A Belated #WoofWednesday & #WorldWednesday

Guest Post By Rachel Wheeler: Immigration Court Trends for the USA in 2016

(Note: In light of the issues surrounding DACA and the travel ban, this post—which Rachel Wheeler wrote on July 20, 2017—is very significant and timely. Although Rachel wrote the post regarding 2016 immigration trends, the 2016 immigration trends and the then-to-be-affected 2017 immigration trends played a key role in the 2016 Election.

(Of course, the legitimacy of the 2016 Election results is another discussion—and I've made clear my positions regarding the 2016 Election results, DACA and the travel ban, and other matters regarding the fallout of the 2016 Election.)

Immigration Court Trends for the USA in 2016

Each year the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) publishes a statistical year-end review on immigration court matters. Released last month, the FY 2016 Yearbook highlights several significant trends that appeared over the past 12 months.

An Increase in Matters Received

Last year, 14% more matters were received by the Immigration Courts compared to 2015. ‘Matters received’ covers a range of violations and applications pertaining to immigration law: Bonds that require payment, formal requests from deportation, and motions to reopen, reconsider, or re-calendar various applications and appeals.

More than 200,000 Matters Completed

A 4% increase in matters completed shows that the courts are effectively handling the matters presented to them. It also proves that they are processing at a faster rate than the previous year. Of all matters received, those completed fell into four main categories:

Granted some form of relief – This pertains to an immigration judge’s decision to grant relief or protection from removal to an immigrant otherwise vulnerable to forced expulsion. Roughly 17,000 individuals received such grants throughout 2016 and therefore are able to remain in the USA.

Order of deportation – After the decision to expel an immigrant has been passed, the DHS becomes responsible for their physical removal. Deportation cases generally arise when the Immigration Naturalization Service (INS) finds the country was entered illegally, or alternately entered legally yet in violation of one or more visa terms. Over 96,000 deportation and removal decisions were made last year.

Terminated Cases – Terminated cases arise for a variety of reasons. Often, they occur if the immigration judge finds that the DHS is lacking evidence for the removal of an immigrant. As a result, the decision to terminate a case is made. More than 23,000 cases were terminated by immigration judges in 2016.

Officially Closed Matters – This remaining category covers Administrative Closure of immigration cases, Failures to Prosecute, Other Administrative Completions, and Temporary Protected Statuses. The total of these occurrences in 2016 came to slightly over 48,500 cases.

Skilled Workers Choose the United States

Interestingly, inventors chose the United States as their priority destination over all other first world nations between 2000 and 2010. Recent research shows that 190,000 migrants holding global patents for a wide range of products moved to the USA. In the same period, only 10,000 brought their futures (and inventions) elsewhere.

Furthermore, 47% of the increase in the United States workforce in the past decade can be attributed to immigrants. 22% of healthcare and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) occupations were taken up by immigrants. This proves a strong tendency for people to move to the United States not only to pursue the ‘American Dream’, but also to further their career in skilled areas. In doing so, they also strengthen the domestic economy.

The Language of Immigration

Of all the completed matters presented in immigration courts in 2016, 91% came from just five of the 258 languages spoken in these courts. The highest of these was Spanish, accounting for 76% of all completions, followed by English (10%), Mandarin (4%), Punjabi (1%) and Arabic (0.6%).

Recent trends in both general immigration figures from the EOIR and Migration Policy Debate papers show the importance of the immigration vetting process. Additionally, they attest to the need for professional translation services for immigration courts and patent processing.

As Submitted To "The Atlantic": My Great-Grandfather Czarnecki Was a DREAMer Of His Day

Without Donald Trump flagrantly attempting to end "DACA", many DREAMers could live lives comparable to what my great-grandfather—given his circumstances—lived. With Donald Trump attempting to end "DACA", many DREAMers are figuratively—and in some cases, literally—facing down barrels of guns. In my great-grandfather's case, it was literal—his parents and he became Anusim to survive the pogroms, and this effectively caused my family (including his paternal grandmother, whom returned to Judaism as soon as she could return to Judaism) to disown them.

    Great-Granddad was born a Czerniecki (Chernetski) in Tsuman, Ukraine (then Cumań, Wołyń in the Russian Pale) when his mother went to visit a cousin in Buzhanka in the Zvenyhorodka (Zvenigorodka) vicinity; and the only reason that his mother could travel back and forth between Zvenyhorodka and Lipsk nad Biebrzą (where they lived) is because Lipsk nad Biebrzą was in the Congress Poland part of Suwałki Gubernia. How his maternal grandparents left Stakliškės for Bosse, by the way, I'll never know: all I know is that a Morgovich relative of his maternal grandmother (a Margiewicz) died of tuberculosis on April 4, 1882, and they already had relatives (including ones whom were Anusim) in Suwałki Gubernia when his mother was born on June 26, 1882.

    Speaking of "June 26, 1882", that was one of the very-few pieces of information that checked out on his father's naturalization applications—and he gave quite a bit of false information on them and other records, including . Finding the record for that Morgovich cousin (Shmuil Morgovich, z"l) and other records (and by having to use methods such as to reconciling any contradictory information on the various records) was what helped me figure out what information did check out and what information didn't check out. As for the information that didn't check out, Great-Granddad would've been deported back to Lipsk with his parents because of it had it been found out to be information that didn't check out—and Great-Great-Granddad knew fully well what he was doing in the instances when he lied—and despite being a Jewish farmer-turned-Crypto-Jewish-coal miner whom didn't have much of what we'd call schooling, he was smart enough to know that lying on official records and lying to compilers of official records (e.g., enumerators of Census records) was (and is) a felony that could (and can) get even a naturalized citizen considered to be a deportable illegal immigrant (and he had already tried to enter the country as "Julian Laczinsky" whom was headed to New Jersey. He was lucky that he as "Julian Zernetzky" whom was headed to Sugar Notch was not caught as being an illegal immigrant).

