U.S. Supreme Court ruling on MPP foolhardy on many fronts, not the least because Mexico has no reason to "cooperate" now

 

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ignored established asylum law and unconcealed racial motivation with a nonsensical ruling that the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security “violated” some made-up “law” that it could not precisely define in rescinding Donald Trump’s so-called Migrant “Protection” Protocols, the infamous “Remain in Mexico” asylum policy, which was essentially white nationalist Stephen Miller’s desire that migrants would be forced to “wait” for asylum hearings on the other side of the border, which made it easier to ignore them, and they would just go “home” after a few years of waiting in vain. Why lie about this? This unlawful policy was put in place because it is harder to ignore asylum requests when these people are waiting inside this country.

In the labyrinth of the U.S. court system, where different courts with different ideological make-ups can issue entirely contradictory decisions, the right-wing Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Trump-appointed Texas judge who ruled in favor of the fearmongering of migrants being a “burden” on states, ignoring the fact that migrant workers—illegal or not—are here to work, and contribute far more to the economy that what they allegedly “take.” A New York Times story in 2020  noted that the average undocumented worker paid more in federal taxes on average than Trump had done in almost all of the previous 15 years looked at, ten of which he paid no federal taxes at all.  It is a crime that the Biden administration has not provided the proof that the basis of right-wing complaints is a lie, continuing the hypocrisy that the U.S. continues to exploit the need for labor from the south of the border, legally or not, and pretend that it isn’t so.

The decision “forcing” the Biden administration to leave in place the policy is problematic on several fronts, including one thing the right always complains about—not just “legislating” from the bench or ignoring precedent, but conducting foreign policy from the bench. The Court decided to ignore established practice and decided that the judicial branch could illegally interfere in foreign policy matters, which includes asylum policy, which is the purview of the executive branch; there can be no more obvious display of partisan arrogance by the right-wing majority on the Court.

Not only that, but it ignored the fact that the MPP hasn’t even been in effect for more than a year, when the Trump administration used Title 42 as an excuse to ban all asylum requests, regardless of the health status of the asylum seeker. The irony of all of this is that the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the MPP and in February 2019 and it remained in limbo until the Supreme Court dismissed the complaint as “moot” when Biden took office. Yet the court now hypocritically changed course and have declared it “unmoot” on ideological whim. Thus the  court order two weeks ago by the Trump-appointed  judge in Texas whose backdated “interpretation” of the 1996 immigration law (another example of how Bill Clinton betrayed progressive principles) as meaning that people from Latin America did not have the same asylum rights as those who cross the ocean, was allowed as the thin reed that the Supreme Court employed to rule that the Biden administration had to make a “good faith” effort to continue Trump’s illegal asylum policy.  

The Court also made the absurd claim that the administration had not “adequately” explained why it was ending the Trump policy as a reason to leave it in place. It has already been noted that the Trump policy was, as enunciated by an unapologetic Miller, clearly motivated by white nationalism and racism, and that should have been sufficient reason to end the MPP on principle. But in its ruling, the Court didn’t even explain why it thought that the Biden administration’s justification was “insufficient.”

Technically, the Department of Homeland Security (which had taken control of immigration policy from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, turning illegal immigration from a civil into a “criminal” penalty) could restate its justification for rescinding the Trump policy, but why does it need to do so at all if it was an unlawful act out pure racist whim? It is not the business of the courts to rule on foreign policy matters, and the Supreme Court was way out of line on this one. This is clearly an early example of just how far to right this court has gone, and just more reason why electing Trump in 2016 was such a grave mistake for this country in the first place.

But the Supreme Court’s—or any Trumpist court’s—mistake extends well beyond that. The upshot of the “Remain in Mexico” policy is that it is counterproductive. Not only is it implied that seeking asylum is a “crime,” but those who abide by the “law”  find that there is no “percentage” in it for them—that is to say, the “percentage” of even receiving an asylum hearing is closer to zero than “maybe.” This only makes illegal crossings the better “option” for them. I have already wrote about how up until the 1965 immigration act, there was no actual law preventing border crossings in either direction, it was just that those who did cross into this country had to have “papers” proving that they were being hired by an employer in the States; there was no actual “quota” on the number of migrants allowed in this country. This meant that there was less reason to stay in the country indefinitely, especially if there was no work; migrants could always come back when there was work. But Hispanic migrants proved to be too convenient scapegoats for white nationalists on the right, and “populists” on the left, and this is what motivated the change in immigration law.

