All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Salvadoran migration to the US in numbers

Good policy analysis requires good data.   With little commentary, here is a collection of the best data estimates I can assemble related to migration of individuals from El Salvador to the United States:

  • Estimated population living in El Salvador in 2017 — 6,582,000
    Source: El Salvador DIGESTYC
  • Estimated number of Salvadoran immigrants living in the US as of 2015 — 1,420,000
    Source: Pew Research Center
  • Estimated number of second generation Salvadorans in the US (at least one parent born in El Salvador) as of 2015 — 935,000
    Source: Migration Policy Institute
  • Estimated number of Salvadorans currently in US without legal documentation:  725,000
    Source:  Pew Research Center
  • Number of Salvadorans granted permanent residence in US (green cards) between October 1, 2016 and June 30, 2017:  18,800.
    Source: Pew Research Center
  • Estimated number of Salvadoran who re-enrolled for Temporary Protected Status by March 19, 2018 deadline:  175,000
    Source: El Salvador Foreign Ministry
  • Salvadoran youth who are recipients of DACA protection:  25,900
    Source:  USCIS
  • Salvadorans deported from the US back to El Salvador:

    January 1, 2017- December 31, 2017 – 15,691
    Source: El Salvador DGME

    January 1, 2018 – March 22, 2018 — 3129
    Source: El Salvador DGME

  • Unaccompanied minors from El Salvador apprehended at southwest US border:
    10/1/2015 – 9/30/2016  — 17,512
    10/1//2016 – 9/30/2017 — 9,143
    10/1/2018 –  2/28/20181,385 (3,324 annualized) 

    Persons in family units of at least one child with an adult apprehended at southwest US border:
    10/1/2015 – 9/30/2016  — 27,114
    10/1//2016 – 9/30/2017 — 24,122
    10/1/2018 –  2/28/20184,197 (10,072 annualized) Source: US Customs & Border Patrol  

  • Among all those persons worldwide who were born in El Salvador and now live either in El Salvador or elsewhere – 23% reside in the U.S
    Source:  Pew Research Center

Much could be said about these numbers, but I will only point out two items.   First, note the fairly dramatic reduction in levels of child and family migration across the southwest US border since October 2015 as measured by apprehensions.  Second, note the approximately 18,800 persons deported since January 1, 2017 and compare that to the 144,360 pending deportation cases against Salvadoran nationals and the additional 200,000 Salvadorans who are losing TPS next year.   El Salvador is facing a wave of returnees much, much larger than it is currently experiencing. 

Is Facebook Really Scarier Than Google? – Facts So Romantic

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On Twitter, in a thread that went viral, François Chollet, an A.I. software engineer at Google DeepMind, argued, “Facebook is, in effect, in control of your political beliefs and your worldview.”Photograph by Joe Penniston / Flickr

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and C.E.O. of Facebook, admitted recently his company knew, in 2015, that the data firm Cambridge Analytica, which assisted with Donald Trump’s election campaign, had improperly acquired information on 50 million Facebook users. “This was a breach of trust,” Zuckerberg said, in a Facebook post. “We need to fix that.”

But that’s not the only thing Facebook needs to fix. “The problem with Facebook is not just the loss of your privacy and the fact that it can be used as a totalitarian panopticon,” said François Chollet, an artificial intelligence and machine learning software engineer at Google DeepMind, in a tweet yesterday. “The more worrying issue, in my opinion, is its use of digital information consumption as a psychological control vector.” He elaborated on this point in a thread that’s been shared thousands of times. I caught it when global-surveillance critic and The Intercept writer Glenn Greenwald quote-retweeted Chollet, calling it a “great thread” on “Facebook’s…
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The Observer view on the danger John Bolton poses to world peace | Observer editorial

He has no power to order anyone to do anything – therefore is no more threat than others who work for #45. Those who have worked for #TraitorTrump have been slow to figure out that anyone who works for #45 is just baggage to be tossed when convenient or used as a scapegoat or diversion when it suits #45.

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The arch-hawk’s advocacy of pre-emptive military action suits Donald Trump’s nationalist agenda but it could spell disaster

John Bolton, Donald Trump’s latest choice as national security adviser, belongs to a band of Washington armchair warriors who are rarely happier than when sending other people’s children to die in foreign wars. Like his former Iraq comrades-in-arms, George W Bush and Dick Cheney, and his bellicose new White House boss, Bolton avoided military service in Vietnam as a young man. But he is no peacenik. Far from it. Bolton the conservative arch-hawk has become infamous over the years as a reckless advocate of pre-emptive, interventionist military action in pursuit of what he perceives to be America’s interests.

The Observer is the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper, founded in 1791. It is published by Guardian News & Media and is editorially independent.

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Marchers across the US united in plan for pro-gun politicians: ‘Vote them out’

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Thousands of people rallied in Washington DC and other US cities on Saturday, expressing clear outlines for action on gun reform

For four minutes and 25 seconds, 18-year-old Emma Gonzalez held a crowd of hundreds of thousands in the nation’s capital in near total silence. With tears rolling down her cheeks, intermittently closing her eyes, the teenager’s stillness told its own story.

Related: Thousands join March for Our Lives anti-gun protests around the world

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Revealed: the ties that bind Canadian data firm AIQ to Leave campaign in referendum

No place to run or hide – hear that #45?

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Role of remote data affiliate raises questions over relationship between Brexit groups

Cambridge Analytica has undisclosed links to the Canadian digital firm AggregateIQ that played a pivotal role in the official Vote Leave campaign in 2016, which was headed by the environment secretary Michael Gove and the foreign secretary Boris Johnson, the Observer has learned.

Christopher Wylie, the former Cambridge Analytica employee turned whistleblower, has revealed that as well as playing a part in setting up the firm – which is now facing increasing scrutiny from investigators on both sides of the Atlantic over its role in harvesting Facebook data – he was also a central figure in setting up AIQ, which accounted for 40% of Vote Leave’s campaign budget.

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Dinner party soundtracker to timeless muse: exploring the Sade complex

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The enigmatic musician remains an influence on modern stars such as Drake and Beyoncé. As she releases her first single in seven years we explore why

Picture the scene: A dinner party. It could be any dinner party, anywhere in North America or Europe, taking place at any point in the last 30 years, but this one happens to be a fictional dinner party thrown by Nathan (James Tupper) and Bonnie Carlson (Zoë Kravitz) in Big Little Lies, the hit TV series about miserable rich people living in coastal California.

“I love this music. Bonnie, is this Adele?” asks Reese Witherspoon’s character, Madeline, ever-so-slightly loose from the half a Xanax she popped en route.

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Trump reissues ban on nearly all transgender troops serving in the US military

Wants to be sure some who might have watched Stormy Sunday will be worrying about how he threatened their life rather than watching the big show. Care only about his ego. In a revised directive, US President Donald Trump has said transgender troops are a considerable risk to military effectiveness. His latest attempt to ban trans military personnel has been labeled “despicable.”