If It Doesn’t Check 9 Or 10 Out Of Their Boxes, Then They Won’t Pull The Trigger

‘A lot of these people are regular, everyday people … [who] have given their life savings and it’s tragic to see,’ he said. He says because the real estate deal Kunwar was offering was so good, many were eager to tell their friends and family, who also signed up. ‘It just spread like wildfire,’ he said. Ballantyne says the would-be buyers were often taken out to the development site and shown the home they were going to be purchasing. ‘Eventually that unit gets built. Eventually [other] people move into that unit, the closing date comes and goes and people realize, ‘Hey, what’s going on here?’

There’s a photo of Moiz sitting on the back of a Lamborghini in a colorful jacket and matching shoes at the link.

County in Maine looks for the right words to tell Canadians how much it misses them

New signs greet Canadians still crossing the border into northeastern Maine with a cheery bilingual message of “Bienvenue à nos amis canadiens!” Officials have taken care to ensure the Maple Leaf is still fluttering, and that frayed flags are replaced. The airport in Presque Isle has urged its employees to be delicate in conversation with Canadian travellers who may not want to hear American views on trade and tariffs.

No joking about the 51st state, local tourism authorities have urged. No chatting even amongst staff about how nice it would be to get to Canadian Tire without a passport, lest a Canadian customer overhear.

Any of that at this moment is in “especially poor taste and we can treat the topic like talking about politics between staff and customers – we just don’t do it,” said Jacob Pelkey, the Aroostook County tourism developer with the Northern Maine Development Commission.

The county, which stretches around the northeastern corner of Maine and is home to nearly half of the state’s points of entry with Canada, is hoping it can find a new language to reassure Canadian neighbours — some of them family relations and fellow church members, others long-time customers — and keep them coming to the U.S.

For months, rhetoric from the White House has kept large numbers of those travellers away (then-prime-minister Justin Trudeau, too, specifically urged Canadians not to vacation in Maine). Local businesses that depended on customers from neighbouring New Brunswick have seen sales fall by a quarter, with April and May land crossings into Maine down nearly a third from last year. Canadian students at a local university switched to online courses rather than risk intense border scrutiny.

The quest to find a more welcoming vocabulary has, however, thrust this part of Maine into a confrontation with the limitations of language.

What turn of phrase, after all, can soothe the economic pain of businesses struggling to cope with punishing new tariffs or, at the very least, dramatic new uncertainty? What can anyone in Maine say that will prove more convincing than the latest social-media post from the U.S. President? Can anyone find a way to speak louder than Donald Trump?

It’s worth trying, Mr. Pelkey said: “It is always good to talk out loud, and that makes it easier to work together.”

Finding the right words, however, has not proven easy.

“Other than, ’I’m sorry’ — I don’t know what else to say,” said county administrator Ryan Pelletier. “We’re kind of paralyzed by what’s happening.”

“I could beg. That’s about it. ’Please,’ I guess,” said Joe Marino, the meat manager of Andy’s IGA in Houlton, Me., a family-owned grocery store that once counted on Canadians for 30 per cent of its business. Today, that has shrunk to 7 or 8 per cent, he says.

“The state of Maine should be scratching and clawing to try and get as many Canadians across the border as they can,” Mr. Marino said.

Yet he struggles to think how that can be done. Not only have tensions with the U.S. kept some from Canada away, but the exchange rate has made cross-border shopping less attractive, while countertariffs have made it potentially costly for Canadians to bring goods back home.

Any future improvement in fortunes will, Mr. Marino believes, “boil down to money — is it worth your while to deal with the border crossing?”

Some in Maine have decided it’s best to say nothing at all.

“I don’t want my employees engaging with my Canadian customers about some of the negativity or the rhetoric around, say, the North American free-trade agreement,” said Scott Wardwell, director of Presque Isle International Airport.

“I mean, this whole thing isn’t going to be decided between an airport employee and a passenger flying out. It just isn’t. So there really isn’t any value in entering into that debate.”

“You can just imagine if I have an employee start yakking about the 51st state or, ‘We don’t really need Canadians’ and so on — that’s not going to send the right message to my customers,” Mr. Wardwell said.