For now, the Supreme Court expects the Biden administration to make a “good faith effort” to abide by a policy it ostensibly opposes. Unfortunately for the Court, it has no say in Mexico’s foreign policy decisions, which of course is the reason why the courts should butt-out of areas that do not concern them. The stupidity of the Court’s right-wing is that the Mexican government—which has been maintaining the camps for asylum-seekers with the help of NGOs—can look at this decision and say that since these people are not going anywhere any time soon, it can no longer afford to help maintain them or allow them a "safe" place to reside in.

And that is exactly what is happening now, since the U.S. is not providing funds to maintain the camps that Mexico has been allowing to exist as a favor to the U.S. The Mexican government and over-stretched local communities are not obligated to maintain these camps at the whim of the U.S.; it is perfectly within its rights to release all of these people on their own “recognizance”—which means either returning to their home countries, or finding a place to cross illegally. If the U.S. did offer to help pay the cost to maintain the camps, that would be an incentive to expedite asylum cases, so we can’t expect that to happen. And so the upshot is that the Court has put American foreign policy in regard to immigration in the hands of the Mexico government, foolishly or stupidly.

Meanwhile, what has the Biden administration been doing on asylum requests? AZ Central reported that U.S. border officials have “since February admitted a little more than 13,000 asylum seekers stuck in ‘Remain in Mexico,’” about half those eligible, and less than one-in-five of those still waiting in camps in Mexico. After the Supreme Court decision, DHS seemingly too easily suspended “processing at ports of entry of individuals who were previously enrolled in MPP.”  50,000 eligible migrants cannot have their cases heard, and 3,500 migrants who are now registered have their entry processing stopped. Far from being "protected," having to stay in limbo longer means that the threat from organized criminal gangs only adds to the misery.

This on top of the fact that asylum seekers must jump through almost impossible hoops without access to an American attorney willing to cross the border to help them. One ACLU advocate, Judy Rabinowitz, expressed surprise at the Biden administration’s actions: “There’s nothing in the district court injunction or in the Supreme Court’s decision not to stay it that says anything about these people and what should happen to them…in fact the injunction and the decisions about the injunction acknowledge that the administration and DHS still have the discretion to decide individual cases” regardless of the “Remain in Mexico” policy.

The Biden administration is also continuing to use Title 42 as an excuse to prevent asylum seekers from crossing the border, paranoid about the far-right myth-making about immigrants as “disease carriers.” The manufactured “crisis” at the border—and there is always a “crisis” at the border if it needs to be for partisan political purposes—always betrays the lack of simple human decency on this side of the border. Do we really need to rehash again America’s responsibility for two centuries of meddling in the affairs of Mexico and Central America, politically and socially, and the latter's economic exploitation—especially in the “banana republic” period when after getting whatever they could out of a country--would, unlike China, destroy whatever infrastructure they built so that the natives could not use them after they had been exploited in virtual slave conditions?

Then there was the destructive influence of American foreign policy during the 1980s in which liberal social movements were deliberately undermined in favor of right-wing murder regimes, like that in El Salvador,

 

 

or the “war” on cartels that simply moved the center of the drug trade from Colombia to Mexico, or the deportation of U.S.-bred gangs like the MS 13 to terrorize people? And the U.S. threatening to withhold miserly “assistance” to combat these problems unless they (again) kowtow to American demands? 

Trump’s claim that “Remain in Mexico” stemmed “irregular” crossings was patently absurd; not only did it make it more difficult to do it the “lawful” way, it promoted illegal crossing. Let’s be clear about this: the 70,000 asylum seekers who had been waiting  in some cases for two years or more for their “turn” for a hearing represent a very small percentage of the number of migrants who come to the border. They have been “promised” that if they “follow the law,” they will be treated as the law requires. That did not happen under Trump at the direction of Miller (who wanted to end all asylum requests), and the Biden administration has been loath to allow more than a trickle to even begin processing their claims.

