Substantial Means Significant

Substantial
1. Interp: Plan must be impacting a substantial statutory restriction

Substantial means significant
Merriam Webster 20
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/substantial
considerable in quantity : significantly great
2. Violation: plan does not remove a substantial amount of restrictions on legal

immigration
3. Standards
Limits BEST Standard
1. Limits is the best standard for adjudication. It’s the only way to give
the judge a clear standard for evaluating interpretations.
2. Limits is the best standard because it discusses the root issue of

procedurals. Limits outline what should be allowed and not allowed
under the topic. Limits are necessary as a prerequisite to other
standards.
Predictability Standard
1. Predictability is necessary for a statis point within the debate. Without it there is no clash and no
education will be gained.
4. Voters
Fairness
Education
NC- Refugees
1. Capitalism is unsustainable and now is key to socialist organization
Geier and Sustar ‘16, *associate editor of the International Socialist Review; **labor editor of
Socialist Worker and a frequent contributor to the ISR, (Joel and Lee, Fall, “World economy: The return
of crisis,” International Socialist Review, Issue #102, http://isreview.org/issue/102/world-economy-
return-crisis)
In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of
overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism ; it appears as if a
famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and
commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilization , too much means of
subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The crisis of neoliberalism- In past decades, mainstream economists would have sneered
at such an analysis. These days, however, the more honest establishment economists are coming to grips with the fact
that neoliberalism—the policies of privatization, deregulation, free trade, social- spending cuts, and union bashing that had delivered a
long upward swing of the world economy between 1982 and 2007—does not offer a solution to the chronically depressed
world economy. On the contrary, neoliberalism is increasingly seen to be at the root of the problem . In
2011, New York University economist Nouriel Roubini told the Wall Street Journal that “Karl Marx had it
right. At some point capitalism can destroy itself. . . . We thought markets worked. They’re not working .”7
After five more years of weak economic growth, other mainstream economists also rejected the orthodoxy.
Notably, Lawrence Summers, the former secretary of the US Treasury turned critic of establishment economics, now
argues that the world economy is gripped by what he calls “secular stagnation,” his description of the prolonged
period of weak growth. He concluded that the economic theory he taught for years is wrong.8 Two staff writers
for the IMF— a training ground for neoliberal technocrats as well as a debt collection agency for Western banks—admitted that “ aspects of
the neoliberal agenda . . . have not delivered as expected .”9Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf asserted that if big
banks had to be effectively nationalized during the 2008 crash, they should be considered wards of the state.10 Economist Robert Gordon’s
latest book is titled The Rise and Fall of American Growth.11 The list could go on. The combination of economic and
ideological crises has led directly to political ones . The impact of a new global slump on world politics is beyond the scope of
this article. It must suffice to say that the polarization seen in the recent economic “good” years will continue. The flux
in imperialist relations following the twin US defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq has ensured that the political
consequences of a depressed world economy will be magnified. This includes revolution,
counterrevolution, and civil war in the Middle East, the biggest refugee crisis in seventy years, the rise of anti-
immigrant right-wing politics in Europe, and working-class resistance as seen in France and other countries. The continued crisis
in the dominant political parties of both the older and newly industrialized nations is part of a process of
political polarization that has produced political possibilities for both the Right and the Left. There is a left-
wing electoral revival in Greece, Spain, and Portugal, as well as the victory of leftist Jeremy Corbyn in Britain’s Labor
Party, which had been the pacesetter in European social democracy’s turn to neoliberalism. While the
outcomes are varied—Greece’s Syriza capitulated to creditors, with Spain’s Podemos likely to face a
similar challenge—anti-austerity politics were finding an expression at the ballot box. For their part, far-right
parties—such as Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France and Norbert Hofer’s Freedom Party in Austria—are seeking electoral gains based on
channeling popular anger over the economy against immigrants. But French
unions’ big strikes and protests against anti-
labor laws in 2016 highlighted the potential of working-class resistance and raised opportunities for the
renewal of the Left within that struggle.12 In the United States, the economy and rising inequality fueled both
the rise of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant “Make America Great Again” campaign and Bernie Sanders’s unexpected
success in reintroducing socialism into mainstream US political discussion for the first time in decades. Of course,
the capitalist class and its political representatives will not stand idly by as the world economy drifts from crisis to
crisis. On the contrary, capital and the state will by turns try and contain, co-opt, or crack down against any
serious challenge from below. US imperialism will develop a new strategy to reassert its power . At the same time,
capital will grope towards some way to restructure the system to restore growth and profitability—which
inevitably will mean intensifying class conflict. If neoliberalism succeeded in gutting Western social
contracts and “partnership” labor-management relations, the next capitalist restructuring will attempt to shred what
remains. In France, it is the El Khomri law to gut workers’ rights; in the United States, it is “entitlement reform,” a euphemism for cutting
Social Security and Medicare. The stormy economic times ahead will only increase this political volatility and
create both challenges and opportunities for a rebirth of revolutionary socialist politics and
organization. The opportunities for such a revival are clear. But if socialists are to make a convincing case for their
views, they must put forward an analysis of the current crisis and an understanding why it cannot be solved
on a capitalist basis without even greater human suffering than we have seen in recent years .
2. Refugee programs create a “meritocracy of suffering” that serves to reify neoliberal

