BORDER SECURITY THREAT ASSESSMENT: Do Facts Reveal a Border

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

The government is shut down as I write. If you happen to read this blog post after today, it will be the longest federal government shutdown in United States' history. The reason for it is a claim by the President that there is a national crisis at the border. The President says we aren't safe and the crisis can't be resolved without five-billion-dollars to build a section of wall. 

IS THERE A CRISIS AT THE BORDER? Or is our President having a temper tantrum as some have suggested?

Let us start to answer that with statistics that President Trump’s own administration presents about border security. 

Per data in Donald Trump's Executive Order 13789, the # of non-citizens federally convicted of terrorists in 15yrs 2mo time = 244 terrorists, (16 per yr.). That's 44% of the total terrorists. The other 295 (55%) are US citizens 1/2 of which (8.5/yr.) were foreign-born. https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1026436/download 

PLEASE NOTE: As of NOW, if you try to VERIFY the URL and link above you will get this message instead of the document:

Continuing with the report: 

In this same 182-month period, 1,716 US aliens, or 113 per year, were removed from the country for being a national security threat. In contrast, there are 1,300,000 domestic violence attacks per year or 11,504 attacks for every alien ejected for being a security risk.

The Executive Order also says there are 25 honor killings each year, but there are also over 1,000 domestic violence deaths of intimate partners per year in the US. Honor killings are 2.5% of that total.

AND THIS is directly from the Executive Order: In the fiscal year 2017, DHS had 2,554 encounters with individuals on the terrorist watchlist traveling to the United States. Of those encounters, 335 were attempting to enter by land, 2,170 by air, and 49 by sea.

That is just 13% of all terrorist watchlist persons traveling by land from either from Canada or the Mexico border.

Since 2010, the last 8 years, there have been 46 terrorist attacks in the US resulting in 106 dead and 527 injured (Boston bombing nearly half the injuries): 20 attacks by Islamic extremists, 16 by rightwing extremists, 5 by 4 by mental illness and 1 by a leftwing extremist. (The author from a list of terrorist attacks on Wikipedia)

Border crossers rape and murder at lower rates than the general population. Or to flip that around, they are more law-abiding than our citizens. Here is a summary of an actual scholarly report:

In the context of crime, victimization, and immigration in the United States, research shows that people are afraid of immigrants because they think immigrants are a threat to their safety and engage in many violent and property crimes. However, quantitative research has consistently shown that being foreign-born is negatively associated with crime overall and is not significantly associated with committing either violent or property crime. If an undocumented immigrant is arrested for a criminal offense, it tends to be for a misdemeanor.

Researchers suggest that undocumented immigrants may be less likely to engage in serious criminal offending behavior because they seek to earn money and not to draw attention to themselves. Additionally, immigrants who have access to social services are less likely to engage in crime than those who live in communities where such access is not available.

In regard to victimization, immigrants are more likely to be victims of crime. Foreign-born victims of crime may not report their victimization because of fears that they will experience negative consequences if they contact the police. Recently, concern about immigration and victimization has turned to refugees who are at risk of harm from traffickers, who warehouse them, threaten them, and physically abuse them with impunity. More research is needed on the relationship among immigration, offending, and victimization. The United States and other nations that focus on border security may be misplacing their efforts during global crises that result in forced migrations. Poverty and war, among other social conditions that would “encourage” a person to leave their homeland in search of a better life, should be addressed by governments when enforcing immigration laws.

http://oxfordre.com/.../97801.../acrefore-9780190264079-e-93

Here are a few data charts that are helpful in identifying whether or not there is a present crisis at the border:






OXFORDRE.COM

Immigration and Crime - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of…

Immigration and Crime - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology


And here is another study ABSTRACT: 

Research has shown little support for the enduring proposition that increases in immigration are associated with increases in crime. Although classical criminological and neoclassical economic theories would predict immigration to increase crime, most empirical research shows quite the opposite. We investigate the immigration-crime relationship among metropolitan areas over a 40-year period from 1970 to 2010. Our goal is to describe the ongoing and changing association between immigration and a broad range of violent and property crimes. Our results indicate that immigration is consistently linked to decreases in violent (e.g., murder) and property (e.g., burglary) crime throughout the time period.https://www.tandfonline.com/.../10.../15377938.2016.1261057

TANDFONLINE.COM

A 2018 study published in Criminology analyzed population-level crime rates from all 50 states from 1990 to 2014 and found that the relationship between immigration and crime is "generally negative." "Increases in the undocumented immigrant population within states are associated with significant decreases in the prevalence of violence," study author Michael Light writes.https://psmag.com/.../research-tells-us-that-immigration...

