Friday News Roundup — June 26, 2020
Immigration Own Goal; Monumental Confusion; Netanyahu’s Next Gamble; Plus News You May Have Missed
Greetings from Washington, D.C., where the beginnings of a long-hot summer are literally and figuratively coming together. Across southern and western states, Covid case numbers and the ratio of positive tests continues to climb, and the Coronavirus reminds us that the only calendar it cares about is how soon effective vaccines are available and how quickly we can adapt to its impact in the meantime. Despite the widespread protests over the death of George Floyd and broader concerns about police brutality, it appears that divides between the House and Senate on a path forward make it unlikely that any federal police reform will be passed quickly, if at all. Debates to address the next round of economic stimulus will be the next point of contention, as some measures will start to end at the end of July.
This week, CSPC’s Senior Fellow James Kitfield warned about voter suppression, fueled by conspiracy theories and misinformation, and the danger it poses in 2020. In the Diplomatic Courier, Joshua Huminski reviewed Ben Hubbard’s “MBS” about the rise of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. CSPC hosted Hubbard for a virtual discussion about his book, which can be viewed on our YouTube channel, along with other virtual roundtables we’ve hosted.
In this week’s roundup, Dan critiques the administration’s decision to restrict H-1B visas; Chris looks at misguided statue vandalism; and Michael covers the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s political survival skills and his next risky gamble. As always, we close with news you may have missed.
Next week, the roundup will be taking a break for the Independence Day holiday. We wish you all a very happy Fourth of July, and we’ll be back on July 10th.
A Major Immigration Mistake
Dan Mahaffee
At a time when America needs, more than ever, to attract the best and brightest in the world, the Trump administration’s move to block H-1B visas is victory for our competitors — as well as a misguided approach for addressing American unemployment and wage growth. At a time when competition over advanced technologies and innovation leadership are the fulcrums upon which global influence, economic prosperity, and national security all turn, pulling up the drawbridge to high skilled workers sends them away from American companies, laboratories, universities, and research institutions. By restricting the H-1B program, specifically for high-skilled immigrants, the administration reveals that its arguments for skills-based immigration are merely lip-service, and the Covid pandemic serves as an excuse for overly-restrictive, ultimately counterproductive immigration policies.
The United States needs more highly skilled workers and researchers than we create. Those eligible for H-1B visas must be sponsored by a U.S. employer for a job that requires at least a bachelor’s degree. The visa is for three years, but is only extendable for a maximum of six years. The program is largely used to place STEM-field workers, scientific researchers, university instructors, and medical professionals. It also serves as one of the key avenues for foreign graduates of U.S. universities to remain in the United States rather than being forced to return to their home country or third country. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has developed an online presentation highlighting the significant economic contribution that H-1B visa-holders have made,
These are highly-skilled individuals in key fields. In January, the National Science Foundation released a report surveying the state of U.S. Science and Engineering (S&E), which highlighted that 30% of the U.S. S&E workforce was foreign born, and that nearly 80% of those foreign-born S&E workers were Master’s or Doctorate degree holders. As Lizebet Boroughs of the Association of American Universities told Nature:
…Medical residents are brought in on H-1B visas, and faculty who are necessary to educate the US workforce…The bottom line is that suspending processing for H-1B visas is going to have an impact on American research and American innovation and America’s ability to train and teach its scientific workforce pipeline.
During the response to the Coronavirus, it’s not just medical professionals, but also researchers that are affected by the move. As the openly pro-immigration American Immigration Council points out:
Eight companies that are currently trying to develop a coronavirus vaccine — Gilead Sciences, Moderna Therapeutics, GlaxoSmithKline, Inovio, Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceuticals, Regeneron, Vir Therapeutics, and Sanofi — received approvals for 3,310 biochemists, biophysicists, chemists, and other scientists through the H-1B program.
The researched compiled by the American Immigration Council also illustrates the salary growth across related fields for native workers, the low-existing unemployment (i.e. worker shortage) in these important fields, and the wide-spread economic impact and hiring of H-1B holders across sectors and geographic hubs — refuting criticism that this program benefits solely Silicon Valley companies.
Furthermore, the move isn’t just counterproductive in terms of the talent needed to find Covid-related therapeutics or vaccines — as well as the research to prepare for the next pandemic or the countless other medical conditions and diseases that haven’t just suddenly disappeared. This blocking of H-1B visas does nothing to actually address the segments of the population that have been worst-affected by the pandemic’s economic impact. H-1B visa holders are largely in high-paying jobs to begin with, while low-paid workers in the hospitality, travel, restaurant, entertainment, and retail industries have borne the brunt of job losses. After all, remember that the average wage increased at the beginning of the pandemic, not because of sudden employer largesse, but rather low-paying jobs leaving the workforce data en masse.
