It’s official: We’re no longer ‘a nation of immigrants’
Given the current state of affairs in Washington, you had to see this one coming. From the New York Times:
LOS ANGELES — The federal agency that issues green cards and grants citizenship to people from foreign countries has stopped characterizing the United States as "a nation of immigrants."
The director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services informed employees in a letter on Thursday that its mission statement had been revised to "guide us in the years ahead." Gone was the phrase that described the agency as securing "America's promise as a nation of immigrants."
On the bright side, Emma Lazarus’ poem about “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” remains at the base of the Statue of Liberty. For now.
The current immigration debate is being driven, in large part, by U.S. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., who is partnering with colleague Tom Cotton, R-Ark., for changes in U.S. policy that would cut legal immigration in half. President Donald Trump has signed onto the effort – which many Republicans are holding out as the price for legalizing DACA kids.
Earlier this morning, we posted a short piece on the awkward ground that David Perdue's cousin, former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, now owns in the immigration debate as secretary of agriculture:
Trump rose to prominence in 2016 with a platform that emphasized economic protectionism and deporting undocumented immigrants.
That in many respects diverges from what farmers rely on: seasonal, dependable labor. Given the long hours and difficult, physical labor needed during harvest time, many agriculture workers are foreigners – and are often undocumented.
Perdue on Thursday said he has been trying to sell his colleagues in the administration on a new class of visa that could meet the needs of the ag industry but isn't as costly or cumbersome as the current H-2A system. (Georgia farmers have long complained about its shortcomings.)
But he also suggested he was having a hard time getting some of his White House cohorts on board.
"Agriculture is frankly a pretty unique area within the immigration (system). I've worked hard at the White House to persuade people who may not understand that," Perdue told the conference crowd, which was packed with hundreds of ag stakeholders. "They still believe that there's a domestic workforce out there who will farm and gather those crops every year, and I've invited those people to go out to the farms and fields with me but I haven't had any takers yet."
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Columbus Mayor Teresa Tomlinson, a Democrat eyed for a statewide run in the not-too-distant future, has a piece in the Daily Beast with this provocative headline: "In Georgia, It's the NRA and the Legislators vs. the Police."
She outlines the pro-gun agenda of the state’s GOP-dominated Legislature, including a 2012 measure that prevents counties and cities from destroying unclaimed firearms seized during investigations:
I witnessed the spectacle of the weapons our police officers had risked their lives to take off the streets being displayed for resale. A .50-caliber weapon, assault-style weapons, and other weapons that previously would have been destroyed were now headed back to the streets so our law enforcement officers could risk their lives again in taking them back out of the hands of criminals.
Her closing argument:
[D]on't tell me that you honor our law enforcement officers by standing during the national anthem if you turn right around and support and pass laws that make their jobs harder and increase the scenarios where they will be forced to put their lives in harm's way.
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Near the end of Thursday's forum for two candidates for governor, sponsored by the Jewish Democratic Women's Salon, the candidates were asked how the party can unite after May's vote.
Stacey Abrams issued a lengthy answer about how she has "never ever questioned the integrity of my opponent" -- that would be Stacey Evans -- but will "point out points of difference and distinction."
"I think there's absolutely no question that any who is sitting here is better than anything they got over there," she added.
But Abrams never explicitly said she would back Evans if she won the primary, so her campaign sent out a statement late Thursday clarifying: "Abrams will support the Democratic nominee for governor and Democrats up and down the ticket."
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You need to be a little long in the tooth to fully grasp the irony of Thursday's announcement that former President Jimmy Carter will address a Liberty University graduating class in May.
The event could represent the burial of some ancient hatchets.
It isn’t just that Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976 largely on the promise that he would never lie to the American public, while Liberty’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr., is a foursquare supporter of President Donald Trump – a master of what he calls “truthful hyperbole.”
Back in the day, the most powerful religious conservative was the founder of Liberty University, the original Jerry Falwell. That ’76 campaign was nearly lost when Carter, in an interview published in Playboy magazine, the former Georgia governor confessed to having impure thoughts about women who weren’t Rosalynn. The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the founder of the Moral Majority, later hammered Carter for consenting to an appearance in that godless publication. Falwell the Elder would lead an exodus of religious conservatives away from Carter and toward Ronald Reagan.
Donald Trump, of course, once appeared on the cover of Playboy magazine. And according to reports that surfaced earlier this month, he allegedly bedded a former Playboy model in the months after Melania Trump bore him a son.
Of course, things like that don’t matter anymore.
About the Authors
Jim Galloway, the newspaper’s former political columnist, was a writer and editor at the AJC for four decades.
Tamar Hallerman is an award-winning senior reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She covers the Fulton County election interference case and co-hosts the Breakdown podcast.
Greg Bluestein is the Atlanta Journal Constitution's chief political reporter. He is also an author, TV analyst and co-host of the Politically Georgia podcast.
