#immigrant labor

Yetta (at the far end of the table) and other members of the ILGWU (International Ladies' Garment Workers Union), 1938.

Farmworkers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) [source]

Immigrant labor is more important now than ever

On Monday, tens of thousands were expected to walk out of their jobs and take to the streets for a national Day Without Immigrants strike. 

The strike was predicted by organizers to be the largest single-day labor strike in over a decade.

The message of Monday's protest was simple: Immigrants power the U.S. economy, and America needs them now more than ever. Experts couldn't agree more.

"All net job growth is coming from new businesses, and native-born Americans are becoming less entrepreneurial while new immigrants are picking up the slack," Jeremy Robbins, executive director for New American Economy, a bipartisan organization devoted to highlighting the economic benefits of immigration reform, said in an interview. 

"Last year, even though immigrants were 13% of the population, they started 20% of new businesses, and that's a huge thing."

Hello, friends.  Welcome to another week.  Let’s get at it. —Jeffrey C. Billman

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1. THE CRIME, NOT THE COVERUP.

THE GIST: Donald Trump Jr. has admitted meeting with a Kremlin-tied Russia lawyer last year to seek dirt on Hillary Clinton, and he brought with him then-campaign manager Paul Manafort and current White House adviser Jared Kushner.  This New York Times bombshell follows one on Saturday revealing the June 9 meeting, in which Trump Jr. said they simply discussed adoption policy.  Now, the story changes: the Russian lawyer lured them in with promises of Clinton-related goods, didn’t deliver, and then switched the conversation over to adoption.

Don Jr.’s statement: “But on Sunday, presented with The Times’s findings, he offered a new account.  In a statement, he said he had met with the Russian lawyer at the request of an acquaintance from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which his father took to Moscow.  ‘After pleasantries were exchanged,’ he said, ‘the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton.  Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense.  No details or supporting information was provided or even offered.  It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.’  He said she then turned the conversation to adoption of Russian children … . ‘It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting,’ Mr. Trump said.”

WHAT IT MEANS: From The Washington Post: “Read that last part again: ‘the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting.’  Trump Jr. confirmed that he went into the meeting expecting to receive information from the Russian lawyer that could hurt Clinton.  That is a breathtaking admission.  The rest of Trump Jr.’s statement is an attempt to minimize the value of what the lawyer actually told him.  The outcome of the meeting and its effect on the presidential race is important, of course, yet it is kind of beside the point.”

From Richard W. Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under the George W. Bush administration from 2005–07:

If treason seems a bridge too far, Rick Hasen at Election Law Blog wonders if Don Jr. didn’t violate a federal law against soliciting foreign contributions.  After all, federal law quite explicitly forbids prohibits a campaign from seeking from a foreign national “anything of value.”  Information harmful to Hillary Clinton would certainly be of value to Donald Trump’s campaign.

WHAT'S NEXT: It’s almost certain this meeting will be a focus on special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry.  After all, as former Ted Cruz communications director Amanda Carpenter noted on Twitter last night, Wikileaks dumped the DNC emails about six weeks after this meeting.

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2. SPEAKING OF TRUMP AND RUSSIA …

THE GIST:  Donald Trump, 7:50 a.m. Sunday:

Trump, 8:45 p.m. Sunday:

To back up: The president, of course, was referring to a sideline meeting he had with President Putin at the G-20 summit in Germany.  There were no notetakers or official record of the meeting or what was said, only Trump, Secretary of State Tillerson, and a translator.  Still, there seem to be differing accounts: Did Trump take Putin at his word that Russia did not interfere with American elections?  Did they discuss sanctions (Tillerson indicated they did, but in a tweet this morning, Trump said they didn’t)?  And so forth.  But the line the White House pushed coming out of the meeting is that they wanted wanted to move forward with a new, constructive relationship — including, as Trump tweeted Sunday morning, an “impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded.”  On Sunday morning, Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin called this partnership a “significant accomplishment” and a “very important step forward.”  “This is like any other strategic alliance,” he told ABC’s This Week.

But then: Ridicule, and lots of it.  Marco Rubio [http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/341160-rubio-slams-trumps-talk-of-joint-cyber-security-unit-with-russia]: Partnering with Putin on a ‘Cyber Security Unit’ is akin to partnering with Assad on a ‘Chemical Weapons Unit’.”  Lindsey Graham [http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-russia-20170709-story.html]: “It’s not the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, but it’s pretty close.”  Former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter: “This is like the guy who robbed your house proposing a working group on burglary.”  Representative Adam Schiff: “We might as well just mail our ballot boxes to Moscow.”

