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Raul Castro of Cuba indicted by the US Justice Department May 20, 2026 for Cuban Americans killed when civilian flights helping Cuban refugees in the waters near Cuba were shot on orders from Raul Castro, as minister of defense. Only towards the end of this news report by Perry Stein and Karen De Young of the Washington Post is it clear that this indictment is on Cuba Independence Day March 20, which in 1902 marks the setup of the Republic of Cuba, at the end of the US military takeover of Cuba from the Spanish during the Spanish American War. Cuba under Castro does not use this day but the day of the Communist takeover in 1959 of January 1, and celebrates as Day of the Revolution, July 26, the day when the attack on the Moncada military barracks started the Revolution against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Only the Obama administration similar to its failures in addressing the Iran nuclear weapons crisis refused to recognize 1902 date as the Cuban Independence Day, all other administrations before did. Under the Monroe Doctrine of 1824 the US clearly considered Latin America as its neighborhood and would not accept any foreign power in its neighborhood, making the Platt amendment attached to the Cuban 1902 Constitution permitting US intervention simply an addition. That the Monroe Doctrine was proven right in 2 ways is not mentioned by the Washington Post or by the elite media. What it did was to prevent European colonial powers from intervening and restoring colonial type rule to Spanish colonies in Latin America. It was welcomed by the British as it had no such designs, objected to by the Spanish Dutch and the French who had such designs for their colonial Empires. It was resented by Cubans naturally but Cubans did not consider that US is the only power who even when it pushed the Spaniards out of Cuba and Philippines in the Spanish American War of 1900 after centuries of Spanish occupation, the only power who prepared Cuba for Independence within 4 years in 1898. Which European colonial power could do this? The other reason for the Monroe Doctrine is in the Platt Amendment attached to the Cuban Constitution which committed the Cuban government to implement and maintain programs the US introduced to control yellow fever and infectious diseases. In 1934 FDR removed the Platt Amendment under a "Good Neighbor Policy. It is the relaxation of the Monroe Doctrine by future American adminstrations that has brought so much suffering and pain to North America, for the US and Mexico with illegal immigration and drugs, corrupting governance in Mexico and creating social political strife in the US, more deaths from drugs than the Vietnam, Korean and WWI combined. Today's Cuba's economy and the Venezuelan economy that copied Cuba's example has completely collapsed, one fourth of the people left the country taking with them the vitally important skills, and leading to economic hardships for the people. This would not have happened if the Monroe Doctrine implemented under the Good Neighbor ideas of FDR and the Alliance for Progress of JFK was kept in place. This shows that Cuba's Independence happened when the Americans supported Cuban rebels fighting for independence in 1898 just as the Indian Independence was won in 1947 from the British under Labour's PM Clement Attlee in 1945 taking action. Four years of American rule in Cuba to prepare it for independence as a transition is far better than 4 centuries of Spanish rule, and 2 years of British rule as a transition 1945-1947 under Attlee (who replaced Churchill in 1945 and setup the NHS) is better than 2 centuries of British colonial rule. In this sense America is with the Cuban people, just as the average British public and working class is with the Indian people.   ...

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Democrats continue to believe they lost in 2024 because they did not attack DJT enough. This fails to cite issues such as cost of living- surge in the third year of the Biden administration with 20% increase in prices and Biden failing to take notice and address this quickly. A wave of illegal immigration- the failure of Mayorkas, himself a Cuban immigrant in 1960, put in charge of Homeland Security and ICE, and Harris who was an attorney helping indigents in inner city San Francisco, to grasp the fears of border states and southern states. The failure to understand that the border was open and inviting waves of illegal immigrants, some with questionable backgrounds. This issue created a sense of unease in the fabric of society and American people. Other issues simply showed how Harris could not relate to the conservative people and average people in the country in the cultural aspect such as transgender, rural America. Biden pulling out suddenly, loss of rural vote- failure of Democrats since Obama to pay attention to rural voters, Harris not appealing to the white male vote in the US, are other factors that hurt Democrats. DJT gained with the shooting incident in Pennsylvania in which he survived, and the perception raised during a garbage truck and DJT photo that the Democrats derided, seen by the public as looking down on working class people. Democrats never really grasped how the political system had gone in reverse- the Republicans had put cultural aspect first and conservative now meant working class voters and white voters in rural areas/small towns, big cities, ( the Archie Bunker type of an earlier era who was now a Democrat, not the college educated and Ivy league Harvard type that had taken over the Democratic party). This continues to this day with some paradox as the business class and the billionaire class sit alongside the working class person in the Republican party DJT created. DJT did this in 2016 by pulling together workers hurt by Bush and Obama's policies favoring the educated classes and affluent, ignoring rural areas and farmers, and committing US to wars in the Middle East that squandered the Nations' resources and human lives. This was aggravated in the Biden/Harris/Mayorkas years by letting in migrants across the border by the millions that created a great deal of unease in the working classes. In this way labor unions or their rank and file left the Democratic party- a problem that plagues Democrats to this day, that Biden tried but failed to fix. The border issues had become complex by the latter part of the Biden administration because of the complete collapse of Venezuelan economy and the drug cartels in Mexico smuggling people and drugs across the border, for which the Biden administration or Harris had no answer.  It was the failure of administrations to continue the Monroe Doctrine in the form given by FDR as "Good Neigbor Policy," and JFK as the Alliance for Progress, allowing drug cartels and foreign European powers to intervene in the western hemisphere, desorying good governance in Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba and other nations in Latin America. By the second year of the DJT administration Venezuela, and the border were brought under control, and the situation in Mexico put in a new direction. ...

