Monthly Archives: September 2020

If you were comparing immigrants to the United States from Algeria and Israel and were asked which group had higher levels of education and skills, youd probably assume the answer is the Israelis. After all, the average Israeli has completed 12.5 years of schooling, compared with 7.6 years for Algerians, according to the American Community Survey.

But youd be wrong. Algerian immigrants to the U.S. are not only better educated than those from Israel, they also have completed more schooling than the average, native-born resident of the United States.

What explains this seeming oddity? Its the built-in bias of the U.S. immigration system, which heavily favors applicants who have family ties in the United States, says Stanford Graduate School of Business economist Edward Lazear. Since there are relatively few Algerians living in the U.S., the immigration process requires that Algerians seeking to enter the country must do so primarily on the basis of their skills.

If this unexpected outcome applied only to immigrants from a few countries, it wouldnt be significant. But recently published research by Lazear found flaws in long-held theories of how immigrants with varying levels of educational attainment manage to migrate to the United States and other advanced countries.

Since the 1960s, immigration was understood to resemble market-driven investment decisions. People would weigh the costs and benefits of migration in much the same way they might choose to change occupations. Highly skilled people living in countries where they are underpaid for their abilities were likely to move to countries where their experience would be better rewarded.

When looking at historic migration within the U.S. from one part of the country to another thats a reasonable theory, Lazear says.

In the first half of the 20th century, for example, millions of African Americans migrated from the South to the industrial centers of the North. The move was expensive both in terms of tangible economic costs and less tangible, but still real, social and psychological costs. Why they were willing to uproot themselves was no mystery: There was more economic opportunity in the North and a perceived chance to escape racial oppression and discrimination. And there were no government policies to restrain their movements.

According to Lazear, some economists have adopted similar models to explain international migration patterns.

But today the U.S. is faced with what he calls an excess supply of potential foreign immigrants. Unlike the past, when market forces held sway, government regulations that ration legal immigration now determine who gets to stay legally.

From our point of view, there are no bad countries. Every country ... produces highly skilled, educated people.

Edward Lazear

In any given year, about 25 million people apply for permanent admission to the U.S., 1 million immigrants obtain green cards, and almost 4 million applicants remain on the waiting list, Lazear says. Who is allowed entry to the U.S. is largely determined by what amounts to a rationing system. Policy rather than migrant desire determines who ends up in the U.S. and how well they do, he explains.

Lazear notes that his findings may seem obvious. But he adds that his argument is based on empirical evidence garnered from 129 countries. The important implication is that we can have any group of immigrants or attainment we want, he says. From our point of view, there are no bad countries. Every country, even those with poor educational systems like Algeria, produces highly skilled, educated people.

Lazear, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to President George W. Bush and has advocated for replacing the current quota system with a skills-based immigration policy. However, he emphasizes that his recent paper is not an argument for any particular immigration policy and it does not contain policy recommendations.

The U.S. radically shifted immigration priorities when the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 changed the allocation system from quotas based on national origin to one that favored family reunification. The effect was swift and dramatic.

The number of immigrants increased by nearly one-third, and they came from a different mix of countries. Immigrants from Asia, for example, quadrupled in the five years after the laws passage, while the share of immigrants from northern Europe dropped. The share of U.S. immigrants from France fell from 4 percent to about 1 percent in the same time period, because relatively few immigrants from France were already living in the U.S.

The use of family ties as an immigration entry vehicle tends to overrepresent some countries and underrepresent others. Algerians are underrepresented among U.S. immigrants by a factor of 10 compared to their share of the worlds population, while Israelis are overrepresented by a factor of three, according to Lazear.

Mexico is overrepresented relative to India as a country of origin, but Indian immigrants are second from the top in educational attainment while those from Mexico are near the bottom. Historically, the best-educated immigrant group were those who came from the Soviet Union to the U.S. in the 1980s.

You might think that immigrants from countries where they are insufficiently rewarded for their advanced education, skills, and expertise would be the most likely to come to the U.S. But Lazear found no such correlation.

