The US Department of Homeland Security has published a new proposed rule that would make people ineligible for US citizenship if their credit-scores were poor.
Notionally, the rule-change is meant to prevent immigrants from becoming
burdens on the welfare system (migrants do not make disproportionate
use of any public welfare system).
However, the credit reporting bureaus are notoriously inaccurate and
arbitrary in the credit-scores they assign; if you have a lot of assets
but do not borrow money, you will have a much lower credit-rating than
if you unwisely enroll in a number of high cost/high fee store cards and
pay them off after running up debts on them and paying significant
interest (I am allergic to debt, and with the exception of my mortgage
have no debts at all; because of this I have a fairly low credit-score,
despite the fact that both my wife and I earn very good livings).
What’s more, the credit-reporting sector is riddled with security holes; notoriously, Equifax doxxed the entire adult population of America
by breaching more than 150 million residents’ financial data.
Integrating credit scores into the immigration process will grant the
bureaux a permanent government contract and funnel tax-dollars to them
forever, despite their routine errors, racial bias, and spurious
guilt-by-statistical-association.
Finally, the DHS’s change is an appeal to selfishness and cruelty: if
America is unwilling to accept migrants who are indigent or who need
assistance, what does it say about us as a nation?
It’s a Made-in-America version of China’s notorious Citizen Scores.
That’s what Republicans do though. They underfund or put ridiculous burdens on governmential agencies so that they’ll be less efficient then turn around and say, “see, government is inefficient, we need to privatize everything.”
They did this with the US Postal Service, too. Congressional Republicans passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006which says that that USPS had to fund retirement pensions not just for their current employees, but any potential employees, for the next 80 years. It has caused an incredible financial mess of the USPS, which Republicans then used to slash USPS’s funding, causing more ineffiency and help further privatize the shipping industry. The VA is another example.
State governments do this with public education and infrastructure, too.
It won’t stop even after trump is gone now, things have gone too far I promise it’s all a ticking time bomb these people aren’t afraid to show their evil faces and kill now.
“To be clear, women loudly protesting the confirmation of Kavanaugh are not a “mob,” and comparing Trump to thuggish autocrats is simple honesty. Trump seems not to understand that criticism of his policies and rhetoric is not the same as a president demonizing opponents, race-baiting and threatening democratic institutions. In his book, news accounts exposing his corruption, ineptitude and cruelty are on par with his insisting that neo-Nazi marches include some “fine people.” No, Trump’s level of vitriol and overt racism is unmatched by political opponents or past presidents. The president for three years has demonized the Clintons, accusing Hillary of negligent handling of national intelligence (funny that Trump communicates by unprotected cellphone as the Chinese and Russian intelligence listen in) and threatening to jail her. As for Obama, Trump was a prime purveyor of the racist birtherism nonsense, designed to delegitimize Obama and cast him as the “other” — a foreigner, a Muslim.”
“We’re also going to hear a lot of moral equivalence and whataboutism. Both sides are over the top. Both sides are too partisan. Let me be clear: Only one party calls for its opponents to be locked up, calls the free press the “enemy of the people,” incites violence at rallies, praises an act of criminal violence by a congressman, deploys race-baiting and xenophobia as a political tactic and stokes fear of crime at a time it is at record lows. To be more precise, the president of the United States does all these things, and by and large, Republicans condone or at the very least ignore him. Afraid of their own shadows and of their own base, Republicans choose to turn a blind eye when Trump whips his crowd into a frenzy — and the audience turns its venom on the media covering the event. We are not saying Trump causes bomb threats; we are saying his rhetoric is unlike any of his predecessors, does damage to our democracy and can motivate fringe characters to behave violently. He systematically destroys comity, decency and rationality in the public square. The violence understandably gets the attention of the public, and of the White House. But the “it’s only words” or “ignore the tweets” or “so he lies” mentality that Republicans use to defend Trump must end. His rhetoric is indefensible. Period.”
