Month: January 2024

I’m just as frustrated as 70% of Americans over our limited choices for president in 2024. Let’s be honest about how our current choices were decided by a few wealthy old white men with oversized egos who are fighting proxy wars over the future of the United States using their checkbooks. We’re screwed because we allowed them to dictate our choices. And we’re even more screwed because they aren’t looking for talented, forward-looking ethical leaders with wit and intelligence and creative problem-solving skills. There are plenty of younger Americans who fit that bill, but they’re not on the presidential ballot. Long shot, independent candidates, threaten to push us into the arms of the candidate we least desire. If these rich old men were trying to do the best for this nation, they wouldn’t force us to choose between two old men with oversized egos who can hardly produce a coherent sentence nor offer this nation the kind of unifying leadership that cuts through manufactured culture wars and inspires the best in people.

But we can’t sit this election out. In 2024, we must choose the lessor of two evils. Those who are deciding to ignore the election or to vote for the independent candidate because they feel betrayed by the monied selection process must be convinced to vote for one of the two major candidates. Despite the unfair way they were forced upon us, these two men, however flawed and unworthy, represent two different visions for the nation’s future. So, we absolutely must choose.

Trump represents the efficiency and simplicity of having a single ruler (with the help of his loyal advisors) who makes all the social, economic, and security decisions for the nation. With the military at his command and the absolute immunity he demands, he can easily and quickly “fix” everything on behalf of the nation, no matter how ruthless, violent, and inhumane his methods. The Trumpian way promises loyal subjects the freedom to live unthinking, unchallenged, uneducated, simple lives of endless work and play in their imagined 1950’s utopia, absent inconvenient truths like climate change and human rights violations. Trump followers gladly accept that their contract depends on their adherence to the religious, social, and economic dictates of the leader, despite his personal corruption and immoral behavior.

It’s easy to accept dictatorship when the leader looks like you and professes a commitment to protect and impose your religious and social values on those you dislike. For the sake of unity and peace, Trump supporters are okay with the idea of punishing anyone who falls outside the narrow confines of social acceptability, or anyone who questions, fails, or worse, rebels against the ruler’s dictates. What Trump and his wealthy backers are offering appeals to white Christian nationalists because they see this as a simple way to rid society of homosexuals, feminists, the disabled, and the economic competition that comes from immigrants and people of color.

They are clearly employing the very effective method of gaining their power by soothing the bruised egos of the underclass. For those who have failed to realize the American dream through their own lack of wit and effort, it is comforting to hear that their lack of progress is because of immigrants, feminism, gay rights, and anti-discrimination policies that “unfairly” help “undeserving” black and brown people. They promise to roll back of any policy that encourages, empowers and enables immigrants, women, gays, and people of color to get ahead so that righteous Americans can succeed.

Those who are funding and advising Trump relish the opportunity to maintain and increase their generational wealth and power through an endless supply of poorly educated workers. It should come as no surprise that Trump openly shows contempt for the media, for the educated, for science, and the courts. As authoritarians do, he promises retribution on anyone who opposes him and on those who try to hold him accountable for breaking numerous laws. His is the way of dictatorship that depends on an undereducated, apathetic, and a sufficiently frightened population to seize and remain in power.

History tells us that while authoritarians project power and control through brutality, the people are eventually crushed by their lack of freedom, stifled by an eventual lack of creativity and vibrancy required to fuel economic growth, and depressed by the absence of self-determination needed to pursue personal happiness. This is the vision Trump and his wealthy backers are offering. The only winners in this scenario are the wealthy, well-connected and powerful.

Next week, I unpack the hard work, messiness, and continued struggle the other side is offering in President Biden.

I am a Christian in the sense that I have accepted Jesus as my savior, and I try to follow His teachings. I am also a person who believes in the freedom that comes with the separation of church and state, a key component upon which our nation was founded. As a citizen, I exercise both my right and my patriotic obligation to petition our government. And so, I again wrote to Speaker Mike Johnson. I share this letter, hoping to inspire my readers to write letters to him and to other lawmakers on issues of concern.

Dear Speaker Mike Johnson,

Yet again, I find myself writing to you based on something you said that I find deeply disturbing.  I see you and I hear you and I know you are coming from a place of sincerity.  However, I believe that you are sincerely wrong in your assessment of God and His judgement of our nation.  Jesus made it clear to us that God isn’t in the human government business anymore, but in the personal relationship business.  The religious leaders of the Jesus’ day were obsessed with this world and Jesus tried to turn their eyes to His Kingdom in the heavens, not made with human hands.  He told them in Matthew 22:21 “render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”  God is interested in the eternal salvation of souls through belief in the sacrifice of Jesus who took the sins of the world upon Himself on the cross.  So, why are you so obsessed with other people’s “sins”?  You should be a minister, preaching the Good News, not a politician trying to do what God already determined was not possible because the heart of men must be reborn, not coerced into morality.

What’s even more upsetting is that you chose the most immoral and despicable human being among us as your representative, Donald Trump.  The form of idolatry around guns and Trump worship is mindboggling.  I would think that the Almighty could find a more articulate, more competent, and certainly more decent human being to bring about the return to God you so desperately think is needed. Your weapon of choice is a gun, not love.  You chose a person who insults our military, sexually assaults women, dodges the draft, evades taxes, defrauds people in business, and hates immigrants who are not white, as your nominee?  Make that make sense to any thinking human on the planet.  I think Jesus is shaking His head in dismay.  You’ve forgotten that Jesus told Peter to put down his weapon when he tried to defend Jesus against the state.

As an older person who grew up in the evangelical church, I recall when this new theology you espouse entered the church through politically minded Republicans.  They lifted scriptures like 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked way, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” Someone even turned it into a nice song.  They took on the issue of abortion as a national sin that would bring God’s judgment upon us all.  They used the example of Sodom and Gomorrah to stir up anti-gay sentiments and fears that our nation would be judged if we allowed it. 

The problem is that God changed His strategy when it comes to the wicked ways of men.  Your theology elevates temporary political power above the actual teaching of Jesus to love God, to love thy neighbor, and to preach the gospel so that souls can be saved and escape the eternal judgement of God in the end. God has preserved a day of judgment for those who reject the salvation offered to them.   According to 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”  This world and everything on, is temporary.  Jesus left us with the mission to preach the “Good News” of the gospel, not the “bad news” that our government on earth will condemn you, imprison you, and harm you if you don’t adhere to our Christian beliefs. 

As an educated person, I assume you know that history has repeatedly showed us that changing the heart of people to believe in Jesus can’t be accomplished through war, torture, murder, re-education, nor laws.  It is the kindness of God that leads man to repentance.  Jesus is our example.  His kindness, mercy, healing, generosity, and love drew followers to Him.  He shows compassion to the sinner, the sick, the hungry, and the immigrant.  Your party does the exact opposite.  It’s no wonder fewer people are going to church and that the saying, “there is no love, like Christian hate” is so prevalent.

You and your backward Old Testament “mean and murderous” God theology is causing real harm to our country and to the Christian message.  There was never a time when this nation was a shining example of Christian values.  It was a nation that began with the murder of native Americans to steal their lands.  It was a nation that brutally exploited the labor of black slaves, raped the women, and separated families.  It has always been a nation that discriminated, exploited, oppressed, and harmed the weak, including women. 

So, if God was going to execute the judgement you so fear, it would have already happened over the genocide of the native Americans, over the exploitation and mistreatment of slaves, and over the oppression of women.  The beauty of this nation is that it was founded by people seeking freedom from religious tyranny and who espoused a novel aspiration that all men are created equal and endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  That is the beauty of this nation that made us a city set on a hill in the realm of mankind. Our freedom and our diversity with an eye towards equity and equal opportunity is our strength and appeal.   

You and your Party do not get to prescribe happiness for others. Your job is to make laws that provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.  Your job is to follow the Constitution and to ensure equal rights under the laws.  Let God be the judge of individual choices as He has already told us that He is the final judge of men’s hearts and actions.    

Sincerely,

Dr. Juanita Hall

Follower of Christ, Voting Citizen of the U.S.

Women in industrialized nations are no longer delivering the average of 2.1 babies needed to replace their current population. At the same time, people in these countries are living much longer. As explained last week, the situation is a crisis in the making because these countries will soon lack an adequate supply of youthful laborers to fuel their economies and support their elderly if nothing changes.

The reality is that maintaining a country’s infrastructure, supporting the elderly, and creating demand for new goods and services requires the ingenuity, strength, and energy of a youthful labor force. Leaders of these industrialized countries know that the status quo is unsustainable. They face a dilemma. Either they somehow convince or force desirable women to have more babies, they allow their population and economies to dwindle into eventual oblivion, or they welcome immigrants from foreign countries and foreign cultures to prop up their economies and support their elderly.

