aurorawatcherak "I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
I think every writer probably has a library of half-done stories. I certainly do. They come in various stages.
Baby Stories
There’s the stories that are merely notes. I had an idea and I wrote it up, but no characters volunteered to create an actual workable story. All of my stories are character-driven. The plot arises from the stories the characters tell me. If no characters start talking in my head about the idea I wrote down, then there’s no story. Those ideas remain notes in my computer and I’ll revisit them occasionally. They’ve become short stories in anthologies and Words I Wish I’d Said came from notes that a character develops into their life story.
About to Be Published
I currently have three works in progress that will probably be published in the next year or two. Currently, I’m working on the next book in Transformation Project series, Republic of Afrika, which will likely publish later this year. My secondary project is the next book in What If Wasn’t series, Empire of Dirt, which might publish in early 2025. My tertiary project is the four book in Daermad Cycle, which is a fat fantasy that has been in progress for a couple of years and might come out next year.
Partially Written
I also have a cache of stories that have characters willing to share thier stories, but are nowhere near ready to be called a novel. They’ve taken second-place behind my active projects. Maybe I’ll publish them after the series finally wind down.
Writing runs on ideas, so every author who publishes likely has a bunch of half-done works that may never see the light of day…or may be their greatest novel yet.
That’s a hard one. Since I write series, I would have said transitions…so beginnings, but especially endings, when I’m setting up the next book. All throughout the book and sometimes in much earlier books, I’m seeding the contents for a later book, but especially at the end of the book, I’m trying to future-see. And that’s a lot of fun because it allows me to be a prophet. Yes, I’m the author but as a discovery writer who at best can plot out large trends rather than details, it’s major work for me.
But I’ve written a couple of standalones and I got say research also turns my crank. I’ve almost always started the book by then–there’s no reason, in my mind, to research for boring characters who will plod through the plot–and I get a charge out of watching an interesting character–like the very complicated Declan of Words I Wish I’d Said–interact with the research I’m uncovering.
So while I like all parts of the book journey at some point (well, except maybe final endings) I am going to say applying research to my characters and seeing it work out in the plot is probably where I get my most satisfaction.
I think ideas flow year-round for me. Anytime I’m not actively engaged in truly engrossing work, my mind will throw off writing ideas. This is especially true in the spring-summer arc of seasons. Alaska is a kind of bipolar state. In the winter, it’s dark and cold. At the nadir of December 21, we have 2 1/2 hours of sunlight, a couple hours on each end of civil twilight, and then its dark more than 12 hours a day. Starting March 21, the days become 12 hours and gradually increase until Summer Solstice on June 21 when they days gradually start to dwindle. But, man, the 23 hours of sunlight is glorious!
Idea Season(s)
For me, that period of the vernal equinox (March 21) signals the start of idea season. I really start to feel it around March 1 as the days get longer and I start to throw out story ideas — either whole stories that are brand-new or fresh ideas for my ongoing series. As spring progresses into summer, I’ll get less writing done because it’s too beautiful not to be outside, but I’ll also just be less focused. It’s an imaginative time of year, not so much a productive time. I might do some editing while I’m on the deck, but I often use this time to read other authors’ books.
Writing Season(s)
The sunlight starts dwindling in June, but you notice it around here in August and September–our rainy season. That’s when my writing production picks up. One reason I often publish a book in September or October is that it’s been lying fallow for most of the summer and I can look at it with fresh eyes in September and do a final edit, then decide if it needs another edit from dispassionate eyes or it can be published.
I spend most of the winter writing. It keeps me from getting SAD in the winter. It takes me out of the house that’s causing cabin fever. It is a less imaginative time–one in which I look at all the notes I made in the summer and start mining my creativity.
So the answer is — I can’t say I have a specific season when my writing flows better, but there are different flavors to my flow depending on the sunlight.
In my early writing days–before I published my debut novel The Willow Branch–I sought writing advice from lots of place, trying to soak up everything I could to reach the goals I set for myself. I considered the guidance provided by agents in hopes of impressing them. Gotta play the game, right?
Then I gradually began to let go of other people’s rules — not so much to break them as to bend them, sometimes to the point of breading. All writing advice should be taken with a grain of salt because writing is a creative art, not a science. Good art has underlying rules, but creative innovation cannot happen with a slavish devotion to the rules.
So, here’s a handful of rules I don’t always follow or even sometimes break.
