump-a-slovenian-model-scored-the-einstein-visa/2018/02/28/d307ddb2-1b35-11e8-ae5a-16e60e4605f3_story.html?utm_term=.a3b1239bd7bf

I'm not $ure how anyone would que$tion how $omeone like Melania would be able to obtain a permanent re$idence under that program. You $houldn't que$tion $uch thing$.

[StLucieBengal]

(03-01-2018, 09:54 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: I'm not $ure how anyone would que$tion how $omeone like Melania would be able to obtain a permanent re$idence under that program. You $houldn't que$tion $uch thing$.

If she was considered one of the top of her field then she would qualify. I don’t know the modeling industry enough to decide if she was at the time.

It’s easy to mock it but it’s a big and valuable industry.

[GMDino]

(03-01-2018, 11:43 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: If she was considered one of the top of her field then she would qualify.  I don’t know the modeling industry enough to decide if she was at the time.  

It’s easy to mock it but it’s a big and valuable industry.

Then you didn't read the article.

[StLucieBengal]

(03-01-2018, 11:59 PM)GMDino Wrote: Then you didn't read the article.

I did. Her extraordinary ability and being from Slovenia a country who doesn’t get many immigrants probably played a role.

But please don’t let me stop you from slamming her.

[BmorePat87]

(03-02-2018, 12:15 AM)StLucieBengal Wrote: Her extraordinary ability and being from Slovenia a country who doesn’t get many immigrants probably played a role.

Yea, I feel like you didn't read the article. It noted that she was a relatively unknown model doing commercials who was not considered supermodel status. 

The whole point is questioning how such lackluster credentials qualified for an exclusive green card reserved for people at the top of their fields. 

[StLucieBengal]

(03-02-2018, 12:20 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: Yea, I feel like you didn't read the article. It noted that she was a relatively unknown model doing commercials who was not considered supermodel status. 

The whole point is questioning how such lackluster credentials qualified for an exclusive green card reserved for people at the top of their fields. 

You obviously didn’t read my post. Her being from Slovenia made a difference. Those types of visas are also subject to country of origin. Slovenia doesn’t have many immigrants to the US. If you come from an area with low immigration you application will move quickly.

[GMDino]

(03-02-2018, 12:48 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: You obviously didn’t read my post.  Her being from Slovenia made a difference.    Those types of visas are also subject to country of origin.   Slovenia doesn’t have many immigrants to the US.   If you come from an area with low immigration you application will move quickly.

Isn't that the kind of visa lottery that Trump hates and wants to end?

Guess he "won" his lottery so no one else should get a chance. 

[masterpanthera_t]

(03-02-2018, 12:20 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: Yea, I feel like you didn't read the article. It noted that she was a relatively unknown model doing commercials who was not considered supermodel status. 

The whole point is questioning how such lackluster credentials qualified for an exclusive green card reserved for people at the top of their fields. 

While the association is admittedly flimsy, I'm guessing it could be argued that a model is excelling in the field of "art/bringing awareness to art" or whatever was one of the criteria mentioned in the article, and even if not at the top of said field globally, could be considered "cream of the crop" in said field from that particular nation. The article mentioned something about meeting 3 out of 10 criteria, so, I'm still not sure how the argument can be made very strictly, but I'm just throwing out the likely argument that was used IMO. Having said that, this really doesn't pass the smell test, at least to me.

[BmorePat87]

(03-02-2018, 12:48 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: You obviously didn’t read my post.  Her being from Slovenia made a difference.    Those types of visas are also subject to country of origin.   Slovenia doesn’t have many immigrants to the US.   If you come from an area with low immigration you application will move quickly.

No I read it, but that doesn't explain how she qualified for that type of green card. As the article pointed out, the fact that 5 Slovenians got it that year reflected stringent requirements. There's no set number they give to a country like Slovenia every year. The country of origin doesn't make a difference. You still need to meet the requirements. 

[BmorePat87]

(03-02-2018, 05:21 PM)masterpanthera_t Wrote: While the association is admittedly flimsy, I'm guessing it could be argued that a model is excelling in the field of "art/bringing awareness to art" or whatever was one of the criteria mentioned in the article, and even if not at the top of said field globally, could be considered "cream of the crop" in said field from that particular nation. The article mentioned something about meeting 3 out of 10 criteria, so, I'm still not sure how the argument can be made very strictly, but I'm just throwing out the likely argument that was used IMO. Having said that, this really doesn't pass the smell test, at least to me.

