The Commoner Call (1/30/170
In an expression of Trumpian arrogance, xenophobia and racism, the White House website abruptly removed the Spanish version of the White House website.
But not to fear, a Commoner Call reader sent the link below which was done by her son, George Conard, which not only restores the Spanish version of our White House website but also includes translations in eight other languages!
What a wonderful act of citizen defiance, initiative and true national values. Thanks, George!
Link to White House Translated
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Trump’s Sanctuary Cities Plan Is Straight Out Of Breitbart, Radical Right Racist Playbook
By Alex Amend
Southern Poverty Law Center (1/26/17)
President Trump’s executive orders on immigration, announced by the administration on Wednesday, include a plan to publicize purported crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in so-called “sanctuary cities.”
The aim is to pressure the many major cities and states that have already announced their unwillingness to cooperate with the administration’s increasingly hardline policies against undocumented immigrants. Because these communities have generally declined to task local law enforcement with enforcing federal immigration laws, they have come to be known as sanctuary cities.
For anyone familiar with Breitbart News under Stephen K. Bannon, it’s obvious that this new fear-mongering tactic comes straight from the playbook of the man who is now the chief strategist and senior counselor to the president. Bannon’s Breitbart has championed such hardline anti-immigrant ideas for years.
While incidents of violence and tragedy inflicted by newcomers to this country certainly occur, the allegation that immigrants are more criminal and dangerous than others is false. Numerous studies over many years have found that immigrants as a group are significantly less criminal than native-born Americans.
One of them, a 2015 study by the American Immigration Council, found that between 1990 and 2013 — a period when unauthorized immigration was on the rise, although that rate has stabilized since around 2009 — the crime rate among that population plummeted. As the report noted in its introduction:
For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants [including undocumented immigrants] are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime.
Unfortunately, immigration policy is frequently shaped more by fear and stereotype than by empirical evidence. As a result, immigrants have the stigma of “criminality” ascribed to them by an ever-evolving assortment of laws and immigration-enforcement mechanisms. Put differently, immigrants are being defined more and more as threats.
Under Bannon, Breitbart published prolifically about crime committed by immigrants, including populating an “Immigrant Crime” tag, using the derogatory term “illegals” as house style, and launching a project to document the horrific drug cartel violence on the other side of the border. In tone and substance, Breitbart repeatedly framed immigrants as invaders and violent threats. …
- Trump Gives National Security Council Seat To Ex-Breitbart Chief Steve Bannon – President also gives Priebus access to sensitive meetings while partially excluding defense chiefs and requesting strategies to defeat Isis. President Donald Trump granted controversial adviser Steve Bannon a regular seat at meetings of the National Security Council on Saturday, in a presidential memorandum that brought the former Breitbart publisher into some of the most sensitive meetings at the highest levels of government. … Read the Rest