capitalism
Mavelli, Luca (2018) (Luca Mavelli is senior lecturer in politics and international relations at the
University of Kent, UK. His research focuses on biopolitics, neoliberalism, migration, security, and
secularism, “Citizenship for Sale and the Neoliberal Political Economy of Belonging.” International
Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1093/isq/sqy004 © The Author(s) (2018). Published by Oxford University Press
on behalf of the International Studies Association,
https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/62/3/482/4996972, 7/14/20 PG)
However, as I argued in the first section, this argument neglects how forms
of inclusion based on human rights, shared
humanity, and common solidarity may be colonized and corrupted by neoliberalism . It neglects how these values may
have undergone a process of economization and how—given that economization cannot be reduced to monetization—entrepreneurial
states may try to maximize not just their economic growth, but their non-monetary and non-
economic value. Hence, they may evaluate prospective citizens—a few hundred Syrian refugees, in this case—
as capital that may enhance their cultural, emotional, and reputational value, even if this
implies an economic cost. This argument appears particularly relevant in the aftermath of Alan Kurdi’s death. In
New Zealand, “Amnesty, the United Nations, Catholic bishops, former Prime Minister Helen Clark and local mayors publicly urged the
Government to do more” (Vance 2015). Yet, the rationale for “doing more” was not
solely framed as necessary in order to
relieve the suffering of Syrian refugees. For Labor leader Andrew Little, “Kiwis” should keep up
with their “track record” of open borders for those in need because “[t]here is something in our
nature—we are people of conscience and compassion—[committed] to offer help” (Vance 2015).
Similarly, for then prime minister John Key, New Zealand should do more because “people want us to respond with extra people, they definitely
want us to respond for Syrians” (New Zealand Herald 2015). These remarks invite us to consider how
responding to the demand
of compassion stemming from the emotional wave provoked by Alan’s death required
supplying New Zealand with Syrian refugees in order to reproduce an ethical and
compassionate self-understanding of New Zealanders. Alan’s death, in other words,
contributed to turn Syrian refugees—specifically, a few hundred Syrian refugees with mental
and physical disabilities—into a source of emotional capital which would contribute to
strengthening the self-understanding of the moral value of the country. To further explore this argument, it
is necessary to consider how the last few years have witnessed a progressive shift from human rights to humanitarianism. This means that
provisions of care for “precarious lives” such as “the lives of the unemployed and the asylum
seekers, . . . of sick immigrants and people with AIDS, . . . of disaster victims and victims of
conflict” (Fassin 2012, 4) are increasingly linked and subordinated to their recognition as
“victims.” Abetted by the protean development of visual culture and social media consumption, humanitarianism has introduced a new
language of compassion and emotions revolving around notions of “suffering” and “trauma” that has resulted in the construction of a “new
humanity” made of individuals who are legitimate as long as they are recognized as “suffering bodies” (Ticktin 2011, 4–5). Miriam Ticktin (2011,
2), for instance, explores the French so-called “illness clause”: a humanitarian principle that grants residence to migrants already in the country
who suffer from a life-threatening condition that would not be properly treated in their home country. This clause endows the government
with the power to decide what constitutes “legitimate suffering” and has contributed to turn the “suffering body” into a “means to papers”
(Ticktin 2011, 4). For Ticktin (2006, 35), this clause is the product of and contributes to reproduce a self-understanding of France as a “global
moral leader” and as the “home of human rights.” It has engendered “a new politics of citizenship in France, a humanitarian space at the
intersection of biopolitical modernity and global capital, in which contradictory and unexpected diseased and disabled citizens emerge” (Ticktin
2006, 35). Humanitarianism institutes a
new global “meritocracy of suffering” (Clifford Bob, quoted in Ticktin
2006, 34) that favors the establishment of humanitarian corridors for certain categories of
refugees—such as women and children, particularly if affected by physical and mental
conditions—and the hardening of borders for able-bodied refugees. Ticktin’s argument resonates with
Mezzadra and Neilson’s notion of “differential inclusion.” This term captures how the modern process of “disarticulation of citizenship” results
in a condition in which “inclusion in a sphere, society, or realm can be subject to varying degrees of subordination, rule, discrimination, and
segmentation” (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013, 159). However, whereas Mezzadra and Neilson deem differential inclusion a function of the
neoliberal political economy of labor—that is, of the capacity of laboring bodies to be inscribed in and contribute to neoliberal mechanisms of
production, accumulation, and dispossession—Ticktin alerts us that inclusion may also be a function of humanitarianism. For her,
humanitarianism represents a partial degeneration (my term) of the human rights regime since it subordinates the universalism of human rights
to the more particularist and selective discourses of emotions, charity, and compassion. Building on Ticktin’s argument, my contention is that
humanitarianism and, specifically, the
establishment of humanitarian corridors for vulnerable refugees are
a product of a neoliberal political economy of belonging that deems vulnerable refugees as a
source of emotional capital that can strengthen the humanity capital of the country. This argument is
well illustrated by the United Kingdom’s decision, shortly after the death of Alan Kurdi, to commit to take twenty thousand Syrian refugees over
a period of five years directly from camps in Syria’s neighboring countries. Then prime minister David Cameron (cited in BBC News 2015)
explained that the refugees would be selected on the basis of need: “We will take the most vulnerable: . . . disabled children, . . . women who
have been raped, . . . men who have suffered torture.” Even more than in the case of New Zealand, the British government—which had
withdrawn its support for search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean in 2014 and refused to accept any refugees under the European
Union emergency resettlement program in 2015—came under heavy pressure to open its borders to those in greater need. Revealingly, the
flurry of calls urging the government to act questioned how, by failing the test of compassion, the United Kingdom was betraying its identity,
undermining its status as a moral nation capable of abiding by its obligations, and losing its moral value (Mavelli 2017b, 826–27). The United
Kingdom, in other words, was irredeemably damaging what could be described as its humanity capital. To avert and reverse this process, in the
framework of a logic of economization of emotions, the country decided to invest in a small number of refugees who could undeniably be
recognized as “victims.” To this end, the pledge was to not just take “womenandchildren” refugees—the embodiment of defenseless, apolitical,
and innocent victimhood as per Cynthia Enloe’s famous definition (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2017, 207). The
United Kingdom raised
its moral investment by committing to take the suffering (and emasculated) bodies of disabled
children, raped women, and men who had been tortured in order to produce the emotionally
valuable, deeply racialized, and gendered figure of the “ideal refugee” (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2017, 209). The
fact that this choice may be potentially costly for the health system lends support to the
argument advanced in this article. The market value of prospective citizens may not be reduced
to their human, economic, or financial capital and to their capacity to contribute to the
economic growth of the country. The process of neoliberal economization turns emotions into a
valuable source of capital, with the effect that inclusion may become a function of prospective citizens’ capacity to strengthen the
emotional identity and moral self-understanding of the country. From this perspective, the physically and mentally disabled refugees taken by
the United Kingdom and New Zealand should be considered an
investment and the embodiment of an emotional
capital instrumental to preserving and promoting a national sense of collective pride, self-
esteem, and moral righteousness. This neoliberal political economy of belonging makes it possible that, while residency to an
autistic child from a relatively wealthy family is denied on the grounds that he would be a burden to taxpayers, a few hundreds or thousands of
disabled refugees are welcomed, despite their potential cost, as a testimony of the country’s humanity. Simultaneously, the neoliberal political
economy of belonging decrees that hundreds of thousands of refugees may languish in refugee camps in North Africa, Turkey, and Europe, or in
offshore locations such as Christmas Island, and that hundreds may die every day in the attempt to cross border zones such as the United
States–Mexican border or the Mediterranean. The reason for these diverging responses is that, as Ticktin emphasizes, the universalism of
human rights is subordinated to the particularism of the politics of emotions. This argument, transposed in the conceptual framework advanced
in this article, means that not
all vulnerable refugees may have sufficient emotional impact to have their
suffering turned into “humanity value” for the country.
3. Neoliberal citizenship corrupts democracy and fosters inequality