Lazears research indicates that the phenomenon he found in the U.S. lower educational attainment of overrepresented groups holds true in Sweden and other advanced countries. Sweden, Lazear notes, is an interesting comparison because its immigration policy is so different than that of the U.S. it is weighted in favor of refugees but the outcome is similar. The general point is that the more overrepresented [groups are], the lower the attainment.

The U.S., he says, can decide what skills and levels of education or other criteria, such as refugee status it wants to emphasize. This isnt about good or bad source countries. Its how many the U.S. takes from each country relative to the pool in that country.

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The Economics of Prioritizing Family Ties in U.S. Immigration Policy - Stanford Graduate School of Business

The coronavirus pandemic and the associated economic crisis has brought many things to light. It has shown the value of care work, as our essential healthcare system and its workforce have been working round the clock to care for affected Australians. It has shown how shortsighted and problematic the political decision to move manufacturing offshore has been, as our global supply chains have been severed and we have had to scramble to remobilise to accommodate the increased demand for protective personal equipment (PPE), hand sanitiser and other health-related products.

It has also highlighted how reliant Australias agricultural sector is on overseas workers, as the pandemic and borders closures saw farmworkers laid off or return to their home countries. The too often unacknowledged fact is that our food is largely produced off the back of migrant labour, with some workers exposed to exploitation and degradation. An ABC investigation this week revealed fresh allegations of sexual harassment of female backpacker workers.

Recently, these workers have started to voice their concerns and frustration through their union, the newly amalgamated United Workers Union (UWU), who have pushed back against the systemic exploitation that became endemic long before the virus showed up.

Yet there have been a number of proposals to bring increasingly vulnerable communities into the industry amid a shortage of workers. Growcom called on the government to allow workers who have been displaced and made unemployed to pick fruit while receiving jobseeker, effectively turning the whole sector into a work-for-the-dole industry. The Northern Territory Farmers Association has suggested that Hecs discounts should be given to university students who agreed to engage in farmwork. Similarly, the interim report of the of the inquiry into the working holiday maker program has echoed these proposals, recommending that year 12 students spend a gap year at home picking fruit before university, allowing fruit-picking jobseekers to be exempt from activity tests, and a number of subsidies and reforms to visa provisions to encourage more temporary residents to engage in farmwork.

Most interesting has been a recently floated solution proposed by the Refugee Council of Australia and supported by politicians from the government opposition and the crossbench, which would enlist the 17,000 refugees who are without a path to residency with an opportunity to work on farms in exchange for a shot a permanency.

There is little doubt that many of the people desperate to build a safe and secure life here in Australia will leap at the chance. However, the fact that the Refugee Council is proposing this solution speaks to the desperation that many who seek the shelter and safety that so many of us enjoy freely must feel. For many of these potential Australians, the choice on offer is often between complying with unacceptable requests in their new country or returning to persecution or oppression in their country of birth. Just as someone who is drowning will clutch at any object that might keep them afloat, it is unsurprising that vulnerable refugees and those who work to protect and advance their interests will look to get permanent residency by any means.

However, we should think twice before conscripting desperate people to pick fruit for their freedom.

From the Afghan cameleers who helped map our nations red centre and Chinese miners who drove the gold rush, Australias uncomfortable history with an interlinked immigration and employment system has long been discussed by scholars and pundits alike. While weve long since abandoned the official discrimination and racial hierarchies of the infamous White Australia policy, the echoes are still quietly reverberating around the edges of our political landscape.

While the current proposal is seeking to solve two problems, by giving people who want to live and work in Australia a real chance at permanency and by filling the gaps in our supply chain, the implications of using a migrant labour force to solve a problem experienced by the white majority could be used as a dog whistle by less scrupulous politicians and campaigners.

However, there is another way to solve the problem that none of the previously mentioned solutions proposes: turn farmwork into secure, safe and sustainable employment.

If the government and farmers worked with farmworkers and their unions to create a sectoral agreement that guarantees fair treatment, wages and conditions across the supply chain, then many workers, regardless of skin colour or residency status, would be more inclined to work in the industry. By creating a fair employment environment, a path to residency for those who need it, and ensuring that both unions and governmental regulators had the capacity and resources to enforce compliance, we could help create a system where farmworkers are treated with respect, dignity and fairness.