And now the Biden administration is using the Supreme Court decision as an excuse to stop processing even those requests in the advanced stages. And people have the nerve to wonder what is so wrong with this country’s immigration system—one that kept illegal crossings relatively “manageable” for over a century. Why do anything “legally” if doing it the “legal” way is closed off just because people don’t like the way you “look”?

Plenty of "cooks" in this foul Afghan brew, including the media looking for a scapegoat to cover its own complicity

 

Fox News is exclaiming that the Biden presidency is “teetering in the brink.” Most on the extreme right or otherwise have no shred of credibility (like Nikki Haley) have called for Joe Biden’s impeachment or resignation. Others say look, they impeached Trump over a “mere” phone call, neglecting to mention that Republicans started this business by impeaching Bill Clinton over an oral service from a willing intern. The media on most sides in attacking Biden has been giddily taking the side of the architects of failure in Afghanistan. Didn’t former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, also a critic of Biden, claim in 2011 and 2012 that Afghanistan was “safe and secure” and that its government was in full control? Well, if that is true, then something wrong had to have happened between then and now; it couldn’t have just all collapsed in a couple weeks or days all by its lonesome.

It was going to be messy getting out, and if people think that it is “messy” now, it would have been even worse if Trump was still president; with Jewish Nazi Stephen Miller calling the shots, it would have been a humanitarian disaster that U.S. probably could never have recovered its international “reputation” from. Miller insisted to fellow white nationalist Laura Ingraham that it would be a “disaster” to allow Afghan refugees into this country. Miller claimed that “resettling in America is not about solving a humanitarian crisis; it’s about accomplishing an ideological objective: to change America.” In ignoring the fact of how many Afghans put their lives in danger supporting U.S. objectives, people like Miller are completely transparent about what they are: white supremacists—and that is the new “normal” in this country

To underscore the point, Matt Zeller of the organization No One Left Behind told CNN that Miller should be seen as complicit in war crimes in the deaths of thousands of people. When he confronted Miller about the failure of granting visas to Afghan civilians who worked with us, Miller complained that they were all just Islamic terrorists. Miller clearly represents the worst of us, and all Republicans have had to run on for years is stoking fear of any variety of “brown-skinned” people, or at least those from Latin America or the Middle East. European allies who haven’t actually been very helpful in managing the chaos on the ground while leaving out concepts like “relativity” and “context” should just shut up in its criticisms of Biden.

More to the point, Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller was relieved of his duties after posting on social media an attack on military leaders on the ground for bungling the withdrawal and failing to take “ownership” of the chaos in Kabul. A former Mike Pence adviser, James Golby, stated in The Atlantic that “Perhaps by design, perhaps by incompetence, perhaps out of sheer spite or arrogance, Trump created the circumstances for another Bay of Pigs, Black Hawk Down, or Benghazi.” This was back in November. When you heard Trump praising the Taliban as "good fighters," it was his way of "admitting" the failure of his and Mike Pompeo's "peace plan."

The media has shown little interest in illuminating the facts of the slow grind to failure in Afghanistan, yet when this failure ended in the spectacular visuals in Kabul, it had the gall to blame it all on Biden. The media failed because it was too eager to trust the “newsmakers” telling them that everything was just great for years, and because it was eager to believe the lies, it failed the American public, and chose to blame its failure on the most convenient scapegoat, Biden; it couldn’t admit it was complicit in the failure in Afghanistan.

The truth, of course, was that George Bush had promised that Afghanistan would be converted into a “typical” nation state run as a “Western” style democracy, and the media fell for it. The problem was that Bush did not commit the resources either militarily or domestically to achieve that end. After initially having the Taliban and Al-Qaeda on the run—and at one point rejected a Taliban offer to “surrender”—the Bush administration allowed the Taliban to regroup with the help of our “friend,” Pakistan.

With failure imminent, the military assured Barack Obama that a major surge in troops—to over 100,000—would end the war; it in fact only resulted in stalemate in which victory was an illusion. Moreover, then Afghan president Hamid Karzai willfully undermined the sustainability of his government by refusing to sign a security agreement with the Obama administration, which included assistance in paying the salaries of Afghan security forces. Biden observed all of this and learned a lesson. The media and know-it-all pundits did not.

