The Biden Presidency

[Delvo]

The refugee flip-flop seems like an unforced error for Biden.

Really, he should have just done what he promised to do in the first place.

He promised to raise the cap to about 60,000 from 15,000, which is where Trump had it. Then he made a U-turn and said he was going to leave it at 15,000. Then, faced with backlash, he did another U-turn and said he was going to raise the cap after all

Difference-splitting is his general MO. Increase taxes, but not even back to where they were before Trump so you're not even cancelling out what Trump did. Back out of one foreign military entanglement (if he actually does it) but not the worse one; claim we're backing out of the worse one but weasel-word it in a way that lets it really stay the same. While talking about decreasing military actions, give the military budget another huge increase to pay for them anyway. Do a pandemic relief package, after negotiating the numbers down and excluding some people who got previous ones. Cancel student loan debt, but only for special cases where fraud was found in a court. Do something about guns, but not anything that would have any actual effect.

RGB's hubris cannot be repeated.

RBG; Ruth Bader Ginsburg

RGB is the order in which to enter the red, green, and blue components if you're defining a color in a computer. It's also the order in which those letters' buttons line up on a keyboard. But it's not the order her names are in.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Difference-splitting is his general MO. Increase taxes, but not even back to where they were before Trump so you're not even cancelling out what Trump did. Back out of one foreign military entanglement (if he actually does it) but not the worse one; claim we're backing out of the worse one but weasel-word it in a way that lets it really stay the same. While talking about decreasing military actions, give the military budget another huge increase to pay for them anyway. Do a pandemic relief package, after negotiating the numbers down and excluding some people who got previous ones. Cancel student loan debt, but only for special cases where fraud was found in a court. Do something about guns, but not anything that would have any actual effect.

RBG; Ruth Bader Ginsburg

RGB is the order in which to enter the red, green, and blue components if you're defining a color in a computer. It's also the order in which those letters' buttons line up on a keyboard. But it's not the order her names are in.

To be fair, she's probably looking pretty green these days.

 

[gnome]

I will not have you present such a mockery of the name of the great Ruth Gader Binsburg!

 

[Bob001]

....
RGB's hubris cannot be repeated. We're already looking at decades of right wing domination of the courts.

In RBG's defense, pretty much everybody in the country, including Trump himself, expected H. Clinton to win the election. And if she had resigned, there is no guarantee that the Repub Senate would have confirmed any Obama nominee.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

In RBG's defense, pretty much everybody in the country, including Trump himself, expected H. Clinton to win the election. And if she had resigned, there is no guarantee that the Repub Senate would have confirmed any Obama nominee.

Yes, that's the hubris part. Such assumptions should not happen again. Who knows what future elections hold, and I'm not thrilled about playing the actuarial odds on a octogenarian.

 

[Craig4]

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-donald-trump-middle-east-africa-central-america-e692d180232fdd3cc2125bdb9cc1278f?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter

Seems that criticizing Biden sometimes pays off.

This is a bad idea. We should keep the refugee cap in place until we rebuild the infrastructure and rehire the asylum officers we lost or train new ones. Raising the cap will cause more people to flood to the southern border and make the humanitarian situation there worse.

Immigration officers enforce two things, one is the Immigration and Nationality Act as amended and the other is the Law of Unintended Consequences.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

This is a bad idea. We should keep the refugee cap in place until we rebuild the infrastructure and rehire the asylum officers we lost or train new ones. Raising the cap will cause more people to flood to the southern border and make the humanitarian situation there worse.



Immigration officers enforce two things, one is the Immigration and Nationality Act as amended and the other is the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Taking in all the variables that would compel a person to uproot their life and seek asylum, how high does the quota rank in their thinking?

What is the correlation in concrete terms? If we double the quota, will we get double the applicants?

 

[Segnosaur]

Taking in all the variables that would compel a person to uproot their life and seek asylum, how high does the quota rank in their thinking?

What is the correlation in concrete terms? If we double the quota, will we get double the applicants?

Keep in mind that it is not just the United States that is a potential destination for refugees...

Any effect that the reduced quota for refugees in the United States may be less a case of "I can't get into the U.S. so I will stay where I am", and more a case of "I can't get into the United States, so I will go to Canada or Europe".

 

[Craig4]

Taking in all the variables that would compel a person to uproot their life and seek asylum, how high does the quota rank in their thinking?

What is the correlation in concrete terms? If we double the quota, will we get double the applicants?

It's hard to say. The rumor mill will take increasing the cap and probably translate it to "The floodgates are open". Doubling is probably an optimistic projection.