These rationalities also inform “talent for citizenship” schemes, such as the recent initiative of the Wellington Regional Economic Development
Agency (WREDA). This agency launched a call for the “the best and the brightest” from across the world to fill one hundred high-qualified tech
jobs in Wellington, New Zealand, and encouraged them to settle “in a place with a lifestyle you never thought possible” (WREDA 2017). In all of
these cases, entrepreneurial
states compete against each other in order to attract the wealthiest
and brightest in exchange for citizenship, business opportunities, or the promise of an
outstanding lifestyle. Undoubtedly, these schemes encompass an underlying logic of commodification. Yet, the above cases show
that commodification takes place even if citizenship and residency are not traded for cash. Hence, contra what many scholars of “citizenship for
sale” explicitly or implicitly suggest, commodification is not exclusive to cash-for-passports programs. Hence, these initiatives cannot be
reduced to mere processes of commodification in which states are succumbing to the power of market. What is at stake is a more complex
phenomenon in which entrepreneurial states—initiators and expression of a neoliberal process of economization—are redesigning
the meaning and implication of citizenship and belonging in neoliberal terms. This leads us to the second
main limitation of existing scholarship. Its narrow focus on commodification makes it unable to grasp how citizenship-by-investment schemes
are partof a broader neoliberal process that is undermining citizenship not just from within but
from without. Current scholarship considers how these schemes “corrupt democracy” and
foster inequality by undermining the principle of equality at the heart of citizenship. Yet, it neglects
how the very same process takes place even in the absence of citizenship-by-investment schemes. In particular, existent accounts ignore how
the race to attract the wealthiest and brightest is blurring the divide between “citizens” and
“residents” to the effect that “wealthy” residents may be granted more rights than citizens
lacking in human or economic capital.
4. The logic of global capitalism is necessitates constant global war and genocide
Illas ‘15--(Edgar, assistant Professor of Catalan and Spanish in the Department of Spanish and
Portuguese and capitalist theorist @ Indiana University, Bloomington, “Survival, or, the War Logic of
Global Capitalism”, March 16th, 2015, http://arcade.stanford.edu/content/survival-or-war-logic-global-
capitalism) kb
Perhaps the logic of global capitalism is no longer cultural but has evolved into a logic of war. As Fredric Jameson
and David Harvey, among many others, taught us, financial capitalism unfolded in the second half of the twentieth century based on a logic of
difference that produced cultural and spatial identities throughout the globe. In postmodernity, localities, cities, nations, and all
types of
spaces and communities began to develop distinctive qualities to attract the flows of global capital .
Postmodern culture was thus fully subsumed in the production and marketing of difference. While this process is still operative today, another
aspect seems to play the dominant role. This aspect is the war logic of globalization . Globalization appeared in the 1990s as the
consolidation of a single world market, the establishment of post-Cold War peace, the successful union of capitalism and
democracy, and the technological development that would make possible the interconnectedness of the
globe. But in the 2000s, and especially after 9/11, globalization has shown a darker side: multiple forms of state
and transnational violence have not proven to be exceptional moments of conflict, but the normal
functioning of the system. Violence does not interrupt the smooth course of globalization; on the contrary, the global world
needs to be in a constant state of emergency in order to function in an effective and profitable way.
Many theorists have described the unprecedented nature of this new state of war. For Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, globalization
has turned war into a “permanent social relation” and has effaced the traditional distinction between
politics and warfare. Hardt and Negri emphasize three characteristics of the global state of war: the unlimited extension of conflict, both
spatially and temporally; the intermingling of domestic and international politics ; and the diffusion of the Schmittian
distinction between friend and enemy. A certain ambiguity traverses their narrative. On the one hand, they locate the
origin of global war in the shift from modern warfare to biopolitical warfare, that is, in the emergence of
twentieth century biopolitical control of populations and bodies through state apparatuses . For Hardt and
Negri, the technologization of death that culminated in Auschwitz and Hiroshima represents the full capture of social life by biopolitical control
and destruction. On the other hand, however, they present a historical difference between twentieth-century wars
and global war when they observe that the latter, starting with George Bush’s 1991 Persian Gulf War,
constitutes a “project to create a ‘new world order’ .” In this respect, a fundamental difference separates the two historical
phases, and the complete destructiveness of total war has been supplemented by a certain constructive impulse of global war. Global war
is constructive to the extent that it permanently redefines the spaces of globalization and rearranges the
distribution of sovereign power. Carlo Galli draws up a different historical typology and divides modern war in three phases. First,
what Clausewitz called “real absolute war” corresponds to the classic wars between nation-states within the Westphalian legality of the Jus
Publicum Europaeum. In this phase, war had a distinct rationale, namely the protection of the national body against other national enemies.
Second, what Raymond Aron called the “total wars” of the twentieth century led to mass destruction in both social and individual spheres. The
rationale of war was no longer protection but irrational destruction. Galli observes that, despite their genocidal logic, total wars still produced a
main spatial difference between “friend” and “enemy,” which resulted in the bipolarity of the Cold War. In global war, in contrast, we no
longer find a clear difference between the spaces of the friend and the spaces of the enemy . For Galli, global
war involves no telos and no division between internal and external spaces. Global war is the inherent obverse of globalization, in which “every
local point become[s] an immediate function of a single global Totality (the principle of ‘glocality’).” Globalization is “at every point, an
immediate short-circuit between local and global,” which generates a “contradiction without system” and makes violence a boundless mode of
being. The difference between this situation and total war is that the latter was based on total mobilization and “the immediate militarization of
The transformation of violence into a social
society,” whereas global war entails “the global socialization of violence.”
relation has destabilized a central paradigm for political and theoretical practices. Whereas under the
cultural logic of late capitalism the recognition of all types of differences and the unearthing of
heterodox, queer, marginal and subaltern subjectivities were the main driving forces of critical efforts, in
the new conjuncture recognition is no longer the last horizon of cultural and social politics . Under the
war logic of globalization, another regime has become dominant: the regime of survival . Two determinations
conflated in the task of cultural recognition. First, the cultural logic of capital established a market of identities that
made possible the recognition of multiple subject positions that had been previously invisible or
nonexistent. Second, the destruction of total war in the twentieth century made imperative that an ethical task of recognition worked
against the disappearances, forgetting, and repression it caused everywhere. Recognition encompassed, on the one hand, ethical work against
the effects of total war and, on the other, an opening to the possibilities offered by the new postmodern marketplace. I will now focus on three
important aspects of the regime of survival. These aspects are the new antagonistic relation between life and death; the post-katechontic
nature of survival; and the overcoming of the modern paradigms of convivance and biopolitics. The contemporary regime of survival contends
with a new reality of life and death. While in the last decades of the twentieth century cultural recognition attempted to give visibility to what
total war had erased, an effort that could generate positive effects, like reparation or affirmation, or more aporetic ones, like the impossibility
of bridging the gap between visibility and invisibility amidst the infinite dimensions of justice, survival copes instead with the fact that, within
global war, life and death are two absolute conditions, with no possible bridge or dialogue between them. Death produced by total war
resulted in cultural exclusion and social destruction and, as psychoanalysis and trauma studies have analyzed, death marked the beginning of
endless chains of haunting specters and mourning acts. Death under global war, in contrast, is as constituent as life. It is as destructive as it is
constructive. It is not hidden but fully exposed. It has no function in the structuring of social life other than being productive elimination.
Survival is therefore the task of escaping death and establishing no connection to it. But we should not understand the new conjuncture as a
return to a pre-political stage where homo homini lupus est. Global war is not the situation previous to sovereign power and in which, in
Hobbes’s famous phrase, there is “continual fear and danger of violent death, and [where] the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and
short.” In fact, we may define it as the exact opposite, that is, as the post-political condition that results from the
crumbling of the state’s monopoly on violence. The absence of an indisputable sovereign power that can limit the spaces of
life and death produces a sense of permanent threat and an apocalyptic structure of feeling. Global war entails the end of Carl Schmitt’s
katechon, that is, the demise of “the power that prevents the long-overdue apocalyptic end of times from already happening now.” In this
conjuncture, survival is an unregulated struggle to live on, with no form of governmentality that directs it and
no katechontic principle that controls it. One often encounters the idea that the so-called “survival of the fittest” encapsulates the
governmentality of our times. The premise is that we inhabit a sort of capitalist jungle in which only the strong
survive and where, as Guns’n’Roses used to sing, “ya learn to live like an animal in the jungle where we play .” Yet
the problem with this ideologeme is not so much that it justifies the colossal inequalities produced by economic competition, but
rather that it applies the rational template of the law of the stronger on a global reality in which the
rationalities of modernity have imploded. The logic of survival does not refer to the post-evental circumstance of those who
come out alive from a war or those who win in an economic battle. Rather, it defines an ongoing and productive condition
determined by the presence of immediate catastrophe . In this context, political practices are no longer
oriented toward the modern question of convivance and living together, but, as French anthropologist Marc Abélès writes,
they result from what he calls “the interiorization of the survival problem .” For Abélès, the reflections and practices that go
from the construction of Hobbes’s Leviathan to the implementation of the Keynesian welfare state, aimed at finding the best possible political
form for the organization of the living together of human beings. Within globalization, in contrast, “the political field finds itself overrun by a
gnawing interrogation concerning the uncertainty and threats that the future possesses.” But Abélès explains the transition from
modern convivance to postmodern survival in terms of biopolitics, and he defines “survival” as the
“biopolitical dimension” of neoliberal governmentality. As is known, for Foucault the imperative of the biopolitical
state is “to ‘make’ live and ‘let’ die,” that is, to regulate life and pursue the disciplining and subsequent purification of the social body
for the extraction of surplus labor. It is true that, in Foucault, biopolitics do not lead to a positive organization of convivance but
rather to a system of terror of which the Nazi state is “the paroxysmal development.” However, the genocidal logic of the
biopolitical state was not oriented toward the administration of future uncertainty . Systematic massacring did
not pursue the control of future threats, but continued to organize convivance by means of a radical extirpation of the perverted and
inoperative elements of the population. For this reason, if the contemporary regime of survival is not about organizing communal living-
together, then it cannot be biopolitical. Biopower is not the primary catalyzer of the new world order. But let’s now focus on the productive
energies of the regime of survival. The interiorization of survival by individuals, which is a way of inserting the work of the state into one’s
subjectivity, compels everyone to play a protective but also entrepreneurial role in the social field. Thus, survival takes multiple forms of
intervention. It may consist in the direct attack on other positions that are not necessarily dominant or oppressive, but that are perceived as
threats in a given moment. It may be the effort to protect an inherited body of knowledge against external contamination or internal dissent. It
can operate as preemptive manhunt that neutralizes future conflicts. It can develop guerrilla tactics, with hide-and-seek movements and
specific targets. It can consist of mafia politics based on friendship and alliances of common interests. It can take the shape of a covert
operation in the sphere of infowar and cyberwar. It can be violent or non-violent, physical or symbolic, melodramatic or unspectacular, real or
virtual, or a combination of both, or a synthesis of all of the above. This brief list of forms is indicative of one central aspect: the neutral
ideology of the work of survival. Survival is neither progressive nor reactionary; it is indeterminate and generic. It is a standard principle
imposed on all political and critical interventions, and yet it does not make interventions indifferent to the world. On the contrary, the work of
survival transforms all social practices into interventionist practices. Each individual and collective action becomes effectively militant and
activist.
5. The alt is a resistance to neoliberal capitalism in all its forms