PSMAG.COM

A 2015 study found that, in the same period, the immigration population more than tripled in the United States; from 1990 to 2013, the violent crime rate decreased by 48 percent, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data. (ibid)

Here is a screenshot of a graph by the Pew Research Center from a FactCheck.org Website

https://www.factcheck.org/2018/06/illegal-immigration-statistics/

And here below are a few more charts from a U.S. Customs and Border Security Report that were also published by FactCheck.org :

Notice in the above bar graph dating all the way back to 1961 that the total number of border crossings the year 2000 and has significantly declined since.  The total number of border crossings in 2018 (last year) is 76% below the number in 2000.

While the total number of people crossing the U.S. border is down 76% from the year 2000, the number of family detentions is up. 

Notice that the number of unaccompanied children crossing the border peeked in 2014 and dropped the following year. The number rose again in Barack Obama's last year in office then dropped again since President Trump took office. Last year (2018) the rate of unaccompanied minors crossing the border was about 37% lower than in 2014. 

SUMMARY: From every scholarly study and government information source, the most objective rendering of facts do not support the claim that there is an immigration crisis at our border. And in fact, the data show such a low rate of crimes committed by immigrants that the more immigrants a community has, the lower the crime rate. 

As to why our President is claiming a border crisis and shutting down the government to get his wall build? Who besides him really knows why. What the facts show is that there is no border crisis and no need to disrupt the government and the lives of millions of people affected by the shutdown. 

Russia Info-Warfare Attacks via US Social Media

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Russia didn’t begin targeting Americans on social media until 2013. That’s when they began tweeting in English. This followed a very extensive and successful twitter campaign within Russia to sway support for the invasion into parts of Ukraine.

By 2014, Russia Twitter activity in the US started ramping up rapidly, and activity on other social media platforms began, starting with YouTube, Instagram and then Facebook. Activities on these platforms took the form of coordinated campaigns. Russia leveraged these different platforms to lend support for ideas or activities initiated on another platform. For example, they might send a flurry of tweets to promote a news story posted on a Russian Facebook page taken from American based websites that they could strategically exploit.  

One such campaign was an attempt to raise fears and suspicion within African-American communities, part of an overall strategy to intensify racial animus within the U.S. They created what looked like an American based organization called Black Matters US. They opened a twitter account, a Black Matters Facebook page, an Instagram account etc.  They then used their platforms to promote and amplify the most radical or polarizing content they could find on domestic websites.  They added radical commentary or made statements like, “We are in danger!” or “Cops kill black kids. Are you sure that your son won’t be the next?”  

Influence campaigns such as this increase in number and volume. Most were designed to polarize Americans and turn us against each other. During the 2016 election season, additional campaigns were conducted to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances to become President. Vladimir Putin personally disliked Hillary, but also because she would maintain or increase US sanctions imposed on Russia for its aggression in Ukraine. The idea that the Russian campaign was primarily to harm Hillary Clinton isn’t accurate either. Interfering in our election was just one focus out of many. In fact, following the election of Donald Trump, Russian propaganda operations in the US continued to grow dramatically. The overall goal of Russia’s massive cyber operations in the United States and around the world is to degrade the ability of countries to function as democracies. Russia is attacking the West using sophisticated information warfare technology.

 https://www.axios.com/senate-reports-russian-interference-2016-election-9d0daca6-1e2d-4617-9295-f8eec61c1719.html

The above graph shows the growth of Russia’s social media activity across several platforms. It represents the pace of the attacks on our democracy. Here below is an overview of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) in Russia that is spearheading the attacks.

ICE vs. New Jersey's Attorney General

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

New Jersey’s Attorney General, Gurbir Grewal, finds that federal ICE agents are leaning on state and local police to enforce federal civil immigration laws, thereby reducing the effectiveness of our law enforcement agencies ability to fight crime within immigrant communities.

On November 29, 2018, Grewal issued a directive telling state law enforcement agencies not to blur the distinction between the federal government’s civil law enforcement agents and our state law enforcement agencies. He directed police agencies to, “… build trust within our state’s large and diverse immigrant communities,” so residents aren’t afraid to work with officers, “… to solve crimes and bring criminals to justice.” 

He didn't tell law enforcement not to cooperate with ICE, but to cooperate within constitutional boundaries and within guidelines that don't interfere with their essential mission. The Attorney General issued new guidelines that will go into effect in March.

