Immigration, Civil Rights and The Economy
Published by Terrance Ó Dhomnaill in Newsletter · Thursday 20 Mar 2025 · 24:15
Tags: Immigration, Civil, Rights, Economy, Social, Justice, Policy, Human, Rights, Economic, Impact, Diversity, Inclusion, Community
Tags: Immigration, Civil, Rights, Economy, Social, Justice, Policy, Human, Rights, Economic, Impact, Diversity, Inclusion, Community
First, as I always do, let me offer readers a link to the podcast page where you may watch the video on my Substack page, or listen to it using one of the podcast apps embedded on the page.
I am becoming increasingly alarmed at where things are heading in the United States and Canada.
All of which directly affects the average consumer in both countries. I'm not talking just about the trade wars that the mafia don has and is promising to levy on nearly all countries around the world.
Those are daunting enough but, with the mass of now thousands of new people hitting the unemployment ques, plus the vastly under-counted ones who were already there, unemployment is only going to get worse in the U.S. There will be some layoffs in Canada but, they stand a better chance at recovery than the U.S. does. The U.S. economy is a house of cards just waiting for a breath of wind to topple it all down.
Lena Petrova, in one of her latest Substack podcasts during the last week, reports that Walmart is predicting a seventy percent loss in revenues due to the Chinese tariffs. She also reports that leading economic institutions are predicting a forty percent chance of a recession in the U.S. very soon. I have been predicting, based on professional economist predictions, that this is likely by no later than the end of this year.
She tells us that the U.S. housing market is now registering new home sales in the negative right now. This is a serious indicator of where the economy is heading. Sales of homes have always been a bell weather for the economic statistics since I can remember. When the housing market tanks, usually, so does the rest of the economy.
I watched a YouTube video this week from a noted Canadian lawyer, and Pro-Palestinian journalist. In the video, he let his viewers know that he has had to resign from his law firm in Canada due to the U.S. Israeli lobby filing baseless complaints about how his activism goes against Canadian ethics laws and rules. They cite his public visit to the recent funeral of the famous Imam, Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon. He did so as an invited, credentialed journalist on invitation of the Lebanese government but that apparently was lost on these rabid American Zionists. The lawyer I'm talking about is Dimitri Lascaris. He is a first generation Canadian, born of Greek immigrant parents. His YouTube channel is Reason to Resist and he has been a noted activist for Palestinians for many years.
Add to that all of the unconstitutional arrests and deportation proceedings of H-1B visa recipients, green card holders and students with valid student visas at Columbia, Yale and, as promised to come soon, any other students or faculty that in any way publicly supported the Pro-Palestinian protests last year anywhere in the country. These deportation 'Lists' are being put forth by U.S. Zionist organisations who are forwarding them to the state department for prosecution. Mahmoud Khalil is just the first of many, many people in the U.S. there on student visas or green card holders who will now lose the visas and green cards, incarcerated by ICE, and deported. The purge is just beginning.
I have a Zeteo article from last weekend about Trump invoking the Alien Enemies act of 1798 over a bunch of Venezuelan cartel gang members. We have to assume he will go after all Venezuelan non-citizens in the U.S., no matter their status, by declaring all non-citizen Venezuelans members of the cartels. As it stands right now, a federal judge has stopped the white house from using this act but Trump shipped a couple hundred Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador anyway. I have mentioned this before. Trump doesn't care about what any judge says. As far he's concerned, he's the president and he can do whatever he wants since he thinks the supreme court gave him carte blanche while he's in office.
As many journalists have said, the last time the U.S. enacted this law, was back in 1941, when they forcibly rounded up all Japanese, German and Italian non-citizens or just anyone in any of these three ethnic groups and declared them all spies for the Axis powers. The U.S. incarcerated a lot of Japanese, German and Italians who were native born citizens or naturalised citizens just because they had familial ties to relatives in Japan and Germany or couldn't find their paperwork when the soldiers came to the door.
Trump wants to bring that back. Maybe as revenge because a judge told him he couldn't put immigrants in the notorious prisons at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Trump had to bring back all forty of them to detention centres in the U.S. As we know by now, Trump doesn't like to be told no.
Given how judges are starting to say no to Trump across the country, the Americans had better get used this tit for tat from the courts and Trump, with all of the other citizens caught in the middle of this looming domestic war. I'm watching very closely to see if Trump, as his press spokesperson, Leavitt, said last Monday, the Trump administration will provide the evidence to the court to prove they were in the right, or will they continue to ignore the courts.
And that is what I want to continue to focus on as I said last week. The regular people just trying to live stable lives in an ever increasing unstable country. Between the deteriorating political situation domestic ally and abroad, and the domestic economic situation that is starting to brew up, the average U.S. citizens, no matter their ancestry or political affiliations, are going to be caught in the middle of this epic battle between Trump and the courts.