Most importantly, we should ensure that it endures beyond the crisis. We should neither take the refugees who work these jobs in a crisis, or the backpackers who will one day return, for granted. We should use this as an opportunity to further deconstruct the systemic oppression that migrant workers face across our supply chains and to build a fair food system.

Shirley Jackson is the senior economist at Per Capita

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Australia should think twice before asking desperate people to pick fruit for their freedom - The Guardian

** This paper is part of an ARI series seeking to generate debate over the effectiveness of international sanctions on Syria and their impact on Syrians and the future of the country.

A number of countries, notably the US and European countries, have imposed sanctions on the Syrian regime in response to its brutal repression of its population and its repeated violations of international law. The scope of sanctions expanded since the entry into force of the US Caesar Act in June 2020 to include foreign partners of the Syrian government.

So far, sanctions have failed to change the Syrian regime or modify its behaviour. This is because of a lack of a real strategy to ensure that sanctions impact the authoritarian structure in Syria and the regimes extensive experience in coping with and overcoming sanctions.Meanwhile, despite the stated objectives of minimizing harm to the population, many indicators show that sanctions, including the Caesar Act, are hitting ordinary Syrians the hardest.

The international community should explore options outside the dichotomy of maintaining sanctions in their current form or lifting them completely. In particular, a real discussion should be had on how to address the sanctions weak impact on regime behaviour while also adopting measures to counter their negative impact on the population.

On 29 April 2011, the United States imposed the first set of sanctions on the Syrian regime as a punitive response to its brutal repression of the peaceful demonstrations that had erupted in March 2011, calling for freedom, dignity, and human rights. These sanctions froze the assets of top-ranked Syrian officers and imposed travel bans on them. The following month, the EU suspended all cooperation programmes and agreements with the Syrian government. In August 2011, the United States imposed additional sanctions including a ban on all transactions involving Syrian petroleum or petroleum products.

Although the main targets of sanctions were military and security officials and entities, the EU extended the list starting in September 2011 to sanction the Central Bank of Syria, public banks, investments in the Syrian oil and gas sector, regime cronies, and pro-regime activists such as members of the so-called Syrian electronic army. Turkey also imposed trade sanctions, and the League of Arab States agreed to freeze Syrias assets in Arab countries and end all financial transactions with the Syrian government (though its decisions are not compulsory on its members).

The imposition of sanctions aimed to weaken the regimes military and economic foundations by targeting its key entities and individuals located mainly inside the country. The scope of the application of sanctions expanded in December 2019 when President Donald Trump signed the Caesar Syrian Civilian Protection Act that came into force on 17 June 2020. Whereas previous sanctions mainly targeted entities inside Syria, this Act authorized sanctions on any foreign individual and entity with business connections to the regime. This Act was also a direct threat to the regimes allies and supporters, including Russia, and could be read as a warning to the Gulf and some European countries that might be tempted to normalize relations with the Syrian regime and enter into reconstruction contracts.

The Caesar Act aims to sanction transactions related to the military, oil and gas sector, as well as any government-led reconstruction and speed up the regimes already deteriorating economy by limiting its access to international financial networks, including those related to its allies. The Act also raises the economic burden on partners of the Syrian government as they have to intensify their efforts to find ways to avoid being designated by the US Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), leading them to rethink and minimize their business relations with the regime.

Despite the stated objectives of targeting the regime and minimizing harm to the population, many indicators show that sanctions, including the Caesar Act, are hitting ordinary Syrians the hardest. The impact is obvious in the energy and financial sectors as most people inside Syria struggle to access oil derivatives such as diesel and encounter difficulties in conducting financial transactions notably receiving remittances that have become one of the main sources of income for many Syrian households. The Act also has created a chilling effect among foreign companies that prefer to de-risk and avoid dealing with any Syrian individual or entity, even in non-sanctioned activities or sectors.

Since 1979, western countries have imposed different sets of sanctions on the Syrian regime, which has only provided it with accumulated experience in dealing with the current economic bans. The regime has developed different mechanisms to survive sanctions and mitigate their impact on the structure of power in Syria.