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Justin Lahart offers these clues to a puzzle why is the US unemployment rate stable when no one is hiring? The 2025 US economic growth rate shows strong economic growth, the stock market is robust, and the unemployment rate is low, yet this is not reflected in the job market. What accounts for weak hiring? WSJ analysis shows that for US job market 2026- quit rate is too low at 3.2 million  (Dec 2025) instead of 4.5 million (March 2022), hiring is low at 5.3 million. And overall firms are not laying off people which is reflected in unemployment rate at 4.4%. As a result even with strong economic fundamentals the hiring is at low levels and opportunities for new jobs scarce. In previous years more people quit jobs, more people were laid off and some firms continued hiring. There is also uncertainty about tariffs that may be playing a part- companies can wait and see how the tariffs policy works out over the next 6 monthsand delay hiring. Ai may be another factor for some firms as they evaluate its impact on their hiring needs. Research at the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute shows that immigration crack down on entry into the US after Biden era surge means less people from overseas to hire and less from the pool of immigrants. A striking piece of this research is that instead of 140,000 jobs needed a month to keep the unemployment rate stable in 2024 the US economy now needs in 2026 after immigration crackdown only 15,000 jobs a month.  ...

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Jeanne Whalen on the Two Speed Economy in the US September 2025- diverging paths of low and high income Americans. With the new administration in 2025 priorities shift to immigration and what to do about 14 million illegal migrants from Latin America and other places, war on fentanyl and drug trafficking gangs with hundreds of thousands of lives lost to fentanyl and drugs in the US, crime and safety which includes the unprecedented illegal movement of drug trafficking in the Nation, and to a bold posture on using US advantages of its huge market to get European Union, Japan, South Korea, and China to level the playing field on trade bring jobs home.The Biden administration had already conceded to DJT's approach in its one term presidency by shifting on uncontrolled illegal migration but not fast enough, by not removing DJT's tariffs, and failing to take an aggressive posture on fentanyl and drug trafficking. Of the DJT plan US has tariff based revenues of 10--15% for all countries imports into US can that it redirect to groups to soften any effects of tariffs. DJT administration oil transition policy of stretching out the transition to give middle class and lower classes cost of living relief was also accepted by the Biden administration and is now the policy of Democrat run California state government.  The US economy was slowing in 2024 under the Biden administration. What has changed in 2025 is that the US stock markets are responding to steps taken by the DJT Republican administration to lower the cost of doing business by softening regulations, and giving US business the upper hand in different industries, and rebuilding the manufacturing sector with calls for EU and Japan/South Korea to invest more in the US as a quid pro quo for market access. This has led to increase in the value of market portfolios of the income earners above 250,000, or 10% of American households. As this happens the process of trade renegotiation has introduced some uncertainty in 2025 and businesses are looking for more clarity before increasing investment and slowing job hiring which hurts younger people entering the job market and lower income Americans. Were things better under Biden? Government Covid assistance and payouts in the early years 2020-2021 helped lower income workers, as this faded and the cost of living autos, housing increased sharply under Biden in 2022-2024 the situation deteriorated. The situation today is similar to the situation in 2024 with the difference in 2025 that inflation is coming down just as government help is receding. And added factor is the DJT administration plan to tackle head on the increasing cost of Medicaid to about $1 trillion by adding new requirements and reducing subsidies. The federal workforce had a disproportionate share of black workers and the policy changes to reduce the federal workforce have increased black unemployment from 6.1% under Biden in August 2024 to 7.5 % a year later. Hispanics have seen slight improvement in unemployment to 5.3% in 2025, and the middle class incomes also have held up and are holding steady. Meantime Bloomberg points out that one third of people in the top 10% are living paycheck by paycheck because of high cost of housing, university education for children, and inflation.     ...