I want to tell you a story about an immigrant family I know about. I won't tell you where they're from to protect them but I will tell you a little bit about them as their plight is very similar to so many hardworking immigrants across the country.
This couple immigrated to the U.S. looking for what most immigrants want in life. A safe place to raise their children and make a better life themselves. They didn't find it, exactly.
They work together as a team whenever my wife hires them for some home remodelling project we have. So far, we have hired this husband and wife team for four different projects since we bought our house over four years ago. They are always very nice and courteous to a fault, and as honest as the day is long. Maybe a little too honest sometimes, compared to their American peers.
On top of them hiring themselves out for these, what my wife calls, handyman projects, they also work at a restaurant in the evenings in order to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Plus, pay for their three children's educations here in the U.S.
Now, l need to tell everyone, especially anyone living outside of the United States. Schools in the U.S. are not free to attend, despite what you might hear.
The primary public education system is tuition free, and so are the books but that's where it all stops. As all American parents are aware of, they are always being solicited for school fundraisers for some extra activity or another, and if any child comes from a poor family and the parents can't afford to pay into these fundraisers, their children are usually bullied by those kids whose parents can afford these extra-curricular activities.
If these children should be unfortunate to be attending one of the public schools in a very poor state, in a very poor school district, these fundraiser solicitations still go out but with less expectations of any returns.
Parents are pressured by the school systems and their children to pony up money they may not have in order for their children to be accepted by their peers, and, extra-curricular activities look good on college entrance exams. The more the kids have on their resume, the better opportunities for college acceptances are for them and that's what most public education systems in the U.S. look like.
In the more affluent school districts across the country, the competition for parents to get their kids into the best universities and private colleges starts at Pre-kindergarten in the U.S. and never stops until their kids get into the higher education institutions that their money can buy.
It's in this backdrop of American society that our acquaintances struggle with to put their kids through the U.S. education system so the kids can have a better life than their immigrant parents have.
My wife knows them through her church, as they are very devout, protestant Christians and attend this Baptist church that caters to their ethnicity. As in most places, these churches offer immigrants a chance at ethnic familiarity in a new country where they struggle with the English language and American customs.
And Trump wants to tear all of that down by deporting non-citizens for any excuse that he can whistle up. This nice couple I'm talking about are not from central or south America but that shouldn't matter. All immigrants who go through the process to immigrate legally, deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Not with disdain and aggression.
Will Trump and his Homeland Security cadre finally come for them with some kind of bogus threat someday? Will Trump invent national security threats for every non-citizen in the United States before he leaves office (If he does)? There are rumours flying around the news feeds that he's going to bring back travel bans like he enacted in his first term.
Which countries will he designate as shithole countries this time and forbid their citizens from visiting the U.S.? Will China, the Latin American countries, African and certain middle eastern countries make the list? Maybe even Canada if they continue to boycott American imports and the new liberal PM fights back with more retaliatory tariffs?
My wife is an immigrant and I worry about her safety in Trump's new United States. She's afraid to speak about U.S. politics unless she knows that it's just the two of us in the house and even that is rare. She comes from a repressive country and entered the U.S. under an asylum visa when she first arrived years ago. She has had her green card for more than a decade but she's always looking over her shoulder, figuratively speaking, and doesn't want to make any trouble that will draw the attention of the authorities. She does listen to the news in her native language and sometimes will ask me about something she heard a YouTube commentator say.
You can imagine that this is taking place in immigrant households all across the U.S. right now. Immigrant families keeping hush about anything other than work, taking care of the kids, and paying their bills in public. Keeping their fears to themselves because they fear that anyone could report them to Trump's government for saying anything derogatory about the U.S. government. Freedom of speech doesn't apply to them or so they think. Most of them didn't have freedom of speech in their former countries and they're seeing this disappear in the U.S. now as well.
This is one of the main reasons they left their old countries in the first place. Now, some are wondering if they made a mistake coming to the U.S. The United States is no longer the mythical land of the free.
One of the other myths being busted is the idea that they can earn a better standard of living in the U.S. They soon find out after they arrive, that the U.S. is very racist and segregated. In the U.S., If you immigrate, no matter what level of education you achieved in your previous country, the U.S. doesn't recognise diplomas from schools in other countries if you want to find work in the skills you were trained in.
Hell, they don't even recognise certificates and diplomas from military schools earned by native born citizens. You can receive points towards your civilian education but a straight, across the board transfer to receive a diploma or certificate of completion, not happening.
For immigrants, it's even harder. Everyone has to attend a higher education institution in order to work in the United States at a good paying job. For immigrants who came to the U.S. and can't afford to attend schools, they're stuck doing the low paying, menial jobs that native born Americans turn their noses up at the mere mention of, such as working in the back sides of restaurants, handyman jobs, and agriculture. You know, picking fruits and vegetables all day, every day, or working on a dairy farm in near slavery conditions.
I know of immigrants I've met in my travels across the U.S. with college degrees and diplomas from schools in their native countries, that're stuck working in agriculture, truck driving or handyman jobs that may pay little more than minimum wages, with no benefits, just because they're immigrants. The American employers know their circumstances and take full advantage of their desperation to feed, clothe and house their families. This is little better than slavery as these people struggle to bring in a living wage. Most work multiple jobs and fight to remain economically stable every day.
When I used to work full time, I also knew of highly educated people enticed to come work in the U.S. on H-1B visas, and get exploited when their U.S. employers threatened them with revocation if they didn't do things outside of their job descriptions. Nor could they quit over workplace abuses to find another, more decent, employer to work for. Their salaries are generally less than what these greedy capitalists would have to pay a native born person with the same background. Exploitation is rampant in the U.S.
I found a news article about a kidney doctor who was working at Rhode Island Hospital. She is Lebanese and went home briefly to visit family. Upon her return through Boston's Logan airport, she was detained for 36 hours and finally sent back to Lebanon, via Paris, France. She was not charged with a crime and was in the U.S. on a valid H-1B visa. This, even after a court order was issued stopping ICE from deporting her without due process. It turns out, according to an article in USA Today, that Customs and Border Patrol found Hezbollah related content on her phone, so they deported her without due process because they think she’s a threat to national security for having photos and pro-Hezbollah content on her personal devices. Apparently anyone who Homeland Security doesn't like or feels threatened by, can be refused entry to the U.S. without due process.
With Trump ramping up his war on non-citizens in the U.S., expect this to get worse. There are those wealthy and not so wealthy MAGA cultists who would love nothing better than to have a compliant work force that works for nothing or near nothing. And they're mostly white skinned, just sayin'.
I feel bad for all of these poorer immigrants I meet during the rare visits I make to my wife's church. I don't say anything as I know how proud they are to be where they are, compared to where they came from. No matter their economic circumstances. Most fled oppressive governments and, up until now, things were relatively worry free on that front. Now, I'm sure a lot of them are having private conversations with their families and wondering if Trump's immigration police will be coming for them soon. They're becoming afraid once again, just like they were in the country they fled from.
Is the U.S. going to start setting up internment camps like they erected in 1941 for those ethnicities they declare national security threats? As someone whose wife is of a different ethnicity as myself, I'm asking myself, what will I do if Trump's Black and Tan's came for my wife someday? Like the last time the U.S. enacted the Alien Enemy act, would we be forcibly separated as they put her in a camp somewhere, to await deportation? And forbid me to be with her just because I have European skin?
Let's change the subject a little bit. Let's talk about U.S. economics as it applies to American households right now and what's coming within a few months.
As I said in the beginning of today's podcast, some very prominent economists and large banking institutions are predicting a major recession. Likely before the end of this year.
They cite Trump's erratic tariff war with everyone as the catalyst. That and the already fragile economy.
Once these tariffed countries retaliate with their own tariffs, as some are doing, or, boycott American imports, as Canadian and European citizens are doing right now, a lot of American retailers are going to feel it very hard. A lot of manufacturers are going to feel it when their supply chain chokes off.
We all know what happens when the corporate bosses start to lose money. They lay off their employees and shut down their facilities and stores. Add that to the already swelling ranks of the unemployed just recently let go from the civil service ranks, and now you have a recession.
People stop spending money other than for essentials and the economy drops like a stone in a pond. Can you imagine the Trump tantrums in the white house when the U.S. enters a major recession during his presidency?
To add more misery to all of this, the U.S. is starting to enter into spring storm season. They just experienced a major storm system that spawned tornadoes, floods and wildfires, killing thirty five people so far. This is just the beginning for this year. Wait until hurricane season arrives.
With a good percentage of the national weather service now laid off, the ability to track storms has now been compromised. Will the U.S. have spring and summer surprise big storms that will kill people and devastate vast swaths of the country? Just what the American people need after they have been laid off from their jobs.
If the politicians think town hall meetings now verge on the violent, wait until a large majority of the Trump voters lose their homes due to extreme weather events, a crazy president and an unstable economy.
Then to add fuel to the fire, Trump has decided to gut FEMA and make the states pay for their own disaster relief from now on, with the feds as just a backup. This is just a recipe for disaster with the spring storm season already getting a head start last week. As we know by now, most of the states in the line of fire from all of these extreme weather events are the poor and poorest in the southeast, mid-west, and far western states. Without federal disaster relief, these state will not be able to manage all of this on their own. And, as we saw last winter, when L.A. was burning, if Trump doesn’t like your politics, he will refuse any federal aid. This is the future of the United States. A devastated country full of very angry people.