It was all bound to failure. The mountainous terrain, which the British and the Russians learned, was difficult to attack and hold, and U.S. forces did little except to occupy “strategic” points. The British called Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires” after the disastrous withdrawal from Kabul to the British garrison in Jalalabad in 1842, in which only one person, a badly injured surgeon, out of 16,000 soldiers and camp followers (including family members) actually made it to alive. The British invaded Afghanistan again in 1878, but they had learned enough to stay only long enough to achieve a limited goal (to curb Russian influence) and withdrew after two years.

The tragic airport bombing that resulted in a dozen American military and scores of civilians dead underlines the cost of 20 years of failure, and how ultimately the country never could have been “managed.” The Taliban has its own problems now with ISIS-K jihadists, who claim the Taliban mortal enemies because it has supposedly abandoned worldwide jihad, for mere Afghan “nationalism.” And if another less Islamic extremist “northern alliance” takes root, one can imagine what real “chaos” looks like.

And let’s not forget the past history of this country. Remember the Beirut Marine barracks bombings that killed 241 Americans and 58 French soldiers in 1983?

 

The Marines were unprepared despite an intelligence warning three days prior that an attack of some kind on the barracks was imminent. Guards at the entry gates would watch the bomber roar past them helplessly because they had been told not to load magazines into their rifles. After all, they were only there as “peacekeepers” and to oversee the withdrawal of foreign fighters who had been driven out of most of Lebanon during the Israeli invasion. Marine commanders excused their inaction by claiming that the warning of an attack was “imprecise”—that there was no “shred of evidence” that a “prudent” commander would have acted on. And nobody claimed that Ronald Reagan’s presidency was “teetering on the brink”; we lived in a different time then.

And then there was 9-11. Just as nobody wanted to believe that Reagan knew about the secret sale of weapons to Iran—a treasonous act given that Iran was the paymaster for the Beirut bombing—hardly anyone was willing to believe that George Bush was aware of intelligence reports that warned of the potential for aircraft being weaponized for attacks on U.S. targets. Not even knowledge of the foiled Bojinka Plot, conceived by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and intended to bomb 11 aircraft, kill as many as 4,000 people, and send a plane into the CIA headquarters in Virginia in 1995 was reason enough to suspect such a plot was afoot. In fact the sheikh wasn’t done yet: he would be the accused “mastermind” behind the 9-11 attacks, just “altering” the original plan a bit. 

Beginning in March 2001, the Bush administration had received many warnings about the potential for such an attack by Al-Qaeda, from Italian, Jordanian, Egyptian, and UK intelligence services. A month before the attack Israeli intelligence provided the names of 19 terrorists in the U.S. plotting a major attack soon. In early September, the Egyptians again warned the Bush administration that a major attack on U.S. soil was imminent. The FBI had received reports from at least one flight school concerning the suspicious intent by four Middle Eastern “students” who only wanted to learn to fly and not land an airliner. The CIA tried to warn Bush and Condoleezza Rice that the country needed to go on a “war footing” right “now,” but no one was taking it seriously. Cofer Black, then chief of counterterrorism at the CIA, slammed his fist on a table in attempt to knock sense into the heads of Bush officials about the seriousness of the threat.

But nobody was listening, because of a complete lack of imagination and the arrogance in refusing to give credence to the competence of “towelheads” to conduct such an attack—or perhaps that Bush was willing to allow what he thought would be a “minor” attack with “acceptable” casualties that would be sufficient cover to launch an invasion not necessarily in Afghanistan, but in Iraq. Given what actually happened, is it any wonder about that look of “oh no” on Bush’s face when he was told about the attack in that classroom? But again, nobody wanted to believe that this country was “unprepared” for 9-11 even though there was  foreknowledge that something like this was about to happen.

And the media was treating Bush like a “hero” instead of claiming his presidency was “teetering on the brink,” and he should not be held responsible for the death of 3,000 people and be impeached or forced to resign. So eager was it to whitewash Bush, the 9-11 Commission refused to include in its report that fateful July White House meeting with Black.