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Lula and Milei clash at Mercosur. Lula of Brazil talks about a humanitarian crisis in US policy to pressure Venezuela's military installed government but fails to say that a third of Venezuela's population, about 10 million people have left the country as refugees to neighboring countries including Colombia and the US. Inflation at over 100% and mismanagement of the economy have destroyed a once relatively affluent oil producing country in Latin America. Hyperinflation in 2018, and 270% inflation in 2025, and lack of open free elections, lack of food and medicine. A story of socialist ideas that have led to military involvement in politics followed by economic disaster in the western hemisphere, in a country that had a educated middle class and a thriving oil industry. Not since the Spanish opening up Latin America to immigration from Europe by 1600 has the continent of Latin America seen such a mass migration which is not reflected in many media outlets including the NYT, Washington Post and BBC, Guardian. The blockade by the US of oil into and out of Venezuela is affecting Cuba and other countries which depend on this oil. ...

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US jobs reports May June 2025 revisions suggest slowdown.14000, 19000,  and 73000 US job gains May June and July 2025 suggest slowdown in the economy. Layoffs are low but hiring is slowing as companies tackle uncertainty. Number of people unemployed 27 weeks increases from 1.65 to 1.83 million in July 2025. Healthcare and social assistance added jobs. Government layoffs were 12000. Unemployment rate increases from 4.1% to 4.2% in July 2025.

In 2024 166,000 jobs were needed for unemployment rate to be steady, now just 86,000 jobs because immigration has dropped to new lows. This is important to note for rest of 2025 to 2030.

Also jobs reports are seeing downward revision because smaller companies tend to send in data late to the Labor Department in the current uncertainty.

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Starmer and Yvette Cooper plan action on speeding up 32,000 asylum cases which cost $5.4 billion in 6 months of 2025 for migrants and asylum hotels. Yet speeding up and creating alternative ways to cut asylum cases may not be enough to address the problem which at its root goes to the fact that the British system of justice was not designed to handle people of other countries freely entering the country on boats. Already the Times of London repoirts that there are 111,000 asylum cases up from 7000 in 2022 by June 2025.  A clear warning that Labour's entire program of action on housing, on immigration, on the economy and cost of living, can be derailed by not recognizing the fact that illegal migrants are simply making a travesty of the British system of justice which was not designed for people of other countries freely entering the country. The simple question is can thousands of illegal migrants be placed ahead of the interests of 60 million people of England, Wales and Scotland.  ...

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A ban on foreigners buying homes in Canada by the Trudeau government is intended to put a lid on house price increases. Immigration is increasing to Canada as Canada needs more people. About 3.5 million new homes have to be built in Canada to achieve house affordability for all. The government has proposed 465,000 new permanent residents in 2023 and 500,000 in 2025. Immigration from India and China and other Asian countries is the main source of permanent residents. The new infusion is needed as Canada's economy grows.

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There is much uncertainty about the federal elections in Germany in 2025. Four years back in 2021 Olaf Scholz had 51% of people polled saying he would make a good chancellor. This is down to 26% in Feb 2025. Merz of CDU is at 32% and Habeck of Greens at 25%. The Greens are holding onto 14% similar to 2021 with the SPD Social Democrats of Scholz at a low of 18% down from 25% in 2021. CDU is at 32% compared to 24% in 2021. AFD moving from 11% in 2021 to 21%. The immigration issue and the weak economy with the Ukraine war has hit SPD hard. The Scholz coalition also failed to invest in the economy with the FDP of Finance Minister Lindner acting as a brake on needed investment in infrastructure. The result is that the German economy burdened with higher costs for energy and a faltering auto industry is showing zero growth. The most likely outcome is a CDU coalition with the Greens and the SPD with Merz as chancellor. There is athreshold for gettinginto parliament of 4%. At this time a breakaway faction of Left parties of Wagenknecht and the FDP are both polling below 4%. The AfD is at 21% and hoping to gain from the immigration issue. Much of the uncertaintly comes from 18% of voters not planning to vote, and the 13% of voters who have not made up their mind yet and will do so on election day. ...