I understand that argument, but you're judged based on others in your field, not your nation. At the time, she was working in the US on a non permanent residency work visa, so she would have been compared to actual super models making millions, which she wasn't.

[masterpanthera_t]

(03-02-2018, 05:36 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: I understand that argument, but you're judged based on others in your field, not your nation. At the time, she was working in the US on a non permanent residency work visa, so she would have been compared to actual super models making millions, which she wasn't.

Agreed, and that's why it doesn't pass the smell test.

[GMDino]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/us/politics/ms13-gang-threat-trump-policy.html

Quote:Early in his term, Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructed his top investigative deputies to target the transnational gang MS-13 as a priority. A year later, drug task forces have new powers to fight MS-13, more federal prosecutors are pursuing charges against the street gang with ties to El Salvador and foreign allies have been enlisted to capture its members.

Few dispute the violent menace that MS-13 is to pockets across the United States. Its members wield machetes, kill with abandon and terrorize — for the most part in immigrant communities.

But law enforcement officials at local, state and federal levels describe the Trump administration’s hard-charging campaign against MS-13 as out of proportion with the threat.

President Trump has seized on the gang’s brutality and violence to symbolize the risks of illegal immigration.

Quote:[/url][url=https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump]Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

45 year low on illegal border crossings this year. Ice and Border Patrol Agents are doing a great job for our Country. MS-13 thugs being hit hard.
9:08 AM - Feb 28, 2018

Not all members of MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, are illegal immigrants. Nor does the gang survive on the global trafficking of drugs, guns or people.

Police and prosecutors in areas where MS-13 is most active said the heightened focus on the gang has come at the expense of fighting more widespread threats to the United States, particularly opioids and human trafficking.

At a meeting with Mr. Sessions last March, Chuck Rosenberg, then the acting head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said it made little sense to focus on MS-13 over more dangerous organizations. He refused to commit more resources to the gang, according to two people familiar with the private meeting. Mr. Rosenberg has since left office.

“MS-13 is certainly a threat, just not the one the president is making it out to be,” said Tom Manger, the police chief in Montgomery County, Md., a Washington suburb where the gang has one of its largest concentrations. Officials there dealt with four MS-13-related police incidents involving murder last year — for a total of five homicides — compared with zero in 2013.

“They are a local public safety threat, but they are not a national security threat,” Chief Manger said.

Formed in central Los Angeles by Salvadoran refugees fleeing a civil war in the 1980s, the gang is believed to have 10,000 members in 40 states, according to the F.B.I. — but predominantly in just three metropolitan areas: Los Angeles, Long Island in New York and the region outside Washington.
Most of its 30,000 other members live in Central America or Mexico, according to the authorities.

In his State of the Union speech in January, Mr. Trump said MS-13 members exploited immigration laws to move to Long Island and, ultimately, kill Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens, 15. The girls were beaten with bats and sliced by machetes in a cul-de-sac near an elementary school parking lot in September 2016.

Mr. Trump brought their parents to the speech and asked them to stand, as if to exhibit the reason for his immigration crackdown.

MS-13 operates in loose local cliques, sowing fear and violence. It is not a sophisticated global drug cartel, and many gang members are destitute.

Interviews with dozens of law enforcement and intelligence officials, and a review of documents, indicate that the gang dabbles in small-time drug dealing, gun sales, prostitution and extortion, with some members receiving just enough money to get by.

In one case, the suspected leader of one the largest MS-13 cliques in Maryland recently canceled a drug deal because he did not have enough money to pay for gas to drive to the drop-off point, according to a law enforcement official in the state.

The Trump administration is not the first to target MS-13.

President George W. Bush set up an F.B.I. task force to focus on MS-13 in 2004 and created the National Gang Intelligence Center in 2005. MS-13 became the first street gang to be designated by the government as a transnational criminal organization when President Barack Obama did so in 2012.

