The November jobs report was released today, and it brought a lot of good news. The U.S. economy added 321,000 jobs in November, well exceeding analysts’ expectations of 230,000. The unemployment rate remained at 5.8 percent. But the report also offers a reminder of the struggles that many working Americans continue to feel in the sluggish recovery.
The monthly jobs report doesn’t provide a comprehensive view of how our economy is doing, but it does offer an important glimpse into some of the macro employment and wage trends that reflect whether the economy is growing, and who is sharing in that growth. Here are five charts that show what to be happy about, and why we need to continue to work so that everyone has a chance for economic opportunity and prosperity.
Season’s greetings from all of us at CAP Action! While most of us are able to be at home celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday with friends and family, not everyone is as fortunate. Retail stores across the country, instead of allowing their workers to take the day off to spend with their families, are increasingly opening on Thanksgiving Day. While some stores are staffing Thanksgiving on a volunteer basis, others are not – and with no mandatory paid vacation in the United States their employees could be threatened with firings if they choose to spend the day away from work. All this, despite the fact that openings on Thanksgiving did not help sales last year. So in your Black Friday prep, check out the graphic below to see which companies are treating their workers fairly this Thanksgiving, and which you might want to watch out for.
From left, Raul Amador Sanchez, 7, from Georgia, Alexandra Diaz, 9, and her brother Andy Diaz, 7, both from Baltimore, Maryland, hold up signs as they join their parents during a news conference of immigrant families and children’s advocates responding to President Barack Obama’s response to the crisis of unaccompanied children and families, Monday, July 7, 2014, on the steps of St. John’s Church in Washington.
Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala have become increasingly more violent and inhospitable to children over the past few years. Honduras is now the murder capital of the world, with El Salvador and Guatemala not far behind. In fact, the murder rate in Honduras is now 30 percent higher than in Iraq in 2007, at the height of the insurgency. Gangs and organized criminal enterprises in these countries are increasingly targeting children. Is it any wonder, then, that children are fleeing these countries and heading for wherever they can find safe haven? In this year alone, the United States has seen more than 57,000 children arrive, a 106 percent increase from last year. According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, asylum requests in the neighboring countries of Central America from children of these three nations are up 712 percent since 2009.
Finding a solution that helps stem the tide of these arrivals in the United States while still ensuring that children who arrive are protected and have their claims heard is not easy. But it is doable.
The administration can revise the process that these children face, without changing the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, the law that governs how children in this situation are treated. Fixing the process through administrative action will cut the amount of time that children have to wait to have their claims heard. Reducing the waiting time may also take away some of the incentive to flee in the first place; currently, children spend many months, if not years, in the United States before seeing an immigration judge. Most importantly, such a change will speed up the process while still ensuring that children have full and fair hearings.
The current system
Under current U.S. law, there are two policies for children who arrive here without a parent or guardian: one for children from the contiguous countries of Mexico and Canada and one for children from everywhere else. Children from contiguous countries receive an immediate screening by the Border Patrol to determine whether they are victims of trafficking or would face persecution if returned home. In theory, if a child articulates a fear of return or has been trafficked, he or she is allowed to stay in the country while awaiting a hearing by an immigration judge. But in practice, as the UNHCR has found, the Border Patrol has neither the training nor the ability to adequately screen these children. In many cases, screenings are done in a matter of minutes, without regard for whether the child even understands the process. In the Rio Grande Valley, as Dara Lind of Vox points out, the vast majority of Mexican children were not even asked if they had a fear of returning to Mexico.
Children from everywhere else are apprehended by the Border Patrol and placed into deportation proceedings. Within 72 hours, they must be turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, in the Department of Health and Human Services. ORR provides shelter and care for the children and works to place them with a family member or a sponsor while they await their immigration hearings.
But the waiting times to see an immigration judge have skyrocketed for everyone, not just children, with average delays of 587 days, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. These long waits are the result of years of underfunding of the immigration court system: The average backlog in the courts has increased by 120 percent since 2006.
