Tag: North Dakota

Tennessee Consents to Refugees Resettlement

On December 18, Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee gave his state’s consent to refugees resettlement. His very short letter thanked  Secretary of State Michael Pompeo “for consulting with the states to ensure this process [of resettlement] is successful. We feel strongly that this consultation is appropriate and that the federal government would be overstepping by requiring states to participate in this program.”[1]

Tennessee Controversy Over the Decision

Conscious of the state’s existing political controversy over refugees, the Governor simultaneously sent a lengthy letter to the state’s Republican Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally and Republican Speaker of its House of Representatives, Cameron Sexton.[2]

This letter emphasized the Governor’s belief that “President Trump has strengthened our national security while enhancing our state’s ability to cooperate and consult with his Administration in the process of resettling refugees who are fleeing persecution, including religious persecution. Public safety is of the utmost importance and the Trump Administration has strengthened the vetting process of those entering the U.S. through heightened screenings around terrorism, violent crime, fraud, and public health concerns. Border security, reducing illegal immigration, and upholding the rule of law are critical, and so it is important to note that each and every refugee that might potentially be resettled in Tennessee under the President’s Executive Order will have been individually approved by the Trump Administration for legal immigrant status.” This letter continued with the following comments:

  • “Resettlement will be facilitated by the Trump Administration and non-profit organizations with extensive experience in this area. The refugee population in Tennessee is small, and I believe our consent to cooperate and consult with the Trump Administration to provide a safe harbor for those who are fleeing religious persecution and violent conflict is the right decision. The United States and Tennessee have always been, since the very founding of our nation, a shining beacon of freedom and opportunity for the persecuted and oppressed, and particularly those suffering religious persecution. My commitment to these ideals is based on my faith, personally visiting refugee camps on multiple continents, and my years of experience ministering to refugees here in Tennessee.”
  • “I am aware that litigation is pending asserting that the federal government is required by statute to consult with states regarding refugee resettlement, and I support this effort. President Trump’s Executive Order is certainly a step in the right direction while that litigation is pending, but I would note that Executive Orders are not necessarily binding on future presidents. So, while I am willing to trust and work with President Trump on the refugee issue, I have consulted with appropriate legal authority, and I am confident that our current work with this President will not undermine the litigation seeking a more permanent statutory interpretation that would actually bind and require the federal government to consult with the states.”
  • “Our consent comes with a shared responsibility to both the character and livelihood of our state as a lawful and thriving place for all our citizens. My consent is valid initially for one year, and we will work closely with President Trump, you, and your colleagues to ensure this process is effective as we work together with the Trump Administration to facilitate and carefully monitor continued refugee resettlement for the next year.”

The state’s Lieutenant Governor and House Speaker immediately issued a joint statement saying their “personal preference would have been to exercise the option to hit the pause button on accepting additional refugees in our state.”

Later that same day the Governor in a meeting with reporters said, “I certainly know there’s disagreement on this subject but there’s disagreement around most subjects. You agree to disagree and move forward. But I think it’s the right decision and we’re moving forward on it.”

The Governor’s decision did find support from others in the state. “Holly Johnson, who coordinates the Tennessee Office for Refugees within the Catholic Charities, said employers are ‘chasing down resettlement agencies because they know refugees work hard, they show up, they’ll work overtime, they call when they’re out,’ particularly during Tennessee’s time of low unemployment.” In addition, four large local governments said they wanted to keep accepting refugees: Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga and Shelby County, which includes Memphis.”

Conclusion

Tennessee now joins other states that have consented to refugees resettlement with positive comments on the previous contributions of refugees who had resettled in their states: Utah, North Dakota, Minnesota, Arizona, Kansas, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Moreover, to date no state has been reported to have not consented to such resettlements,[3]

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[1]  Office of Tenn. Governor, Gov. Lee Announces Decision on Refugee Resettlement (Dec. 18, 2019); Letter, Governor Lee to Secretary Pompeo (Dec. 18, 2019); Letter, Governor Lee to McNally and Sexton (Dec. 18, 2019); Assoc. Press, Tennessee Governor Says State Will Keep Resettling Refugees, N.Y. Times (Dec. 18, 2019); Jacobson, Gov. Lee decides Tennessee will continue accepting refugees, News Channel3 (Dec. 19, 2019); Mattise (AP), Daughter hoping to see father again praises gov’s decision, Wash. Post (Dec. 19, 2019).

[2]  Letter, Governor Lee to McNally and Sexton (Dec. 18, 2019).

