Former Vice President Mike Pence called for a return to immigration and border security policies of the Trump administration during a speech in Phoenix Monday.
In addition, Pence called for the adoption of policies that the Trump administration considered but didn't implement.
Brazil's national soccer team is a draw wherever it plays, often a sentimental choice. The affection will run deeper for some in Japan when the countries play Monday in Tokyo with both headed to the World Cup in Qatar. Geographically distant and culturally distinct, Brazil and Japan are connected by more than a century of immigration — and return migration. The end of slavery in Brazil in 1888 saw Japanese and others recruited to work under near-bondage conditions on coffee plantations in southern Brazil. Brazil is home to the world’s largest Japanese population outside the country — estimated at 2 million. Several hundred thousand Japanese Brazilians have returned to work in Japan over recent decades, changing the face and cadence of towns and cities. Japan has never beaten Brazil in soccer in 12 tries. Two decades ago it hired former Brazilian midfielder Zico to coach its national team. It has fielded a few Brazilian-born players through the years like Alessandro Santos, but this time there are no obvious connections. “I’m not sure I can go to the game, but surely I’d cheer for Brazil,” said Silvia Semanaka, who was born in Brazil to a mother with Japanese roots and moved to Japan 16 years ago to work.
“Maybe I’d wear a Brazil shirt and hold a Japanese flag." Semanaka followed her brother Norberto to Japan, where he played professional baseball for the Chunichi Dragons, a game he honed in the Japanese community near Sao Paulo. Almost no one in Brazil plays baseball. “In Brazil, baseball is seen as Japanese game,” Norberto said. Despite growing up in the world's most famous soccer country, Norberto said he played “zero soccer.” “There was no time for soccer, because every weekend they were playing baseball,” Silvia said. Norberto's been in Japan longer than his sister, setting down roots and running the popular Brazilian restaurant Kaminalua in the small town of Oizumi, located about 90 kilometers (55 miles) northwest of Tokyo. A small gallery at the restaurant's entrance shows off his old Dragons' baseball jersey (No. 65), cap, glove and bat — and newspaper clippings that make him a small-town celebrity. He went to high school in Japan, speaks Japanese fluently, and was a left-handed hitting first baseman known for his bat. “My life is half and half,” he said, “half in Brazil and half here in Japan. In soccer, it’s Brazil." About 2% in Japan have foreign nationality. Oizumi and other small towns that have drawn immigrants are different. Of Oizumi's 40,000 residents, the local city hall says 20% were born outside Japan and just over half are Japanese Brazilians The next largest group is Peruvians, followed by Nepalese and Vietnamese. The city claims about 32 nationalities. Supermarkets, companies offering moving services, and other shops are sprinkled with Brazilian flags. All popular Brazilian food and drink is here: Pacoquita, the tasty peanut confection; cans of feijoada, the black-bean stew; and the popular soft drink Guarana. Signs abound in Japanese and Portuguese. Some shopping malls make announcements in Japanese, Portuguese, English, and Chinese. This may be common in the United States or countries with large immigrant communities, but it's not in homogenous Japan. “It sounds like you are in an airport,” Silvia said. Many Brazilians in the Oizumi area returned to work at the local Subaru car plant or other factories. Silvia runs a language school where she teaches English and others teach Portuguese or Japanese. Parents with children born in Japan want them to know Portuguese or Japanese — depending on which is absent — and adults who immigrated study Japanese or English. LAREDO, Texas — Just a month after President Biden took office, pledging to roll back Trump-era policies in an attempt to take a more humane approach to immigration, Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from South Texas, began to sound an alarm.
He warned that the number of migrants seeking to enter the country would rise, and soon released photos of children sleeping under tinfoil blankets at a crowded migrant processing facility in his district at the edge of the U.S.-Mexico border. Now Mr. Cuellar, 66, has become one of the administration’s most consistent critics on immigration, appearing on Fox News and at times echoing Republicans, saying immigrants are pouring into the United States because they believe “that the border is open.” His criticism has been met with fierce resistance from Jessica Cisneros, 28, a progressive immigration lawyer who is trying to unseat him in a Democratic runoff on Tuesday. Like other Democratic primary contests, their race is a proxy battle for the broader direction of a party that is being tugged between moderate and progressive wings. But in particular, it encapsulates the acute tensions within the party on immigration. In interviews with Democratic leaders and voters in Texas’ 28th Congressional District, which stretches from Laredo to San Antonio, many expressed a deep frustration with both national Democrats and Republicans who use the border as a political backdrop but have failed to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, combat the drug trade or improve legal pathways to citizenship. And many worried that Democrats lack a forceful and coherent message when facing Republicans who have appeared increasingly intent on portraying a migrant “invasion,” making it a marquee issue of the midterm elections. Mr. Cuellar is often at the center of the debate. His supporters say he is simply trying to balance competing Democratic factions on the issue, as the G.O.P. has largely abandoned policy-centered debate in favor of anti-immigrant appeals. But he is criticized just as much by Democrats concerned he sounds too much like a Republican, focused on enforcement rather than a humanitarian approach. |