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Russia’s Brain Drain, Putin’s Brainwashing & the Lame-Brained U.S. Immigration Apparatus

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Putin’s approval rating has jumped from a not-so-bad 77% to a much better 83% according to a recent “state-backed” opinion poll. So says the Wall Street Journal, while noting that “experts have cautioned against taking current Russian polls on face value, given that Russian authorities have pursued a crackdown against dissent, including a media blackout of any reports contrary to the Kremlin’s narrative about Russia’s actions in Ukraine.” Anyone calling the war a war or impugning the military is liable to receive harsh punishment. The muzzling has been so effective that Russians are refusing to believe first hand accounts of death and devastation from their own relatives and friends in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post has reported the results of a recent Gallup poll: 20% of the Russian population are eager to leave the country. This tranche of unhappy Russians skews young, male, educated and urban, which suggests an ingenious way for the West to undermine the Putin regime. Lure the dissatisfied element to the U.S. and the E.U. by making immigrant visas easy to obtain. Think of it! Russia could lose a generation of its best and brightest!

Unfortunately for that bright idea, multitudes of desperate people are waiting for the U.S. to get its immigration act together, some with deservedly high priority, particularly the thousands of Afghans who helped the U.S. throughout America’s military adventure in Afghanistan.   Also already in line for adjudication are the long-suffering refugees from violence, corruption and climate change  in Central America.  Although Ukrainian refugees belong on the list of worthy immigrants, most of them seem to prefer accommodation in Europe, to make it easier to return home as soon as they can.  [Update:  Still thousands are at the border.  Even as we do our best to help them regain all of their country, we need to give them temporary shelter.]

Deceptively promising for would-be immigrants to the U.S. is the nationwide labor shortage that has been pushing wages and salaries to higher levels.  Employers are desperate for employees in nearly all categories.  Without workers, the economy is in danger of tanking.  Yet the immigration pipeline is clogged with able and willing foreign workers who can’t get a hearing.   Such being the sad case, what's the possibility in the near future of anything like a comprehensive immigration reform bill being drafted, let alone passed, by stalemated U.S. legislators?  Zilch.

All of which raises another question: given the sorry state of U.S governance and the frightening odds of a much worse future, why should anyone want to emigrate to the U.S. anymore?

 

 

America’s Anchor Babies: Can You Say ‘Bundles of Joy’?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The rabid Right went into a tizzy over a report released a couple of weeks ago by the Pew Hispanic Center.  The anti-immigration claque went so far as to reinvigorate a movement to amend the Constitution.  They want to eliminate the “birthright citizenship” clause that resides, not by amendment, but in the very body of the U.S. Constitution.  As things now stand, and always have stood, in these United States, anyone born on U.S. territory is automatically an American citizen, even if the proud parents are visa-less. 

It seems that Conservatives, usually so eager promote “original intent” as the only allowable approach to interpreting the Constitution, respect the words of the nation’s founders only when their own prejudices are thereby unhindered.  Oh, but the founders never envisioned a porous border with Mexico, they say.  Indeed!  Should we laugh or cry at the inconsistency?

Still, there’s no doubt that some women who are pregnant, or planning to become pregnant, time their entry into the U.S., legally or illegally, to ensure that their children will be birthright Americans.  The understandable hope of such parents is that these offspring, aka anchor babies,  will ease their own naturalization process.  Sometimes it works.  Sometimes it doesn’t.  It never would, the alarmists promise, if the Constitution were amended.

From one absolutely incontrovertible point of view, the law’s the law.  No one has the right to break it.  So illegals are illegal.  Another point of view suggests leniency.  American immigration law is an unworkable crazy quilt that in no way covers the U.S. need for labor.  The flow of illegal workers results as much from incessant U.S. demand as from largely Latino opportunism, an inevitable consequence of well known economic laws.  Finally, there are those who insist that, the law being what it is, people caught up in the deportation process should be treated with compassion, respect and due process.