Beyond this very specific field, American competitiveness is harmed across key industries and fields in which our high-tech future is being built. Both allies and competitors will avail themselves of the talent, and U.S. firms will have to move R&D offshore to remain competitive. In a geopolitical competition for technology superiority, talent is a key advantage that the United States cannot afford to cede. Turning qualified, highly skilled workers away — as well as promptly sending away foreign graduates who have studied here — does just that. Our education system’s failures, not foreign talent, are to blame for the lack of American applicants available for these positions. Take cybersecurity for an example of a strategically-important field where our education system is failing to meet our needs, as a report released on Thursday by the EdWeek Research Center illustrates.
This measure from the administration is misguided, at best, as it harms American competitiveness and pushes talent away. In the long-run, when we compete with major global powers, it pushes away a key American advantage. As I’ve said before in these pages: few want to become Russian; you can only be born Han Chinese; but millions have become Americans, with many more yearning to bring their talents here.
Iconoclasm and Historical Illiteracy
Chris Condon
Many in America support the basic goals of the protests which have spread like wildfire over the past few weeks. George Floyd’s death was more proof that America’s justice system is cruelly imbalanced and needs immediate, wide-reaching reform. Further, regulatory and educational structures must be improved to ensure equal opportunity for all, regardless of race, color, or creed. These are the ideals of America, and we should all be willing to stand up and protest to move our nation toward a future in which these ideals are fully realized. However, these protests must be a constructive act, dedicated to creating a movement for positive change. Instead, some protestors have dedicated themselves to destroying statues of presidents, priests, and even staunch opponents of slavery. Such destruction only plays into the narrative that protestors are no more than a violent, anarchist mob.
Col. Hans Christian Heg immigrated to America with his family at age 11 in 1840. From a young age, Heg realized the brutality and moral abhorrence of slavery and joined the fledgling Free Soil Party and later the new Republican Party as he came of age. In the lead up to the Civil War, Heg was a leader of Wisconsin’s Wide Awakes, a local militia dedicated to opposing slave catchers sent from the south to return escaped enslaved persons to servitude. As tensions boiled over and the War began, Heg was appointed colonel of a Union regiment from Wisconsin. As the commander of this brigade, consisting of Scandinavian immigrants largely recruited by Heg himself, he fought valiantly against the slaveholders’ insurrection until he was mortally wounded at the Battle of Chickamauga; he died an American hero. Grateful citizens erected a statue of Colonel Heg outside the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin to commemorate his sacrifice for racial equality and the Union soon after the War.
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 15th, 1865, six days after the army of southern traitor Robert E. Lee surrendered to American hero General Ulysses S. Grant. Although not always the staunchest abolitionist, President Lincoln never owned a slave and became a strong supporter of racial equality while simultaneously preserving the Union throughout the Civil War. Following his tragic murder by John Wilkes Booth, plans soon began to erect a memorial commemorating his dedication to the United States and to the abolition of slavery.
Freedmen soon took up the cause, and organized a group of Black Americans to raise funds for the monument’s creation. They commissioned prominent sculptor Thomas Ball to create the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C., and consulted with him on his design. The monument depicts President Lincoln holding a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation and apprising a man in bondage of his newfound freedom. Frederick Douglass, perhaps the man most responsible for the abolition of slavery in America, was asked to speak at the memorial’s dedication which was attended by President Grant in 1876. During his remarks, he stated the following:
“Fellow-citizens, I end, as I began, with congratulations. We have done a good work for our race today. In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us; we have been fastening ourselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal.
When now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.”
As the 20th century approached, America lurched forward into the Industrial Revolution, creating advancements only dreamt of up to that point. In 1893, Chicago hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition, a global showcase of American ingenuity. Although much of the fair was dedicated to industry and technology, space was also allocated for the display of art and culture. As part of this section, sculptress Jean Pond Miner was commissioned to create a sculpture to represent her native Wisconsin. Women from around the state raised funds to support the creation of the statue, which depicted an allegorical figure of a woman on the bow of a ship (the ship is named “Old Abe” to commemorate Abraham Lincoln) holding an American flag and gesturing forward. Meant to symbolize humanity’s progress, Forward was placed on the grounds of the Wisconsin State Capitol following the Exposition. Although the original was moved indoors due to the risk of damage from the elements, it was replaced by a replica in the 1990s.
