This week Otto Frank, Bobby Hull, and Stormy Daniels all made the front page. My challenge is to mix them into a blog that holds your interest and makes you think.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day was January 27. In Ken Burns’ recent documentary on the actions of the United States during that terrible period in Europe, he opens the series with the story of Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank, and his frantic efforts to leave Germany before the soldiers came for him and his family. He tried every connection he could imagine to get into the United States. He would have paid every Deutsche Mark of his substantial fortune, but he was constantly refused entry by a country that turned a blind eye to the systematic killing of six million Jews in Germany and the other countries the Nazis invaded.
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Bobby Hull, probably the greatest hockey player ever to play for the Chicago Blackhawks, died a couple days ago. Hull is the most celebrated player of my lifetime. He has a statue at the United Center, where the Blackhawks play.
He is being mourned in the sports press, but not by his daughter Michelle Hull. She is a lawyer who defends abused women and children, like she was by her father. Michelle lived through the drunken, hateful rampages of her father. She vowed to make her life’s work defending and aiding women and children against awful abusers like the “Great Bobby Hull.”
Hull was also a blatant racist and anti-Semite, and he made his views quite clear whenever he had the chance.
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Stormy Daniels of porn fame is back in the news. The New York City District Attorney is beginning to present evidence to a grand jury regarding Donald Trump offering her hush money to keep quiet about their relationship in 2016 when he was running for President of the United States. Supposedly he passed the money through David Pecker, publisher of the National Enquirer.
Pecker was present in the building Monday where evidence was being presented to the Grand Jury, according to Fox News. The District Attorney also contacted two of Trump’s own employees about testifying, according to Fox.
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How do these threads pull together in a blog about machining by Lloyd Graff?
I love this country. I feel blessed to live here and give thanks everyday for the privilege.
I also see its flaws. I live with the conflict. Sometimes it boils inside me.
Ken Burns loves America too. One of his first magnificent works was the history of baseball, which I dearly love. But America’s response to the Holocaust has haunted him as it has me. He wanted to tell the story as he saw it, beginning with America’s rejection of Otto Frank and millions of other Jews and others who begged to enter the country.
The tirades of our heroes like Bobby Hull are ugly, but common threads in our great country, which we saw so dramatically recently in the outrages of Kyrie Irving and his mentor Kanye West.
We saw them in 2017 at the Charlottesville rally where white supremacists shouted “the Jews will not replace us,” and the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
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How does all of this tie into precision machining, an industry that is starving for workers?
The US is still the country that most of the people in the world would love to come to and work. They would add their energy and ideas. Even today with the country in dire need of legal immigrants, half of the startups are founded by newcomers.
Yet my country cannot stop its immigration mess. The “Build the Wall” shouts that Donald Trump used to get elected still reverberate and connect with the nationalist and anti-Semitic threads that kept Otto Frank and his family out of America and led to their deaths.
Imagine how much creativity and energy has been lost because of this “Build the Wall” trope. Yet we still hear it everyday.
I am sure Bobby Hull connected with it. I am one of the people who voted for Donald Trump in 2016. I ignored his narcissism and womanizing because I thought he was a better option than Hillary clinton. And I still think that Trump was an effective president in many ways.
I am one of the conflicted Americans who loves their country, but I see enough to deplore the ugly germs that continue to infect it.
Question: How would you fix the “immigration problem?”
6 Comments
Regarding immigration…
The first thing the United States should do is enforce the laws that are currently on the books. If you don’t like the current laws, change them. I know many immigrants that came into the United States legally, and they are ADAMANTLY OPPOSED to immigrants entering the country illegally. They are from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, Columbia, Ireland, Italy, Brazil, and Germany.
Also, the process to track incoming workers on H-1B non-immigrant visas should be enhanced. Many people on these work/education visas overextend their permitted stay in the country. The US has no firm process to enforce the limits of the granted visas.
Most people reading this blog are descendants of immigrants. Both sets of my grandparents came over from Poland in the early 20th century. They had to have a ‘sponsor’ currently within the US before their admittance could be granted. I believe that this was to ensure that they would not be a burden on our much more limited government back then.
Also, the United States should look at the criteria for which they are granting entrance to the US. Should there be quotas for political vs. economic asylum?
Our current immigration policy is a mess because we allowed it to become that way. The ability to pass laws is a heck of a lot easier than it is to enforce them.
You Americans make it so hard to get in on a work visa. I am a Canadian, an engineer, a Production Manager and an Operations Specialist Manager. I’ve had so many discussions with companies looking for people like myself but as soon as they find out I need sponsoring it’s no thanks and they move on. The funny thing is my wife is actually American. Any tips on what to do. We live in Canada so my wife cannot sponsor me unless we move to the States.
Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated.
You need to prove you aren’t going to be a burden in order to bring a foreign spouse to the US. This happened to me when I married and moved back to the US with my Hungarian husband. We needed to prove we could support ourselves, which I think is a reasonable requirement.
Americans living abroad are required to report income earned abroad, although you don’t need to pay taxes on it if it is under a certain limit. Not having a tax history, I’ve found has been an issue for others I have met who also sought to bring their foreign spouse back home with them. The US government likes to see that you’ve had an income, even it it’s not a lot.
If your spouse is American, then it isn’t your job that needs to do the sponsoring. I think it would simply be that your spouse needs to find a job first, then relocate applying for a green card as a spouse. Then there is nothing your future workplace needs to sponsor.
My husband’s workplace did not sponsor him; I did as his spouse. I arrived ahead of him, found a job and place to live, and then he joined me about a month or so later. Granted at the time (10+ years ago) you could apply for residency through the US embassy instead of Homeland Security, which was much more efficient. It took about a month. As to him finding a job – there was no issue with his status. (They were a little hesitant with his English and unsure of his skills however. It meant he started at a low salary, but was able to quickly establish his competency and move up the salary scale.) I have heard horror stories of these things taking months and needing lawyers. Perhaps we were just lucky.
Hi Mark,
Where would you like to live. I probably can find a sponsor for you very quickly.
Many many folks need somebody with your qualifications.
Lloyd Graff
Hi Lloyd and thank you from the bottom of my heart for responding. I have limited my searches to the South Easter part of the country. From the Carolina’s to Florida.
Thanks
Mark
South Eastern