Let’s leave this debate for a moment, and look at the aspects of the Pew report that terrify the conservatives who fear some fatal dilution of American culture, whatever precisely that is.    Here are some excerpts:        

Unauthorized immigrants comprise slightly more than 4% of the adult population of the U.S., but because they are relatively young and have high birthrates, their children make up a much larger share of both the newborn population (8%) and the child population (7% of those younger than age 18) in this country....

The new Pew Hispanic analysis finds that nearly four-in-five (79%) of the 5.1 million children (younger than age 18) of unauthorized immigrants were born in this country and therefore are U.S. citizens....
   
 The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1868, grants an automatic right to citizenship to anyone born in the U.S....

In 2009, immigrants—be they legal or unauthorized—comprised 12.8% of the total population of the United States and 15.7% of the total adult population. However, because of their youthful age structure and higher fertility rates, immigrant adults are more likely than native-born adults to be parents of children younger than 18. As a result, they are the parents of 23% of all children in this country ages 17 and younger....

In addition, immigrant adults tend to have higher rates of fertility than do native-born adults. As of 2008, the total fertility rate among females ages 15 to 44 was 2.0 for the native born and 2.7 for immigrants. 

 Please notice that last sentence.  A fertility rate of 2.0 is bare replacement, which means the U.S. is teetering dangerously on the edge of population decline without those immigrant births.  Perhaps baby bonuses would help.  Perhaps universal day care for working mothers would help.  Perhaps subsidizing the cost of a college education would help.  Ironically, all such interventions would require government action.  How amusing it would be should Conservatives suddenly espouse them to protect the nation from Hispanic babies.

Meanwhile, Russia is shrinking.  Europe is shrinking.  Japan is shrinking.  When the population replacement rate goes into negative numbers, the prognosis for a country’s future is grim: not enough maturing workers to sustain the economy or support a population skewing toward elders.  In short, things go out of whack.  Too few babies results in too few adults to support and care for a disproportionate number of seniors.  When the life cycle contract becomes disfunctional, the results aren’t just financial.  The social fabric is torn.  Things get ugly domestically.

And, of course, national power declines, which, you’d think, would give the Conservatives pause re this issue.  A puny population can’t support a huge military establishment, to say nothing of the R & D required to maintain the budget-breaking, cutting edge equipment a modern army fights with.

Because of the dismal phenomenon known as the Great Recession, the U.S. birth rate has declined these last couple of years, even among Hispanics, according to demographers.  Two years don’t make a trend. It’s still possible to say that the U.S., so far, has escaped the worst of the  population shrinkage that afflicts most industrialized countries.

But—remember this!—we've escaped only because we have so many young immigrants presenting us with their beautiful babies.  So down your tequila, munch your tacos, spoon up your chili and celebrate.  These anchor babies that terrify American nativists are really bundles of joy for America.  We need them, every one of them. 

The 2007 Passport Fiasco, Maura Harty and State’s 2009 Presidential Rank Awards

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Updated September 25, 2010

What does it take to qualify for a Presidential Rank Award? Serve in a war zone perhaps, or, maybe, preside over the worst US passport issuance debacle in recent history?

The State Department announced its prestigious Foreign Service 2009 Presidential Rank Award winners in the July/August 2010 State Magazine. Four of the Foreign Service recipients had previously held top positions in either Iraq or Afghanistan and one has just returned to Iraq as Ambassador. Given the tenor and tone of US foreign policy since 9/11 these awards make sense.

Other winners, however, include Nancy Powell, State’s own Director General of the Foreign Service; Philippe Lussier, head of the Office of Resource Management; and Foreign Service Institute Director Ruth Whiteside – in essence members of State’s own management team also rewarding, ahem, who else? Themselves?

The strange case of Maura Harty

Even more strangely, however, one of the other Presidential Rank Award winners had retired – or perhaps been retired kicking and screaming – from the Foreign Service on February 29, 2008 nearly two years before the most recent period covered by the award. Her last overseas assignment which had ended in 1999 was as Ambassador to Paraguay – neither an onerous war zone nor hazardous duty at the time.