[3]  See these posts to dwkcommentaries.com: U.S. Sets 18,000 Quota for New Refugee Admissions to U.S. for Fiscal 2020 (Nov. 4, 2019; U.S. Senators Oppose U.S.Reduction in Refugee Admissions for Fiscal 2020 (Nov. 11, 2019);Latest U.S. Struggle Over Refugees (Dec. 11, 2019); Minnesota and Minneapolis Say “Yes” to Refugees (Dec. 14, 2019); Updates on States’ Consents to Refugee Resettlement (Dec. 16, 2019).

 

 

 

Update on States’ Consents to Refugee Resettlement

President Trump on September 28 issued an executive order requiring state and local governments to provide written consents to refugee resettlements for Fiscal 2020. Thereafter, as previously noted in this blog, at least three states—Utah, North Dakota and Minnesota– provided such  consents with at least three North Dakota counties, one Minnesota county and the City of Minneapolis doing the same.[1]

Here are some updates on this subject while we await until the January 31, 2020, deadline for consenting to see what other states and localities do in response to this challenge.

Evangelical Support for Refugee Resettlement[2]

In the meantime, we have learned that two evangelical nonprofit supporters of U.S. immigration—World Relief and the Evangelical Immigration Table—have been urging U.S. States to consent to resettlement of refugees in Fiscal 2020 (October 1, 2019—September 30, 2020).  This effort is directed at the governors of the following 15 states: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin.

The World Relief president, Scott Arbeiter, said, “After being forced to leave their countries to escape war, persecution or natural disaster and being legally allowed entry to the U.S., the last thing refugees should have to experience is being denied access to communities in which they wish to dwell. Halting the resettlement of refugees to states will disrupt families and could lead to the end of vital ministries by local churches.”

Consents by Arizona State and Local Governments[3]

On December 6, the Republican Governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, sent a letter of consent to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. The letter stated, in part, “Throughout our nation’s history, the United States has been a refuge for individuals fleeing religious and political persecution in their homeland, and Arizona has historically been one of the most welcoming states in terms of the number of refugees resettled here.”

This action was applauded by Arizona’s State House Speaker Rusty Bowers: “Our state is one that offers opportunity for all. We welcome people from all backgrounds, religions, and cultures to come here and share in that special spirit. I applaud Governor Ducey for affirming that Arizona will continue to welcome religious and politically-persecuted refugees who have been vetted through the State Department’s Reception and Placement Program.” Similar messages came from Stanford Prescott, Arizona’s community engagement coordinator of the International Rescue Committee, and from Arizona’s Surge Network of evangelical churches.

On December 11, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego added her city’s consent, telling Secretary Pompeo, “”The refugee resettlement program has a long and important history” in Phoenix; “these individuals have made invaluable contributions to our community and economy, opening businesses, creating community, and bringing greater diversity to the nation’s fifth largest city.” The same day this city’s county (Maricopa) did likewise. Previously other local Arizona authorities had provided their consents–Pima County and Tucson.

Other States Providing Consents[4]

The consent column also has been joined by the states of  Kansas, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington with Democratic governors and New Hampshire with a Republican governor.

Texas’ Republican Governor  Greg Abbott has not yet offered his decision on this issue, despite pleas from Texas evangelicals and the mayor of Fort Worth to continue accepting refugees.

Conclusion

Now there are at least nine states that have provided written consents to the resettlement of refugees for Fiscal 2020, while so far no state has declined to consent. This blog approves of these actions.

Rather surprisingly there is no readily identifiable website with an ongoing national tally of those categories. (If any reader knows of such a website, please identify it in a comment to this post.) There also is some confusion from the various articles about the deadline for submission of such consents to the Department of State and the period of time to be covered by such consents. (Comments with clarification on these issues are also welcome.)

All of this activity and confusion about the U.S. new lower quota for refugee admissions and the new requirement for state and local governments’ consenting to such resettlements are causing great uncertainties and challenges for the refugee resettlement agencies throughout the U.S.

One of those in Minnesota (International Institute of Minnesota) this year is celebrating its centennial of helping refugees and other immigrants with English classes, job training and other supports. One of its celebratory events last week was hosting a ceremony for the naturalization of new U.S. citizens. Welcoming them was U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Kressel, who said, “Becoming an American does not mean renouncing your love for the land where you were born or forgetting your native language and the songs and dances you learned as a child. As a U.S. citizen, you are free to follow your own path wherever it takes you.”[5]

All of this is happening while the U.N. is calling for all nations to increase their acceptance of the escalating numbers of forcibly displaced people, now over 70.8 million, 25.9 million of whom are refugees.[6]

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[1]  See these posts to dwkcommentaries.com: U.S. Sets 18,000 Quota for New Refugee Admissions to U.S. for Fiscal 2020 (Nov. 4, 2019; U.S. Senators Oppose U.S.Reduction in Refugee Admissions for Fiscal 2020 (Nov. 11, 2019);Latest U.S. Struggle Over Refugees (Dec. 11, 2019); Minnesota and Minneapolis Say “Yes” to Refugees (Dec. 14, 2019).

