"the press is on your side"

Bill O'Reilly is a tool. This we knew. Most lately he's been--out of ignorance or malice, or some combination of the two--spreading misinformation about the state of immigration law as it relates to gay couples. Again, nothing unexpected about this. He says that American citizens can't sponsor their foreign gay partners for a green card, but that it is no big deal since then those people can just get a green card through the "normal channels," by showing ties to the community, getting a good job, relying on professional skills, or some other horse puckey like that.

First of all, many foreign spouses have overstayed their visas and are here illegally. Normally, overstaying a visa or working without authorization from the government will prevent you from obtaining a green card down the line. However, there is an exception for spouses of U.S. citizens. A gay spouse who has overstayed his or her visa or worked without authorization receives no such protection. Our immigration laws reflect the collective decision that, if the spouse of a U.S. citizen slips up along the line, doesn't file the correct form when he should, or waits too long to renew his work permit, we are not going to ship that person off to Pakistan, Mali, Thailand, or from whencever he came. That would be heartless and cause much suffering to citizens who had the misfortune to fall in love with foreigners. But gay couples get no such treatment.

Secondly, Bill's understanding of immigration law falls far short of the level someone who holds forth about it on television to millions of viewers should have attained. Rachel Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality, gives the example of a gay couple from Pennsylvania she knows who have been together 17 years and are raising two children together. When the foreign partner's visa expires, he's out on his ass. No problem, says Bill, he can just show "ties to the community" and other fluffandstuff that any decent hardworking immigrant can manage if they have a mind to, and presto chango, abracadabra, viola--green card!

No, Bill, no. It doesn't work that way. You can't just show that you have been here a long time and you're a hardworking individual and that people in the community will vouch for you. If it were that easy, we wouldn't have 12 million or more people in this country who the government says shouldn't be here. Immigrants who have been here for many years and find themselves in removal proceedings can sometimes apply for "cancellation of removal" based on potential hardship to a qualifying U.S. citizen relative, but if your relationship to a U.S. citizen is not recognized by the U.S. government, then that relief is not available to you.

Bill's point is doubly disingenuous, since he and others like him are working hard to make sure it is not easy for just anyone to get legal status through "the normal channels," whatever those are.

In short, what he's saying makes no sense and I have a hard time believing he doesn't know he's misleading people. That is his stock in trade.

My favorite line of his to Tiven: "The press is on your side." Such modesty--he has the number one cable news commentary show by a good margin, but he's still not managed to reach the hallowed ranks of the press. O'Reilly the underdog, always fighting for the little guy. It warms my heart.

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

married

I've not been posting much at all lately on account of me getting married last weekend. So now I am wed to a truly stellar woman. Cool!

red scare

Matt reports on the crazies:

James Fallows, reports that according to Gary Hart and Lee Hamilton, Lynn Cheney wanted to start a war with China back in the pre-9/11 era. According to Francis Fukuyama among Bill Kristol and his circle in the 90s "There was actually a deliberate search for an enemy because they felt that the Republican Party didn't do as well" in the absence of a pressing foreign threat, and the consensus was that the enemy should be China.

These are crazy people.

The “silver lining” to 9/11, if there is such a thing, is that we didn’t end up at war with China, which would have killed exponentially more people than the current war on terra. Our government was going to have a war one way or another, so better a low-level, intermittent pseudo-war (excluding Iraq, which is utterly fucked) than a major confrontation between two populous, ambitious nuclear powers.

looking over your shoulder

Andrew Sullivan puts it concisely:

Any non-citizen in this country is at risk of government detention at any time. If they can do it to citizens, they sure can to aliens.

Without citizenship, they can throw you into jail and leave you there indefinitely with no legal recourse. It happens frequently to people who’ve fled violence in their home countries, overstayed a visa, or crossed the border to work. But since, as it turns out, the reason we have a legal system that allows things like this is because most citizens are A-ok with these outcomes, it’s unlikely to change anytime soon.

more cowbell!

My neighbors decided to celebrate the fourth earlier today with a BBQ with 4 foot speakers and nonstop reggae. Somebody at the BBQ decided to grace the neighborhood for an hour or two with his improvised percussive accompaniment on a kitchen pot. It was excruciating, and I had to wonder whether Bruce Dickinson was down there egging him on ...



It's after 11:30 p.m. now, and firecrackers are still going off intermittently. Summers tend to be noisy here.

the refugee problem

There is a simple explanation for why we’ve not admitted more Iraqi refugees to the U.S., but it hadn’t even occurred to me until Jim Henley pointed it out. Letting in Iraqi refugees would seem to be a no-brainer—we liberated them from Saddam so some must be nominally pro-American, we want to win hearts and minds in Iraq, and there’s a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Iraq for which we are largely responsible. Letting in large numbers of refugees is tantamount to admitting we’ve failed to stabilize Iraq, and so I see why the U.S. government has resisted it. Otherwise, though, this seems to be an issue both left and right could agree on, much like Darfur.

But as much as the pro-war crowd likes to draw distinctions between “good” Middle Eastern Muslims (non-Hezbollah Lebanese, Iraqi Shi’ites and Kurds, Iranian protesters, sometimes Abbas) and “bad” ones (everyone else), the fact is, they’re still Middle Eastern Muslims and for that reason not fully trusted by most Americans. Not only that, but we are collectively responsible for turning their country into a charnel house. What if some small fraction of the thousands of Iraqi refugees we allow in later become the next 9/11 hijackers? It’s a risk our government isn’t willing to take. So instead we’ll let the staunch Ameri-philes in Syria and Iran welcome with open arms Iraqi refugees with a serious grudge against the U.S. I’m sure that will work out splendidly.