Presidential Rank Awards are “for exceptional service over an extended period.” The recipients are “nominated by their agency heads, evaluated by citizen panels and designated by the President” according to the write-up in State Magazine. So it’s difficult to understand how Maura Harty, the recipient in question, could have possibly qualified for an award that was supposed to cover more than a year when she was no longer employed by the US government. Not only had she already left the Department well before years before but her final assignment as Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs (2002-8) had been fraught with scandal.

(Update) As it turns out, the March 2010 State Department Report on Integrity and Fairness in the Foreign Service stated that "Initial recommendations for presidential awards (based on the candidate's performance over the previous 3 year period) are made by the senior promotion boards." (see page 14 of the report)  So how could Ms. Harty have even been eligible for the award when she left the service in early 2008?   

Tariq Ramadan: Where’s the Beef? Here’s my Beef

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

 I have beheld the Beast-that-had-to-be-barred-from-the-U.S. I am still alive.  In fact, having submitted myself to Tariq Ramadan as the featured speaker at lunch during last week’s all-day conference under the auspices of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, my primary reaction was this:  I bin had!   This famed (or notorious) Muslim theologian who has for so long been denied a U.S. visa, this professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford, this supposedly great thinker, insulted an eagerly attentive audience with disorganized repetitive remarks that boiled down to this: “Muslims of America, use your citizenship rights to pursue your interests and values vis-à-vis domestic and international issues. Be involved.  Be serious.  Stress schooling and education.  Teach ordinary Americans about Islam.” 

 Well, gee!  That’s what all Americans are expected to do.  In fact, that’s precisely what I told my friends at the Saudi-funded World Muslim Congress in Karachi some years ago.  America’s Muslim citizens enjoy the same rights and opportunities for participation in American politics as anyone else; to have an impact they need to exercise those rights effectively.  Etc.  None of the highly educated Muslims in the banquet room at the CSID luncheon needed Tariq Ramadan to travel thousands of miles and brave the U.S. immigration authorities to tell them this. And not all of us, by far, were Muslims.  We were being ignored altogether.

And so, as I listened to Ramadan, I oscillated among three reactions to his apparently simplistic remarks.  His presentation was (1) contemptuously dismissive of the audience, (2) super-cautiously innocuous to avoid offending immigration authorities or (3) duplicitously disingenuous and thus in need of some careful code word  interpretation.

The first was entirely possible.  There was a certain sneering superiority and hauteur to his manner.  It was hard not to conclude that this was a man with little interest in making friends. 

The second was also all too sadly plausible.  We all know that the U.S. has got culpably timid about free speech, and Tariq Ramadan is not the only intellectual who has been denied a visa in recent years.  Why upset the censors the minute you arrive, especially if you have some serious work to do?  Ramadan’s snarky comments about this state of affairs were right on.

The third hypothesis offered itself only as the boredom and dissatisfaction settled in.  Why is he bothering with such apparently banal stuff?  What’s he really saying?  So hey!  I’m not so dumb.  How about this: use the American system to undermine the American system.  This isn’t so hard, actually.  The U.S. doesn’t always live up to its ideals.

Thus, in speaking of values that must be reinforced, Ramadan touched on some soft issues that all Americans need to pay some attention to, especially in these days of Tea Party nativism.  Racism persists in America.  So does a pernicious class system.  These barriers to equality in the U.S. vitiate our own democratic values and they are also contrary to the bedrock values of Islam, which stresses the equality of all believers.  Yet, even as we criticize the U.S., we also need to be aware that Muslim majority countries seldom perfectly exemplify the core values of Islam.  Take a look at the social and economic system in Pakistan, for example.

The tenacious issue of Israel and Palestine came up briefly during the painfully truncated question period.  Ramadan’s response is worth paying attention to.  He suggested that the fruitless efforts of the U.S. might be superceded by another country’s mediation.  In short, China might play a role. What interests me here isn’t the non-existent immediate potential for a Chinese intervention, but the very idea of it.  The world is changing.