This week, rioters forcibly toppled the statue of Colonel Heg. Not satisfied with this act of destruction, the mob beheaded the statue and dumped it into Lake Monona. The same day, Forward was ripped from its pedestal and cast onto the ground. Now, rioters vow to tear down the Emancipation Memorial, a statue that stands on federal property in Lincoln Park in our nation’s capital.
Surely, any rational person would concede that tearing down these monuments makes no logical sense, as their creators and those they depict nobly advanced the struggle for equality. Setting aside the destruction of memorials to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ulysses S. Grant (which is similarly moronic), tearing down statues meant to represent equality only demonstrates the ill-conceived thinking of those who turn peaceful protests violent, or subvert them with anarchic nihilism. Moreover, destroying statues only chips away at the facade of racism, rather than addressing the fundamental structures of racial inequality that the Black Lives Matter movement is meant to challenge. As Americans, we must boldly support the causes that these protests were meant to advance while demanding that public property be protected and that removal only be considered through lawful means.
Netanyahu Goes All-In on Annexation
Michael Stecher
If you have ever played poker, you have met someone like Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, has 120 seats, so to form a government, a party or coalition requires 61 seats. Twice in 2019, Israelis went to the polls and returned parliamentary compositions that precluded a majority from forming. The right-of-center coalition was anchored by Likud, the national conservative party headed by Netanyahu, and a collection of Jewish religious parties were a few votes short, and the center-left coalition that was led by the new Blue and White Party could get close to 60 seats with the support of the Israeli Arab parties. The remaining seats belonged to Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu Party that is explicitly nationalist in its orientation and draws its support from Russian-speaking Israelis who migrated after 1989. Lieberman had effectively vowed not to support any coalition that included the religious parties or a coalition that relied on Arab support, so he was a kingmaker who declined to pick a king.
Meanwhile, the corruption cases against Netanyahu continued towards trial. He worked to secure a commitment from his would-be coalition members to pass a law to make a sitting prime minister immune from legal process while in office, before abandoning it in the face of opposition. If he was out of power, he would face trial alone and likely find a large collection of knives delivered by other senior members of the right-of-center parties in his back.
The third round of Israeli elections produced a similar outcome, but the ground was starting to shift. The immunity bill was an albatross and right-wing knives were coming out. Netanyahu had an inside straight draw against three of a kind on the river. There were exactly 4 cards in the deck that would save his political future, a 10–1 long shot. But here is the thing about Netanyahu: he always seems to catch that card.
The COVID-19 outbreak created a national emergency and neither a caretaker government nor a minority government would have the legitimacy to make the hard calls necessary to fight the virus. Benny Gantz, the leader of Blue and White, blinked; he agreed to a power sharing agreement under which Netanyahu would remain prime minister for 18 months before letting Gantz take the helm and Blue and White would get some of the most important ministries. The Blue and White Party splintered at this betrayal of their “No Netanyahu” pledge, making Benny Gantz the most recent Israeli politician to come at the king and miss.
One of the elements of the power sharing agreement between Gantz and Netanyahu that upset Blue and White supporters was a deal to hold a vote on annexing portions of the West Bank after July 1 — the current euphemism is “applying Israeli civil law” to the West Bank. Netanyahu favors annexing up to 30% of the West Bank, including the entire Jordan River Valley that forms the border with the Kingdom of Jordan, as well as the major Israeli settlements (the ones that people will tell you would be given to Israel in any theoretical peace agreement with the Palestinians) and perhaps large numbers of Israeli settler outposts that are generally considered to be illegal under Israeli law. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy estimates that this could bring more than 450,000 Israeli settlers into Israeli territory, as well as more than 100,000 Palestinians. Gantz is believed to support a smaller annexation plan, perhaps involving a policy statement designed to prevent this unilateral move from too deeply poisoning the future prospects of a Palestinian state, but the remnants of Blue and White are still discussing their position.
Since the annexation discussion has come to the front burner, most of the major players in regional politics have made their opposition heard. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres called it “a most serious violation of international law.” Several EU nations, led by France, Spain, and Belgium, have threatened to formally recognize the State of Palestine and place economic sanctions on Israel. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, has threatened to dissolve the organization and force Israel to take direct political control of the occupied West Bank. King Abdullah of Jordan has threatened to suspend the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty. Shockingly, the United Arab Emirates’ powerful and well-connected ambassador in Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba wrote in an Israeli newspaper in Hebrew, that annexation would end the quiet normalization process that has brought Israel and the Gulf States closer together in recent years.