At the core of these mechanisms was external support from strategic allies, notably Iran, and to a lesser extent Russia. Iran, for instance, has provided the Syrian regime in addition to unlimited military support with essential goods and services, mainly oil, during the conflict. All non-military support is made through credit lines, which means increasing Syrias financial debt. Iran has reportedly shipped oil to Syria with an estimated annual amount of $1.7 billion US dollars between 2013 and 2018. Assuming the same pattern in 2019 and 2020, the total value of crude oil exported from Iran to the Syrian regime during the conflict would be $13.6 billion US dollars. Additionally, Iran provided $2 billion US dollars in 2013 and 2015 to the Central Bank of Syria to support the Syrian currency and facilitate the imports of Iranian goods other than oil. In June 2020, the Iranian Foreign Minister stated that Syria still has a credit line in Iran but without mentioning the amount. Based on these numbers, Iranian non-military support to Syria during the conflict can be estimated at around $15.6 billion US dollars, which almost equals 8.5 times Syrias budget in 2020.

Russia has also been facilitating business activities and has invested in vital sectors in Syria. It has become the main source of wheat for the Syrian regime that used to have wheat self-sufficiency before the conflict. The annual quantities of Russian wheat to Syria have increased sharply from 650 thousand tons in 2015 to more than 1.5 million tons in 2018. Also, many companies registered in Russia have played an important role in exporting oil to Syria and breaking the sanctions imposed on the Syrian oil sector.

The support from Iran and Russia has not been without consequence as the country has lost its sovereignty over key issues, but the regime managed to prevent a complete economic collapse. The Caesar Act may limit Russian companies involvement with the Syrian government, but the already sanctioned Iranian entities have nothing to lose.

In addition to external support, the Syrian regime has proven adept at changing internal power dynamics to benefit from the rents usually associated with economic sanctions. Networks of wealthy cronies and warlords are enjoying the rents and the black market activities that flourish as a result of sanctions. These profiteers have risen as powerful actors that can influence policymakers to achieve their interests at the expense of other actors, including state institutions, traditional businesspersons, and vulnerable sectors of the Syrian population. But the regime always makes it clear that these new actors should provide it with financial support when needed; otherwise it would use its coercive measures to replace them with more obedient and controllable profiteers.

To overcome sanctions, the new war profiteers have coordinated and created criminal and illegal networks that have their smuggling routes to secure goods and services either from neighbouring countries, mainly Lebanon, or from other areas inside Syria such as the north-eastern region to obtain oil and wheat. In addition, some profiteers have established shadow companies and accounts in different countries to facilitate trading activities with the Syrian government. Once again, the Caesar Act and other economic sanctions will increase the trading risk for these companies though the added risk is often compensated for by higher profit margins. Consequently, Syrian civilians end up having to endure price increases for imported and smuggled goods given that local production was largely damaged during the conflict. This set-up by the Syrian regime ultimately allows it to use sanctions to reallocate resources to the benefit of its cronies and at the expense of civilians.

The Syrian government also seeks to deflect pressure on its performance by blaming sanctions for all the economic failure and collapse in the country. This is typical rhetoric in authoritarian regimes that portray sanctions as an external threat to the state itself, and thus, all Syrians should stand with their state against them. The regimes propaganda, media campaigns, even Assad himself, always present sanctions as a part of an overall conspiracy against the country for its crucial role in fighting imperialism and Israel. Thus, it claims its survival stands like a fortress against a western evil plan. While it is impossible to measure exactly the impact of such efforts, the regime has been able to divert to a certain extent the anger of many Syrians away from its own performance and towards the sanctions, claiming they are the major cause of their misery. This is clear in the last social media campaign managed by the The Syrian Civil Society Facebook page to lift sanctions on Syria using the Covid-19 pandemic to attract more attention. Thousands of Syrians mainly from inside the country have changed their Facebook profile picture to include the sentence of lift sanctions on Syria. Members of parliament, artists, and key religious figures who retain a strong influence over local communities, such as Father Elias Zahlawi, a well-respected priest in Damascus, expressed their support for the campaign and official state media was quick to relay that.