Challenging existing scholarship, I showed how neoliberalism does not simply undermine political notions of citizenship grounded in
reciprocity, fairness, equality, mutual participation, and solidarity by replacing these principles with economic
ones. Rather, neoliberal economization rewrites these principles in economic terms . The result is that
neoliberalism does not make inclusion solely “conditional upon the applicant’s wallet size” (Shachar and Hirschl 2014, 246; see also Reding
2014). In the neoliberal political economy of belonging, states include and exclude individuals and groups
according to the latter’s endowment of human, financial, economic, moral, and emotional
capital. This argument has four main theoretical and political implications for the existing debate on neoliberalism and the neoliberalization
of citizenship. First, neoliberalism absorbs, rewrites, and profanes contending moral systems —such as
humanitarianism—because it “invariably exists in an essentially parasitical relationship with those
extant social formations with which it has an antagonistic relationship” (Peck, Theodore, and Brenner 2010,
96). Hence, neoliberalism disguises its hegemony and neutralizes the power of resistance of opposing
regimes and practices—such as humanitarian corridors—by co-opting them . This means that neoliberal
rationalities operate at a much more concealed level than that represented by the possibility for the ultra-rich to buy citizenship or residency.
Future research on the neoliberalization of citizenship needs to account for the fact that neoliberalism as a transformation of subjectivities and
political rationalities is not happening in plain sight, but, as Wendy Brown (2015) perceptively observes, as a “stealth revolution.” Second,
neoliberalism’s “stealth revolution” encompasses and thrives on a distinctive emotional logic. This
logic transcends mere cost-benefit
calculations. It prompts states to strive to maximize their capital value even in those moral,
emotional, and reputational domains where money may not be directly at stake or even if this may imply an economic cost.
This means that neoliberal rationalities, and therefore neoliberal citizenship, cannot be reduced to mere dynamics of profit and
commodification. Neoliberal citizenship is the product of a more complex and protean matrix of accumulation that frames individuals and
groups as the embodiment of different forms of capital value. In
this matrix, the suffering and victimization of
particularly vulnerable refugees may be as valuable as the material wealth of ultra high-net-
worth individuals who buy their way into the country. Hence, neoliberalism establishes a
regime of differences—between included and excluded, worthy and unworthy, and valuable
and less valuable—through a logic of equivalence that reduces every human to some form and
amount of capital. Future research needs to further investigate the role that racial and gender stereotypes play in the establishment
of this logic of equivalence and in the perception and construction of certain migrants as a valuable source of emotional capital. Third, the
neoliberal logic of equivalence is not only fostering a process of “disarticulation of citizenship,” which, as Mezzadra and Neilson (2013, 159)
observe, subordinates inclusion “to varying degrees of subordination, rule, discrimination, and segmentation.” It is prompting thevery
overcoming of citizenship by making the traditional rights of protection and mobility associated
with this institution no longer a function of birth, residency, and family ties but of an
individual’s or group’s endowment of different forms of capital. The term “neoliberal
citizenship” may thus well be an oxymoron. Citizenship designates a protected status that has
been increasingly questioned by neoliberal rationalities. The inherent contradiction in the
notion of neoliberal citizenship reveals a fundamental feature of neoliberalism: neoliberalism
cannot coexist with contending schemes of value, as it has a remarkable capacity to capture
and incorporate them. Neoliberalism, differently said, has no outside. Fourth, this argument does not suggest that resistance
to neoliberalism is impossible or futile. It suggests that resistance needs to begin from the recognition that
neoliberalism is not one voice among many but the overarching grammar that governs structures of
consciousness and regimes of practices in existing debates on citizenship, inclusion, and belonging. Hence, I conclude , resistance to the
neoliberal political economy of belonging cannot start from the search for alternative “schemes
of virtue” (Ong 2006b, 22) but from an investigation of how seemingly contending rationalities
have been infiltrated, colonized, and distorted by neoliberal logics. It requires bringing to the
surface the internal alienation of existing practices of inclusion and exclusion, revealing their contradictory and
unifying logics, and exposing their inner hypocrisies by interrogating how states have been actively promoting and cultivating neoliberal forms
of belonging.
PIC
The United States Federal Government should ____________________ except for
Russian immigration.
1NC
A. Biden’s Presidency Means Russian Influence Are at a New Low Now
Ellyatt 20 (Holly Ellyatt, correspondent covering European macroeconomics and policy, Why Russia — and Putin — might be worried
about a Biden presidency,” CNBC. 21 October 2020) – JXN E
Analysts expect that a

victory for Biden would increase tensions between Washington and Moscow and
would raise the probability of new sanctions on Russia . The country is already operating under international sanctions on
some key sectors and Russian officials close to Putin. However, arms control is an area that both Russia-watchers believe could be a point of mutual
interest and some harmony. Despite some tough sanctions and even tougher criticism, Russia has not topped America’s foreign
policy priorities under President Donald Trump , who has appeared to have a congenial relationship with his counterpart Vladimir
Putin. However, that could all change if Democrat nominee Joe Biden wins the November 3 election, according to experts, who are weighing up the
implications of a Biden presidency on U.S.-Russia relations. At the very least, analysts expect that a victory for Biden would
increase tensions between Washington and Moscow, and would raise the probability of new
sanctions on Russia. The country is already operating under international sanctions on some key sectors and Russian officials close to Putin,
for actions including its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, interference in the U.S. election in 2016 and reported involvement in a nerve agent
attack in the U.K. in 2018. Mutual distrust Andrius Tursa, central and eastern Europe advisor at Teneo Intelligence, said a win for Biden would improve
transatlantic ties between the U.S. and Europe and would see “a renewed U.S. commitment to NATO” that would be welcomed by Europe. However he
also said such a result would mean “mostly downsides for Russia,” citing a recent history of mutual distrust and acrimonious
relations between the Kremlin and U.S. Democrats. “In general, a potential Biden presidency would be negative for Moscow
and likely lead to a further deterioration of bilateral relations, both in terms of rhetoric and substance . The Democratic Party’s
candidate has long maintained a tough stance towards President Vladimir Putin’s administration,” Tursa said in a note Friday. “ The Kremlin’s
disdain for Biden, meanwhile, dates back to his vice-presidency , particularly his push for sanctions
against Russia in response to the 2014 Ukrainian crisis.” A meaningful conflict resolution over Crimea, and in the Donbass
region in east Ukraine (where there are two pro-Russian regions that declared themselves republics) still eludes Moscow and Kiev, despite efforts by
Germany and France to broker a lasting settlement that both sides can live with. Tursa argued that without tangible process in conflict resolution in
Donbass and Crimea – a region Biden was heavily involved in as vice president – “Moscow could hardly expect any meaningful easing of sanctions,”
and that a potential Biden presidency could lead to more stringent enforcement of existing measures. The risk of new sanctions could also increase, he
said, given allegations of Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election. Mutual interest Any
new sanctions on Russia are
unlikely to be imposed immediately, however, according to Timothy Ash, senior emerging markets strategist at Bluebay Asset
Management. He said on Saturday that “while I do think the course of U.S.-Russia relations will remain on this deteriorating path I am not sure that we
should expect an immediate rollout of additional ‘pent up’ sanctions on Russia.” “I think those candidates likely to be running Russian affairs in a Biden
presidency are all pretty experienced and level headed. They won’t want to roll out sanctions for sanctions sake. They will want to be very
proportionate and logical in approach,” he said, emphasizing that it’s “important for the U.S. to have a business-like relationship with Russia to ensure
the two sides, under a Biden presidency, would have to “learn
delivery on the U.S.’s strategic interests.” He said
where they can tolerate each other and get along on certain areas of mutual interest — such as arms control
— and reducing risks of conflict where strategic interests compete, for example on areas like Ukraine, even Belarus and Turkey.
Sanctions will be part of the tool kit herein, but only one such tool.” New START Arms control is an area that both Russia-watchers believe could be a
point of mutual interest and some harmony, however. Biden has signaled as much, saying in 2019 that he would want to see an extension of the major
U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reduction treaty, known as the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or the implementation something similar. “Based on
negotiations on a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) is one area
recent statements from both sides,
where progress could be expected if Biden is elected ,” Teneo’s Tursa said. “However, the timeline would be extremely
challenging as the current treaty expires on 5 February 2021.” Russia itself has acknowledged that arms control could be one positive dynamic under a
Biden presidency. Earlier in October, Putin criticized what he called “sharp anti-Russian rhetoric” from Biden, but also said that he had been
encouraged by Biden’s comments regarding a new arms treaty or extension of new START.
B. Increased Russian Immigrants, Through Compatriot Organizations, Shift US

Foreign Policy Narratives to Promote Russia
Williams 20 (Anna Williams, political scientist based in New York covering international relations, “Russian Compatriots in the US: Soft
Power Tools or Trojan Horses,” The Institute of Modern Russia. 02 September 2020) – JXN E
The Kremlin’s Trojan Horses? It comes as no surprise that Russian compatriot organizations coordinate with foreign policy
bodies. After all, most countries maintain linkages with their diasporas and build platforms for homeland–diaspora dialogue. This is complemented by the fact
that US political culture is very accommodating of diasporic activities. In this sense, Russian compatriot activities can, in fact, serve a positive and wholly reasonable
purpose. For instance, in February 2020, the RYA coordinated with Russian Americans in New York to find housing for Russian citizens and students unable to return
home after Russia closed its borders to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. Where, then, is there cause for concern? Despite the seemingly benign strategies of the
compatriot organizations, their Trojan horse nature cannot go unnoticed. Compatriot activities are largely
funded by the Russian government through organizations like Rossotrudnichestvo and Russkiy Mir, whose sole purpose is to
advance the Kremlin’s interests through soft power tools . CRA, RYA, and CCRCUS all engage in influencing US
public discourse by promoting Russian foreign policy narratives —from its great power ambitions and
grievances over alleged Russophobia to complaints about the hypocrisy and double standards of US
policy toward Russia. The espoused unity among Russian compatriots denies the divisions present among the Russian-speaking community on political
questions, such as the annexation of Crimea. Indeed, calls from the Russian embassy for US-based Russian citizens to support the Kremlin’s Crimea policy drove a
wedge between different groups, with some accusing the embassy of turning the community into a “fifth column.” In the 2016 Duma elections, Russian Americans
cast 39.72 percent of the vote for the liberal Yabloko party as opposed to 20.37 percent for the pro-Kremlin United Russia. Additionally, compatriot
organizations tend to misrepresent themselves as speaking for the entire Russian diaspora . For example, while
lobbying for the lifting of US sanctions against Russia, CRA attempted to paint themselves as representatives of all Russian Americans. This leads to the misguided
perception that this stance is shared by the Russian diaspora as opposed to a much narrow group of compatriots. In other words, this group tries to
hijack a constructive cultural and social dialogue and project pro-Kremlin ideas onto the entire
Russian-speaking community in the US, which can obstruct the diaspora’s normal relations with the
US government and contribute to the proverbial Russophobia in American public discourse.
C. Compatriot Organizations Are Used as Aggressive Foreign Policy Tools by Russia