So far, no one is standing up and stating the obvious. Donald Trump has no idea how to run, what used to be, the largest economy in the world. A few people are speaking up but they’re few and far between. I'm one of them but who am I? I'm definitely not some famous TV anchor. There are not enough of people like me willing to stand up and tell this wannabe mafia capo to step away and let someone else take over before he runs everything into the ground, like he has with all of his other corporate ventures throughout his life. And J.D, Vance does not qualify to take over, yet.
The democrats and independents are still just flailing their arms in public like a bunch of panicked chickens with a weasel in the coop. They can't seem to figure out how to work together to try and stop this lunatic.
Half of the democrats or more, plus all of the republicans, are being paid by the Israeli lobby so they don't want to rock that donor boat. As long as Trump is supporting Israel still, the democrats aren't going to do much, other than wave their arms around and speak platitudes whenever a journalist asks them why they aren't doing something about Trump.
There are a couple who are willing to stand up, but they are too few to be of any good. It looks like it's going to be up to the American people to put a stop to this madness somehow. But, as history teaches us, Americans don't usually do anything radical until things get so far out of hand that they feel like they have no other choice.
Right now, the failing economy is starting to get some attention but we're still in the early stages. A lot more people have to lose a lot more stability in order for them to start mobilising.
Once the store shelves empty out and stay that way for a while, then people will start making more noise.
I noticed last weekend, when I went to my usual local grocery store, that there were a lot of empty racks in the coolers and empty shelves in the aisles. Certain brand items that I usually purchase, have been missing in action for more than a week already. I'm starting to have to select alternatives now. Is this a trend? You can bet that I'll be watching this a lot more closely in the weeks to come. Are any of you seeing this in your local stores now? Despite what the white house press secretary says in her briefings, the price of eggs has not dropped and the Europeans gave a flat no, when asked to export eggs to the U.S.
One last thing I found, and I only picked this one as I have made multiple deployments, around the world, and sometimes, for weeks, right in the backyard of the United States. Trump has decided to deploy a U.S. navy destroyer off the coast of the Mexican-American border as an added deterrent to anyone thinking of crossing the border illegally. There will be a small contingent of Coast Guard sailors aboard for, presumably, interdiction on U.S, soil or territorial waters. By law, U.S. navy sailors are prohibited from performing any law enforcement activities, so they will have the coasties on board to handle that. If I were a navy sailor aboard this destroyer, I would be pissed. Standing hot, boring watches over the U.S.-Mexico coastline, knowing that this is what the Coast Guard is supposed to be doing. There's nothing like a useless deployment like this to squash morale. I imagine the active duty soldiers called up to work the southern border are also griping about why they are there instead of a local national guard unit.
I hope I have given everyone something to think about once again this week. The bottom line to all of this, is that we need to start standing up to all of this craziness before things progress to a point of no return. Most of us who have lived for a bit, have weathered recessions and crazy politics but what's going on now, tops everything I've seen since Nixon and Agnew were taken down in the early 1970's.
The American people, regardless of politics, need to get their heads out of their asses and wake up to what's actually going on. It's time to attend town hall meetings with your congress people. It's time to write letters, make phone calls, and in general, start making a lot of noise before it's too late. Trump and his oligarchs do not want a democracy anymore. Or one that looks like something we would recognise anyway. If we don't stop him the United States could very well be turned into an American version of Hungary, Belarus or Russia.
If you want to know what too late might look like, I offer you a couple of dystopian future stories that are very good reads. I'm currently reading a book, first published in 2015, called The Water Knife, by Paolo Bacigalupi, a New York Times bestselling author.
It's a story about people caught up in a future where the American south west has completely dried up and the western states have set up armed national guard and militias to guard and steal water from everyone else. It’s a very gritty and graphic story of what survival might look like in the southwest region of North America in about 50 to 75 years, if the government doesn't do more to mitigate climate change and stop the oligarchs.
After the break, I also have another chapter from The Priest by Michael Campi, with a different look at societal collapse in the not so distant future.
Thank you for joining me again today. I hope you enjoyed it and that you'll return again to talk about the world we live in.
Please like, subscribe, reply and share the videos or audio podcasts, however you watch or listen. The goal here is to resist the people who want to take our freedoms away from us. I appreciate everyone around the world, no matter who or where you are. Together, using independent media like this, we can resist the authoritarian oligarchs in the west.
As I say good bye this week, I wish to leave you with this Irish blessing as we try to survive another week of mayhem. "May we finally find the peace and contentment we seek, despite the whirlwinds of chaos brewing all around us." Slán go fóill.
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