A few parting words: many Americans of good will have been eager to learn from Traiq Ramadan’s reputed profundity vis-à-vis Islam.  They clamored for the issuance of his visa.  How odd that he seems disinclined to participate whole-heartedly in the educational project he urged so exhaustively on fellow Muslims last week.

    

Back to the Future -Revisiting the US, Russian dialog

By Patricia H. Kushlis

I spent Wednesday afternoon at the Wilson Center at “Dialogue, Defense and Media Messaging: US-Russian Citizen Diplomacy Past and Present,“ a Kennan Institute program devoted to US-Russian relations from the standpoint of the people, the media, the desire to avoid nuclear holocaust and the signing of the New START. A substantial portion of the two and one-half hour event consisted of retelling and revisiting the past, a past that is, that began in 1985 with an all but forgotten “Citizen’s Summit” called a “Spacebridge.

This electronic bridge linked, by satellite, audiences in Seattle and what was then Leningrad and consisted of two separate Q and A sessions jointly moderated by larger than life American journalist and former NBC television host Phil Donahue and Soviet counterpart Vladimir Pozner.

Donahue was at the Wilson Center event on Wednesday and in excellent form. Pozner was supposed to have been there too – but the Icelandic volcanic eruption not the long disappeared Iron Curtain– kept him home in Moscow. To compensate, he participated live on camera – in a kind of contemporary give and take version of the Spacebridge.

Much as it would have been nice to have seen him there in the flesh, the Skype-kind of dialogue did work – and especially so for a back-to-the-future event rife with historical comparison, archival clips and an exploration of its meaning in context of the times. The event itself was conceived of by Ellen Messinger, producer of Global Pulse at Link TV in San Francisco. The timing could not have been better.

The almost forgotten Spacebridge

To tell the truth, I had almost forgotten about the Spacebridge – an early form of US-Soviet citizen-to-citizen diplomacy brought about through the very latest technology then available. It signaled the beginning of the Gorbachev era policy of glasnost (transparency) in Soviet politics and occurred before another kind of person-to-person bridge - the Reagan-Gorbachev Summit in Reykjavik in September 1986. In fact, according to Pozner, had Gorbachev not personally sanctioned the Spacebridge, it would not have happened and certainly would never have aired on Soviet national television as it did.

The Spacebridge - although dropped by NBC because it did not command the Neilsen ratings needed to keep it on the air (Donahue wryly characterized American interest in their Soviet counterparts as tepid) - nevertheless performed a useful function in breaking down national stereotypes, misperceptions and lowering heated Cold War era barriers between the two countries and peoples.

That Failure on 12/25: It’s the Culture, Stupid!

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

12/25/09 was 9/11/01 all over again, with one crucial exception: the perp screwed up, so no one died.

An intelligence failure? A systemic failure?  An underperforming bureaucrat or two?

Once again America’s national security agencies—the CIA, the FBI, NSA, the State Department—had, in house, all the information needed to make Dec. 25 a happier day, but the dots, as usual, didn’t get connected.  Sure, some passengers on the fight to Detroit were heroic, and kudos to them.  But if the plot’s chemistry had worked as planned, there would have  been no time for heroism.  

Who or What Dun It?

Now the President wants a report he can act on.  He wants it in seven days.  Given the apparently sufficient  information available to the U.S. government, in one agency or another, he wants to know, why was this guy not kept off that plane?  

Unfortunately, I fear, the President hasn’t asked for the report he needs.

The Dot Game

The metaphor regularly resorted to during these intelligence failures is very interesting—drawing lines between dots to get the picture.  It’s a homey metaphor, one we’re all familiar with.  It’s a game we Americans are introduced to as soon as we can count and read.  Connect the dots and see what you get.  A house? An elephant?  An ice cream cone? 

A national security disaster in the making?

Usually the failure to connect the dots is laid to simple miscommunication.  Too much stovepiping.  Not enough information-sharing among agencies.