Avoiding Passive Voice
I really hate passive voice. It just takes so long to say anything. I blame social workers for this. They can’t get to the point, no matter what. They love to talk in circles A close second to social workers is bureaucrats. I’ve spent the last 27 years working for one and then the other. Sigh!
But one most pay the bills, so….
As an indie writer, I don’t have to answer to anyone but myself. I still hate passive voice. But a novel with a high-content of active voice can be boring. So I let about one in 10 sentences be passive voice. It relaxes the novel a little, gives it sace. But I’m very choosy about when I break the rule.
Write What You Know
We’ve all heard this. It’s like this hard and fast rule that you absolutely can’t break. Right?
Well, sometimes you can break it. I really knew very little about medicinal herbs before I wrote The Willow Branch, but my main character is an herbman, so I had to teach myself about medicinal herbs. Since it’s a fantasy, I play a little fast and loose with what works because it’s not set in this world. I went from not knowing to expanding my knowledge. I took the time to do the research.
Similarly in the series Transformation Project I knew almost nothing about how to grow corn in the Midwest. I’m still far from an expert, but I now know a lot about growing corn in Kansas.
Imagine how many aspiring writers toss aside solid book ideas because they’ve been told they don’t know enough, so don’t bother. Gain knowledge and let imagination do the rest.
Write for the Market
Okay, this one I pulverize with a sledgehammer. I’m writing books I want to read–good books with great characters doing interesting things–and then I try to find a market for it. The more books I write, the easier it is to get people to read it because they’ve read some of my other books and they liked them. And sometimes new people show up and that’s great.
The thing is — almost no really GREAT novels had a market before they were written. To sell a “breakout” book, a writer needs to do something that will break from the rest of the books on the market. This isn’t accomplshed by writing for the market. You have to write something totally different and unique. The market is yesterday’s news. You need to aim for what people will want to read tomorrow and that’s not going to found in a marketing report.
Show, Don’t Tell
Craft books love to remind us of this one, but in some instances, detail can be irrelevant or redundant. For instance, telling is preferable to showing when an author needs to signify the passage of time. Sure, you could take 20 pages describing a step-by-step journey over the mountains, but sometimes that’s just going to be boring for the reader. It might be better to simply tell the reader that it’s now three days later.
Formulaic Narrative Structures
I am a discovery writer, so I don’t write to a formula. Since I write series, I usually know the start of the story and, often, then end of the story in a particular book, but the journey to reach the destination has yet to be discovered.
Rather than precisely transition from one “act” to another like writing coaches say we should, I focus on capturing the reader’s attention early in the book and then asking myself if there’s enough conflict to encourage the reader to read the middle of the story. What matters is whether the story engages the reader, who–if they’re reading a compelling story-absolutely won’t care if I’ve transitioned from one of act to another at the 20% mark.
Don’t Use A Thesaurus
I’ve never followed this rule. When I took Creative Writing in high school, we were encouraged to use a thesaurus, which was just reinforced when I was a newspaper journalist. I use a thesaurus every day. When I write, I might use a mundane word to describe something, but think there’s perhaps a stronger word I can use. I love synonyms!
Some well-established authors advise writers to use the simplest word possible–the word most readily available and quick to come to mind. I understand the sentiment. Never use a $1000 word when a $5 word sounds less pretentious. But sometimes a precise word is just what a passage needs and I won’t apologize for using it.
And, although I have always had a big vocabulary, using a thesaurus has improved it, which is absolutely a good thing for a writer.
So there you have it. I don’t necessarily break all the rules, but there are a few I bend and more I just play with when I feel the story needs it. I wonder what my fellow blog hoppers have said.
Solving the migrant crisis depends on understanding why undocumented immigrants insist upon coming to the United States illegally.
Legal immigrants have been welcome in the United States for a long time. During the 19th and 20th centuries, America absorbed millions of peoples coming from less-advantaged countries around the world. There were times when citizens felt the country was being overwhelmed by immigrants and so undertook a pause or slowdown to give the residents of the nation time to assimilate these new arrivals before once more opening the doors to more of them. America has been one of the most welcoming of first-world societies to legal immigration. Thus we have the largest immigrant population in the industrialized world.
Legal immigration is not the problem and, if we could get ILLEGAL immigration under control, we could – in time – increase our ability to admit more legal immigrants.