These coping mechanisms have allowed the regime in Syria to reduce the impact of sanctions on itself while people and state infrastructure suffer. As a result, sanctions have indirectly if unwillingly contributed to weakening peoples ability to cope with the war and even to stand up against the regimes oppression as people spend more of their energy and daily efforts to ensure daily subsistence, particularly after the dramatic deterioration of living conditions caused by the sharp devaluation of the Syrian pound in 2020. Thus, it is crucial for countries imposing sanctions to restructure their sanctions on Syria to mitigate their impact on the population and make them more effective against the regime.

After almost 10 years, the current sanctions have failed to achieve their announced objectives of halting the Syrian regimes repression and forcing it to settle the crisis in line with UN Security Council resolution 2254 that calls for a genuine political transition. This failure in meeting objectives should incentivize the international community to analyze and overcome the sanctions ineffectiveness.

The first step is to do a thorough evaluation of the role of the current sanctions in affecting the regime approach to UN resolution 2254 which the EU and US claim to be a strategic framework for their policies in Syria. The evaluation should also include an examination of the impact of sanctions on the behaviour of international supporters of the Syrian regime, notably Russia, Iran and China.

A second step is for sanction-setting countries to update their comprehensive strategy to end the conflict in Syria and fit the use of sanctions within this broader strategy. Western countries should agree on a set of detailed objectives within the agreed framework of 2254 to resolve the conflict and tie sanctions to measurable and attainable goals. One example could be to tie certain sanction policies to specific improvements on human rights issues such as releasing detainees, setting up independent visits to detention facilities, and stopping arbitrary detentions by security agencies to give civil society initiatives an appropriate and safe working environment. Other goals could be more political including progress on key aspects of the constitution or focus on reforms and accountability efforts in the security sector. The regime will resist this but at least the benchmarks and the expectations will be clearer than they are today.

Another weakness in the current approach to sanctions is the lack of coordination between the different countries. The EU is using sanctions as the main tool of intervention in Syria whereas the US administration has also adopted different approaches besides the sanctions, including direct military intervention in the northeast of the country as well economic support for the areas under the authority of the Kurdish-controlled Syria Democratic Forces. Moreover, the EU insists on political transition in Syria as a condition to lift sanctions and provide financial support for the reconstruction process in the country while the USA uses sanctions, including the Caesar Act, to increase its political bargaining power and limit Iran and Russias influence in Syria rather than fulfil vital Syrians needs and aspirations in building a democratic state. A minimum level of coordination between sanction-imposing counties to agree on one main objective, which should be according to UN resolution 2254 a genuine political transition, would limit the political capacity of the Syrian regime to invest in the different agendas of western countries and open several channels of negotiation with each one of them.

The last challenge for sanction policies is the lack of global consensus on the importance of substantial political reform in Syria. Countries like Russia, Iran, and China have been fighting against such a change, and they counter the western sanctions by increasing their support and trade with the Syrian regime. Consequently, these countries are enjoying a growing influence in Syria, which has given them more reasons to protect the current regime. The sanction imposing countries, after agreeing on their final objectives in Syria between themselves, should explore how to provide these foreign backers of the Syrian regime with incentives to accept a political reform in the country. Negative incentives could include sanctions such as the Caesar Act that increase the cost of their support to the regime whereas positive incentives could be by providing guarantees that a democratic state would also protect their economic interests and investments in Syria.

The international community has a range of policy options beyond the simple dichotomy of maintaining current sanctions or lifting them completely.

In thinking of how to minimize the impact on ordinary Syrians, one possibility is to provide direct financial support for traditional businesspersons and SMEs (small & medium enterprises) in Syria by opening parallel financial channels with them as a substitution of the formal ones which are sanctioned and controlled by pro-regime entities and individuals. These channels can resemble the Swiss payment mechanism to Iran launched in January 2020 which allows for humanitarian goods to be traded with Iran without falling under US sanctions. Such mechanisms reduce the chilling effect on foreign companies and organizations that become able to trade with sanctioned countries without being afraid of breaching sanctions. At the same time, they provide the international community with a tool to fulfil peoples needs for basic goods and services without empowering cronies in sanctioned countries.