The Israeli right argues that this is all just a silly dance. The United Nations is already hopelessly biased against Israel, from the bodies that imply that Israel is the only violator of human rights in the world, to the regular Security Council meeting in which scores of countries get to air their pretended grievances towards Israel. The Europeans are the key architects of the growing leftward drift of international sentiment towards Israel; they will never be satisfied. Abbas threatens to disband the Palestinian Authority all the time but he never does it because he is bluffing. Jordan would prefer the Israeli Army in the Jordan Valley to any Palestinian force, so they will get comfortable with this move once the dust settles. And the Arab world has always been like Lucy with the football about the Palestinians: always threatening to do something, while quietly working with Israel for raison d’etat. Meanwhile, Israel would have created the conditions for a defensible future.
But there is something different this time. A combination of forces have strained the bipartisan consensus on the U.S.-Israel relationship. Netanyahu’s strident opposition to the Iran nuclear deal soured relations with the Obama administration, while his warm relationship with Congressional Republicans angered Democrats. The close alignment between the Israeli right and the American religious right also coincides with a leftward drift in the Democratic Party that now has many more voices that are opposed to Israeli policy. And of course President Trump’s perceived pro-Netanyahu preferences warp the American political context. Annexation would end that consensus, perhaps irreparably. Dana Stroul points out that, in 2017, a Senate resolution reaffirming the United States’s commitment to bilateral negotiations as the only way to settle the Israeli-Palestinian dispute garnered 78 co-sponsors. A similar statement that added opposition to the annexation of territory passed the House last December; 221 Democrats supported it and only 5 Republicans did.
The prospect of cooling U.S.-Israel relations under a possible Biden administration may actually be accelerating Israeli plans on annexation, but doing so courts the future many Israelis fear. After each round of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations ended in failure, the consensus in the American political establishment was that Palestinian intransigence was to blame. When Israel built the security barrier in the West Bank, American policymakers argued that it was not an attempt to create facts on the ground. When Israeli settlements grew, the United States looked the other way. If annexation goes ahead, Israel’s diplomatic standing will be determined by swing states in the midwest. When they need support, Israel might find itself alone.
In a sense, this moment in Israeli politics reminds me of Brexit. For a short-term political edge, a right-of-center prime minister made a promise to hold a vote on a divisive policy. All around the world, voices were raised to say that it would be a mistake but domestic politics makes it hard for people to hear those arguments. Four years later, the United Kingdom remains mired in a Hold-My-Beer competition with itself, marginalized in international politics when it was supposed to become a “global Britain.” Whether Israel can avoid that fate depends on the card that Binyamin Netanyahu, under indictment but still the most important Israel politician in his generation, pulls from the deck. Can he hit that straight again?
News You May Have Missed
United States Chimes in on Piracy Issues in Mexico
Emily Stone
On Wednesday, the United States issued a security alert for the Gulf of Mexico after numerous piracy attacks occurred in April in the Bay of Campeche. The area has seen a staggering uptick in these attacks since 2017, primarily occurring on Mexican oil industry vessels and offshore platforms. The pirates, usually travelling in groups of five to fifteen people, have targeted crew members’ personal belongings as well as oil rig equipment, which is then sold on the black market. The Mexican Navy has been addressing the influx of pirates in the region by expanding surveillance and enhancing patrol, but has also struggled due to strained resources.
Victory Parade in Russia holding implications for Great Power Competition
Danielle Anjeh
On Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Russian victory against Nazi Germany. The event featured an expansive military parade with thousands of soldiers shoulder-to-shoulder without the protection of face masks. This event was originally scheduled for May 9, an annual holiday known as Victory Day, but was delayed. President Putin plans that this celebration will alleviate the gloom that has presided over his rule. Both China and India, competing for Russia’s support after recent disputes between their armies, sent officials and soldiers to participate. China is credited with sending the largest foreign contingent. This parade may hold implications for the conflict between China and India and great power competition in Asia.
Saharan Dust Cloud Adds to #2020 Feelings
A natural phenomenon that transports dust of the Sahara desert across the Atlantic Ocean has been peculiarly strong this year. Visibilities and air quality across the Caribbean have declined as the dust cloud has been surprisingly large and at lower altitudes than normal. Visible from satellites, this plume of dust has been responsible for decreased hurricane activity, increased algal blooms, and may even reach up into the mid-Atlantic states by the weekend. While scientists evaluate the event’s cause and impact, the scenes of dust storms in tropical paradises has added to the #2020 vibe.
The views of authors are their own and not that of CSPC.