Tim Lausier, who co-owns the gas station and corner store with his sister, has deep personal connections with Canada, where he was born and still regularly attends hockey games.

In the past few months, though, travel to New Brunswick has meant getting an earful. Employees of one plastic manufacturer stopped coming to his service centre after tariffs hit their business.

Mr. Lausier doubts he will ever see all of his previous customers again, and he wonders what good any words on a sign can do at a time like this.

“They’re not coming,” he said. “They’re not going to see those signs.”

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-county-in-maine-looks-for-the-right-words-to-tell-canadians-how-much/

ICE raids are cruel, but so is an economy built on undocumented labor

Even as Californians protest the crude and often brutal deportation tactics employed by President Trump’s ICE and Homeland Security agents, we’re giving too little thought to how our state, and the nation, is failing the very immigrant community we want to protect.

In the past, particularly in the last century, when the U.S. economy, and California’s, was growing at a fast rate, loosely controlled immigration filled critical needs and, over time, moved many immigrants into an increasingly diverse middle class. But now newcomers are getting stuck. According to new findings from USC and University of California researchers, immigrants account for nearly a quarter of the U.S. population living in poverty, up from 14% three decades ago.

The immigrant poverty rate fluctuates, but it has been rising in recent years, especially since the pandemic. In 2024, 22.4% of all immigrants and 28.4% of non-citizen immigrants, including the undocumented, were poor, the highest rates since 2008.

As well, welfare dependency is more pronounced among immigrants than the native born. A 2023 analysis of census data showed that 54% of households headed by naturalized citizens, legal residents and the undocumented use one or more welfare programs versus 39% of U.S.-born households.

In California, the overall situation is only slightly better. A 2023 report from the Public Policy Institute of California put the poverty rate for all foreign-born residents at 17.6%, compared to 11.5% for those born here. For unauthorized immigrants, however, the rate was even higher than the national figure: 29.6%. Undocumented households, notes a separate USC study, have consistently had the lowest median household income in L.A. — $46,500, compared to $75,000 among all Angelenos in 2024.

The grim statistics reflect a decline starting in the 1980s in blue-collar industries in California, which traditionally offered upward mobility to immigrants. Unionization in the immigrant-heavy hospitality industry has helped lift some families, but those gains may lead to fewer jobs as employers look to rein in costs, potentially by automating some services. And immigration itself, especially mass immigration, puts downward pressure on many of the jobs newcomers fill — in agriculture, for example, or construction.

The dearth of jobs that support families has pushed California toward a model that Michael Lind, a Texas-based historian and author, describes as the “low wage/high welfare model.”

The fiscal implications are severe. The president has signed executive orders denying federal funds to sanctuary cities, funds that would shore up city and state budgets for policing, education and many other services affected by immigration. Those orders have been stymied in the courts, although Trump is sure to try again. At the same time, the budget the president signed into law on July 4 boosts funds for border enforcement but cuts back such things as medical services for non-citizens, even for those who are here legally.

This will cause particular distress in deep blue states. California’s current budget shortfall has forced Trump “resistance” leader Gov. Gavin Newsom to scale back healthcare for the undocumented, which is also occurring in other progressive hotbeds such as Washington state, Illinois and Minnesota.

The simple truth is that the low wage/high welfare economy dependent on illegal immigration isn’t sustainable. Economic reality suggests we need a commonsense policy to restrict new migration and to focus on policies that can allow current immigrants — especially those deeply embedded in our communities and those with useful skills — to enjoy the success of previous generations.

Law-abiding immigrants who are here without authorization should be offered a ticket home or a chance to register for legal status based on a clean record, paying taxes and steady employment. In addition we need to consider a new Bracero Program, which allowed guest workers to come to the U.S. legally without their families in the mid-20th century. Even President Trump has been forced to acknowledge that low-wage immigrant labor is difficult to replace in some sectors.