However, given the stubborn persistence of the problem, we should perhaps look for a deeper cause.  Why do American bureaucracies seem to work this way, no matter how often they are caught short, no matter how often they are urged, encouraged, prompted to work otherwise?  Why do reform efforts inevitably founder?  That is the question we need to answer.

Teams and Stars

The answer, I think, lies in the nature of our society.  Americans claim to appreciate team work.  We’re always saying how much we like team players.  We also appear to love team sports.  We root for our favorite football teams; we follow them on tv. However, much as we love our teams, we worship the stars.  That’s film stars, sports stars, the hotshot stars of the financial world, CEOs, anyone with big money. 

What's more, every American wants to be a standout, to have the income, attention and perks of a star—or to get as close to that status as possible.  No one really wants to be just the member of a team.  So we compete like crazy to stand out, to get ahead, to reach the top. Like crabs in a basket, we’ll do anything to scramble to the top—and if those on the bottom suffocate in the process, so be it.  “Mr. Nice Guy” is not a compliment in American society.

One way to become a winner is to obtain and control crucial information, whether it’s gossip or tidbits touching on national security.   Information, properly parlayed, projects its possessor out of the anonymity of the team into the ranks of the stars.  You get awards.  You get promotions.  You get recognition.  You are on your way to the top!   It does not surprise me that national security agencies find it so difficult to share information generously with counterparts in other organizations.  Who’ll get the credit for a successful operation?  Me—or some oceanic inter-agency team in which I am a mere minnow?

Visa Revocation: Easier Said Than Done

By Patricia H. Kushlis 

OK.  I didn’t plan to spend the New Year’s weekend investigating why Mutallab the younger hadn’t had his visa yanked before he took the opportunity to attempt to turn Delta/Northwest Airlines flight 253 from Amsterdam’s Schifpol Airport into a fireball over Detroit on Christmas Day.  

Nevertheless, it did occur to me that had he lost his visa, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab wouldn’t be sitting – likely quite uncomfortably according to reports of the locations of his burns – in a US jail without bail.

Furthermore, State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly would have had a far pleasanter December 28. Instead, he attempted – not very successfully I might add - to dodge a barrage of hostile questions from the State Department Press Corps who, if it had been up to them, would have much preferred not to have had to attend Kelly's briefing or ask those embarrassing questions. Instead they would have been free to move on to the really important tasks of the day – like getting home to begin the New Year’s celebrations early or scouring the ads for the best price for a case of champagne. 

Responses would be nice

Before I forget, there are officials in the Public Affairs Office of State’s Consular Bureau who apparently don’t think that responding to this blogger’s e-mailed questions were worth their time – even though I didn’t wait until the holiday had begun to pose them.

Having been US Embassy Press Attaché in Helsinki during  PanAm 103 when it was first thought that the bombers might have had a Helsinki connection, I at least returned phone calls (or would have answered e-mails had it been in an e-mail era) from all sorts of media – even if I could only point them to better, and more loquacious, sources. 

After a bit more research, however and with special thanks to Diplopundit for alerting me to a few basic documents that apparently still govern America’s cumbersome visa revocation process – I’m starting to understand better the “no response” to me from the State Department Consular PA folk as well as Kelly’s uncomfortable December 28 Q and "A" tap-dance before  the State Press Corps.   

What is the Answer?

So what is the answer to Don Thieme’s obvious question on his blog “Life Style Analysis”:  Why was Abdulmutallab allowed to board a flight bound for the United States?     Spencer Ackerman’s explanation in The Washington Independent is the best summary I’ve seen so far about a convoluted process fraught with bureaucratic and legal problems.

But what no one has yet asked is whether the revocation process – had it actually been started – would have been capable of stopping a Richard Reid look-alike from boarding a plane destined for the United States from an international airport with the intent of blowing the plane and himself into smithereens.  The latest list of vulnerabilities from Congress's General Accountability Office that I've found is a report is dated July 2004.  If  this isn't the latest, then please e-mail me links to any follow ups on the follow up – if they exist.  