Until recently, the consensus was that our government’s policy of welcoming the wealthy as well as the most talented and the highly motivated from every nation, has served us well. But as these immigrants have become increasingly people of color, white nationalists have grown wary of the demographic shift. The unspoken reality is that our country has long benefited from the brain-drain of poor developing nations, making it more difficult for them to make economic progress. But individuals will do what they believe is best for themselves if given the chance and migrating to countries that offer greater freedoms and more economic opportunities is a temptation too difficult to resist. The U.S. university system was a preferred destination and great immigration opportunity for the privileged few for many years. Only recently have other countries enhanced their universities and begun to recruit international students as well. This includes China.

It is not surprising that many people seeking safety, freedom, and economic opportunity find Europe, Canada, and the United States an attractive destination. With the exception of native Americans, certain Mexican Americans, and the descendants of slaves, every American or their descendants arrived at the U.S. border for one of these reasons. The words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty are an invitation unique to the United States: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

But there are those who would erase those words if they could. I’m referring to Donald Trump, his advisors, and his followers who would close the doors particularly on those who are risking everything to come here because they are largely people of color from what Trump calls, “shit hole” countries. He is correct to say that these countries aren’t sending us their best and brightest because we poach their best and brightest every chance we get. However, they are sending us able bodies willing to work.

It is time that we acknowledge that our foreign policies, including brain drain, and our demand for cheap labor as well as illegal drugs have caused economic hardships, dangerous conditions, and political instability in those “shit hole” countries, making them poorer and more dangerous. What nation wouldn’t allow highly motivated uneducated laborers to migrate to the U.S. where they can work and send money back home to help boost their economy? Both individual humans and desperate countries are just trying to survive.

As a person who spent a career dealing with the U.S. immigration system in a higher education setting, I know that the immigration system in the United States has been broken and underfunded for many years. There is a relatively easy and fast path to citizenship for the wealthy, talented, and well-educated. And each October or November, high school graduates and those with work experience from countries with low immigration to the U.S. can apply for one of 50,000 green cards in a lottery system run by Homeland Security. There is also a path through family connection. Depending on the actual relationship, the annual cap limits, and a crazy backlog of cases, the wait for family unification can be 6 months to 20 years.

Everyone else is out of luck. The pathway for people outside these categories who are willing and able to work involves too few temporary worker visas to meet the demands of both industry and would-be migrant workers. And so, the failure of Congress to pass adequate legislation has created a situation where desperate people from unstable countries cross our border and claim asylum while others sneak in illegally. The Republican House purposefully fails to adequately fund our border patrol and immigration processing systems to meet the demand while simultaneously broadcasting to the world that our border is completely open. Of course, the system is completely overwhelmed. Republicans want Americans to experience the crisis they perpetuate in order to blame Biden for it and re-elect Trump or some other Republican.

The reality is that we need these workers. We need people with expertise in IT, healthcare, and the sciences. We need labor for jobs that few Americans are willing to do. The problem for white Christian Nationalists is that the workers who want to come here are people of color from “shit hole” countries with cultures and religions they fear will reshape the country. It’s not enough that their policies have stifled the fertility rates of minority women to a degree that absent immigration, the nation will become whiter. But White women simply aren’t having enough children either.

So, they stoke fears. Fears that immigrants are stealing jobs that black people should be doing (wow!). Fears that immigrants are bringing drugs. Fears that immigrants are committing violent crimes. Fears that immigrants are bringing diseases. Fears that immigrants are draining our healthcare, welfare, and education systems. And worst of all, Trump repeated the hateful words of Adolf Hitler by saying they are “poisoning the blood” of our people.

Contrary to conservative political rhetoric, illegal immigrants do not vote. They are less likely to commit crimes and have a positive net contribution to our economy. Their labor and spending contribute to the bottom line of Social Security and to local economies. In particular, the undocumented are doing jobs for lower wages and sub-standard working conditions that no American would bother to do. Their cheap labor contributes to lower prices for the goods and services we all enjoy.

The problem for white “Christian” nationalists who fear being replaced by people of color from “shit hole” countries is that the white people from other industrialized countries, whom they wish to attract, don’t find the United States particularly attractive beyond our interesting wealth of diversity and the creativity that it brings. They love our food, our music, our movies, our sports, and our parks. We’re good for the occasional vacation. But our healthcare system, our education, our childcare policies, our gun violence, and our politics are less attractive than their own. And so, Republicans can’t escape the changing demographics that immigration will bring.

So, in preparation for the coming demographic shifts, they must attack the equal rights and democratic powers granted to every American citizen under the law by our current Constitution. They are willing to throw out the Constitution and start over if it will allow them to retain their political power, wealth, and cultural status as the standard bearers of the nation despite their diminished numbers. They wish for a return to a boss to subordinate relationship with people of color. The question is whether we will fall for it.