There were a lot of “cooks” in this foul Afghan brew, and they are all piling on Biden out of pure convenience—the media especially, which save for the Washington Post’s “Afghanistan Papers” expose, has been complicit in not questioning why this country was in Afghanistan for 20 years and still the Taliban was far from subdued, and that the Afghan government still only controlled major cities at best. Or why the Afghan military and police were just taking a paycheck and mailing it in, ready to run as soon as they had to fight on their own. Is that Biden’s fault after being in office just seven months? No, it is the fault of anyone who thought we would have any more success in that country than the British or the Russians did.

Using DSPs for its AMZL delivery service, so goes Amazon's "guaranteed" deliveries

 

I know there are terrible things going on in the world today, but I’ve already spoken of why they are happening, hypocrisy from Trumpists be damned. Meanwhile, life goes on, and there is something I just have to get off my chest.

Two months ago I was waiting on the three Amazon packages to be delivered by its Amazon Logistics “specialists,” or what they call a “delivery service partner.” One of them was already a day late. These DSPs are hired out from third-party companies to drive those gray “Prime” vans, or those who drive their own POVs.  Amazon equips these drivers with a GPS tracking system for customers so that they can track where the driver is, although it is only activated when there are nine stops to go. Of course anyone who has followed this “guidance” in the expectation that they can actually gauge when a package will be delivered knows this it being too optimistic.  

The following screenshot was taken at 5:47 PM, almost eight hours into the delivery. The blue dot indicates where I happened to encounter the Prime van sitting between 2 and 2:30 PM—just a stone’s throw across the street from the delivery location. The green dot is where the driver was now:

 

By 7:01 PM, it was clear that something was “confused,” as the driver had moved even further away:

 

7:17 PM: when you are told this between “stops,” that means the driver is completely lost:

 

7:44 PM: There is this all too common message these days, which may have been just a random time the lost driver imputed to fake a delivery attempt:

 

 

The “issue”--besides operator headspace--was that as both the permanent and written delivery instructions stated, the business this was to be delivered to closed at 7 PM. Deliveries are made to this location every day; shouldn’t someone have gotten the “message” by now, presuming they know how to read?  This past June, CNN Business published a story about Amazon renting drivers for their “last mile” deliveries, although it was too forgiving of the drivers for the mounting complaints by customers you can find on message boards on the Internet.  Amazon’s delivery service (AMZL) has ballooned so far out of control that there isn’t even the slightest effort at accountability.

 

DSP drivers wear uniforms provided by Amazon, but they technically are not Amazon employees—meaning they are not subject to Amazon’s habit of firing employees who they say have succumbed to “mediocrity” and need to be replaced. Of course Amazon makes bold claims for its logistics services, but the fact is it is getting worse and worse, as those online comment pages will tell you. This week alone, I have two packages delivered a day late, and another is two days late—if it ever is delivered at all. The new Amazon DSP point in Tukwila, WA has become a Twilight Zone of lost packages and late deliveries to Seattle customers. Delivery routes are supposedly “programmed” into the driver’s app, but as indicated in the previous delivery example, it all depends on the competence of the driver, or person “programming” the delivery—that is, if the package even gets on the van at all.

 

I don’t want to hear about “disgruntled” drivers who sit in their vans for a half-hour or an hour trying to figure out where they are supposed to go to next, if in fact that is what they are doing. They don’t read customer delivery instructions until they arrive at a location, if they do at all—which is pointless if the instruction is about delivery times and the driver is already late. Drivers grumble about instructions that include customer complaints about previous failed deliveries; I guess I’m not alone.

 

Claims in the CNN story that DSP drivers are expected to make deliveries every 36 seconds or 250 stops in 10 hours has to be pure bullshit when you see drivers just sitting in their vans for a half-hour or hour, or the GPS shows them in the same spot for that amount of time. The complaint that incompetently programmed routes make their day longer—often forcing them to double back to locations they had passed hours ago, or send them down the wrong way on one-way streets—indicates that Amazon logistics is just a shit-show all around.