 

[Leftus]

Yeah, I understand the legal difference. But practically speaking, it sometimes seems to come down to how sharp your lawyers are. For example, I don't think the legislators who drafted the tax codes ever explicitly said "Please transfer ownership of your intellectual property to overseas shell companies so your profits aren't taxable."

The commissioner did mention that the IRS is frequently outgunned by lawyers. He is looking at adding 4500 or so people to the compliance groups this year and next in an effort to shore it up a bit. Still takes time to get people skilled up to take on the big dogs, but efforts might be underway.

I doubt the legislators even drafted those laws. They probably received them directly from stakeholders and pushed them to the floor of the house without proofreading.

 

[Horatius]

Keep in mind that it is not just the United States that is a potential destination for refugees...

Any effect that the reduced quota for refugees in the United States may be less a case of "I can't get into the U.S. so I will stay where I am", and more a case of "I can't get into the United States, so I will go to Canada or Europe".

And while people are looking at numbers, in 2019, Canada accepted about 45,000 refugees (15% of 300,000 immigrants total), so the US accepting 60,000 shouldn't be that much of a stretch. It's hard to get worked up about "en masse" immigration "flooding" the US, when it's just barely more than what Canada accepts, even with about 10% of the total US population.

 

[dudalb]

I think that Biden is already making emergency plans for what hsppens if Chauvain walks in the Floyd trial, which I think is a 80% plus possbility.

 

[Blue Mountain]

And while people are looking at numbers, in 2019, Canada accepted about 45,000 refugees (15% of 300,000 immigrants total), so the US accepting 60,000 shouldn't be that much of a stretch. It's hard to get worked up about "en masse" immigration "flooding" the US, when it's just barely more than what Canada accepts, even with about 10% of the total US population.

Being pedantic here, the current number is 1/8.75, or 11.4%.

 

[Horatius]

Being pedantic here, the current number is 1/8.75, or 11.4%.

Definition of about (Entry 1 of 3)
1a: reasonably close to
about a year ago

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Ginsberg would have had to retire when the GOP didn't have a majority in the Senate. McConnell proved that he would make up any excuse not to fill a SCOTUS seat a Democrat nominated.

It would have been a disaster had she resigned under Obama and McConnell refused to allow a vote on both Scalia's and RBG's seats. Because you know he would have.

 

[Stacyhs]

I think that Biden is already making emergency plans for what hsppens if Chauvain walks in the Floyd trial, which I think is a 80% plus possbility.

No way. The defense was absolutely horrible and the prosecution was excellent. Chauvin is going to be convicted most likely of 2nd degree manslaughter, less likely of 3rd degree murder, and least likely of murder in the 2nd degree.

 

[dirtywick]

I don't think Chauvin will get off, but plenty of people will be pissed if he beats the murder charges even if they get him on some lesser ones.

 

[The Don]

I think that Biden is already making emergency plans for what hsppens if Chauvain walks in the Floyd trial, which I think is a 80% plus possbility.

I think that's prudent of President Biden and I think that if anything, you've underestimated the probability of Chauvain walking.

 

[Aridas]

Having cut the number of refugees allowed in to 15,000, it's a near certainty that after four years, they don't have the number of trained staff needed to process 60,000. And the people they would tap to take those jobs with the least amount of hassle are probably the same people working with the people on the Southern Border.


This is just another lingering effect of Trump's policies. You need to quadruple the staff for this job, while also trying to do the job. Everyone you tap for training new people isn't doing the work of processing refugee claims, so even if you're being diligent in trying to fix this mess by increasing staff, your ability to process claims will actually go down at first, until the new staff are up to speed. I have no idea how long it takes to learn this job, but I wouldn't be surprised if it took more than a year before someone was really able to do it up to the standards needed.

And that doesn't even take into account the time and effort need to recruit people. Job interviews take time, and the government has lots of rules on hiring that can't be easily ignored.

Pretty much. The Biden Administration inherited a refugee program that was pretty much outright broken, on top of how broken just about everything else related to asylum and immigration was. I find myself wholly unsurprised, though, that based on the comment, that manpower was likely redirected in fair part to try to try to help take care of the southern border backlogs. I also find it hard to criticize the Biden Administration for doing such, for that matter. It's terrible when one needs to employ triage, but doing such usually leads to better results overall.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Gawd I hate Biden's speeches.

He's giving a speech on the Floyd case, it's on in the other room so I'm not listening to the words. I just can't stand his whiny over-dramatic attempt at emotion.

It's not that I don't think he's sincere, he probably is. There's just something creepy/annoying about his speeches that grates on me like fingernails on a blackboard.