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Antonia Romeo new UK Cabinet Secretary Feb 2026-  precocious yet "warm and forthright"  in civil service interactions active as Consul General and at Home Ministry. After Westminster school and Oxford University, and a stint working at Oliver Wyman in management consulting, she joined the civil service. Becoming permanent secretary at the Department for International Development and the MoJ, and spent time as consul general in New York. She spent time with immigration and boat migrant issues at the Home Ministry, and is now keenly aware of the issues facing Britain. That bit of precociousness is needed at this time to set out a plan of action and get results for Starmer and his team. Based on what Labour stands for building on the skills of everyone in Labour not just those who go by labels as centrists, left and right, false labels that ignore that common sense means something else entirely. Getting results means addressing tough issues for the economy, cost of living, housing, through honesty, resilience, hard work and dedication. ...

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Men all in their 20's and at different points in their careers, from all parts of the US are interviewed by the WSJ 6 months into the DJT administration to see what they think of performance so far.

Young men as a demographic group are optimistic about the economy even with high interest rates restricting housing access. Young men supported DJT in 2024 by 15 percentage points 57% to 42% giving the president an edge. Overall on foreign affairs messy international disputes, on immigration and hurdles in resolving returning migrants to home countries, they are considerate about what difficulties the president faces. They are optimistic about president DJT and his ability to handle tariffs, inflation, and the economic growth that will improve their lives in the coming years.

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It is the Tories (Conservatives) party that made immigration an issue for the last decade. It was immigration that was one of the main issues keeping the Tories in power for the last decade. It is a surprise then that the Tories have a dismal failure in restricting immigration by 2024, going into the 2024 general election and expecting large losses of seats in parliament. It also means Tories have taken Britain out of the European Union on an issue such as immigration, heedless of the negative effects on the British economy and growth after misrepresenting it. Boris Johnson made the remark on July 2, 2019 that after Brexit "we will still have whey for our Mar's bars," as if Britain could go on as before. Worse the Tories under Johnson/Sunak misrepresented issues such as immigration in their advertising for Brexit. It is the story of how a small minority were able to misrepresent issues for staying in power regardless of the consequences. Today most Britons support rejoining the European Union. ...

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Under Mette Frederiksen immigration which reached 21,000 in 2015 was down to a little over 1000 a year. She is a strong fighter for workers and families and labor rights and yet tough on illegal immigration. She has been proven right about this as Britain and the US under Biden are seeing illegal immigration as a threat to workers and labour, are seeing the risks of distraction from illegal immigration doing a serious disservice to workers and families by making it hard to fight for workers and families on wages, cost of living and other issues.  Even with a strong record of fighting for workers and families, Frederiksen was one of the first European leaders to see the dangers of illegal immigration to society. It gave parts of the political spectrum that had no interest all along in workers and families doing well, an issue to run on that would come to cause grave harm to workers and families. This turned out to be the error of Angela Merkel a CDU leader brought up in Communist East Germany, who had no idea of the risks of her approach for open immigration. As Merkel let this chapter unfold it created fissures in Europe, with Tories and Nigel Farage taking Britain out of the EU and laying waste to its economy for 5 years till Labour's Starmer adopted a tough immigration policy and became prime minister in 2024. That danger then spread to the US in 2016 which also suffered as Republicans and Trump did the same in the US around rhetoric but without serious action on immigration till the Lankford- Biden legislation.  That bill would have closed the border with Mexico and ended immigration as an issue forever if passed into law in December 2023, as Senator Lankford says would have happened. Ending immigration as an issue forever alongside foreign wars as an issue, so that a concentrated effort could be made on improving badly damaged lives of workers and families. And on rebuilding badly damaged manufacturing in the US, rebuilding collapsing infrastructure, and competing with better education and healthcare with the large Asian countries China, Japan/ South Korea, India. ...