For Syria, the mechanism may include, besides humanitarian aid, other goods and services needed for local markets such as raw materials and equipment for industrial sectors, including textile, pharmaceutical and agri-food industries. In practice, this needs an independent technical office with the power to decide and approve transactions that can be conducted with Syria without being affected by the sanctions. Such an office should be established through a UN resolution that determines its governance, location, and authority. Syrian traders, foreign companies and banks should send requests for transactions to this office which will study all of them and only approve those that are not serving the regime and its cronies. Thus, this office needs to have a strong and effective monitoring system that is well informed about cronies in Syria and their activities. It could work in coordination with UN agencies and international organizations and be managed by Syrian and foreign technical experts.

Another choice for the international community is to provide technical and financial support to civil society initiatives through direct, flexible, and monitored channels similar to the above-mentioned mechanisms to avoid the bureaucracy of the current UN channels and to give a better opportunity for local civil society initiatives in getting external funds. Currently, only licenced NGOs in regime-controlled areas, that are all pro-regime, have the right to receive funds from international organizations. The Syrian civil society is the only actor that could positively change the internal power dynamics in the country. It understands the actual causes of economic deterioration, and, therefore, it would be able to counter the regimes rhetoric on sanctions as the sole cause of economic failure in the country. It could also build practical economic alternatives to mitigate the economic hardship at the household level.

The above technical suggestions should only be used as temporary solutions to overcome the negative impact of sanctions on the Syrian population. The end goal remains eventually lifting all sanctions provided the country goes through genuine political reform that fulfils aspirations of many Syrians in building a just, fair and democratic society.

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Punishing the Regime, Protecting Syrians: The Dilemma of Sanctions on Syria -

An Ice detention center in Georgia is reportedly the site of a mass involuntary sterilization project. A whistleblower report published by the non-profit Project South alleges that large numbers of migrant women held at the Irwin county detention center, a privately run facility that imprisons undocumented immigrants, received hysterectomies that they did not want and which were not medically necessary.

The allegations reported by Project South were first made in a formal complaint by a nurse working at the detention center, Dawn Wooten, who describes the conditions there and conversations she had with imprisoned women in detail. The hysterectomies were all allegedly performed by the same outside gynecologist, Mehendra Amin, of Douglas, Georgia. Wooten says that one migrant woman referred to Amin as the uterus collector. Amin told The Intercept that he had only done one or two hysterectomies in the past two [or] three years. Responding to the allegations, he said Everything is wrong and urged Intercept reporters to talk to the hospital administrator for more information.

The women say they were not told why they were having hysterectomies, with some saying that they were given conflicting reasons for the procedures or reprimanded when asked about them. Wootens account in the Project South report was corroborated by two lawyers, who told NBC News that four women in the facility whom they represent, had been sterilized without medical cause and without their consent. According to the Project South report, a detained woman at the Irwin county center said: When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp. It was like theyre experimenting with our bodies.

As horrific as the allegations are, its not likely that either the Irwin county officials or Dr Amin were experimenting. More likely, they knew exactly what they were doing. If true, the allegations of forced sterilizations would make the Irwin county detention center only the latest in Americas long history of eugenics, which has disproportionately targeted women of color.

In the early 20th century, white American intellectuals were pioneers of race science, advancing the idea that undesirable traits could and should be bred out of the population with government planning and selective, involuntary sterilization programs. Everything the Nazis knew about eugenics, they learned from the United States. The 1927 Buck v Bell supreme court case, in which the court ruled that the state of Virginia had the right to sterilize a 20-year-old named Carrie Buck against her will, led to an era of enthusiastically racist population engineering by state governments. Federally funded eugenics boards were established in 32 states, through which tax dollars were spent to sterilize approximately 70,000 people, mostly women. These programs were used to enforce via state law the racist fiction of America as a white country, and forced sterilization disproportionately targeted Black women.

A separate federal program in the 1960s and 1970s deputized doctors with the Indian Health Service to choose which Native American women they personally deemed fit to reproduce, and to make those womens reproductive choices for them accordingly. They decided that approximately a quarter of Native American women were unfit to have children, and sterilized them. As with the migrant women at the Irwin county center, many of the Native women were lied to about the nature of their procedures, or were sterilized without their knowledge during other surgeries. Some Native women were told, incorrectly, that the sterilizations were reversible; others were told that they were being treated for appendicitis, or needed to have their tonsils removed. They discovered the truth when they woke up.