The Directive immediately created a public clash between Federal Immigration and state law enforcement officials.

On December 8, 2018, the Star-Ledger newspaper reported that ICE arrested 105 immigrants in a five-day long raid conducted in sixteen New Jersey counties. While these raids were planned before the Directive, ICE officials told reporters who asked about the timing, “… there will likely be an uptick in arrests of immigrants living in the country illegally in the wake of state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal’s announcement last week that he is limiting how much local and state police can help immigration officials.”

ICE officials told the Star-Ledger that 80% of the immigrants they caught in that raid had prior criminal records. They said, “Our focus has been, and will continue to be, on arrests of illegal aliens who have been convicted of serious crimes or those who pose a threat to public safety.”

On December 14th the Star-Ledger reported on one of those “serious” criminals captured by ICE.

Dane Foster is a 36-year old Jamaican-born man who became a legal U.S. resident in 1997. He is the sole breadwinner in a family of four children with his wife, Alexsa, a disabled U.S. Army veteran who served for seven years. He is the owner of a small lawn care business. Foster was dropping off his daughter at her daycare center when three vehicles rushed in, surrounded his car and publicly arrested him.

Why was he targeted for arrest and deportation? He had a criminal charge nearly 20 years earlier for which he pled guilty and paid a fine.

Asked about Foster’s case, a spokesperson for ICE said, “ICE conducts targeted immigration enforcement actions in compliance with federal law. Dane Foster, a Jamaican national, is subject to removal from the U.S. based on his criminal history.”

Notice the changes from the prior ICE statement above. In the case of Dane Foster, ICE arrested a legal, not an illegal alien, and they dropped the word “serious” from in front of “criminal history.”

Can we fully trust a federal law enforcement agency like ICE when its public actions exceed its publicly stated mission? Is Dane Foster really a threat to public safety? Or is he more of an asset to the community? And who will care for his family now?

Old African Proverb: When elefants fight the grass dies.

The Idiots of Democracy

By Brian T. Lynch, MSW

So much of what we call Western Civilization had its origin in Ancient Greece. On a recent trip to Athens, my wife and I stood on the steps leading up to the great temple at the Acropolis. It was on these very steps that democracy was first practiced in the ancient world.

 When important decisions of governance had to be made, all the men of the city (sorry ladies) were summoned. They came and stood on these steps where they freely and openly debated all sides of the issues before them. They then called for a vote, and by a show of hands decided the issues in question. It was for all of them a liberating and empowering experience unlike anything citizens ever experienced before.

But even so, there were always some men who choose not to participate, men who stayed away. The Greeks had a word for such men. In English the word they called them means “individual” but not in a positive sense. It was more in the sense of a person who holds themself apart from others, who doesn’t pull their weight or work for the welfare of the community in which they live.

The Greek word for this was “IDEOS” from which we get the word idiot. 

That’s right, people who didn’t vote or participate in democracy were called idiots back then, and they are still idiots today.

NJ's 7th District Democratic Congressional Candidate

by Brian T Lynch, MSW

What follows is a summary to inform anyone interested as to the policy positions of the Democratic candidate for Congress from New Jersey's 7th Congressional District. Tom Malinowski may soon be replacing Republican Leonard Lance.

Tom Malinowski (D) NJ 7th Congressional District Candidate Positions Summary*

HEALTHCARE

 - Will defend the ACA, fix its flaws and evolve towards universal coverage.

 - Supports taxpayer-funded cost-sharing subsidies to share the burden of low wage earners

 - Supports access to contraceptive coverage

 - Supports elimination of pre-existing condition clauses

 - Advocates for a Medicare buy-in (purchase) plan

 - Will allow Medicare to be able to negotiate lower drug prices

 - Will allow state attorneys general to sue generic drug makers for excessively high prices

 - Supports laws to prevent pharmaceutical companies from blocking generic alternatives

 - Will increase funding and support for HIH research grants

 - Will allow stem-cell research

WAGE EARNERS

 - Supports an equal pay for equal work law to benefit women

 - Supports guaranteed paid family leave for new parents

 - Wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour

 - Opposes right to work laws and other attacks on collective bargaining

 - Opposes unsafe worker misclassification and other wage theft schemes

 - Will protect the prevailing wages of workers

ENVIRONMENT

 - Believes climate change is a threat and will support the Paris Climate Change Agreement

 - Opposes fossil fuel industry subsidies

 - Supports sensible safeguards against climate change

 - Opposes the PennEast and Pilgrim pipelines

 - Opposes offshore drilling

 - Supports and will defend the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

TAX REFORM

 - Will work to repeal and replace the GOP tax law with a fiscally responsible tax reform.