– Orgs Promote Russian Soft Power at America’s Expense
Williams 20 (Anna Williams, political scientist based in New York covering international relations, “Russian Compatriots in the US: Soft
Power Tools or Trojan Horses,” The Institute of Modern Russia. 02 September 2020) – JXN E
Over the last decade, Russia’s

compatriot policy—officially represented as a soft power tool for advancing Russian culture— has been
increasingly used by the Kremlin as a cover to promote its geopolitical interests . Analysis of the activities of the
Russian compatriot organizations in the US shows that they tend to speak on behalf of the entire Russian
diaspora, hijacking a good-natured debate on US-Russian relations and conflating the often diverging
interests of the Russian Americans. Russia’s annexation of Crimea under the pretext of defending the
rights of “compatriots abroad” has engendered a deep mistrust and suspicion of Russian compatriot
policy across the former Soviet Union. The “compatriot” label has increasingly become associated with territorial ambition and military
aggression—especially in Europe. While the US does not face quite the same problem, Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election elevated the threat
level and put the Kremlin’s foreign policy into a different perspective. According to US census data from 2017, 889,707 Americans speak Russian at home, making it
the seventh most spoken foreign language in the country. Given the country’s influence, Russian
compatriot organizations could be
regarded as a soft power tool and a factor in advancing the Kremlin’s foreign policy narratives . However,
according to Natalie Sabelnik, head of the Congress of Russian Americans, most of their activities are directed at improving American perceptions of Russia and
Russians in light of recent events in US politics. How do these organizations attempt to influence US public discourse about
Russia? What Russian foreign policy narratives, if any, do they promote? How do these narratives and strategies contradict US national interests? To answer these
questions, activities of the following US-based Russian compatriot organizations are examined: the Russian Youth of America (RYA), the Congress of Russian
Americans (CRA), which claims to be financially independent from Russian state organs, and the Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots in the US (CCRCUS),
the most authoritative compatriot structure at the national level in which all recognized compatriot organizations participate. These organizations were selected as
case studies as all claim to promote Russian culture, language, and spiritual heritage to combat Russophobia and improve Russia-US relations. The time frame for
the analysis is 2014 (annexation of Crimea) through 2020. Constructing the diaspora The term “compatriot” in Russian political and public discourse differs from
the concept’s usage in the West. If in the West the term implies a fellow countrymen or citizen, then it is used in Russian discourse as an amorphous “catch-all” term
that at any given time could refer to Russian citizens abroad, “blood and soil” ethnic Russians (irrespective of citizenship), all Russian-language speakers, or anyone
displaying a spiritual or emotional connection with Russia. [1] This means that the number of “compatriots
abroad” could be anywhere
between five million, if restricted to Russian citizens residing in foreign countries, and up to 146 million
in the most inclusive tabulation. [2] Compatriots are also distinct from the Russian diaspora as a whole through their cultural and political
activism; to be a diaspora member requires mere self-identification. In this sense, the development of Russian compatriot policy goes hand in hand with the
confused search for a new Russian identity after the collapse of the USSR. The contraction of state borders to their present delineation was a painful and traumatic
process for the entire former Soviet population and those “accidental” diaspora members who found themselves on the wrong side of the new Russian border. The
emergence of the novel Russian Federation necessitated a reassessment of who could be considered “ours abroad.” To avoid narrowly ethnic parameters for
“Russianness,” compatriots were codified in a 1999 federal law (“On the State Policy Concerning Compatriots Abroad”) using civic classifications, defining them as
citizens abroad, former Soviet citizens and their descendants, and emigrants from the Russian Empire without citizenship who want to establish a “spiritual, cultural
and legal bond” with Russia. Despite the text’s strictly declarative nature, it addressed the external Russian communities as part of the greater Russian nation, even
if compatriots emigrated willingly. As such,
compatriot policy’s purpose is twofold: it reduces the internal mismatch
between Russian state and national borders by designating islands of Russianness beyond state
borders while constructing a pressure group in respective host states that can contribute to Russia’s
voice on the international stage. A number of factors explain the Russian government’s earlier neglect for the diaspora (and compatriots). Until
Russia’s economic recovery in the mid-2000s, the Kremlin did not have the resources to engage with the global Russian diaspora amid volatile economic
uncertainty, concerns over the new Russian state’s territorial integrity, and separatist sentiment in Chechnya. It was only after Vladimir Putin had consolidated his
own power vertical domestically that the state apparatus could turn its attention to the new diaspora abroad. This compatriot policy reconstruction was also
influenced by the 2003–2005 color revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. The Russian political elite saw the street protests which brought pro-Western
leaders to power as an incursion by the West aimed at bringing Ukraine into the its sphere of influence. However, Russian diasporic organizations both in the US and
elsewhere pre-exist the Russian political elite’s attempts to institutionalize the compatriot community. The CRA, for example, was formed during the Soviet period
by anti-communist Russian émigrés “rooted in religious Christian Orthodox values.” There
is no doubt that the Kremlin considers the
compatriot movement a worthy investment and a useful tool in the foreign policy arsenal. The current
format of Russian compatriot policy was molded by former presidential aide Vladislav Surkov, mastermind of the “sovereign democracy” concept. [3] Compatriots,
previously seen as a burden on resources and largely ignored, were re-imagined as objects of national security and a soft power weapon in Russia’s information war
against the West. Simultaneously, the civic activist strategies employed by protesters and NGOs that promoted democracy were examined carefully so that the
most successful ones could be integrated into Russian public diplomacy. With Russia as the territorial core around which compatriots must unite and increased state
coffers owing to a large rise in oil prices, Russians residing abroad were included into a top-down structure with centralized “tentacles” that would increase Russian
influence in their host states and reinforce Russia’s image as a longstanding “state-civilization” with a thousand-year history. This approach necessarily entailed
loyalty from compatriot organizations to Russian foreign policy prerogatives and therefore limited the ability of those groups to shape compatriot policy themselves.
Importantly, a 2010 amendment to the law on compatriots stated that compatriot membership and funding depended on civil or professional activity preserving
Russian language, history, and culture, and strengthening relations between host states and Russia, turning compatriots into political and cultural activists working
to promote Russia’s external voice. To this end, the World Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots (WCCRC) was established in 2007 to represent compatriot
interests in Russian state organs and coordinate activities between diplomatic missions and local compatriots. The WCCRC forms the top of the Coordinating Council
umbrella structure to which each national and regional Coordinating Council of compatriots is subordinated. The Russkiy Mir foundation—a joint project of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education and Science—was created in 2007; Rossotrudnichestvo—the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of
Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation, under the jurisdiction of the Foreign Affairs Ministry—was established
in 2008. While the former funds projects concerning Russian language, culture, and history abroad, Rossotrudnichestvo is tasked with a broad range of public
diplomacy initiatives and defending compatriot interests. This umbrella structure also included regional and country-level Compatriot Coordinating Councils,
including US-based offices. The most important policy areas, according to the compatriot law, concern the formation of a Russian-language information space,
popularizing and preserving Russian language, culture, and history, improving Russia’s image abroad and bettering diplomatic relations between Russia and host
states. All organizations under analysis operate along these policy principles. Compatriots are mentioned in Russia’s 2015 National Security Strategy, and the 2016
Foreign Policy Concept refers to the need to protect their rights and lawful interests, to enable their consolidation and preservation of the distinct character of the
Russian diaspora. This leaves no doubt as to their inclusion in the foreign policy process. The inclusion of cultural diplomacy in the foreign policy process was
stimulated by the success of Western cultural institutions that managed to achieve public relations successes and a positive perception in target countries. From
Moscow’s perspective, the compatriot structure is another cultural institution that, by emphasizing language, traditions, and art, should help promote a benign
image of Russia, thereby reducing the significance of more controversial bilateral issues. [4] Furthermore, compatriot communities, through their presence and
actions, reinforce Russia’s “great power” status and complement Putin’s assertion that Russia is a “state-civilization” in its own right. What’s more, as an identity
category, “compatriot” is highly adaptable and its salience varies depending on the host state under analysis. On one hand, compatriots are de-securitized
transmitters of Russian culture, history, and values, as in the US and other Western countries. In countries bordering Russia, compatriots can be securitized objects
under Russian military protection outside sovereign borders. The safety and well-being of Russian compatriots in Ukraine was used as a pretext for the military
annexation of Crimea in March 2014. This ambiguity is precisely what makes the “compatriot” structure such an appealing wing of the foreign policy process. There
is no doubt that the Kremlin considers the compatriot movement a worthy investment and a useful tool in the foreign policy arsenal. However, most institutions
that fund or coordinate activities with compatriot communities, such as Rossotrudnichestvo, are controlled by the government, which essentially undermines the
efforts of compatriot communities in improving Russia’s image in their home countries.
D. Expanded Russian Influence Leads to Nuclear War and Collapses the