None of this is distant history. North Carolinas eugenics program, through which 7,600 people were sterilized, did not end until 1977

Nor was it only state actors who forced sterilization on women. Some gynecologists took it upon themselves to sterilize women they didnt think should be having children. In her groundbreaking work on the reproductive oppression of Black women, Killing the Black Body, the legal scholar Dorothy Roberts details the case of Clovis Pierce, the only Medicaid-accepting obstetrician in Aiken county, South Carolina. Pierce allegedly demanded that his pregnant Medicaid patients consent to sterilization before he agreed to deliver their children. He reportedly threatened women who resisted with legal action; once, when a woman currently in labor objected to being sterilized, Pierce allegedly had her thrown out of the hospital. One of Pierces patients, Dorothy Waters, claims that Pierce explained his rationale for enforcing her sterilization in extremely blunt terms. Listen here, young lady, this is my tax money paying for this baby and Im tired of paying for illegitimate children, he told her. If you dont want this sterilization, find another doctor. Dr Pierce reportedly sterilized 18 women at Aiken county hospital in 1972 alone. Sixteen of them were Black.

None of this is distant history. North Carolinas eugenics program, through which 7,600 people were sterilized, did not end until 1977. Dr Pierce moved his practice from Aiken to Greenville, South Carolina, and was still practicing as recently as 2012.

Few fictions are as violently defended as the one that posits that America is for white people, and few things make those who cherish this fiction so angry as the specter of non-white women choosing for themselves when to have children and how many children to have. Forced sterilizations like the ones that happened to women at the Irwin county center and to women throughout the nation during the 20th century are first and foremost human rights violations, cruel abridgements of those womens dignity, autonomy and rights to self determination. But they are also statements of white supremacist hostility, an assertion by white racists of the thing they most hate and fear: new Americans of color.

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Ice hysterectomy allegations in line with US's long and racist history of eugenics - The Guardian

Meadowbrook High alumnus Tony Pham (left), the newly appointed acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, speaks with Chesterfield Sheriff Karl Leonard during an Aug. 28 visit to the county jail. ASH DANIEL

The single piece of unlined white paper, neatly folded and tucked away in the inside breast pocket of Tony Phams suit jacket, is a testimony to both how far he has come over the past 45 years and what he left behind.

Its a copy of his familys aircraft boarding pass from April 19, 1975, when the 2-year-old Pham, his mother and his two older sisters fled Vietnam with little more than the clothes on their backs just 11 days before the capital of their war-torn country fell under Communist control.

I carry it with me everywhere I go, because no matter how well I do in life, no matter how high I go or how low I go, thats my anchor, Pham says, sitting at a conference table in the Chesterfield County Jail on the morning of Aug. 28, three days before he officially assumed his new role as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

This is what got us on the plane that day and we were blessed and fortunate as a family to have that opportunity. I carry that weight with me, knowing that for that family of four to sit in those seats, we knocked out another family. That drives my vision of doing the best I can because there were folks that gave up a lot for my family to get here, he adds.

Pham, a Meadowbrook High School graduate and friend of Chesterfield Sheriff Karl Leonard, visited the county jail to deliver pizzas to the deputies who run the facility. He spoke to the Observer for nearly an hour about his recent appointment, his personal refugee story and how that experience will guide his leadership of a beleaguered agency, one charged with implementing immigration policies that many advocates say are overly harsh and inhumane, particularly under President Donald Trump.

Pham, an attorney, had served as principal legal adviser to ICE since January. He was named Aug. 25 to succeed the retiring Matt Albence as its top official, responsible for managing a staff of 20,000 and an annual budget of $8 billion.

Less than two months before Election Day, amid nationwide protests over systemic racism and police brutality and a global pandemic that has seen COVID-19 cases surge in many ICE detention centers (including one in nearby Farmville), Pham is now the public face of a Trump administration immigration agenda that has been widely criticized as racist.

Still, when acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf called him last month and offered the job, Pham insists he accepted without hesitation.

The call to leadership has never been convenient, but when the opportunity came up to be that voice of calm and reason and hopefully be able to change [negative perceptions of ICE] simply by being in the seat, how could I say no? he says. My parents didnt raise a coward.