The wrong approach
With up to 90,000 children estimated to arrive this year, a numberof proposalsby legislators such as Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) have proposed changing existing law to prioritize speedy deportations over fair proceedings. These legislators contend that the law’s current requirement that these children receive full immigration hearings, coupled with the long backlogs in these cases, incentivize children to come to the United States.
To speed up the process, legislators such as Sen. Cornyn and Rep. Cuellar believe that children from countries such as Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala should be pushed through an expedited screening process more similar to the one applied to children from Mexico. This is a serious mistake. A system that takes years to adjudicate a single case makes no sense, but the failure of that process does not diminish our responsibility to treat all children with care and to give them their day in court. The president has ample authority within existing law to accelerate the process and ensure that children receive appropriate hearings quickly, without sacrificing protections and due-process rights for children.
A better solution
Solving the challenging issues presented by these child refugees will require significantly more resources. The administration has requested emergency funds, and the Senate has introduced a $2.7 billion supplemental funding bill to tackle the problem. This is a good start. The money should be used to increase protections and legal representation for children, to provide more immigration judges and asylum officers to hear their claims, to ensure that ORR has the resources and facilities it needs to care for the children, and to set up in-country processing facilities to give children the ability to make a claim for refugee protections before they leave home.
In creating a policy to deal appropriately with child refugees, the United States should adopt the recommendations discussed below.
Maintain ORR custody. All children who arrive at the border should be turned over to ORR custody as soon as possible. Once in custody, these children should be screened by child welfare specialists, and receive know-your-rights trainings that explain the legal requirements for making a case for protection. These children should remain in ORR custody while awaiting their hearing. If they are still in custody beyond 90 days, ORR should conduct a best-interest determination to see if they should be released to family members or sponsors who reside in the United States; this determination should be repeated every month thereafter.
Provide court-appointed counsel. Children as young as toddlers cannot be expected to represent themselves in a formal immigration court proceeding without the benefit of legal counsel. The effect of having a lawyer is clear: Children with attorneys are more than four times as likely to win their cases, while only 1 in 10 children without an attorney currently win. Congress should provide the resources to enable the administration to appoint counsel to represent all children.
Increase staff in the immigration courts, and speed up the process. To move children’s cases through the immigration court system quickly, avoiding the multiyear backlogs, the courts must be adequately staffed and trained. Children should have their claims heard by an immigration judge no later than 60 days after arrival, and the courts should proceed on a “last in, first out” principle, hearing the cases of the most recent arrivals first. With additional resources and more immigration judges, such a change should not affect the existing immigration court caseload. This system would allow those with valid protection claims to be put on a quick path toward legal status and eventual permanent residency, rather than languishing in legal limbo. Simultaneously, this would address concerns that the current system allows children to stay in the country indefinitely.
Focus on smugglers and traffickers. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement should focus their resources on cracking down on the smugglers exploiting these children and bringing them to the United States, rather than on low-priority, noncriminal immigrants. Going after these organized criminal elements will also require cooperation from Mexico and other Central American countries.
Develop in-country processing programs. The United States should devise a program that allows children and others with refugee claims to have their cases heard by trained officers while still living in their home countries. This process was used for refugees in East Asia during and after the Vietnam War and for Haitian refugees in the 1990s. A similar process could be set up for Central American refugees that would not preclude them from also seeking asylum if they were to make it to the United States. Such a process would help the county fulfill its international and moral obligation to protect people from being persecuted, while also helping ensure that these children do not have to make a treacherous journey to find relief.
These recommendations are not meant to be exhaustive. Instead, they sketch out the broad outline of a way forward. In the long term, more investments are needed to rebuild civil society and stop the violence in Central America. Likewise, the United States should explore the possibility of accepting the persecution of children as meeting the threshold for asylum status; currently, children are unlikely to be viewed as being targeted as a member of a “particular social group,” a necessary legal determination and prerequisite for gaining refugee status. In the meantime, the president has the authority to accelerate the process for children fleeing violence, without sacrificing fairness or due process and without changing existing law.
Marshall Fitz is the Director of Immigration Policy, Philip E. Wolgin is a Senior Policy Analyst for Immigration, and Angela Maria Kelley is the Vice President for Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress.