International Order
Gray 17 (Dr. Colin Gray, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at the University of Reading, “Russian strategy Expansion, crisis and
conflict,” Foreword in Comparative Strategy. Summer 2017) – JXN E
Short of war itself, the international political and strategic relations between Russia and the United States (US)
are about as bad as they can be. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the simultaneous conduct of two air independent campaigns over
Syria could evolve all too suddenly into a war triggered by accident or by miscalculation. There is little, if any, mystery about the broad political purpose
fueling Vladimir Putin’s conduct of international relations. Subtlety is not a characteristic of Russian statecraft; cunning and intended trickery, though, are another
matter. Stated directly, Putin is striving to recover and restore that of which he is able from the late USSR. There is no ideological theme in his governance.
Instead, there is an historically unremarkable striving after more power and influence. The challenge for the Western World, as
demonstrated in this National Institute study in meticulous and troubling detail, is to decide where and when this latest episode in Russian
expansionism will be stopped. What we do know, for certain, is that it must and will be halted. It is more likely than not that Putin himself does not
have entirely fixed political-strategic objectives. His behavior of recent years has given a credible impression of opportunistic adaptability. In other words, he will take
what he is able, where he can, and when he can. However, there
is ample evidence to support this study’s proposition
that Russian state policy today is driven by a clear vision of Russia as a recovering and somewhat restored superpower, very much on
the high road back to a renewed hegemony over Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Putin’s international political objectives
appear largely open today: he will have Russia take whatever turns out to be available to take,
preferably if the taking allows for some humiliation of the principal enemy, the United States. A practical political and strategic
problem for Putin is to guess just how far he dares to push NATO in general and the United States in particular, before he finds himself, almost certainly unexpectedly, in a
situation analogous to 1939. Just how dangerous would it be for Russia to press forcefully the Baltic members of NATO? Vladimir Putin
would not be the
first statesman [person] to trust his luck once too often, based upon unrealistic confidence in his own political
genius and power. There is danger not only that Putin could miscalculate the military worth of Russia’s hand, but that he also will misunderstand the
practical political and strategic strength of NATO ‘red lines.’ In particular, Putin may well discover, despite some current appearances, that not all of NATO’s political
military instrument is heavily dependent, indeed probably over-
leaders are expediently impressionable and very readily deterrable. Putin’s
dependent, upon the bolstering value of a whole inventory of nuclear weapons. It is unlikely to have evaded Putin’s strategic grasp to recognize that these
are not simply weapons like any others. A single political or strategic guess in error could well place us, Russians included, in a world
horrifically new to all. This National Institute study, Russian Strategy: Expansion, Crisis and Conflict, makes unmistakably clear Putin’s elevation of strategic
intimidation to be the leading element in Russian grand strategy today. Putin is behaving in militarily dangerous ways and ‘talking the talk’ that goes with such rough
behavior. Obviously, he is calculating, perhaps just hoping, that American lawyers in the White House will continue to place highest priority on avoiding direct
confrontation with Russia. This study presents an abundantly clear record of the Russian lack of regard for international law, which they violate with apparent impunity
and without ill consequence to themselves, including virtually every arms control treaty and agreement they have entered into with the United States since 1972 (SALT
I). The
challenge for the United States today and tomorrow is the need urgently to decide what can and must be done to stop Putin’s
campaign in its tracks before it wreaks lethal damage to the vital concept and physical structure of
international order in much of the world, and particularly in Europe.
Solvency
No solvency- Green card requirements like in-person interviews slows the process to a
crawl. They can’t solve the backlog.
Peniel Ibe, policy engagement coordinator at the Office of Public Policy and Advocacy at the “American
Friends Service Committee,” April 23, 2020. [Trump’s attacks on the lgal immigration system explained,
last accessed on August 14, 2020, Accessed at: https://www.afsc.org/blogs/news-and-
commentary/trumps-attacks-legal-immigration-system-explained] MD
Slowing applications for green cards (permanent residency) and citizenship: What used to be straightforward
application processes have been dramatically slowed down and halted. By the end of 2017, the backlog of
pending green card applications had increased by more than 35%. A new mandated in-person interview
for all applicants for employment-based immigration applications has increased processing time and slowed
applications to a crawl. These slowdowns leave thousands of people seeking citizenship or permanent residency in limbo. In addition, U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) now allows officers to deny outright any visa or green card
application that is missing evidence or contains an error —without giving applicants a chance to fix it . This
could mean people with valid visas who are trying to renew could be placed in deportation proceedings.
Court Clog DA
COVID 19 has caused significant court backlog

Zazueta-Castro 20 (Lorenzo Zazueta-Castro. 6/9/20. The Monitor, “Report: Pandemic
may impact 850,000 immigration cases.” https://www.themonitor.com/2020/06/09/report-
pandemic-may-impact-850000-immigration-cases/) zmf
The current backlog in immigration court and growing cancellations “will certainly increase hearing delays for months and probably years to
come,” says a new report from Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. According to the TRAC report, more than 365,000
immigrants have been impacted by the partial shutdown of the immigration court due to COVID-19. TRAC’s estimate of those impacted
by the partial shutdown states 368,000 immigrants have been impacted by the partial shutdown that began in earnest in early March — but the
report underscores that more than 850,000 immigrants could be affected by the shutdown even if the court were to open immediately.
“However, this does not represent the full scope of the long-term impact of COVID-19 on the courts,” the report stated. “TRAC estimates that
once scheduling delays for the rest of the individuals in the court’s backlog are taken into account, 850,000 immigrants — or more than three-
quarters of a million — may well be affected by the shutdown even if the Court were to reopen today.” TRAC is careful to warn that compiling
exact numbers of immigrants affected by the partial shutdown due to COVID-19 is simply not possible for three reasons; internal reporting
delays tied to the database’s inability to give a “reason” code, a decline in accuracy for entries in the field, and third, TRAC states the case
management system has “built-in” limitations that make it difficult to determine whether or not a hearing took place. Immigration court case
completions dropped by nearly 15,000 cases in March, from 41,793 cases completed in February, and further dropped in April, from 26,699
cases completed in March, to just 6,460 cases completed in April, according to the report. In calculating the estimate, TRAC looks at different
groups of immigrants in different points in their respective hearing processes. The first group — people at the end of the hearing process — are
those who had their hearing canceled after a judge was unable to decide their case, the report stated. TRAC estimates that more than 85,000
immigrants are part of this group as of the end of May. Additionally, TRAC states the people in this group will
now have to “wait
many months, if not years, before they have their day in court when their cases finally get resolved ,”
the document stated. The second group looked at by TRAC are the new cases, estimated to be 88,000 cases, these cases were impacted by the
partial shutdown because they have to wait longer before their initial hearing is scheduled — and not because their hearings were canceled like
the first group. In the third group, TRAC looked at those who are not at the beginning or at the end of their respective cases; but instead
somewhere in the middle of the court’s backlog when the partial shutdown was put in place. According to data TRAC received from the
Executive Office for Immigration Review, the immigration courts had canceled nearly 220,000 hearings by the end of April due to the
government shutdown related to COVID-19. “With hearing cancellations continuing throughout May, hearing cancellations recorded due to the
shutdown have undoubtedly grown,” TRAC report stated. “A conservative estimate would be that cumulatively at least 280,000 — or more than
a quarter million cases — have already been canceled through the end of May, although not all cancellations have been recorded yet.” As
discussed above, 85,000 out of the 280,000 hearing cancellations were for final hearings and were in the first group, leaving the remainder in
this third group. These roughly 195,000 individuals will face months or years of delay before the immigrant’s next hearing can be scheduled,
with more hearings needed even after the next one to fully resolve each immigrant’s case. Nearly 40% of these cancellations were for the initial
hearing, and nearly 90% of cancellations were for initial and reset hearings, according to the report. Finally, the report further states that an
estimated 500,000 immigrants have yet to be directly affected because their next hearing was scheduled after the end of May. “For
this
particular group, however, they will need to schedule further hearings after the one now scheduled.
These subsequent hearings will also be delayed because of the increasingly clogged schedules of
immigration judges,” the TRAC report stated.
Immigration causes court backlog and detention overflow