Let USAID be USAID – Not Let Confusion Reign

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Whatever happened to the U.S. Agency for International Development? Wasn’t it supposed to play a key role in the Obama administration’s accent on diplomacy as a major tool of US foreign policy? Didn’t Hillary Clinton emphasize development as a crucial part of diplomacy – in fact, as important as traditional diplomacy and defense – in dealing with the world? Didn’t Robert Gates support this enthusiastically? Or am I missing something.

After learning last week from an NPR broadcast entitled Diplomacy Under Fire that new State Department Foreign Service Officers should be agronomists, counter-terrorism experts, civilian development, anti-narcotics and democratization specialists rather than masters at traditional State Department skills like political and economic reporting and analysis, negotiation or even running embassies or consulates and dealing with host governments, I wonder what the development officers at USAID are supposed to do. Or, for that matter, if anyone’s home there?

Who is supposed to do traditional diplomatic work?

And if the State Department Foreign Service Officers don’t do the traditional work of running Embassies and Consulates and interacting with host governments and peoples – who is supposed to do it?

I guess this might be one way to eliminate the need for those unsightly fortresses that have sprung up like mushrooms after the rain beginning in 1984.

Just fire – or pension off - the political, economic, administrative, consular and public diplomacy officers who currently staff them or alternatively turn these people into USAID officers who set up shop in remote corners of a country. Then send in demolition squads in a kind of “cash for clunkers embassy” program. This would not only provide work for those proficient in the use of dynamite and nothing better to do with their dubious skills. It might also change America’s face abroad. Who knows, this might just be for the better.

What happens to Consular Services and Public Diplomacy?

That doesn’t address, however, the ongoing need to issue (or not) visas, passports and look after Americans abroad in trouble. This, by the way, is a full time occupation of State Department Consular Officers.

Or, heaven help us, what about those few FSOs who still engage in public diplomacy, e.g. interact with foreign media on a regular basis (and those few American correspondents still abroad), administer educational and other exchange programs, English teaching programs, run the few libraries and cultural centers that still exist and support and enhance visits by American cultural figures? This all used to be done by the US Information Agency before those tasks and staff were slurped up by State and shrink-wrapped and diluted big time.

But back to the USAID crisis and it is a big one.

The problem begins with the lack of leadership. No, I should write LACK OF LEADERSHIP – all caps.

A Needless American Horror Story: The Double-edged Sword of International Youth Exchange

By Patricia H. Kushlis

There’s a horrific story – a train-wreck not averted – that was reported by AP and CNN yesterday. It details a litany of horrors that beset 12 students from around the world who came to the US last year to attend American high schools and live with American families in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, these charges – some even criminal – may be the tip of the iceberg of a program allowed to run-amok through official US government negligence.

When international youth exchange is done right, it is - in my experience - the single most effective way possible to create long standing good will abroad for this country, our people and our society. Youth exchange is, in fact, my very favorite kind of international exchange program and I administered any number of different ones at home and abroad over the 27 plus years I worked for the United States Information Agency.

Furthermore, because of bedrock community and public school involvement and support, international youth exchange is also the least costly of any of the international exchange programs involving the U.S. government – and the State Department in particular. When done right, it is a shining example of an outstanding symbiotic public-private sector partnership in the very best sense of the term.

When not, the results are horrific: as we’re just now learning through reports of the sordid happenings in Scranton this past school year.

What happened in Pennsylvania – due to the unspeakably shoddy work of Aspect, the private San Francisco-based exchange organization that is responsible for the problematic student home-stay placements – can be traced directly back to three factors: 1) lack of oversight and monitoring of the particular exchange organization (and youth exchange organizations in general) by the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department; 2) the inelasticity of the American family home-stay network itself and 3) corporate greed and overstretch even though the organization in question is apparently non-profit.

The US government had two control mechanisms that it failed to enforce: