Stephen Miller Races to F--K Over Immigrants on His Way Out the Door

By Bess Levin, Vanity Fair

03 December 20

The new father and architect of Donald Trump’s family-separation policy is hard at work.

hen he wasn’t making the case, via Twitter, that he should be put under conservatorship, or speaking to Fox & Friends for hours on end, Donald Trump spent much of the last four years enacting despicable policies, many of which concerned immigration. The top hits obviously include the travel ban, family separation, and spending billions of dollars in taxpayer money on his ridiculous border wall, but also using ICE to terrorize undocumented immigrants, attempting to allow the deportation of 700,000 people who came to the U.S. as children, cutting the refugee cap to the lowest level in history, and generally demonizing anyone who wasn’t born here and making their lives as miserable as possible. Behind these policies was World’s Biggest Bastard nominee for four years running Stephen Miller, the 35-year-old adviser who cut his teeth working for Jeff Sessions and defied his upbringing in Santa Monica to become a white supremacist. And if you thought he was going to ease up the immigrant-bashing policies on his way out the door, you sadly underestimated the depths to which Miller clearly hates himself, a self-loathing that he takes out on anyone with less power than him or who doesn’t have to spray on their hair.

Instead, Miller is reportedly doing everything he can to limit immigration, legal and otherwise, on his way out the door. Per Politico:

Since Election Day, the president’s staffers have pushed through changes that make it easier to deny visas to immigrants, lengthened the citizenship test, and appointed new members to an immigration policy board.... The focus is on putting a bind on President-elect Joe Biden, making it harder for him to reverse these politically fraught issues, according to half a dozen people familiar with the changes.... The administration’s push on immigration is attributed to Stephen Miller, the senior aide who has largely guided the president’s policies on the issue for four years, according to people on both sides of the debate.

On November 13, the administration announced that starting next month, the citizenship test would include more questions about American history and politics. The revised questionnaire, which received some criticism, will increase from 100 to 128 questions. Four days later the administration said it would also give federal officials more discretion in approving an immigration application through updates to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Policy Manual. The changes will provide officers with an expanded list of positive and negative factors they can use to either accept or reject applicants. Administration officials said the new language would make the decisions more consistent and fair, but immigrant advocates said new factors, such as the strength of family ties, history of employment, and community standing, will lead to longer processing times and additional denials.

That same day the administration published a proposed rule that would limit work permits for immigrants awaiting deportation but not in custody.

Additionally, despite the administration’s claims that it’s only illegal immigration it has a problem with, it’s trying to make it harder for people to obtain H-1B visas, which go to highly skilled workers. The move would not only shrink the types of jobs foreign workers can apply for, but also require companies to pay foreign workers more, changes the administration itself says would decrease the number of H-1B applicants by one third. It is also trying to scrap the long-running lottery process for such visas and prioritize authorization for those with the highest-paid jobs. And:

Outside groups are pushing the administration to go even further in its final days. Chris Chmielenski, deputy director at NumbersUSA, which supports immigration restrictions, said he hopes the administration will also limit a program that provides work permits for international students. The administration previously considered the step, but never acted.

“What they’re doing through the transition is working their way down their list of items to minimize immigration to the U.S.,” Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, told Politico. “The Trump administration has been widely effective in terms of grinding our immigration system to a halt.” In a statement, White House spokesman Judd Deere said, “Since taking office, President Trump has never shied away from using his lawful executive authority to advance bold policies and fulfill the promises he made to the American people.”

In a sign of just how far some people want the administration to go in its last few weeks in power, aides reportedly “urged” the president to sign an executive order that would end birthright citizenship, which, as Politico notes, “is enshrined in the Constitution.” The idea was said to be recently dismissed, presumably much to the chagrin of Miller, a uniquely evil nonhuman who, as my colleague Gabriel Sherman reported in 2018, enjoyed “seeing...pictures at the border” of families being separated.

In other Miller news, the Trump adviser is a new father:

And apropos of nothing, here’s an NBC News report from August on the administration’s family-separation policy, which Miller was the architect of:

Miller saw the separation of families not as an unfortunate byproduct but as a tool to deter more immigration. According to three former officials, he had devised plans that would have separated even more children. Miller, with the support of Sessions, advocated for separating all immigrant families, even those going through civil court proceedings, the former officials said.

While zero tolerance ultimately separated nearly 3,000 children from their parents, what Miller proposed would have separated 25,000 more, including those who legally presented themselves at ports of entry seeking asylum, according to Customs and Border Protection data from May and June 2018.