Not surprisingly, it makes white nationalists feel better to hear their candidates promise to round up and deport all illegal immigrants. Imagine the chaos and labor crisis that policy will bring. It also makes white nationalists feel better to hear their leaders claim that this is a “Christian” nation and that all the laws should be made in accordance with their beliefs. The push to force births isn’t really a moral issue, but one of survival for people who look and think like them. It is not lost on the Republicans leaders that women of color are having fewer children and that when they do, they and their babies are more likely to die in childbirth than white women and their babies.

The solution is an acceptance of the reality that more people of color are being born into this world, particularly in poor nations and to accept the fact that every rich industrialized nation will depend on their labor to survive. We must also acknowledge and mitigate the damage our demand for drugs, our brain-drain policies, our wars, and our climate destroying activities have inflicted on countries so as to drive mass migration. The solution is not to have more babies as the planet cannot support more people, but to redistribute the people we already have and provide them with the dignity, rights, and respect their humanity deserves. Keep the words on the Statue of Liberty!

It is time for we as citizens to pressure our lawmakers to build and fully fund a new immigration system that meets the demand for labor and processes people for entry in a timely way that also ensures our border security.

I’ll probably be long gone from this earth when most industrialized countries face the very real repercussions of an upside-down population pyramid. As fertility rates fall below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman in most industrialized countries while life expectancy rates continue to rise, the number of homegrown youthful workers needed to support economic stability, productivity, and care for the elderly will shrink to crisis levels if something is not done.

The U.S. went from women bearing an average of 3.148 children in 1950 down to only 1.786 children projected for 2024. While it certainly isn’t the lowest fertility rate in the industrialized world, it is still precariously low. On the other hand, life expectancy rose in the U.S. from 68.14 years in 1950 to 79.25 in the current year. Despite the wealth of the U.S., we are nowhere near the top in life expectancy among industrialized countries. In fact, we are closer to the bottom. I attribute this to poor lifestyle choices coupled with overly expensive and inaccessible healthcare.

I recall learning in school that over-population was an existential threat to the planet. Humans were using up limited natural resources, forcing animal species into extinction, polluting our oceans, and causing the planet to overheat. So, some people celebrate the lower fertility rates, especially among industrialized nations where most of the over-consumption occurs. Others fear the very real demographic changes and cultural shifts that immigration would bring if it’s the only solution to support their economies and care for an aging population. These immigrants will come from poor and illiterate countries where the fertility rates remain well above the 2.1 replacement rate.

At the top of that list are the countries Donald Trump referred to as “shit hole” countries whose people he adamantly wants to prevent from immigrating to the U.S. The entire continent of African leads in fertility rates with an average of 4.1 children per woman. This is followed by the poorer, less industrialized countries in Oceania who far exceed the 2.3 fertility rate for that continent which includes Australia and New Zealand (who are below replacement rates). The same is true for Asia and South America where the poorer countries exceed the average 2.0 fertility rate of the continent. In fact, South Korea and Japan have the lowest fertility rates in the world and have near top life expectancy.

In other words, the immigrants of tomorrow who will supply the labor and support the elderly in the industrialized nations of the world will be black and brown people if they can be enticed or forced to immigrate. Projections indicate that by the year 2050, the population of the African continent will be three times larger than the population of the European continent. Already, African people are migrating to Europe in record numbers, and many are starting to enter the United States through the southern border.

The declining birth rates coupled with increases in life expectancy is a burgeoning crisis current political leaders are starting to grapple with. The rhetoric and proposed policies presented by conservatives, liberals, and humanitarians differ according to their view of humanity with regards to diversity, equity, and inclusion. To say that deep rooted xenophobia and racism aren’t embedded in policy discussions at the highest levels is to deny the shortcomings of human nature.

Republicans want to close the border, severely limit immigration, change constitutional protections, and force women to have babies. Democrats want an orderly immigration system that preserves human and constitutional rights, embraces the demographic and cultural diversity immigrants have always brought, and welcomes the youthful influx of labor needed to maintain a viable economy. Humanitarians seek the welfare of all mankind and want to limit fertility, end brain-drain policies, and eliminate militarized borders which are arbitrary lines created to hoard and control resources.

The future of our nation and its immigration policy is being shaped as we vote in every election. The reality is that the U.S. has been and must continue to be a nation of immigrants if it is to survive. The Republicans know that trying to force births is a losing proposition, especially if they are unwilling to enact policies that support childrearing. It appears that their back up plan is to force people to work longer, limit healthcare, and to roll back constitutional rights so that they can remain in power and maintain their wealth as the proportion of white people significantly decreases relative to the numbers of people of color.

In my next blog post, I will continue my observations on our current immigration dilemma.