 

And, of course, because DSP’s are not unionized, driver turnover is “high,” and every week (if not every day) the likelihood that deliveries are made by people unfamiliar with the terrain is high. And don’t expect any “assistance” from Amazon Logistics “customer service.” They are only there to be a sounding board for angry customers; they can’t do anything to locate a “lost in transit” package, or expedite a “found” package’s delivery.

 

Of course it isn’t all the fault of the “prime” drivers. After all, packages have to arrive at the warehouse to start with. Remember Amazon’s “guaranteed” delivery date? You don’t see that notification anymore. The bigger Amazon has become, the more the attitude is “you get it when you get it.” Before so-called Prime service, you got what you paid for with the shipping charge, and if they didn’t deliver packages as promised, you always had alternatives. “Prime” service, which is basically an annual lump sum paid for “free” shipping, is cheap if you order a lot of items, but the catch is that Amazon has more control over the what, whens are wheres. If you hate their AMZL delivery service, well tough bananas.

People may boycott Amazon for a little while and shop somewhere else, but they always come back expecting things to change, but they never do. As noted earlier, I have 2 packages that were delivered a day late and a third two days late, and probably won’t arrive at all because it got “lost” in the 20-minute drive between SeaTac and Tukwila. With any other retailer, if you called customer service about a problem, it could be fixed right then. With Amazon, you are directed to a call center in India, where the person you talk to only knows what you can read yourself; they are only good for two things: offering to cancel or replace an item. They can’t tell you the whens, whys, or wheres about a package, and they can’t contact anyone who can find something “lost in transit.”

Customers who constantly deal with late packages may wonder what the hell is going on. The recent New York Times investigation reported an “unusually high” rate of turnover at Amazon warehouses—150 percent a year. What does that mean? It means that the average warehouse employee lasts about 8 months on the job, and this, we are told, is by “design.” Jeff Bezos in fact designed it this way; his attitude is that because lower-end, lower-wage warehouse workers who have no opportunity for advancement are inherently “lazy,” this creates a “stagnant workforce” that leads to “mediocrity.”

In a UK investigative program where an Amazon employee was equipped with a body cam in a non-automated warehouse, workers had to push around heavy carts and carry handheld devices that set times—literally seconds—between each item pickup; burnout in such an environment is a given. Even in automated environments, it’s a race against time when every move is monitored and recorded. There are penalties for not reaching targets (getting fired), and no reward for exceeding targets (save for not getting fired). Amazon benefits are supposed to be “great,” but hardly anyone has a chance to use them before they either leave out of frustration, or are terminated.

According to the Times, there is no “human” in Amazon’s human resources department; it is totally automated, and it might takes months for a request to be considered “elevated” enough for an actual human to be bothered with it. The Times noted that the completely automated “HR” department often mistakenly terminated employees on authorized leave, and notified former employees who had been fired for things like “behavioral” issues that they were supposed to report for work.

Amazon apparently loses 3 percent of its workforce every week, and to “fulfill” it growing labor needs, even with automation, every year it needs 5 percent of the entire U.S. available workforce to apply for a job there. And it isn’t particularly hard to get a job at Amazon either, in fact, it requires little more than just showing up. I could have gotten a job there myself if I actually wanted to. A few years ago I filled out their online application, after which I was informed that I was in their hiring queue. After about six months I forgot about it, and then I received an email telling me to show up at some Seattle community center. There I hung with a crowd of other people, watched an introductory video presentation, did a quick drug test, had my picture taken for an ID card, selected a preferred shift schedule, and was told to wait for further instructions.

Those came two weeks later, when I was told to appear at a Kent facility. I actually had a night job that wasn’t too stressful, I could work mostly alone and the pay and benefits were OK, so it wasn’t a hard decision to make one way or the other, particularly given that video from the UK facility that I had seen. Of course if I didn’t already have a job I would have shown up, but in retrospect it wouldn’t have been a good idea given the revolving-door nature of employment there.

Unfortunately, Amazon won’t attempt to become more reliable in its shipping service until it has more effective competition. Other retailers offer “free” or low-cost shipping, but there you get what you pay for. It wouldn’t be so egregious if Amazon wasn’t running on the fumes of its prior reputation and didn’t make promises it couldn’t keep; all it does now is make excuses for not keeping them.