Trump backs down: “The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn’t mean I think it can happen.”

WHAT IT MEANS: On Sunday, White House chief of staff told ABC News that this doesn’t mean Russia is “off the hook.”  "What it means is we're not going to forego progress simply because we have a disagreement in regard to this meddling in the United States election.  What it means that we have to move forward with things like a cease-fire in Syria ... move forward with ISIS ... and resolving the conflict in Ukraine.”

If you didn’t catch that, the White House is shrugging off a hostile foreign government interfering in our presidential election as a “disagreement.”

Related: Frum: Will Congress hold Russia accountable, since Trump won’t?

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3. N.C. PEEPS ARE CANCELING THEIR VOTER REGISTRATIONS.

THE GIST:  With the White House’s voter-integrity commission requesting voter data from all fifty states — and North Carolina’s State Board of the Elections agreeing to partially fulfill that request — some voters are concerned, and in North Carolina, some are concerned enough to cancel their registration.

Nut graph: “The state elections board has been deluged with calls over the last few days about how the state is handling a request from the commission for voter data – even though the board says it’s handing over only information that’s already available to the public.  Hundreds of people have called the Raleigh office of the Bipartisan State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement, and at least 380 people sent email, said board spokesman Patrick Gannon.  Some of those voters — the office doesn’t have a count — are asking to cancel their registration or for instructions how to do so.”

WHAT IT MEANS: Let’s be real.  This is a feature, not a bug.  Widespread voter fraud is a myth — last year, 508 out of 4.8 million N.C. voters voted illegally, and voter ID would have stopped one of them (a Republican), according to an SBE audit — but it can be used as a helpful pretense to help make it more difficult for minorities to vote.  Casting a big net to gobble up voter data can also stoke paranoia, which can drive down turnout.

BE SMART: Not voting doesn’t help.  Deregistering until the state turns over info to Trump’s goons and then reregistering again, that’s fine — so long as you do it in time for this fall’s municipal elections.

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4. KIDS MIGHT BE PICKING YOUR FOOD

THE GIST:  The N&O had an important piece over the weekend.  In short, it boils down to this: no one knows how many, but immigrant children as young as seven are working in North Carolina fields, in violation of federal labor laws.  And there’s good chance the farmers will never be caught.

The farming industry responds: “Anti-child labor organizations say that working in agriculture poses health and safety risks for children, but many farmers grew up working on their parents’ farmers and argue that farming ingrains the value of hard work from an early age.  ‘Thousands of people grew up working on farms.  My children did it,’ said Larry Wooten, president of the N.C. Farm Bureau.  ‘Farm work is hard, it’s hot, it’s nasty and it’s outside.  They [immigrant workers] come here knowing that it is work.’”

WHAT IT MEANS: Immigrant labor often has an exploitative element to it, and this is no different.  As Catherine Crowe of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee told the N&O, the underlying problem here is poor wages.  “Child labor is an issue not because of lack of legislation, but more because of poverty wages being paid to their parents.  If you pay poverty wages, kids are going to have to work to make up for that loss of income in the family.”

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5. SIX LOCAL HEADLINES.

Thom Tillis, a senator and former state House speaker, is weirdly unknown in these parts. [N&O]

Raleigh mayoral candidate Charles Francis calls Mayor McFarlane “aloof” and “disengaged.” [INDY]

Five months after a state trooper killed Willard Scott, the cops have yet to release an autopsy. [INDY]

At long last, booze flows before noon on Sunday. [WRAL]

In North Carolina, bears are opening car doors. [Charlotte Observer]

Twenty-six of the fifty most expensive zip codes in North Carolina in which to rent an apartment are in the Triangle. [N&O]

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6. ODDS & ENDS.

Here’s why your dog rolls in the grass.

The University of Maryland School of Pharmacy will train students on medical marijuana.

Elon Musk debuts the long-awaited Tesla 3.

Here‘s some video of the Raleigh Trolley Pub getting towed this weekend.

An Excerpt from Chapter 41 Path Perilous: My Search for God and the Miraculous “The Plongeur…a slave of the modern world.” Down and Out, George Orwell I climbed the back stairs to the kitchen in the dark, the smell hitting me before I reached the door—grease, burned meat, sour water left too long in metal trays. Inside, a mountain of pots and pans waited, slick with fat, stacked like wreckage.…