Mr. Sessions has compared MS-13 to Colombian drug cartels and the Mafia. The gang is now a top target of the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, which has historically focused on major drug traffickers and money launderers with its annual $500 million budget. The department’s budget proposal for next year also requests $400,000 for a “sensitive investigative unit” to address transnational threats from El Salvador.

The United States and foreign allies have issued charges against 4,000 members of MS-13, Mr. Sessions said earlier this month. In December, he announced 40 new assistant United States attorney positions across the country to fight MS-13 and other gangs, including two on Long Island and three in Maryland.

One official at a United States attorney’s office, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was troubled by new pressure on MS-13 cases, given skyrocketing opioid crimes and a growing national human trafficking problem.

Even so, the number of federal prosecutions against MS-13 in the United States is limited. Only 11 cases were brought between October 2016 and September 2017, according to data provided by the Justice Department. Since then, prosecutors have opened another 13 cases.


This week, Mr. Sessions told state attorneys general he wanted to work with them in local prosecutions against MS-13. “We’re coming after MS-13. We want to hammer them,” he said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators arrested 796 suspected members of MS-13 last year, up from 429 in 2016. The agency said it also deported about 5,300 suspected members of all gangs over that same period of time, up from 2,000. Over a three-month span last fall, an I.C.E. operation dubbed “Raging Bull,” swept up 214 MS-13 members nationwide and arrested an additional 53 in El Salvador.

In New York, F.B.I. agents have grumbled about having to focus on MS-13, according to a senior bureau official; there have been worries that agents have arrested members of Trinitario, a Dominican gang, but characterized them as MS-13 members to inflate their arrest totals to meet expectations, a senior state law enforcement official said. Neither official was authorized to speak publicly and both spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Any claim that we are mischaracterizing gang members to inflate our arrest totals is false,” an F.B.I. spokeswoman, Nora Scheland, said in a statement. The F.B.I. cracks down on all gang activity as part of its work to combat violent crime, she said.

A $500,000 Justice Department grant promised in October to fight gang violence and gun crime in Suffolk County, N.Y., targeted not only MS-13 but also the Bloods and Crips in its crime analysis. The Long Island county, which applied for the grant, was one of 14 awarded for a total of $3.375 million. Officials say they have not yet received the grant.

Timothy D. Sini, the Suffolk County district attorney and former police commissioner, said MS-13 “constitutes a significant public safety threat” and was responsible for 17 murders in 15 months in that area of Long Island.

“With that said,” Mr. Sini said, “the No.1 public health and safety issue facing Suffolk County, as in other communities, is the drug epidemic. And this drug epidemic is a moving target.” He said opioid overdoses killed more than 300 people in Suffolk County last year, compared with six deaths linked to MS-13.

A two-year uptick in violent activity converged with the arrival of more than 4,700 school-age minors in Suffolk County since 2013. Many of the children were fleeing gang violence in their native El Salvador or Honduras, and, after entering the country, most often applied for asylum, or the protection known as Special Immigrant Juvenile Status.

Last March, federal authorities charged 13 young adults — including four accused of involvement in the killings of Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens — linked to MS-13 with racketeering and other crimes in Suffolk County. Of the 13, 10 were unauthorized immigrants, federal prosecutors said. Seven had come to the country as unaccompanied minors.

The Trump administration has repeatedly sought to show that immigration programs it is trying to eliminate have allowed MS-13 and other gangs to flourish. It has singled out the nation’s diversity lottery system, immigration programs to allow unaccompanied minors to cross the border and deportation protections for people who were brought illegally to the United States as children.

Yet the latest numbers do not bear that out. According to Border Patrol apprehension statistics published in December, the number of MS-13 members caught at the border actually declined to 228 in 2017, from 437 in 2014.

Some law enforcement officials privately fear that the Trump administration’s push to eradicate crime by deporting illegal immigrants could backfire.

Immigrants in communities where MS-13 is the strongest may be reluctant to come forward with information to help investigations, fearing deportation themselves. Some fear the government will use MS-13 cases to identify the gang members’ relatives and deport them.

And MS-13’s victims are overwhelmingly immigrants themselves.

“The administration is using MS-13 in Willy Horton-esque campaign ads and as cover to make a boogeyman out of immigration,” said Kevin de León, a California state senator. “It is using MS-13 as a pretext to go after hardworking immigrants.”