Frazee 19 (Gretchen Frazee. 10/2/19. PBS News Hour, “US claims reducing refugee
numbers helps with asylum backlog. Will it?” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/u-s-
claims-reducing-refugee-numbers-helps-with-the-asylum-backlog-will-it) zmf
The Trump administration has claimed that capping the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. will reduce the significant backlog
of asylum seekers. But immigration experts argue that backlog can be cut in other ways. For the 2020 fiscal year, which started
Tuesday, the U.S. plans to cap the number of refugees admitted into the U.S. at 18,000–the lowest admitted under the modern-
day refugee system. In announcing the shift, Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said reducing refugee admissions will
allow the Department of Homeland Security to focus more resources on immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border and reduce the
asylum case backlog. But, asylum seekers and refugees go through two separate processes and history shows the U.S. has the
ability to accept more refugees than it is currently accepting. “The U.S. is more than capable of processing both refugee and asylum
claims at the same time,” said Eleanor Acer, the director of Human Rights First’s Refugee Protection program. When the modern-
day system for resettling refugees in the U.S. was created in 1980, for example, the federal government admitted more than
207,000 refugees in a single year. The cut in refugee admissions to the U.S. comes as the world has a record number of refugees–
25.9 million, according to the United Nations. The largest share of the refugees are from Syria, where the U.S., supported rebel
groups in that nation’s ongoing civil war for years. This latest move will mark the third time the Trump administration has reduced the
refugee cap. In his first month in office, President Donald Trump limited the admission of refugees from majority-Muslim nations and
slashed the refugee cap to 50,000 from 85,000, citing national security. The move, known widely as the “Muslim Ban,” was subject
to several lawsuits, but a version of it was ultimately maintained. When the administration further cut the cap to 45,000 in 2018,
Trump and other government officials cited a number of reasons, including national security, the asylum backlog and the cost of
resettling refugees. What is the asylum backlog? There are more than 338,000 people waiting for
asylum decisions from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the department told the PBS NewsHour. That’s up
from 320,000 cases in June of 2018, according to the Migration Policy Institute, which attributes the increase to an increase
in asylum requests. The spike in requests likely is the result of a number of factors, including worsening
violence and climate change in Central America as well as the strong U.S. economy and smugglers telling migrants that they
need to make the journey before the Trump administration makes it more difficult to enter the U.S. The asylum case backlog was
only 40,000 in 2014. “There is a crisis at our southern border where many people seeking economic opportunity are taking
advantage of our asylum system to attempt to gain entry to the United States,” USCIS told the PBS NewsHour in a statement. “This
continued abuse of our laws creates longer lines for legitimate asylum seekers and forces USCIS to divert resources to deal with
this large, legally required workload.” Over the past two years, USCIS has employed on average between 500 and 550 asylum
officers and between 120 and 190 refugee officers. Currently about 80 refugee officers are already helping with asylum workloads,
according to USCIS. There are a number of places throughout the immigration system where the Trump administration has said
they are overloaded. They claim not to have enough officers to apprehend people at the border, enough beds to house
migrants, or enough judges to hear immigration cases. Congress has allocated money to alleviate some
of those problems, but Democrats have also expressed belief that the Trump administration could do more to reduce backlogs
without more resources. How refugees differ from asylum seekers When it comes to U.S. immigration, refugees are defined as
people who are displaced from their homes and apply for entry to the U.S. while living abroad in places such as in a refugee camp.
Asylum seekers have already come to the U.S., or at least reached the U.S. border, and are seeking permission to stay. Both
refugees and asylum seekers must prove that they fear persecution in their home country. USCIS makes that initial determination.
Refugees speak to a USCIS refugee officer while living abroad. If they are approved, their case continues through the process,
which involves numerous other steps overseen by a handful of government agencies. Asylum seekers are also interviewed by a
USCIS officer, but that person initially only determines whether the person has a “credible fear.” If they meet the threshold, their
cases are generally referred to immigration court, where a judge will make the final
determination on whether a person is granted asylum. In both cases, USCIS is only part of a much larger
process. The State Department, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and countless nonprofit organizations handle other
aspects of refugee cases, from determining where they will be resettled, to providing support for refugees to find jobs, and to get
comfortable in cities across the U.S. Amy Longa looks over paper work with refugees at the International Rescue Committee office
in Garden City, Kansas, March 26, 2018. Numerous nonprofit organizations, in addition to the U.S. government, provide support to
refugees. Picture taken March 26, 2018. Photo by Adam Shrimplin/Reuters Eskinder Negash, CEO of the nonprofit U.S. Committee
for Refugees and Immigrants, points out that refugees are supported, in part, through private donations through religious institutions.
The refugee system is “probably the most successful government partnership with local communities,” said Negash, who is a
refugee himself and the former director of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. For asylum seekers, the Department of Justice,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and various nonprofits also play roles in getting migrants through the process and in
the end, either deported to their home countries, or resettled in the U.S. What is being done to reduce the asylum backlog? Leon
Rodriguez, USCIS director under President Barack Obama, said because USCIS is involved in the initial stages of both asylum and
refugee cases, refugee officers can be easily retrained to handle asylum cases. Key to moving from processing refugee cases to
asylum cases is understanding what constitutes “credible fear” and being well-versed on the conditions in the Central American
countries where most asylum seekers are coming from. But, Rodriguez added, “the idea that the only option available to the
administration is to take refugee officers away from their core tasks and to reassign them to asylum processing, presents a false
choice.” The Migration Policy Institute and other nonprofit organizations have suggested numerous other procedural changes to
streamline the asylum process and reduce the backlog. A larger share of the USCIS’ $4.8 billion budget for fiscal year 2020 could
go toward hiring more asylum officers, or the Trump administration could send refugee officers to Central American countries to
process claims there before people make the journey to the U.S., Rodriguez said. USCIS said it is already hiring more asylum
officers. The Trump administration has also implemented a metering system at ports of entry, so only a set number of
asylum seekers are allowed into the U.S. each day. The rest have to wait in Mexico either
in long lines near ports of entry or in shelters that are often overflowing with migrants. The
338,000 asylum case backlog does not account for those migrants who have not yet been allowed into the U.S. A Honduran father
seeking asylum and his 2-year-old son are called by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers for entry after waiting on the
Mexican side of the Brownsville-Matamoros International Bridge near Brownsville, Texas, on July 2, 2018. In a process known as
“metering,” U.S. immigration officials have only been allowing a set number of migrants through ports of entry each day. Photo by
Loren Elliott/Reuters The Trump administration also changed its policy to “last in, first out,” where it reviews the latest cases first and
works backward. A USCIS report from earlier this year said since that process has been implemented, backlogs have dropped in
some offices but increased in others. Even if USCIS could eliminate the backlog for its asylum cases, many of those cases would
likely be referred to immigration courts, where another backlog has ballooned in recent years. There are
more than a million pending cases in U.S. immigration courts, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access
Clearinghouse, which tracks immigration cases. Critics have argued the Trump administration’s own efforts to deport all
undocumented immigrants, not only those with criminal histories, are making the immigration court backlog worse. Nonprofit
organizations have also recommended a host of other ways to reduce the larger immigration case backlog, such as hiring more
judges and changing some of the rules of the immigration proceedings in order to make them more efficient.
Overcrowding in detention centers due to court backlog catalyzes the spread of COVID
19
Jawetz & Svajlenka 20 (Tom Jawetz is the vice president of Immigration Policy at the Center for
American Progress and Nicole Prchal Svajlenka is the associate director of research for Immigration
Policy at the Center. 6/16/20. Center for American Progress, “Data on the Coronavirus outbreak in
Immigration Detention Offers more questions than answers.”
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2020/06/16/486338/data-coronavirus-
outbreak-immigration-detention-offer-questions-answers/) zmf
Most weekdays, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has published data on the number of COVID-19 tests administered to people
detained in immigration facilities, the number of detained individuals with confirmed cases of the virus, and a by-facility breakdown of those
who have tested positive. Yet for a full month until April 28, ICE provided no information regarding the number of tests it had performed. In
recent days, ICE has begun to disclose by facility the number of individuals who have tested positive who are in isolation or otherwise being
monitored, as well as the number who have died while in custody following a coronavirus diagnosis. The data paint a grim picture of a virus that
has spread quickly and dramatically within detention facilities and throughout the network of facilities around the country—and of a federal
agency that has ignored commonsense measures to halt its spread. The data also hint at the existence of a problem far more significant than
what the agency has acknowledged. Although ICE has slowly and reluctantly agreed to release these reports, gaps in the data raise significant
questions that must be answered if solutions are to be identified that protect human life and promote public health. Interpreting the ICE data
As of June 4, the last day before writing for which ICE provided both the number of positive tests and the cumulative number of tests
administered, data show that 3,146 detainees had been tested for the coronavirus and 1,623 cases had been confirmed. Of those 1,623 positive
cases, 781 individuals were in custody under isolation or monitoring. Since ICE began reporting data at the end of March,
two individuals have died while in ICE custody after testing positive for the virus in detention, and at least one person
has died of COVID-19 after being released from custody. Partially reflecting the spread of the virus throughout facilities over the past two
months and the increased use of tests, the total number of individuals who have tested positive in detention continues to rise on a steep
trajectory. A note on the data On Monday, June 8, ICE reported that 5,096 tests had been conducted as of Friday, June 5—a jump of 1,950 from
Thursday to Friday. On June 9, ICE announced that one week earlier, it had offered voluntary COVID-19 testing to anyone detained at
two facilities—the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, and the Aurora Contract Detention Facility in Aurora, Colorado. This
likely means that a substantial portion of the almost 2,000 additional tests were administered in only two of ICE’s more than 200 facilities.
While ICE included in the release results for the 450 individuals who agreed to be tested at the Northwest Detention Center, ICE’s press release
states that results for an undisclosed number of tests administered in Aurora have yet to be returned; as of June 15, this is still the case.
Without these results, it is impossible to determine an accurate positive test rate for the 5,096 tests administered as of June 5, not to
mention the positive test rate for the unknown number of individuals who have been tested in the days since that date. In light of this, Figure 1
includes a positive rate as of June 4, the last date for which ICE has provided all relevant data to perform such an analysis. Including the huge
increase in total tests performed without having any information about how many of those tests will return positive results would artificially
deflate the positive rate. Perhaps even more alarming is the fact that more than 50 percent of all the individuals tested
until June 4 had tested positive. Public health experts look at this positive test rate to determine whether enough people are being tested
to catch most infections within a given population and whether the right mix of people are being tested—not only those who are symptomatic
but also those with mild or no symptoms. The Center for American Progress recommends that states achieve a positive test rate of 2 percent
before they relax their stay-at-home orders. Even as the numbers of new cases are rising in states including Arizona, Florida, North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Texas,* the level of testing nationwide has ramped up over the past few months and shows that the positive test rate has
generally decreased. Over the past 14 days, most states have still been above a positive test rate of 2 percent, but nearly all states are at or
below 10 percent. In
no state is the overall positive test rate even close to as high as that of immigration
detention facilities. (see Figure 1) The positive test rate for people in ICE custody may be this high because tests are being administered
to too few people and generally only people who are symptomatic. If so, ICE’s failure to adequately test makes it impossible for facility
operators to identify and isolate infected individuals for treatment and prevent further spread. On the other hand, the rate may be this high
because detention facilities are the perfect environment in which the virus can spread ; the high positive test
rate may simply reveal the high incidence of illness in the detention system. This would mean that ICE’s practices—from cohorting exposed
detainees to transferring infected detainees throughout the country—have actually facilitated the spread of the coronavirus. One group of
researchers recently concluded that 72 percent to nearly 100 percent of detained people may eventually be
infected. Last week, the Vera Institute of Justice released a model finding that the actual number of people infected in ICE detention may be
15 times higher than what ICE has reported to date. While cumulative data are helpful, understanding how the virus is moving through a
population and whether testing strategies are keeping up requires breaking the data down into smaller pieces. Based upon the ICE data, CAP
identified the number of tests administered and the number of positive COVID-19 cases reported on a daily basis. Figure 2 shows that since late
April, the number of individuals in detention who have tested positive for the coronavirus has largely plateaued, even as the overall number of
people detained decreased by nearly 5,000—from 29,675 people to 24,713 people.
A dramatic increase in COVID 19 cases leads to a catastrophic economic recession