 - Supports middle-class tax deductions such as State and Local Tax (SALT) deductions

 - Wants to close corporate and special interest tax loopholes

 - Wants to bring foreign tax shelter money back onshore where it can be fairly taxed

IMMIGRATION

 - Supports bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform

 - Will funding better border security Encourage legal immigration

 - Encourages legal immigration

 - Will advocate for a tough but fair process to bring immigrants out from the shadows

 - Will strengthen employment verification

 - Supports DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program

 - Would end the practice of family separation by ICE

 - Opposes the Muslim travel ban

 - Supports granting additional protections to domestic and migrant farm workers

NATIONAL SECURITY

 - Will support the US State Department and frontline diplomats

 - Supports foreign trade policies that are fair to American workers and businesses

 - Opposes foreign trade wars

 - Will keep our NATO commitments

 - Will maintain sanctions on Russia while it continues aggression towards Ukraine

 - Supports Israel

 - Will support putting pressure on Iran to stop missile and nuclear weapons development

 - Will urge deterrence, sanctions and diplomacy to achieve the denuclearization of N. Korea

 - Is for greater Congressional oversight of military overseas operations

 - Will defend global human rights and fight international corruption

FIREARMS CONTROL

 - Supports renewal of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban (AWB)

 - Prohibits domestic firearms manufacturers from producing military-style assault rifles

 - Limits ammunition magazines to ten rounds

 - Would raise the minimum gun purchase age from 18 to 21 years old

 - Opposes the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act

 - Supports a court petition law to remove guns from people at risk to themselves or others

 - Supports legislation to prohibit ownership of armor-piercing ammunition

 - Support restrictions to the acquisition, sale, or transfer of body armor

 - Support repeal of the Tiahrt Amendment which restricts law enforcement gun tracing

 - Support universal background checks in all circumstances

CORRUPTION

 - Has pledged to not take campaign contributions from corporate PACs.

 - Supports a Constitution Amendment to overturn the SCOTUS Citizens United decision.

 - Supports an Honest Ads Act to keep a public registry of political ads and their funders

 - Supports codifying ethics rules to prevent conflicts of interest and lobbyist abuses

DEFENDING DEMOCRACY

 - Will fight to protect democratic institutions that keep us free and hold leaders accountable

 - Supports the independence of the Justice Department and the FBI

 - Will encourage law enforcement to pay close attention to all extremist groups, including     white supremacists

 - Opposes voter suppression and partisan gerrymandering

 - Will work to secure our voting process from electronic tampering and foreign influence schemes

__________________________________________

* This summary was compiled by me, Brian T. Lynch, from Tom Malinowski’s position statements as posted on the Malinowski for Congress Web page. I am not affiliated with his campaign. You can read his full position statements at this link:  https://malinowskifornj.com/issues-all/

This Lays Behind Our Economic Boom and Political Bust

By Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Last year the wealthiest nation in the history of the world generated $8.7 trillion in new wealth, more than the next 10 countries combined. That works out to over $65,000 per household. How much of that worker generated new wealth did you receive in your pay raise last year? If your family income was $60,000 last year, and if you were rewarded with just 5% of the new wealth that you helped create, plus a cost of living adjustment to keep up with inflation, your family income today should be over $63,500? Is that true for most of you? Probably not, because that second bar graph on right suggests personal household income is not growing much.

Some people looking at this will say: 

“Yea, rich people will get richer, but low unemployment and new manufacturing jobs will add a lot of wealth where there was none before. Right"?

That hasn't been the case overall for the past 40 years. The great wealth creation last year isn't a one-off event. It happens nearly every year. And every year since the mid-1970s workers do not receive any (or very little) share in the rising hourly GDP (New Wealth).

Prior to 1974, we all receive productivity raises nearly every year on top of any cost of living adjustments (a COLA, as it was called). Since then we stopped receiving productivity raises and lost public sector health coverage, pension plans, and other benefits. We have received cost of living raises since then, but productivity raises have been minimal. Therefore, while our wages keep up with inflation, they aren't keeping up with new personal wealth. Put another way, our collective wages are a smaller and smaller percentage of our National GDP.

