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Walsh: City will fight with and for Salvadorans

At a Three Kings' Day celebration in City Hall, Mayor Walsh vowed to work on behalf of Salvadoran immigrants whom the federal government now wants to toss out of the country.

"We stand behind you," he told people assembled in the City Hall atrium. He urged Salvadoran residents to contact the city to learn about resources the city has to help them "feel safe and secure" in Boston. Last fall, the city and several non-profit groups set up an immigrant legal-defense fund to help residents who suddenly find themselves facing deportation.

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Comments

There are US citizens in Boston right now, who's children won't eat breakfast due to cost. Marty's priorities should be for American's first. I really hope the Fed sues cities like Boston for stealing tax money from US citizens and giving it to citizens of El Salvador.

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Among other things, every single Boston public school provides free breakfast - you don't even have to prove you're poor.

As for the Salvadorans, they are paying into the system, not taking out of it. Their wages are taxed, you know.

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They also send wealth out of the country.

I wish the mayor cared about Bostonian's as much as foreign nationals.

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The next time you get behind the wheel of your Camry or buy some blueberries in the winter or put on a T-shirt.

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Camries (Camrys? Camry's?) are made in Kentucky. If you want a Japanese car made in Japan or a German car made in Germany, you're going to pay a premium.

Blueberries don't grow here in the winter. No one expects trade or immigration policy to overrule the weather. Though some people expect law to overrule climate. Go figure.

T-shirts used to be made here. Free trade with low-wage countries is what put an end to that. That was a choice. The law (trade agreements, labor regulations, environmental regulations, all of it) did not need to be changed to expedite that process. That was a choice sold under the promise of clean air and worker protections. This was a false promise because the air here got cleaner at the expense of the air there and worker protections here amounted to unemployment checks here and slave wages there.

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To try to extend a temporary permit past 17 years.

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The "T" stands for Temporary.

It was wrong to keep leading these people on for nearly twenty years into believing that the "T" didn't matter by constantly finding reasons to extend it. In fact, the entire program of TPS was wrong because the law that established it was ambiguous about the criteria for expiration.

Ambiguous laws are bad laws.

Playing devil's advocate, though, I could see how it would be impolitic for the US to tell a small country, "We'll take all your people" with the implication being "because you can't run your affairs yourself." I suspect that was a consideration for leaving that ambiguity in there in 1990.

And that's why good government is hard and why the stern adult in the room will always lose the emotional argument. It should have been all or nothing. If geopolitical considerations mattered more, it should have been nothing. If the moral imperative to help the unfortunate mattered more, it should have been immigrant visas from the get-go.

Instead we gave into the good feelings and set up a situation where we either ignore the letter of the law by perpetually extending TPS, thereby sending the message to everyone else that if you come here you won't be told to leave while at the same time giving people the false impression that they can stay in perpetuity and not subject to politics. Read that again: TPS has set up a quarter million human beings to become political footballs.

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We need to talk about your TPS reports!

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Answer: Because the U.S. made it so. It's ahistorical to call these people merely "unfortunate". They are unfortunate because they are living in the shadow of an amoral giant who funds murderous right wing dictatorships and right wing coups, harbors and promotes the interests of corporations inflicting banana republic control of their land, wages "the war on drugs" both inflicting death and environmental destruction while increasing the profit margin of the illegal drug trade, incubates gangs in country that become ten times worse once they are deported back to Central America, etc, etc...

You can't lay waste to a region for 100+ years and then scold them because their house isn't in order. We should be doing everything we can for these people, not sending away proven productive members of society with American children.

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WHERE IS OUR LONG ISLAND BRIDGE?!

WHO IS FIGHTING FOR US!

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How about removing all the snow from the crosswalks and handicap ramps?

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Marty can give a five-minute speech at a holiday celebration in City Hall (most of which was just platitudes about the holiday) and still have plenty of time to not personally plow out your street. Most people, if they dig deep enough, actually have an amazing ability to do more than one thing in a day.

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bebutted with some common sense:

Anyone who's actually accountable for their performance has been, is, ever shall be, expected to prioritize their attention on areas where they are not meeting the expectations of their job. For mayors, that's cleaning the streets by a mile over grandstanding on national politics.

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