Last month, President Obama called for a review of deportation policy. To get a sense of how enormous the number of deportations have been under this administration, check out this infographic from our colleagues at the Center for American Progress:
Check out a few other resources on deportations as well:
Jeb Bush believes that undocumented immigrants cross the border out of “act of love.”
Speaker John Boehner, after dragging his feet, is apparently “hell bent” on passing immigration reform this year.
BOTTOM LINE: With each passing day, failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship costs more and more in economic benefits for the country and in families torn apart.
For the past three years, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) has been trotting out the same conservative, top-down policies that have failed the nation’s middle- and working-class families, seniors, and the economy. The House Republican budget is built around the tenet that nearly everyone else must sacrifice in order to continue to give billions of dollars in tax breaks to millionaires, big corporations, and Big Oil. At every turn, the House Republican budget reveals its vision of an economy and government that only works for the wealthiest individuals and special corporate interests at the cost of everyone else.
Now for the fourth consecutive year, the House Republican budget proposes dismantling traditional Medicare and slashing investments that drive our economy, all while cutting taxes for the rich and protecting taxpayer subsidies for big businesses and oil companies. The American people have seen this before, and we know how it ends—with millionaires, big corporations, and Big Oil as the only ones who are better off. Everyone else gets left behind, and our economy only gets weaker. Read more.
Though President Ronald Reagan called the right to vote the “crown jewel of American liberties,” many Republicans around the country have begun demanding increased voting restrictions in the name of fighting “voter fraud.” Though actual cases of voting fraud are so rare that a voter is much more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud at the polls, one Republican official in Indiana has proved that lightning can strike himself.
Yesterday, a jury found Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White (R) guilty on six felony counts of voter fraud, theft, and perjury. The conviction cost White his job, though he plans to ask the judge to reduce the charges to misdemeanors and hopes to perhaps regain the position.
In a statement, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) announced White’s deputy will take over on an interim basis:
I have chosen not to make a permanent appointment today out of respect for the judge’s authority to lessen the verdict to a misdemeanor and reinstate the elected office holder… If the felony convictions are not altered, I anticipate making a permanent appointment quickly.
But a second court case could ultimately give the job to Democrat Vop Osili, who lost to White in November 2010. A judge’s December 2011 ruling — currently on hold, pending appeal — held that due to the voter fraud charges, White’s election was invalid. Should that ruling survive the appeals process, Osili would assume the office.
Ironically, White’s now-removed 2010 campaign website listed election integrity as among his top concerns, and promised he would “protect and defend Indiana’s Voter ID law to ensure our elections are fair and protect the most basic and precious right and responsibility of our democracy-voting.”
NOTE: In 2005, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels signed “the strictest voter ID requirements in the nation,” and Republicans said at the time that it was “needed to guard against voter fraud.”
Editor’s Note: The irony in this entire situation is that one of their own got caught and now, instead of being outraged and going after Mr. White, instead they want to downplay his heinous actions to mere misdemeanors, slap him on the hand, and put him back in the job that is responsible for policing such actions! Had that been a Democratic Secretary of State committing such actions, they would be attempting to elevate his actions to the equivalent of treason and calling for his execution!
By National LGBT Health Education Center and Center for American Progress
The Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (Affordable Care Act) is expected to expand insurance coverage to millions of Americans starting this year. Among those most in need of access to affordable health insurance and high-quality health services are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Research has shown that many LGBT Americans, particularly same-sex couples, transgender people, and those living with HIV, have difficulty accessing insurance and are disproportionately likely to lack coverage. This brief explains how the Affordable Care Act will benefit LGBT Americans, particularly through better data collection, stronger nondiscrimination policies, a new essential health benefits standard and other insurance reforms, and coverage expansions. Part 1 provides an overview of the issues, while Part 2 discusses how America’s health centers, which are integral to efforts to enroll uninsured people, can deploy effective strategies for reaching LGBT people.