[2] Smith & Jordan, Trump Said Local Officials Could Block Refugees. So Far, they Haven’t, N.Y. Times (Dec. 9, 2019); World Relief, Press Release: World Relief and the Evangelical Immigration Table Urge Governors in 15 States To Accept Refugees (Dec. 11, 2019).

[3] See n.2 supra; Gonzalez, Arizona will continue to resettle refugees, Gov. Doug Ducey tells Trump administration, azcentral (Dec. 6, 2019); Gonzalez, Phoenix, Maricopa County tell Trump administration they will keep accepting refugees, azcentral (Dec. 11, 2019); Resnik, Arizona leaders tell Trump they will welcome refugees. That doesn’t mean we’ll see more of them, 12News (Dec. 15, 2019).

[4] Macchi, More US States Welcome Refugees Under New Trump Rule, Voice of America (Dec. 6, 2019).

[5]  Rao, Refugee Center’s Future in Flux at 100, StarTribune (Dec. 16, 2019).

[6] UNHCR, International community must do ‘far more’ to shoulder responsibility for refugees, says UN chief (Dec. 17, 2019); UNHCR, Global Refugee Forum (Dec. 17-18, 2019); Assoc. Press, UN Urges ‘Reboot of Refugee Response as Millions Uprooted, N,Y. Times (Dec. 17, 2019).

 

Federal Reserve Bank Endorses Need for More Immigrants

On November 13 the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis concluded its second annual Regional Economic Conditions Conference with a strong endorsement of the U.S. need for more immigrants.[1]

Its Senior Vice President and Research Director Mark Wright  summed up the proceedings by saying, ““What’s clear to me is that, in the same way that immigration has played a very large role in shaping the history of this country, it is going to do so again in the future, one way or another. The simple laws of demography and economics demand it.”

Wright added, “But what can’t get lost in purely thinking about the statistics, the spreadsheets, and the government budgets and how that’s affected by immigration, we also have to recognize that behind those statistics are the very real lives of many people, many families who are living in a great deal of uncertainty and great deal of difficulty right now.”

The conference’s keynote speaker, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (Rep., WI), agreed. He said, “If you don’t have enough human capital, you’re not going to have a growing economy. No policies, no tax cuts, no deregulation is going to make up for the fact that we simply don’t have enough workers. … We’re going to need a vibrant, legal immigration population.”

Therefore, Senator Johnson called on his fellow members of Congress to adopt an approach of continuous (and incremental) improvement of immigration policy to be responsive to current conditions. He also emphasized the need for  a legal immigration system where states would have a stronger voice in determining the appropriate mix of skilled workers it could welcome to address local labor force needs and where greater emphasis was placed on immigrants work skills, rather than family reunification.

More specifically Johnson said he would reintroduce a bill to allow states to administer guest-worker visas allowing the individuals to stay in the U.S. for one year to take jobs, and he previously has suggested having an annual cap of 500,000 of such visas

Political reality, however, said Johnson, requires the Congress first to fix illegal immigration.

Another speaker, Ryan Allen, Associate Professor of  Community and Economic Development at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, emphasized that as fertility rates among native-born Americans lag and as the population ages, the growth of the labor force will stagnate, but for the inflow of immigrants. For the State of Minnesota, the labor force is growing at what Allen called an “anemic” one-half of 1 percent annually, and that’s not enough to ensure economic growth. In Allen’s view, to maintain the current labor force growth rate, Minnesota needs more than four times the number of immigrants that the state demographer projects will arrive in the state over the next three decades.

These thoughts were echoed by speakers from North and South Dakota. And a Montana immigration attorney redefined what “assimilation” of migrants should mean going forward. “They’re working, they’re providing for themselves and their family, they’re contributing to the economy by spending the money they earn. They are assimilated—perhaps not in language all of the time, perhaps not in skin tone or cultural background. They are assimilated in the sense that they are part of our economy.”

This Federal Reserve Bank’s President, Neel Kashkari, frequently makes these points about immigration.[2]

Conclusion

Recent Minnesota statistics provide further evidence of this need. Its unemployment rate in October remained at 2.8% while the state added jobs at a slower rate than last year and employers were working harder to attract and retain talent. A recent survey by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce found that the difficulty of finding skilled workers is so pervasive that it is threatening business growth in the state. [3]

These conditions are also true throughout the U.S., Europe and other industrialized countries.[4]

It, therefore, is contradictory for the Trump Administration to increasingly deny and delay applications for legal immigration.[5]

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[1] Weiner, Human capital, demographics,, economic growth, and immigrants, Fed. Res. Bank of Mpls,  (Nov. 14, 2018); Ramstad, Sen. Ron Johnson says illegal immigration needs to be fixed before other reform, StarTribune (Nov. 14, 2018).