Therein lies the problem, though.
Over the past five decades, undocumented immigrants have largely replaced low-skilled Americans in the unskilled labor market. Americans are legally required to work for no less than the minimum wage and are subject to tax evasion laws if they work “under the table.” Americans risk prison for working “under the table.”
Undocumented immigrants thus fill jobs that employers deem “not worth” the minimum wage – exerting downward pressure on wages in agriculture, construction, food preparation, meat packing, hospitality, and general maintenance.
Black Americans and first-generation legal immigrants are the most hurt by this practice. Even when unemployment is low, these workers often show a decline in labor participation because they simply can’t get hired for what they can legally work for.
The current overwhelming surge of illegal immigration then puts enormous fiscal pressure on towns, cities and states in the Southwest region, but also big Northeast and Midwest cities whose Democratic mayors started demanding federal action.
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Finally, and most concerning, this influx of illegal immigration threatens the underpinnings of American democracy. Legal residents and citizens of the country belief those who receive the benefits of living in America should meet the obligations of citizenship. One obligation of living in American society is that you obey our laws, which illegal immigrants can’t do because they entered the country illegally. That shouldn’t be a hard concept to entertain, but apparently it is for some members of Congress. For our federal government to condone this on such a widespread basis leaves many multi-generational Americans feel “less-than” in their own country, as if they should go across the border and enter illegally to receive better treatment.
So something needs to be done. But what?
House Republican Plan
Last May, House Republicans passed H.R. 2, a “tough” immigration bill. Democrats immediately denounced it as too mean and President Biden (speaking the words his puppet master provided) promised to veto it.
Senate Republicans introduced their own proposals, supposedly modeled on H.R.2. They then tied it to funding for the Ukraine and Israeli wars, assuming whoever didn’t vote for it would be vilified as not caring about these two beleaguered nations.
That’s a topic for another time, but the vote failed.
The Senate also appointed a bipartisan committee to hammer out a compromise, but it hit a predictable roadblock. House Republicans announced that they wouldn’t accept a Senate bill that was substantially different from the House bill. Biden tried to sweeten the pot by offering to close down the border if crossings exceeded 4,000 a day.
Republicans can do math. That’s 1.8 million illegal border crossings a year.
And the Democrats have offered no other proposal to counter H.R. 2. They call for greatly expanding the asylum system and providing a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Most ordinary Americans feel this is like offering to make dinner for the burglar who broke into your house.
Of course Democrats are hoping to use this as a political wedge against Trump and the GOP (“they’re anti-immigrant), but there is such a thing as Wayback, so we can see that Biden voiced encouragement of illegal immigration in his first days in office and inspired the flood of illegal migrants we’re now experiencing. At least some Democrats are now recognizing this as a problem.
Oh, my God! The burglar is demanding dessert now!
Then, any honest reading of H.R. 2 shows many of its provisions are not unreasonable, which puts the lie to the Democratic narrative that anything coming out of the GOP is extreme nutbaggery that must be stopped at all costs. It’s a reasonable alternative to just allowing the continued invasion of the country.
Now, the burglar wants you to fix him a bed.
What’s In HR 2?
The House bill slightly toughens rules for asylum and parole, which have essentially allowed the Biden administration to release almost every illegal border crosser they encounter after giving them a court date in the distant future that nothing requires them to show up for. It would require asylum seekers to apply at official ports of entry. They would also have to apply for asylum (and be denied) in countries they transited through on their way to the United States. Migrants would have to convince US asylum officers that they face a “credible fear of persecution” in their home country rather than just state it.
The Refugee Act of 1980 allows migrants to apply for asylum based on “a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Biden illegally widened these criteria. H.R. 2 tightens it back to the legal standards.
Now ask me what I think of passing a second law to uphold the first law?
The House bill also re-establishes more stringent requirements for parole, which allows undocumented migrants to live in the United States and work for a specified period (6 to 24 months) after which they must apply for admission through normal channels. Dating back to 1952, parole was legally limited to individual cases that advanced a humanitarian cause or conferred a public benefit. Typically, migrants would be granted parole to seek medical attention, but periodically, it was used to admit people fleeing war-torn countries where the United States had intervened unsuccessfully, such as in Vietnam.
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Biden has applied parole for people from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Venezuela, Cuba, and Haiti, but also is being used by border officials to release undocumented migrants temporarily (that just somehow becomes permanent).