    What helped save my great-grandfather (and subsequently his descendants) is that my great-grandmother was born here (technically as what one would call an "anchor baby", since her parents weren't fully honest on their records, either). Had he not married my great-grandmother, he would've been deported even if his father (whom died in 1922) was posthumously caught (and if his mother, whom wasn't always honest on her records, either, was even posthumously caught); and he married Great-Grandma Czarnecki (supposedly) on May 10, 1934 (even though the marriage license was never signed. I'm pretty sure that they probably had a secret Jewish wedding somewhere.), and this was after "United States v. Wong Kim Ark (and she was born to parents whom were Anusim and B'nei Anusim, and each of them had immigrated from Austria Hungary to New Jersey and then Ashley, Pennsylvania, where she was born).

    As a descendant of a DREAMer equivalent and as a Fourth- and Fifth-Generation Pogrom Survivor, then, I'm speaking out for the DREAMers whom face figurative death and may face literal death if Trump fully gets his way—and by the way, both Great-Granddad and Great-Grandma subsequently lost relatives in the German part of the Holocaust (1933-1945) and the Russian part of the Holocaust (1922-1960; and some of the relatives in Russia died at the Augustow Resistance on July 5, 1945 and in the gulags—also by the way, that Stalin had his own "Final Solution" plan is now known, and the gulags did not close until seven years after Stalin's death. 

PS As for after the Holocaust in Europe:

1. One of Great-Grandma's uncles, Ǎǔgǔstinǔs Samuel Mǔnka, died in 1949 as a result of the Holocaust affecting him—by the way, "Munk", "Munka", and variants thereof are exclusively Jewish in Eastern Europe.
2. One of Great-Granddad's relatives died in 1970 as a result of his health being affected by his constantly having to flee the Nazis and the Soviets in Lithuania.

    Thus, my DREAMer and Non-DREAMer [family] (as the saying goes) saw it and [have] seen it before, and we know what "Never again" means for anybody and everybody—including DREAMers, at least quite a few of whom (I'm sure) are Sephardic Anusim and B'nei Anusim whom can trace their ancestry back to Anusim and B'nei Anusim in Colonial Spain and Colonial Portugal, and Ashkenazi Anusim and B'nei Anusim like my family whom aren't Jewish enough in the eyes of the Haredim to be allowed to make aliyah

PS Eric Trump's recent comments about his father's "depression" insult those like my great-grandfather—whom really did have Depression and committed suicide as a result of having Depression—and me, since I inherited the Depression partly from my paternal grandfather, whom was one of the ancestors whom passed it on to my father (and at least one other ancestor from whom we inherit Depression also committed suicide)

Trump: Bad On Morality And Bad On Morale

As more of the Trump saga unfolds—and only God knows why He wrote it the way that he did—morality and morale are showing to be on the decline in the United States, and some absolutely- and truly-ugly colors and sides of people are either coming out or beginning to be formed. For example, and as if this hasn't been written about before:

1. Anti Semitism, including Self-Hating Jewishness, is coming out in the open & on the rise. At least Jews like Dennis Prager, for instance, are revealing their far-from-dati colors—and there is nothing dati or b'ahavah about supporting a man whom keeps "My New Order" by his bedside, "[doesn't] want [Jewish] money", as if we're the canardic "short little guys that wear yarmulkes every day", and is friends with Anti-Zionist Netanyahu & Agudat Yisra'el. By the way, the only reason that there are even friends of Trumps like the Netanyahus and their mutual friends known as the Adelsons—whom really spurned the hand of Whom blessed them—is: 1) the one Whom blessed the families like the often-enviously-disparaged Rothschilds and the self-hating Adelsons remade us the head and not the tail; and 2) the Anti Semites that forced many of us into banking as the only available occupation had the evil that they did to us for good; and these Anti Semites now don't like when the tables turned on us and even their families are blessed by B'nei Yisra'el.
2. Ableism is definitely on the rise. As Serge Kovaleski got mocked, Marlee Matlin got cursed as "retarded"—which, by the way, Donald Trump violated the mitzvah of not to curse the deaf in so doing—and people like me have been threatened by "physically fit German American[s]," many can see why Betty DeVos wants to repeal the ADA and make the lives of PWDs (people with disabilities) than it is, for instance.
3. Misogyny is on the rise. Ask, e.g., the Chuck Nellis whom attacked me for being a "girl" when he lost the argument regarding how dangerous Trump is; and ask the GOP Senate whom cowed to Trump by silencing Elizabeth Warren.
4. Racism and xenophobia are on the rise. By the way, thank God that Coretta Scott King died when she did—she did not have to live to see this (cf. Isaiah 57:1-2), and she's a gentile whom went to the mountaintop where her late husband and others are (cf. Micah 4:2).
5. U.S. military morale is on the decline. Ask, e.g., the family of CSWO William "Ryan" Owens, USN, KIA. Also ask the troops that dread that they will be sent to war against Mexico and actually with, instead of against, Trump's and Putin's mutual friend Rouhani—a known Anti Semite.

In conclusion, envious Anti Semites and Self-Hating Jews, dehumanizing ableists, patronizing misogynists, and nativist racists and xenophobes are helping Donald Trump put the United States of America and the U.S. Armed Forces on a slope of moral and morale decline,