[2] E.g., Kashkari,  WSJ Op-Ed: Immigration Is Practically a Free Lunch for America (Jan. 19, 2018).

[3] Ramstad, Minnesota adds 3,400 jobs in October; unemployment holds at 2.8 percent, StarTribune (Nov. 15, 2018); DePass, Minnesota Chamber of Commerce Survey: Hiring woes threaten state’s business growth, StarTribune (Nov. 15, 2018).

[4] Noack, Fertility rates around the world are declining, some Trump supporters won’t like the solution, Wash, Post (Nov. 9, 2018); Freeman, Is America Running Out of Workers?, W.S.J. (Nov. 1, 2018). See also these posts to dwkcommentaries: U.S. Needs More Immigrants (April 14, 2018); Other Factors Favoring U.S. Immigration (May 17, 2018); Impact of Declining, Aging, Rural Population (May 22, 2018); More Immigrants Needed in U.S. (June 23, 2018); Fear of Change Driving U.S. and European Clamor Over Immigration (July 3, 2018); Outstate Minnesota Newspaper Stresses Need for Immigrants (July 27, 2018); Outstate Minnesota City Aided by Immigrants Aug. 5, 2018).

[5]  Bier, America Is Rejecting More Legal Immigrants Than Ever, N.Y. Times (Nov.15, 2018).

 

The Antiquated Constitutional Structure of the U.S. Senate 

This year’s U.S. election re-emphasizes, for this blogger, the antiquated nature of the U.S. Constitution, especially the U.S. Senate.

Alec MacGillis, a government and politics reporter for ProPublica and the author of “The Cynic: The Political Education of Mitch McConnell,” points out that Democratic voters are increasingly concentrated in certain cities and urban areas while the Constitution allocates two Senate seats to each state regardless of population. The juxtaposition of these phenomena “helps explain why the Democrats are perpetually struggling to hold a majority. The Democrats have long been at a disadvantage in the Senate, where the populous, urbanized states where Democrats prevail get the same two seats as the rural states where Republicans are stronger. The 20 states where Republicans hold both Senate seats have, on average, 5.2 million people each; the 16 states where the Democrats hold both seats average 7.9 million people. Put another way, winning Senate elections in states with a total of 126 million people has netted the Democrats eight fewer seats than the Republicans get from winning states with 104 million people.”[1]

Nevertheless, Democrats are seeing signs that they may gain control of the Senate this election.

However, Chris Cillizza, a Washington Post columnist, points out that this control may last only two years. The reason? In the next election in 2018, 25 of the 33 Senate seats up for election are currently held by Democrats, and five of these Democratic seats are in states that then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney carried in 2012 (and even Trump is likely to carry on this year’s election): Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia. Three other Democratic seats are far from “safe” seats:  Sen. Bill Nelson (Florida) Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin). The Republican seats up for election in 2018, on the other hand, look like difficult challenges for the Democrats.[2]

These consequences of the current constitutional structure of the U.S. Senate suggest, as argued in a prior post, “that the U.S. Senate in particular needs radical reform if we are to retain a bicameral national legislature. To require 60% of the Senators to agree in order to do almost anything [due to the filibuster rule,] for me, is outrageous. It should only be 51% for most issues. This deficiency is exacerbated by the fact that each state has two and only two Senators regardless of the state’s population. Yes, this was part of the original grand and anti-democratic compromise in the late 18th century when there were 13 states. But the expansion of the union to 50 states has made the Senate even more anti-democratic.” [3]

Since “I believe that it would not be wise to increase the size of the Senate to reflect the population of the states (like the allocation of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives) and that each state should continue to have two Senators in a bicameral upper house, I suggest for discussion that there be weighted voting in the Senate. Each Senator from Wyoming (the least populous state in 2010 with 564,000) would have 1 vote, for example, but each Senator from California (the most populous state in 2010 with 37,254,000) would have 66 votes (37254/564 = 66.05). This approach would produce a total Senate vote of 1,094 (total U.S. population in 2010 of 308,746,000 divided by 564,000 (population of Wyoming) = 547 x 2 = 1094). The weightings would be changed every 10 years with the new census population figures.”

Such changes would aid the U.S. government in addressing the many problems facing the nation, instead of the continuation of the gridlock that has helped to prevent progress on these many problems.

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[1] MacGillis, Go Midwest, Young Hipster, N.Y. Times (Oct. 22, 2016).

[2] Cillizza, Even if Democrats Win the Senate in 2016, their majority is unlikely to endure, Wash. Post (Oct. 23, 2016).

[3] The Antiquated U.S. Constitution, dwkcommentaries.com (Mar. 28, 2012).