The House Republican bill would reaffirm parole’s original language. Cases would be taken one-at-a-time instead of applying to whole classes of people and a “humanitarian cause” would be restricted to such things as medical emergencies, the imminent death of a family member, or the attendance at a funeral. Parole would be limited to one year, which could be renewed once, and parolees wouldn’t be eligible to work.
Yes, the bill would drastically cut down on the admission of economic migrants.
We already have a system in place for orderly migration. The Biden administration should use it. There is a provision that allows for asylum “in extraordinary circumstances, such as those involving national security or foreign policy considerations” which would cover, for example, our contractors from Afghanistan who had to flee precipitously because of Biden’s inane policies.
What Do They Think They’re Doing?
When Senate Republicans announced their own bill in November, they claimed they based it on H.R. 2, but conspicuously omitted the E-Verify requirements.
This isn’t really anything new. My entire working life, every time I’ve been hired by an employer, I’ve had to provide legal proof that I’m legally permitted to work in the United States. Yes, I was born here, but that isn’t enough for American citizens to get a job in this country.
But, if you’re an illegal immigrant….
H.R. 2 requires all employers run their employees and applicants through a national electronic database that combines information from the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. If employers hired or continue to employ a worker who doesn’t meet the legal requirements to work in the United States, they could be fined $5,000 for each employee, and possibly, denied federal contracts.
Remember, American citizens have had to go through this process (without the database) most of my working life. It was meant to discourage illegal immigrant hiring which employers engaged in to lower costs and bust unions, and to discourage undocumented immigrants from crossing the border because they couldn’t gain employment and might get caught.
In the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, Congress decreed fines for employers who knowingly employed undocumented workers, and criminal penalties, including, possibly, jail time for repeated offenses, but businesses successfully lobbied for the law to say they only needed to see the evidence of legality and file a form, not actually provide proof to the government. Under these lax rules, the government prosecutes an overwhelming 15 cases annually about once a decade.
Since 1996, employers have been able to voluntarily verify Social Security numbers electronically. Ten states require employers to use E-Verify for all hires but other states limit its use to public employees, or leave it entirely voluntary.
Studies of its effects in the states that require E-Verify suggest it could discourage illegal immigration. States that use it have fewer unauthorized immigrants living there and there is evidence that when a state starts requiring it, undocumented migrants leave the state, which suggests they might leave the country if it was mandatory on a federal level.
Some of these studies show the E-Verify mandates ease the pressures of illegal immigration on unskilled American workers by removing their direct competition. Interestingly, some studies found employment rose among male Mexican immigrants who were naturalized citizens in states that adopt E-Verify mandates. Furthermore, earnings increased amoung US-born Hispanic men.
Skeptical
I don’t think this is the best solution. As a libertarian, I am highly suspicious of any federal program that tracks American citizens. But I also don’t think you can call yourself a country when you haven’t got a border – or the border you’ve declared has millions of people crossing it illegally.
E-Verify won’t fix America’s broken immigration system all on its own. It might discourage undocumented workers, but it’s not a panacea. It must be paired with more effective policing of the southern border, an increase in immigration judges familiar with the history of immigration in this country, and something needs to be done with the 30 million undocumented immigrants already living and, mostly working, in the United States.
Should they be given a legal pathway to employment in a country they entered illegally?
I think if you ask low-skilled Americans, especially males who typically can’t easily get welfare payments…no! Hell, to the NO! They often didn’t have the best advantages starting out in life and for those who want to work, the existence of illegal migrants who can work for less than the minimum wage sets up competition they can’t overcome. They go to prison if they’re caught working under the table, but illegal migrants just get an all-expense-paid vacation back to their home country. It’s not a fair system.
Every one of my ancestors who wasn’t a Native American was an immigrant. They all left behind stories of coming to America, risking getting turned away at a port of entry, working hard, learning English, and becoming citizens through a legal process. I suspect they’re rolling in their graves right now thinking about finding a burglar in their home and being required to provide him dinner, dessert and a bed for the night before he leaves with their television set under his arm in the morning.
Yes, some compromise is necessary to fix the migrant crisis, but that fix needs to recognize that Americans who are here now, for the most part, want immigrants to follow the rules their ancestors had to follow to come to this country. E-Verify helps. Tighter border security, a tight restriction on parole and asylum, and a formalized process to become legal workers in this country help more. But more than that, there needs to be a recognition that undocumented workers have been able to work in this country without they (or likely, their employer) paying income taxes. While I don’t agree with income taxes in general, I do recognize that the Americans who can’t find jobs because illegals have taken them all might feel differently.