Left behind during the hasty evacuation from Vietnam, Phams father later reunited with his family at a refugee camp at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, where they lived in dormitory-style housing and dreamed of beginning new lives in the United States.

The Phams made their way to Virginia by way of sponsorship from a Presbyterian church in Henrico County, then moved to the Meadowdale area in northeastern Chesterfield in the early 1980s. Pham enrolled at Hopkins Elementary and his sisters at Falling Creek Middle, while their parents sought whatever jobs they could find and struggled to overcome significant language and cultural barriers.

His mother, who had been a teacher in Vietnam, worked at Thalhimers department store and sold tickets at a movie theater. His father, formerly an engineer and military officer, worked as a mechanic during the day and a janitor in the evening.

Anything they could do to keep the family afloat, he recalls.

In 1985, 10 years after they came to the U.S., the Phams were granted American citizenship. Tony graduated from the College of William & Mary in 1995 and added a law degree from the University of Richmond in 1999.

He took a job in the Richmond commonwealths attorneys office and quickly built a record of obtaining convictions in complex homicide, narcotics and firearms cases. In 2006, he was tasked with creating and leading the citys first unit specifically dedicated to prosecuting gang-related offenses. Along the way, he earned the nickname Phammer the Hammer.

His hard-nosed approach gradually softened, though, when he went to work in a correctional facility and learned more about the human condition.

Pham was hired as in-house counsel for the Richmond sheriffs office in 2010, providing legal and operational guidance to newly elected Sheriff C.T. Woody and his staff of 600 full-time employees at the city jail.

I cant say enough good things about Tony, Woody says. Hes a hard worker, hes intelligent and fair and a man of the highest integrity. Hes just an outstanding individual.

Two years after an unsuccessful campaign to become Henricos commonwealths attorney in 2015, Pham took over as superintendent of the Virginia Peninsula Regional Jail. He was credited with implementing a series of reforms that improved conditions at the Williamsburg facility, which had faced repeated lawsuits for mistreatment of inmates. He also launched an addiction recovery program modeled after the one Leonard had created at the Chesterfield County Jail.

Hes an extremely compassionate man who is sincere about wanting to help people, Leonard says. He knows the plight of the immigrant first-hand and he sees an opportunity to help make a difference in this country.

He has no time to waste. As a political appointee, Pham knows he could be replaced if Joe Biden wins the Nov. 3 presidential election. Even if President Trump secures a second term, theres no guarantee Pham will retain his leadership position at ICE on a permanent basis.

Because of his background, Pham already faces heightened scrutiny from pro-immigration groups waiting to see if hes able or willing to make any substantive changes at ICE.

OCAAsian Pacific American Advocates, a national civil rights organization dedicated to improving the social, political and economic prospects of Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI), has called on Pham to release nonviolent detainees, halt the unlawful deportation of refugees and end family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Representation in our government is important in order to uplift the needs of our community and ensure the well-being of AAPIs through policies and legislation, says Roland Hwang, the groups vice president for public affairs, in a press release. We hope Mr. Pham will remember his refugee roots, and the Vietnamese American immigrant community, to counteract the Trump Administrations anti-immigrant agenda.

If Pham has any loyalty left to refugees, he will begin by announcing the closure of ICEs migrant prison camps, halt all deportations during the pandemic, cease ICE collusion with hate groups and immediately release all of those in immigrant detention. To do otherwise would mean turning his back on refugees and siding with a rogue government agency that has only shown itself to be a menace in our communities, adds Tracy La, executive director of VietRISE, a California-based nonprofit that advocates on behalf of Vietnamese and other immigrant groups, in its official response to Phams appointment.

Without getting into specifics, Pham says hell be rolling out several new policy initiatives over the next few weeks.

I understand when families talk about the horrors of fleeing oppression, he says. Any decision that is made to the application of the rule of law is done with deliberate, thoughtful processes, understanding Do we apply the law in this fashion? Is it fair? Is it just and is it equitable?

ICE, he insists, is not an organization bent on intolerance or racism.

It cant be, not with me at the head, he says, refolding the copy of his familys 1975 boarding pass and putting it back in his pocket. It just cant be with my life story.

The rest is here:

Tony Pham's story: From refugee to head of ICE - Chesterfield Observer