World Bank 20 (6/8/20. World Bank, “Covid 19 to plunge global economy into worst
recession since world war 2.” https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-
release/2020/06/08/covid-19-to-plunge-global-economy-into-worst-recession-since-world-war-ii) zmf
The swift and massive shock of the

coronavirus pandemic and shutdown measures to contain it have plunged
the global economy into a severe contraction. According to World Bank forecasts, the global
economy will shrink by 5.2% this year.[1] That would represent the deepest recession
since the Second World War, with the largest fraction of economies experiencing declines in per capita output since
1870, the World Bank says in its June 2020 Global Economic Prospects. Economic activity among advanced economies is
anticipated to shrink 7% in 2020 as domestic demand and supply, trade, and finance have been severely disrupted. Emerging
market and developing economies (EMDEs) are expected to shrink by 2.5% this year, their first contraction as a group in at least
sixty years. Per capita incomes are expected to decline by 3.6%, which will tip millions of people into extreme poverty this year. The
blow is hitting hardest in countries where the pandemic has been the most severe and where there is heavy reliance on global trade,
tourism, commodity exports, and external financing. While the magnitude of disruption will vary from region to region, all EMDEs
have vulnerabilities that are magnified by external shocks. Moreover, interruptions in schooling and primary
healthcare access are likely to have lasting impacts on human capital development. “This is
a deeply sobering outlook, with the crisis likely to leave long-lasting scars and pose major global challenges,” said World Bank
Group Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions, Ceyla Pazarbasioglu. “Our first order of business is to
address the global health and economic emergency. Beyond that, the global community must unite to find ways to rebuild as robust
a recovery as possible to prevent more people from falling into poverty and unemployment.” Under the
baseline forecast—which assumes that the pandemic recedes sufficiently to allow the lifting of domestic mitigation measures by
mid-year in advanced economies and a bit later in EMDEs, that adverse global spillovers ease during the second half of the year,
and that dislocations in financial markets are not long-lasting — global growth is forecast to rebound to 4.2% in 2021, as advanced
economies grow 3.9% and EMDEs bounce back by 4.6%. However, the outlook is highly uncertain and downside risks are
predominant, including the possibility of a more protracted pandemic, financial upheaval,
and retreat from global trade and supply linkages. A downside scenario could lead the global economy to
shrink by as much as 8% this year, followed by a sluggish recovery in 2021 of just over 1%, with output in EMDEs contracting by
almost 5% this year. The U.S. economy is forecast to contract 6.1% this year, reflecting the disruptions associated with pandemic-
control measures. Euro Area output is expected to shrink 9.1% in 2020 as widespread outbreaks took a heavy toll on activity.
Japan’s economy is anticipated to shrink 6.1% as preventive measures have slowed economic activity. “The COVID-19 recession is
singular in many respects and is likely to be the deepest one in advanced economies since the Second World War and the first
output contraction in emerging and developing economies in at least the past six decades,” said World Bank Prospects Group
Director Ayhan Kose. “The current episode has already seen by far the fastest and steepest downgrades in global growth
forecasts on record. If the past is any guide, there may be further growth downgrades in store, implying that policymakers may need
to be ready to employ additional measures to support activity.” The pandemic highlights the urgent need for health and economic
policy action, including global cooperation, to cushion its consequences, protect vulnerable populations, and strengthen countries’
capacities to prevent and deal with similar events in the future. It is critically important for emerging market and developing
economies, which are particularly vulnerable, to strengthen public health systems, address challenges posed by informality and
limited safety nets, and enact reforms to generate strong and sustainable growth once the crisis passes. Emerging market and
developing economies with available fiscal space and affordable financing conditions could consider additional stimulus if the effects
of the pandemic persist. This should be accompanied by measures to help credibly restore medium-term fiscal sustainability,
including those that strengthen fiscal frameworks, increase domestic revenue mobilization and spending efficiency, and raise fiscal
and debt transparency. The transparency of all government financial commitments, debt-like instruments and investments is a key
step in creating an attractive investment climate and could make substantial progress this year.

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Substantial

1. Interp: Plan must be impacting a substantial statutory restriction

considerable in quantity : significantly great

2. Violation: plan does not remove a substantial amount of restrictions on legal

2. Limits is the best standard because it discusses the root issue of

2. Refugee programs create a “meritocracy of suffering” that serves to reify neoliberal

3. Neoliberal citizenship corrupts democracy and fosters inequality

5. The alt is a resistance to neoliberal capitalism in all its forms

Analysts expect that a

B. Increased Russian Immigrants, Through Compatriot Organizations, Shift US

C. Compatriot Organizations Are Used as Aggressive Foreign Policy Tools by Russia

Over the last decade, Russia’s

D. Expanded Russian Influence Leads to Nuclear War and Collapses the

COVID 19 has caused significant court backlog

Immigration causes court backlog and detention overflow

A dramatic increase in COVID 19 cases leads to a catastrophic economic recession

The swift and massive shock of the

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