The migrant crisis at America’s southern border is a looming existential threat to the country and Congress has become totally dysfunctional while the elderly man pretending to be President seems not to realize that he has the authority to fix the problem without Congress saying a word.
The Constitution and Congress gave him (well, a predecessor) that authority a long time ago.
But it’s complicated, so let’s look at it.
A Snarl and A Half
America’s immigration is a mess. It’s always been a little bit of a mess because the United States has a lot of border and a historically laissez faire attitude. It became a bigger mess under the Reagan administration and then an even bigger mess under the Obama administration, but it got a great deal messier under Joe Biden’s presidency, primarily because undocumented immigrants learned to claim asylum while Biden’s administration now grants what they call “parole” to hundreds of thousands of gate-crashers.
You know the problem has reached a crisis when Democratic mayors joined Republican governors in demanding the federal government address the situation – NOW.
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It’s an election year, so everything has a political flavor to it. Republicans blame the Democrats for the border crisis and they’re not wrong. Democrats are in charge in Washington DC, immigration and the borders are a federal enumerated power, and the Democrats have failed to find a credible way to address the problem. If they don’t wake up and smell the coffee burning, their worst nightmare might become president again.
Facts
The current United States immigration system admits over one million immigrants a year (675,000 permanent visas, 400-500,000 chain-migration applicants, and about 50,000 refugees who have been vetted prior to entry). This is among the most generous legal immigration system in the world. Good for us!
Don’t dislocate your shoulder patting yourself on the back just yet.
Back when I took sociology in college, the rationale was that admitting more than 1% of your population via immigration in a year was not healthy. A country can’t assimilate more than that. At 1 million legal immigrants per year, that’s about one-half of one percent of our population, so we could admit more, but that’s another topic. Let’s address the real issue now.
In the three years that Biden has been president, about 6 million undocumented immigrants have entered the country illegally. Some have been processed by the Border Patrol before disappearing into the country, but most have simply come across the border and disappeared into the country. We have no idea who these people are or what they want.
In Fiscal Year 2017 (October 2016 to September 2017), the US Customs and Border Protection encountered 526,901 unauthorized migrants trying to enter the country. It took Trump a while to get the flow of migrants under control, but the numbers plummeted to 646,822 in 2020. Some of the reduction was covid-related, but a lot of it was because Trump actually enforced America’s existing laws concerning illegal border crossings.
And then he lost the 2020 election and Biden became president.
In FY2023, customs agents encountered 3.2 million unauthorized migrants. According to the Department of Homeland Security about 3.1 million have attempted to enter the country through the southern border, but they admit they only encounter between 30-50% of actual crossers.
Why?
Most South American migrants are lured here by the hope of employment in the prosperous United States, while others are driven by the breakdown of public order and economic stability in Venezuela. But there’s also many who are somehow coming from Africa and Asia. (If you can afford the passage across an ocean, maybe you can’t claim you’re poor). Many correctly view Biden as more welcoming toward illegal immigrants. One of his first executive orders liberalized the processing of illegal immigrants, so they’re not wrong to perceive that.
What has made this surge unique in the Biden administration is the vastly expanded use of parole and asylum by those who would normally not be granted legal entry.
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The United State actually has one of the most liberal legal immigration systems in the world. Or did—until the Obama administration inexplicably slowed down the processing of applications in 2014. Why? I’ve heard a lot of half-assed answers, but none of them are terribly satisfying. It seems like a deliberate choice to break a system that was working relatively well.
The asylum laws were established in the wake of World War II to accommodate peoples who feared persecution if they returned to their native lands. This was primarily an issue with European Jews at the time. Endorsing a United Nations convention on refugees, the US passed the Refugee Act of 1980. A refugee must apply from abroad and an asylum seeker can apply from within the United States to be eligible for asylum if they had been persecuted or had a “well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” If their asylum status was accepted, they would be eligible to work in the United States, and after five years they could apply for citizenship.
I know two people who are American citizens today after they (separately) applied through the asylum system while they were here on visas. The system works if you work it.