This kind of immigration reform has eluded Congress for decades, but a clear-eyed assessment shows that merely welcoming newcomers willy-nilly won’t pay off for most migrants or for California. A large pool of undocumented labor is the exact opposite of what is needed to nurture a strong and sustainable economy. If you are protesting against ICE raids and immigrant bashing, you should also be protesting for remaking U.S. immigration according to economic fundamentals. The prospect of a better life should be available to us all.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-07-14/california-immigration-poverty-welfare-deportation-wages

US undocumented farm workers feel ‘hunted like animals’ amid Trump’s immigration raids

Raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) have caused workers to lose hours and income, and forced them into hiding at home, according to interviews

“We really feel like we’re being hunted, we’re being hunted like animals,” said an undocumented farm worker in Ventura county, California, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.

“You can’t go out peacefully to do things, or go to work with any peace of mind anymore. We’re stressed out and our kids are stressed out. No one is the same since these raids started,” the worker added. “We are stressed and worrying if it continues like this, what are we going to do because the rent here is very expensive and it has affected us a lot. How are we going to make ends meet if this continues?”

The US president is “clearly” trying to give corporate leaders “as close to slavery … that he can give to them,” claimed Rosalinda Guillen, a farm worker from Washington, community organizer and founder of the non-profit Community to Community. “Giving workers an opportunity who are already here in this country the ability to work and support their families and stay in this country by giving up their dignity and their freedom to their employer? If that isn’t a definition of slavery, I don’t know what is.”

Trump has indicated that his administration could issue temporary passes to immigrant workers. “Even Trump consumes products being produced by farm workers, without realizing who produced these for him,” Lázaro Álvarez, a member of the Workers’ Center of Central New York and Alianza Agrícola, who has worked on a farm for more than a decade, said.

“They have really demonized us with the word ‘criminals’,” Álvarez said. “Despite the fact we are undocumented, we pay taxes. We are invisible to the government until we pay taxes, and we don’t receive any benefits.”

Teresa Romero, president of United Farm Workers, a labor union representing farm workers, said: “Everything that he’s doing to detain these workers is unconstitutional. They don’t have a document signed by a judge. They don’t have a court order. They want to just eliminate protections of farm workers who are currently here and have been working in the field for 20 to 30 years.

“These workers who have not committed any crime are being taken by people who are masked, are not wearing a uniform and don’t have a marked vehicle, so they are essentially being kidnapped.”

“There’s a lot of fear of going to work,” said Dr Sarait Martinez, executive director of Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño (CBDIO), which works in the Central valley and on the central coast of California with Indigenous farmworkers. She added that family dynamics among farm workers have been changing due to the Ice raids, as parents will alternate between who goes to work and who stays home with the children, to ensure they aren’t both arrested, and separated from their children.

Luis Jiménez, an undocumented farm worker in central New York for 21 years, said the raids have affected the mental health of many undocumented farm workers.

“A lot of people come here to work and their families back home depend on the work and the support of them, so it would be a tragedy if they were arrested and deported,” he said. “We don’t know who is going to report us or at what moment if we go out we will be reported to Ice because of the propaganda the federal government has been carrying out against the immigrant community.”

“There are many people who are racist but do not realize it affects them, too,” added Jiménez. “The immigrant community and migrant labor supports the agricultural industry and makes the economy grow. And if the economy is good, then those people are better off financially.”

“And there are people who don’t care about that because of the simple fact of wanting to get immigrants out of this country.”

Back in Ventura county, the undocumented farm worker warned of far-reaching consequences should Trump press ahead with his crackdown. “If there are no immigrants, there is no food, there are no houses, no hotels, no people who do the work in restaurants,” they said. “Without us, food is going to be more expensive. We’re essential.

“We worked through Covid. We worked through the wildfires in Los Angeles. We get up at 4am every day. No one else is willing to work the eight-, 10-hour days the way we do. We’re not criminals. We’re hardworking people trying to give our kids a better life. And we contribute a lot to this country.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/14/us-farm-workers-ice-raids

‘The US president is “clearly” trying to give corporate leaders “as close to slavery … that he can give to them’

It’s the hollowcost Rosa, they should leave as soon as possible.