Asking Patients Questions about Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Clinical Settings
By The Fenway Institute and Center for American Progress
The Institute of Medicine, the U.S. government’s Healthy People 2020 strategy, and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations are among many entities that have recommended asking sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) questions in clinical settings and including such data in Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Many health care providers are in the process of considering how to do this. In order to better understand how a diverse group of people would respond when these questions are asked, several hundred patients at four health centers across the United States were surveyed about asking SOGI questions in their health center. This study found wide patient support for the importance of SOGI data and demonstrated the feasibility of collecting SOGI data using existing question designs.
Now the Koch brothers are coming after my solar panels.
I had solar panels installed on the roof of our Washington, D.C. home this year. My household took advantage of a generous tax incentive from the District government and a creative leasing deal offered by the solar panel seller.
Our electric bills fell by at least a third. When people make this choice, the regional electric company grows less pressured to spend money to expand generating capacity and the installation business creates good local jobs. Customers who use solar energy also reduce carbon emissions.
Yes, according to ALEC, an organization that specializes in getting the right-wing agenda written into state laws, people like me who invest in energy-efficiency and shrinking our carbon footprints ought to be penalized.
Why does ALEC want us punished? Since it’s bankrolled by, among others, the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, it’s hard not to surmise that they’re worried about a threat to fossil fuels businesses. Koch Industries’ operations include refineries, oil and natural gas pipelines, and petrochemicals
That’s no conspiracy theory. Recently the British newspaper The Guardian wrote about the assault on solar panels as part of a broader exposé on ALEC.
John Eick, the legislative analyst for ALEC’s energy, environment and agriculture program, confirmed to The Guardian that the organization would support making solar panel users pay extra for the electricity they generate. That’s already about to happen in Arizona, where homeowners who use solar panels will pay an average of about $5 extra a month for the privilege, starting in January.
The solar power industry called the new rule a victory only because power companies in the state were demanding assessments of as much as $100 a month — more than high enough to deter families from considering switching to solar.
Making solar energy cost-prohibitive for homeowners and businesses is part of a larger ALEC objective, affirmed at its recent annual meeting, to continue its effort to eliminate state renewable energy mandates.
According to meeting minutes, ALEC has already succeeded in getting legislation introduced in 15 states to “reform, freeze, or repeal their state’s renewable mandate.” ALEC lobbyists are pushing policies through states that will speed up climate change and increase pollution. They’re threatening the renewable energy industry, which is already creating new jobs and saving money for homeowners and businesses.
Without the current policy paralysis in Washington and a lack of bold, creative thinking about how to build a new, green economy at the national level, they wouldn’t be making so much headway.
My organization, Institute for America’s Future — together with the Center for American Progress and the BlueGreen Alliance — recently published a report that shows what’s at stake with ALEC’s destructive agenda.
Our “green industrial revolution” report recommends tying together a series of regional solutions that take advantage of the unique assets of each part of the country, such as the abundance of sun in the West and the wind off the Atlantic coast, into a cohesive whole.
These regional strategies would be supported by smart federal policies, such as establishing a price for carbon emissions and a national clean energy standard, creating certainty and stability in the alternative energy tax credit market, and providing strong support for advanced energy manufacturing.
This is the way to unleash the kind of innovation and job creation our economy — and our rapidly warming planet — desperately needs.
My solar panels are the envy of my block and I wish more of my neighbors will be able to make the same choice I did. But they won’t if fossil-fuel dinosaurs like the Koch brothers and right-wing organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council keep casting their dark clouds on efforts to build a clean energy future.
It’s time for them to step aside and let the sun shine in.
Isaiah J. Poole is the editor of OurFuture.org, the website of the Campaign for America’s Future. OurFuture.org. Photo credit to: Brookhaven National Laboratory/Flickr, Distributed via OtherWords. OtherWords.org
On Monday, the Heritage Foundation published a widely pannedstudy arguing that comprehensive immigration reform that allows undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion, as the population will take advantage of an array of government programs, including, Social Security, Medicare, unemployment benefits, Medicaid, public education, and population-based services like police and parks.