Like every other country, the United States doesn’t have to accept every application for asylum or refugee status. The president sets the annual limit. Obama set the ceiling around 80,000. Trump, aware of the large influx of illegals coming across the Southern border, dropped the legal asylum limit at 15,000 in FY2021. Biden immediately raised the limit to 62,500 for FY2022. There is no limit on grants of asylum. For the first 15 years of the twenty-first century, asylum applications were generally in the five-digit range but began to rise under Trump, which coincided with huge mass immigration in Europe. In FY2022, there were 259,912 applications and in FY2023, 478,885.
We know from journalistic investigation by Lauren Southern that this huge jump in asylum applications resulted from human smugglers advising border crossers to let themselves be caught by border security and then apply for asylum. Border patrol agents have said that the Biden administration doesn’t require these illegal crossers to establish a legitimate fear of persecution in order to be granted a Notice of Appearance in court before being released.
It’s enough to say you fear such persecution.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities can hold only 35,000 undocumented migrants at a time, so the pressure is on to process everyone and give them transportation into the interior of the country. The definition of “fear” is pretty loose and families and unaccompanied minors face a much lower scrutiny if claiming a fear of persecution.
Combine this surge of asylum applicants with a shortage of immigration judges and there is now a backlog of 3.1 million cases. Illegal immigrants granted preliminary asylum permits are released into the country, virtually without screening, with a Notice of Appearance for a court date 4-10 years out. Two-thirds of them never reappear for their court date.
Do we think they’re going to hang onto that piece of paper for a decade?
Under a Reagan era policy, undocumented migrants can also temporarily enter the country via “parole”, but (legally) only on a case-by case-basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit. Paroled migrants must apply for normal legal admission after a specified period of time, but the Biden administration has vastly expanded the use of parole and made it more or less permanent. The groups qualifying under this policy used to be very limited, but now include Afghans, Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans, and Ukrainians, as well as just about any individual seeking admission at ports of entry. They are granted permission to obtain employment without going through the green card process and may apply for permanent status without going through the normal processes.
This means of the 6 million undocumented immigrants who flowed across the Southern border in FY2023, only about 3.1 million had any contact with Border Patrol, with 1.5 million are actually being tracked by the immigration system. And remember, we still admit over 1 million immigrants legally.
We’ve absorbed the population of a 51st state in three years.
The southern border of the United States has as much security as a bus station during Spring Break.
Feeling the Pain
Many of these illegal migrants stayed in the Southwest and West, taxing the ability of towns, cities and states to provide services. The city of El Paso (population 677,000) absorbed over 200,000 illegal immigrants in FY2023 and spent $89 million last year on migrant services while the state of California spent $900 million. Other illegals traveled to northern cities and towns, often on flights funded by the federal government. Citizens who were previously proud to live in a “sanctuary city” now face the cost of sheltering these extra people while their governments try to maintain public order with people who don’t even know the rules—or, as was the case when a dozen migrants beat the crap out of two New York City cops, don’t care what the rules are. The surge in migrants have taxed the welfare system of these liberal states to t he point where they can’t provided needed services to American citizens who need it. Many of these Democratic-led cities now have outraged citizens pressuring public officials to fix the problem…NOW!
With 150,000 undocumented migrants filling New York City, 62% of New Yorkers (a very immigrant-friendly city) say this is destroying the city. When Chicago spent $361 million on 34,000 illegal migrants in 2023 ($10,600 per migrant), Chicago’s black community turned out in rage. The Democratic mayor of Edison, New Jersey (population 100,000) objected to the 1200 migrants that showed up there.
And the Federal Government Does…?
Biden has made half-assed efforts to slow the flow of illegal immigrants, trying to get applicants to apply online or from processing centers in their own countries, or at designated ports of entry, but if they were already across the border – well, once you’re inside the borders of the United States you have vastly more rights than if you’re outside of the country (Verdugo-Urquidez). This is true even if you came in legally. Biden’s re-application of long-standing (they’re not new) rules slowed migration for a short while, but the effect didn’t last long.