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Mexican president Nieto's poll numbers are at all time low of 24%, according to Reforma newspaper. He took office in late 2012 and has been hurt by human rights scandal of the murder of 43 students in the state of Guerrero, corruption issues, and failure to improve the economy. The invitation to Trump to visit Mexico left even people close to the president surprised, and was criticized widely inside Mexico. It is not clear what Trump or Nieto gained from the trip. As Trump continued his talk about building a wall on the Mexican border and having Mexico pay for the estimated $23 billion it would cost. He did this in a speech to supporters in Pheonix on the same day he met Nieto, showing the use of teleprompters and prepared script was not his way of campaigning. Just as the message to black people that Democrats take them for granted cannot resonate without the basic message delivered with compassion and understanding- such as done by the presidents Bush and Reagan- so also the message to Hispanic people is suffering from the same lack of empathy. Recent polls show only 3% of blacks support Trump. McCain and Romney gained only 4-6% in the U.S. presidential elections of 2008 and 2012. The message of the wall is also baffling as an election strategy. A Gallup poll in July 2016 shows only 15% of Americans opposing a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and only 24% of Republicans. There is another problem in the strategy. The rhetoric about walls and mass deportations, and the Trump temperament combined with handling of nuclear weapons is not winning college educated women in the suburbs with polls showing Trump lagging behind Clinton by about 20 points or 4 million voters with this group. It is hard to undo the damage done by this kind of rhetoric used in the primary elections as it gains distrust of voters. It would require a bad economy with illegal immigrants taking local jobs, and handling of immigration seen as weak, for such a message to gain some national traction. Both are absent for the most part with a steadily improving economy since 2012, lower unemployment, a tough enforcement policy on deportatons under Obama that exceeded that under Geoge W. Bush, and the talk of a wall comes with illegal immigration having declined steeply since the 2008 financial crisis. The real culprit appears to be elsewhere, the triple hit taken from hollowing out of the manufacturing economy that hurt the Conservatives in Canada, the insecurity created for older whites from the job losses and hits to net worth from the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and the increasing loss of access to health care and educational opportunities with high  costs. About 62 million households or the bottom half of the distribution in the U.S. have a net worth of about $10,000, a quarter of this group having zero net worth, according to the Federal Reserve's Janet Yellen at an Inequality Conference in Oct 2014. Problems no wall is going to solve, problems that built up over 2 decades, problems that will take a generation to fix.  It shows the tech miracle of the last 2 decades as a mirage for quality of life of the middle and working class. Tech as a tool to a goal, not a goal in itself, is the better way forward. ...

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NYT says DJT ratings have been resilient and stable around 43% in September similar to April 2025. Shows slight improvement on the economy and slight drop on immigration. DJT gets higher approval in fighting crime 48% supporting, 51% saying government was deporting mostly those needing to be deported, and 54% favoring deporting of illegal migrants. On the major issues of the economy, illegal immigration, the support is fairly resilient and stable says the NYT. Even the groups that say the biggest problem is the other side Democrats saying that of Republicans and vice versa, is only about 15%, or what has been seen in polarized periods in American history such as with Jefferson and Adams, Andrew Jackson after British wars,  Abraham Lincoln and Southerners before Civil War, Hoover and FDR as Depression progressed, and Harry Truman and Wendell Wilkie/Eisenhower periods of this history. The current polarization is not something new even though it is seen as unsettling to an onlooker. On immigration Eisenhower led Operation Wetback in the 1950's similar to today's effort to reverse illegal migration. Efforts to bring Common Prayer or Christian prayer to schools is part of America's history and Prayer existed in American schools throughout most of America's history, so that this is also nothing new. ...