But the study, which comes out under the leadership of conservative former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), is a sharp departure from a “Backgrounder” the Foundation published in 2006. Then, Heritage noted that “worker migration is a net plus economically” and warned lawmakers against succumbing to “a lopsided, ideological approach that focuses exclusively on border security while ignore migrant workers (or vice versa) is bound to fail.” Below is a comparison of the two:
Heritage in 2013
Heritage in 2006
“[F]ormer unlawful immigrant households would likely begin to receive government benefits at the same rate as lawful immigrant households of the same education level. As a result, government spending and fiscal deficits would increase dramatically.”
“An honest assessment acknowledges that illegal immigrants bring real benefits to the supply side of the American economy, which is why the business community is opposed to a simple crackdown… Most immigrant families have a positive net fiscal impact on the U.S., adding $88,000 more in tax revenues than they consume in services.“
“Amnesty would also raise retirement costs by making unlawful immigrants eligible for Social Security and Medicare, resulting in a net fiscal deficit of around $22,700 per retired amnesty recipient per year.”
“Social Security payroll taxes paid by improperly identified (undocumented) workers have led to a $463 billion funding surplus.”
“Many conservatives believe that if an individual has a job and works hard, he will inevitably be a net tax contributor (paying more in taxes than he takes in benefits). In our society, this has not been true for a very long time. “
“Whether low-skilled or high-skilled,immigrants boost national output, enhance specialization, and provide a net economic benefit.”
“Unlawful immigration appears to depress the wages of low-skill U.S.-born and lawful immigrant workers by 10 percent, or $2,300, per year. Unlawful immigration also probably drives many of our most vulnerable U.S.-born workers out of the labor force entirely.”
Studies show that a 10 percent share increase of immigrant labor results in roughly a 1 percent reduction in native wages-a very minor effect… [C]ritics of this type of insourcing worry that jobs are being taken away from native-born Americans in favor of low-wage foreigners. Recent data suggest that these fears are overblown.”
NOTE:
The author of the 2006 Heritage report disputes the 2013 analysis: “Unless they expect readers to believe all this household income (a) generates no productive work (e.g., makes product, mows lawns, nurses the sick, and starts businesses that hire other Americans) and (b) is 100% remitted abroad, consuming nothing in the U.S. macro economy, then the report is misleading.” Like the other fiscal conservatives today, he argues, “The net effect of this Special Report does real damage to the cause of dynamic analysis. For more than a decade, Heritage has called on CBO to add dynamic analysis to its tax reform studies.”
The achievement gap between school districts in high-income neighborhoods and those in low-income ones is already more canyon than crack, and if $1.7 trillion in automatic sequestration cuts are allowed to go into effect on March 1, that gap could grow even wider.
Dozens of education programs would face reduced funding, but three crucial programs — No Child Left Behind, Head Start initiatives, and the Individuals with Disabilities Act — provide the most assistance to low-income students and also face the sharpest cuts if the sequester is allowed to go into effect, as the Center for American Progress’ Juliana Herman and Kaitlin Pennington detailed in a new report:
Altogether, the sequester would cut approximately $725 million from Title I funding, potentially affecting 2,700 schools, impacting 1.2 million students, and placing 9,880 education staff at risk of losing their jobs. […]
Head Start and Early Head Start—a similar program for infants—both work to ensure that parental income does not determine whether a child will be able to learn during these influential years. But should sequestration happen next week, approximately 70,000 children will be kicked out of Head Start due to inadequate funding. […]
If sequestration goes through, funding under the Individuals with Disabilities Act could be reduced by as much as $579 million.
In all, the report estimates, the cuts would impact as many as 1.2 million children, 30,000 teachers and 2,700 schools, the overwhelming majority of which will be from low-income communities.
Recent studies have shown the devastating correlation between income and student achievement. Since the late 1980s, the gap in metrics like college completion between students from high-income and low-income households grew by more than 50 percent.
For the past three years, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) has been trotting out the same conservative, top-down policies that have failed the nation’s middle- and working-class families, seniors, and the economy. The House Republican budget is built around the tenet that nearly everyone else must sacrifice in order to continue to give 
Though President Ronald Reagan called the right to vote the “
What’s not to love? 
On Monday, the Heritage Foundation published 
Humboldt County Democrats 