If wages continued keeping up with hourly GDP since 1974, the median household income today (fam of 4) would be over $115,000/year instead of nearly half that. The national GDP is nearly three times greater today than it was in 1974, yet inflation-adjusted have barely risen. These are uncontested facts. Chronic wage suppression (and I do believe this is deliberate) accounts for most of our economic ills today.

Imagine how much easier it would be to raise money for our schools and local services if everyone in town had twice the income they make now. How much money would we save on government aid to the working poor (daycare, housing, medical care, etc.) if everyone had twice the income and didn’t need financial subsidies? Imagine how the economy would be buzzing if everyone had lots more discretionary income to buy things, thus boosting the demand for production. The only downside is that the wealth of the richest 1% wouldn't be growing quite as fast. The decline of the middle-class, the lack of good paying jobs, the increase in public assistance, the rise in taxes and decline of other government services are all symptoms of income inequality. The cycle of wealth accumulation followed by catastrophic wars and social collapse is a very old story with a many-centuries-old history.

Are you still with me, because this next part is important.

There has not been a big partisan difference on the issues of a fair distribution of wages or wealth. Both political parties remained silent on the subject for decades, until the 2014 election. Both parties talked about job growth, but not wage growth. Both talked about growing the economy but not about our shrinking pensions and benefits packages and stagnant wages. They talked about bolstering the middle-class but didn't mention our growing poverty class for almost three decades.

Republican legislators (not most rank and file members) have been far more pro-corporate in pursuing the interests of the wealthy elite over time. Republican party elites also shamelessly pandered to value voters and the far-right fringe to win elections but never delivered on their promises. Main Street Republicans were used and abuse to the elite of their party could pursue the corporate donor interests.

On the other side of the aisle, Democratic Party leadership (not every legislator) also pandered to big corporations, to the rich and to their more liberal base while being complicit in their silence on income inequality and many other matters important to their voters. No one in government was addressing the shrinking middle-class or their shrinking wages relative to the size of the ever-growing US economy. No one was listening to any of us!

Hence, we had a political revolt in both parties during the 2014 elections. Rank and file members of both parties weren’t listening to each other either as powerful special interest, foreign and domestic, made sure we didn’t get together to compare notes. Donald Trump rose up among conservatives to shake things up in the GOP. Bernie Sanders rose up among liberals to shake up the Democratic establishment.

So here we are today, like opposing armies glaring at each other across the battlefield in a war we never wanted. Both sides have been ignored by our leaders. Both sides have been told the other side is the cause of our decline. Both sides have been given false reasons for our growing dissatisfaction. And yet the real reasons for this sluggish Main Street economy, which is slowly squeezing us into poverty, are reasons that we all share in common. 

It is the failure of our politics to address the unfair distribution of wages and wealth. It is hundreds of policies that favor the profitability of big businesses over the best interests of our people. It is the corruption of special interests representing the ultra-wealthy and buying elections. We would all do far better if we could just lower our guard, put our less consequential differences aside for now and join in common cause to take charge of our economic well-being.

Social Progress and the Democratic Party

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

When I take the long view of this country's domestic history, and especially when I view it through the lens of that great historian, Howard Zinn, I feel a debt of gratitude towards the past leaders of the Democratic Party who championed the progress we have made towards building a better society for all.

But then I think about what Democrats have so far failed obtain in recent times. A list that includes: 

• Meaningful minimum wages 
• Paid maternity leave (only one of three countries on earth without it) 
• Paid family leave 
• Affordable daycare 
• Reasonable gun control 
• Reductions in our outrageously bloated military spending 
• Abolishment of the death penalty (Only one of a handful of countries with it) 
• Universal healthcare 
• Free or low-cost college tuition 
• A humane prison system 
• Racial equality
• Adequate and competent counsel for anyone accused of a crime 
• Pay equity for women 
• A plan to mitigate the release of greenhouse gasses 
• A fair tax system that doesn't favor the wealthy and reduces wealth inequality 
• Labor laws that give workers real power on corporate boards (as is true and very beneficial in Europe) 
• An honest, fair and accessible voting system 
• Enforcement of meaningful regulations on polluters, wall street traders and big corporations, and much more. 

This is a very long list that has been ignored for too long. I know we can't count on any current members of the Republican Party to champion these priorities, but we ought to be able to count on Democrats to take up these very reasonable measures.

So I do thank the Democrats for all of the great advances they have ushered into our lives. I vote for them consistently. I believe the Republican Party has been kidnapped by men addicted to power, but still I keep waiting for leaders in the Democratic Party to show up on all of these popular, progressive issues.