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It is not a story that most people grasp or understand- the long term effects of the US immigration surge of 2023 and its source mostly from Venezuela. The  US Congressional Budget Office says labor force in 2033 ten years from now will be larger by 5.2 million people and younger as a result of the immigration surge in 2023 from about 1 million immigrants each year in the 2010's to 3.3 million. About 2.5 million crossed the southwestern border in 2023. Much of it the result of the collapse of the Venezuelan economy and its middle and upper classes leaving the country. This was worsened by the US sanctions on the Maduro government including under president Trump, say experts in an adjoining NYT article on the 7 million people who left Venezuela to go to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Chile since 2012, then making their way up the Darien Gap to the US. Something that could have happened under a Republican president if the US Congress could not reach bipartisan agreement on correcting asylum and parole policy. As a result of this surge US Gross Domestic Product  in 2033 will be 3% larger. When the large Asian economies are seeing a aging workforce, Japan for the last decade and China now following Japan, the US labor force will be younger than it would be without this unusual surge in immigration of the last 2 years. The federal deficit will be smaller at 6.4% instead of 7.3% in 2033 as immigrants will pay taxes on income. Another aspect of this larger infusion of immigrants is that after the pandemic shut down immigration entirely there were severe shortages in the hospitality and restaurant, construction, healthcare industries. And with the trillions of dollars in investment that the Biden administration is making with more factories - this will absorb most of the immigrant surge by 2033. With some positive effects in the competition with rising Asian economies China and India. Particularly consider with the younger demographic India of 1.4 billion people. It will mean more factories can be built in the US and there will be workers for these factories in the US at wages that keep the US economy competitive years from now in 2033. This is a sobering aspect of the current situation viewed from what will be seen by America's younger generation. And under the bipartisan compromise in Congress correcting asylum and parole policy that was shut down by the former president, Republican senators understood very well that the immigration surge of 2023 would have some constructive effects for the long term, while its effects on the short term would be mitigated by Biden's commitment to close the border in 2024. This did not happen, yet the future for America's younger generation is bright under the Biden plan for massive investment in manufacturing and jobs in the US, and with the millions of immigrants needed to fill the jobs that investment will create by 2033. It will make America with a younger work force than Europe or China, only India having a younger workforce in 2033. ...

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Result of Brexit in a Cambridge econometrics study-

2 million jobs lost

Economy smaller by 140 billion pounds

Every Briton lost $2400 in 2023, Londoners 3400 pounds in 2023 alone

Do the Tories have an answer for misrepresenting immigration as an issue when as the adjoining article shows the Tories have a failure in migration issues.

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A key figure in approval ratings is 46% with DJT getting 46% approval for the economy and on a range of issues including immigration. On tariffs the situation is steadily improving with new trade agreements with Japan, the EU, South Korea that were announced after or just when this WSJ poll was taken on July 20. Among Republicans 88% support the president and 66% strongly support him which says this report means more of them would turn out to vote. More significant is that the optimistic rating of the economy went up by 11 percentage points from April 2025 to 46% in July 2025. This is also the view of Fed chairman Powell. Each step of the way as DJT tariff actions result in tangible improvements in trade relations for the US and result in concrete real world trade agreements for a level playing field in world trade, the president's actions are seen in a different light. The first Trade Agreement with the UK, then with Japan and now quite possibly with the European Union. All this within 6 months of the president acting in February 2025. A major role played also by Bessent, Greer, Luttnick and others in the cabinet of ministers. This lifts perceptions of the president in the eyes of the American people in handling the economy, business and world trade, and protecting the interests of America's farmers, and rural communities. ...

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Le Monde publishes the speech JD Vance gave at the Munich Security Conference with it says added context and explanation. It is useful because it is easy to make hasty judgements in one direction or another. The focus here is on immigration to EU and to the US, a sore point. Vance does not mention a bigger sore point - the lack of recognition worldwide to the 490,000 American lives lost in the illegal flow of fentanyl into the US without needed action from CMC Canada, Mexico and China. And business as usual carried on by these countries and the European Union, and a failure to act by the US.  JD Vance said- "And of all the pressings—challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration. Today, almost one in five people living in this country moved here from abroad. That is, of course, an all-time high. It’s a similar number, by the way, in the United States—also an all-time high. The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone. And, of course, it’s gotten much higher since.And we know the situation, it didn’t materialize in a vacuum. It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent, and others across the world, over the span of a decade." Fact Check- About 14 million of Germany's 84.5 million people are foreign nationals according to Destatis. This is 16.6% of Germany's population. Vance rounds it off to 20% not 17%. In the US there are 47.8 million people who are foreign born or 14.3% of the population in 2023. It increased by 1.6 million from 2022 to 2023, much of it coming from Venezuela and Central American failed states from left parties mismanaging the economy for hyperinflation and from gang violence. In 2022 EU member states welcomed 1.8 million Ukrainian nationals that was only 100,000 in 2021, which is two thirds of the increase. The reason for Vance's doubling. A similar situation happened in the US with Venezuela as a failed state with hyper inflation into 1000 percent inflation leading to migration to other Latin American countries and into the US during the Biden administration. Some of this happened because sanctions made things worse, mismanagement of the economy. A similar migration happened from Syria into the EU member states as a result of the civil war.     ...

