Trump’s Immigration Ban Literally Harms Our Health

Over the past three years, I have spent a lot of time in hospitals supporting close relatives with serious medical conditions. I’ve been there many mornings, afternoons and evenings, interacting with doctors, nurses and other personnel. And I often wonder: Where would hospital patients be without immigrants?

Many of the people on the front lines of the battle against the coronavirus came here from other countries. A 2018 study found that 29 percent of physicians were born abroad and seven percent are not U.S. citizens. For registered nurses, the figures are 16 percent and three percent. There is no telling how many hospital kitchen workers, IT staff and maintenance employees — all crucial to operations — are also foreign-born.

If you find yourself in the hospital with COVID-19, chances are very good that you’ll get care and help from immigrants. You may end up owing your life to one. Some of them have died of the disease. Continue reading.

‘Unqualified Trump loyalist’: Experts slam appointment of Stephen Miller ally to be top lawyer at DHS

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump has installed Chad Mizelle, an attorney tied to top White House advisor Stephen Miller, to run the Dept. of Homeland Security’s Office of the General Counsel. Miller is largely seen as an anti-immigrant extremist and white nationalist. Mizelle has been an attorney for under 10 years, and will now be in charge of 2500 other attorneys, as CNN reports.

An unverified Twitter account under the name of Chad Mizelle, which includes tweets about Cornell University, his alma mater, shows a Chad Mizelle retweeted a Federalist Society tweet quoting attorney Charles Cooper that says: “Requiring complete diversity may well be unconstitutional.” Cooper has represented Jeff Sessions, John Bolton, and John Ashcroft

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