Plans, So Many Plans
November 2023, Senate Republicans unveiled a set of proposals addressing illegal immigration. They tied it to a highly unpopular proposal for military aid to Ukraine and Israel. They demanded the border wall be completed, and they wanted asylum and parole rules toughened. Instead of having to convince an overworked border officer that there was a “significant possibility” that their claim of asylum would be accepted by a court, applicants would have show that it was “more likely than not” that their claim would be accepted. The Republicans wanted to eliminate the broad class-based criterion for humanitarian parole. They wanted parole to be granted “rarely” and only for a year with a possible one-year extension. They also wanted the Biden restrictions on application for asylum, which were under court review, codified into law. They further wanted families facing court hearings held in detention rather than released on their own recognizance. Finally, they wanted other claimants returned to a contiguous country like Mexico while they awaited immigration court hearings.
Remember, migrant rights diminish when they’re on the other side of the border.
So, essentially, they wanted a return to the previous system which had worked fairly well in the past. Most of these provisions already exist in the federal code. They don’t require Congress to vote on them again to be in force. They just need the Biden administration to do its job.
Of course, leading Democratic Senators rejected the Republican proposals. California Senator Alex Padilla warned that the proposals would “eviscerate our asylum system, endangering families and children fleeing violence and persecution.”
That the vast majority of illegal migrants crossing our southern border are military-aged men unaccompanied by women or children seems to have escaped notice.
The ACLU stirred up lots of “immigration advocacy groups” bent on rejecting these “anti-immigrant” proposals. Biden (or more likely his puppet master) urged Democrats to find a compromise agreement with the Republicans on reform proposals. After all, the Democrats need war in Ukraine and Israel to win the 2024 election.
Starting in December , a bipartisan group began meeting to work out a deal. This group is apparently stalled – or at least very slow in producing a proposal. They agreed they could toughen up some asylum criteria, but they don’t agree on reforming the “parole” protocols. There’s no word on other proposals.
And it probably doesn’t matter because our border has very few barriers to illegal border crossers. You can wade across the Rio Grande during most times of the year. Although I’ve always been skeptical of “the Wall”, it would take a decade to complete even if they concentrated on the areas where it’s most needed. Illegal border crossers will still claim “persecution” to get into the country and establishing a better definition of credible fear won’t teach Border Patrol officers how to discern what’s a bogus assertion over what’s legitimate. And once in the country, our Constitution grants crossers rights that those who wait patiently in their country of origin don’t have.
The existence of parole and asylum just encourages illegal border crossings and both those situations will continue to exist under the Republican plan. And the bill likely won’t get through the House, which has an alternative bill that actually addresses the rising number of illegals trying to get into the country.
I want to look at H.R. 2, which contains provisions that might actually work, but will face opposition from American businesses, but I think this article is too long, so I’ll split it in two.
Lela Markham is an Alaska-based novelist and commentator who doesn’t hate immigrants, but thinks they should follow the rules when they enter our country just as their home countries expect American citizens to follow the rules when we enter theirs.
No. That’s the short answer. The article revolves around the why.
My parents told me that I made up stories when I was a little kid, so there’s every reason to believe I was born a tale-teller. I wrote my first short story when I was 12, as part of a school project. I hated the process, but I continued writing afterward. It had ignited a fire that just hasn’t gone out.
I occasionally take breaks — a couple of weeks — maybe a month once — but even when I’m not actually writing stories, I’m framing them in my head. Everything in life forms the components for stories that I want to tell. If anything, taking a short break often reignites my production because life informs art. The more life I live, the more art I want to produce.
So, the answer to the question “Do you ever ask yourself if you’re still a writer?” has to be a resounding “no” because I’ve never stopped writing. If I ever do, maybe I’ll ask that question.
I had a new book Words I Wish I’d Said come out in December and my next book Four Seasons of Winter (Book 4 of What If Wasn’t series) publishes March 5. Having finished the formatting for Four Seasons of Winter, I plan a week’s break before launching fully into Book 10 of Transformation Project — Republic of Afrika, which might be out in the fall. Right now, it’s bits and pieces of half-written scenes, explorations I haven’t started yet, descriptions of settings, and research into the Nation of Islam and an obscure 1970s revolutionary group called the Republic of Afrika. Running across this bit of history on You-tube forced me to focus an entire novel on it. It will definitely be more dystopian than apocalyptic, but I suspect that’s what comes after the apocalypse anyway.
Of course, I always have a secondary project for those days when my muse is bored with my primary project. My trade-off project for this will probably be Book 4 of Daermad Cycle, which hasn’t got a name yet. I’ve also partially drafted Book 5 of What If Wasn’t. So clearly, I’m not done writing.
aurorawatcherak 