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The complete Transcript of the Harris Trump television debate on ABC Television that went on for 90 minutes. As expected Harris remained organized, thoughtful and precise in her answers to questions of cost of living, the economy, and never wavered in her focus on her plan for an Opportunity Economy that lifts all boats where she said Trump had none. Trump raised the immigration issue in questions about the economy and cost of living failing to tackle one issue at a time and do it well and convincingly. Harris brought up Trump's focus on himself and billionaires, and on Project 2025, when Trump talked about immigration. Trump's response on Project 2025 was long and rambling and failed to register losing critical minutes and spreading himself thin leaving behind the idea that he had no Plan for America, for if he had one would he not have offered it when the question was raised. This set the pattern for the rest of the debate. The next issue Trump hoped to focus on was migrant crime after immigration. This is where his exaggeration that migrant crime was rampant came under the first fact check of the evening by David Muir. Something that other moderators had amazing as it sounds neglected their duty to do - all of them failed to do this with rigor and on the spot- till David Muir. “As you know, the F.B.I. says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.” ...

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The workforce participation rate reached a high of 84.5% in 2023. WSJ points to how the flexibility to work from home, remote work, is playing a role in bringing more women, and men into the workforce. More jobs are being created 275,000 in February, and the economy is resilient with inflation coming under control with a larger supply of labor productively used in the economy. Additional immigration, though the need for it to be organized is clear, has added to supply of labor.

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Anxieties about illegal immigration and cost of living propel Trump to a win in the 2024 presidential elections. He wins more votes from younger people, from rural voters, and from Latinos, black people without a college degree. 

Paradoxically the end of the pandemic, vaccines, and improvement in health care may have led to voters focusing on the cost of living as an element that was not tackled under the Biden administration. Housing and grocery costs were allowed to surge and tech monopolies operated as before. Even union leaders were not fully convinced about Democratic support because of the changes in the Democratic party since Clinton. 

A general sense of unease about immigration was not tackled early on in the Biden administration first 2 years when the surge from Venezuela became evident following the collapse of its economy. 

 

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Chile's Constitutional Council that swung in one direction now swings in the other direction. The new Constitutional Council has elected 33 conservatives and 17 from the left parties as the mood swings to keep some aspects of the old constitution that helped the economy grow. There is concern about the effects of crime, immigration and the slow growth of the economy under the Boric government. The economy is expected to contract by 1% in 2023 according to the IMF.

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Simply put the party that makes the best case for the economy and for a better future consistently and constantly will prevail as at the end of the day white, black, rural and urban voters will be listening carefully. The cost of living, immigration, the economy, are major issues in 2024. Nate Cohn of the NYT looks at the 2020 election, the 2022 midterms and polling for 2024. He says Republicans are doing better in states they did well in the midterms in 2022. Nationally they are doing as well as in the midterms making gains in noncompetitive blue states such as New York and California where there is less impact of Roe vs Wade abortion rights and voters can show discontent with Democrats for the way they have governed. Trump can also gain with black and Hispanic voters but more in California and New York and Texas noncompetitive states.  Harris does well in Florida, and Texas, and in some red states for the same reason as voters look for alternatives from being tied down to the Republican party or the Trump Republicans.  In the key Electoral College states in midwest Harris is holding up well in polling- in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In these states Black and Hispanics are not in the same population numbers as in other states. ...

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A comprehensive study on immigration's impact on the U.S. by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in 2016, looks at the broad fiscal and economic impacts of immigration. On the drawbacks the new immigrants can lead to lower wages for earlier waves of immigrants and high school dropouts. It can also burden government finances, education budgets at local and state levels. On the plus side it leads to more innovation, entrepreneurship and technological change in the economy. Other facts that are new in the report and run against the popular narrative are that 53% of immigrants had at least some college, including 16% with graduate education, as of 2012- which explains the technological impact of being open to immigrants. It is this that helps lift overall growth says the report- "the prospects for long run economic growth in the United States would be considerably dimmed without the contributions of high-skilled immigrants." About 42.3 million immigrants live in the U.S. in 2014, 13% of the population, increasing from 24.5 million or 9% in 1995. Unauthorized immigrants doubled in this period to 11 million.  A surprising result considering the popular idea of anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. is that a WSJ/NBC poll shows 54% of respondents saying immigration helps more than it hurts. In 2006 only 45% to 42%, considered immigration as beneficial to the country. Immigration is an issue today even though in recent years the large scale deportations under the Obama administration and difficulty finding jobs have reduced the flow of immigrants - since 2009 about 300,000-400,000 new unauthorized immigrants arriving and similar number leaving.   ...