By Caitlin Britos
The U.S. Postal Service is Staying Alive (for now)
During the Spring, President Trump has brought to the spotlight a little-discussed, quite unsexy policy dilemma: how to save the U.S. Postal Service.
In a series of Tweets, the President accused Amazon of unfairly taking advantage of the U.S. Postal Service. The first of these Tweets appeared on his Twitter feed on March 29th, and seemingly accused Amazon of shirking its tax responsibilities and free-loading from the government delivery service:
“I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!”
President Trump also seemingly accused the Washington Post, which is owned by progressive billionaire Jeff Bezos, of engaging in secret lobbying. Although it is not entirely clear to which type of lobbying President Trump was referring in his March 31st Tweets, he seems to imply that the Washington Post is Amazon’s lobbying arm or propaganda machine that is helping Amazon to rip off the post office:
“While we are on the subject, it is reported that the U.S. Post Office will lose $1.50 on average for each package it delivers for Amazon. That amounts to Billions of Dollars. The Failing N.Y. Times reports that “the size of the company’s lobbying staff has ballooned,” and that…
“…does not include the Fake Washington Post, which is used as a “lobbyist” and should so REGISTER. If the P.O. “increased its parcel rates, Amazon’s shipping costs would rise by $2.6 Billion.” This Post Office scam must stop. Amazon must pay real costs (and taxes) now!”
After several news outlets, including the New York Times, published articles rebutting his statement that Amazon is not paying taxes (Amazon paid $957 million in income taxes in 2017) and is costing the U.S. Post Office billions of dollars per year, President Trump again asserted that he was correct, tweeting in part, “Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon. THEY LOSE A FORTUNE, and this will be changed.”
A few days later, he again tweeted that, “Amazon should pay these costs (plus) and not have them bourne by the American Taxpayer. Many billions of dollars. P.O. leaders don’t have a clue (or do they?)!” However, if one thing is clear, it is that the U.S. Post Office is not funded through taxpayer dollars, but through its own revenue. Still, the President is correct that the post office is losing money every year, specifically $2.7 billion in fiscal year 2017. However, it is unlikely that the bulk of that loss was incurred by conducting business with Amazon.
According to the U.S. Postal Service’s annual report for fiscal year 2017, its biggest losses came from fluctuating forces outside of its control. “The controllable loss for the year was $814 million, a change of $1.4 billion, driven by the $775 million decline in operating revenue before the 2016 change in accounting estimate, along with the increases in compensation and benefits and transportation expenses of $667 million and $246 million, respectively.” Mail volumes declined by 3.6%, while employee benefits and transportation costs have increased. On the other hand, the report indicated that package mail is up by 11.4%, providing “some help to the financial picture of the Postal Service as revenue increased $2.1 billion.” However, that growth has not been able offset other losses.
In other words, package companies like Amazon may actually be helping the U.S. Postal Service, even if they are receiving discounted shipping rates. By law, the Postal Regulatory Commission ensures that all items sent through the U.S. mail are profitable. Therefore, even if the U.S. Postal Service gives a discount to Amazon, those shipments will still be profitable to some degree. Whether the U.S. Postal Service should charge higher rates is a separate issue.
Postmaster General and CEO Megan J. Brennan described the report’s findings as “serious though solvable.” So, how can the government hope to save an agency that has not had a net surplus since 2006? The U.S. Postal Service is hopeful that H.R. 756, which was introduced to the House of Representatives by Rep. Chaffetz in 2017, and is being sponsored by Rep. Garrett in 2018, will pass and provide some relief by reforming postal service benefits, operations, personnel, and contracting. In addition, the Postal Regulatory Commission must adopt a new pricing system to generate additional revenue.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has also pitched some ideas in the past, which are now catching the public’s eye in light of the President’s recent Tweets. Senator Sanders recently told Vice News that the post office should expand its services to generate more revenue. For example, the U.S. Postal Service could offer gift-wrapping services to capitalize on package shipments around the holidays. Additionally, “[t]he postal service could make billions of dollars a year by establishing basic banking services so lower-income people have access not to these payday lenders but to someplace where they can be treated with respect.”
This idea is not new. In fact, until 1966, many U.S. post offices did offer simple banking services. Moreover, other countries such as Japan, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy currently use similar systems of postal banking with success. Senator Sanders emphasized that the post office must survive or else Americans living in rural areas, where it is not profitable to deliver mail, will face a decrease or elimination of mail services.
One former postmaster added that “[a]bsent a public infrastructure like the postal service network, it’s likely that both of these private sector firms (Fedex and UPS) would either refuse to serve many areas of the country or they would use their powers as an oligopoly to control prices.” In other words, if the U.S. Postal Service goes out of business, other mail carriers may be unable to fill the gap, or may only do so at inflated rates.
With so much at stake, it is daunting to imagine America without the U.S. Postal Service. We can only hope that Congress will step in and make the necessary reforms before it is too late.
Caitlin Britos anticipates graduating from Boston Univeristy School of Law in May 2019.
Breaking Chain Migration: An Affront to the New Colossus?
In February 2018, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that grants green cards and U.S. citizenship, revised its mission statement by striking its characterization of the United States as a “nation of immigrants.” The phrase dates back to the 1800s and was popularized by President John F. Kennedy, who sought to remind Americans of the monumental contributions that immigrants have made to America. The removal of this iconic language is consistent with the President Trump’s “America first” agenda, including efforts to limit immigration by proposing to end or alter the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, ban immigration from several majority-Muslim countries, and build a wall along the Mexican border. This anti-immigration attitude has also led to attempts to curtail the family visa program, which allows U.S. citizens and permanent residents to sponsor certain family members applying for lawful permanent residency in the United States.
President Trump recently made immigration policy a priority with congressional leaders at Camp David, emphasizing his desire to end the “horrible system” of family sponsored visas, which he refers to as “chain migration.” Now, in exchange for softening their proposal to deport DACA recipients, President Trump and the Republicans are targeting the lower priority F3 and F4 category family visas, arguing that they threaten national security. In fact, President Trump blamed chain migration, also known as “family reunification,” for the terrorist attack on New York City in December 2017. The perpetrator of that attack entered on an F43 visa, the lowest priority family visa category reserved for children of parents who are sponsored by a direct relative who is a U.S. citizen. While the U.S. issues an unlimited number of visas to close relatives of U.S. citizens, the number of visas allotted for extended family, or “chain migrants,” is capped at 226,000 per year.
The political rhetoric surrounding chain migration has stoked fears about national security and who is entering the United States through family sponsored visas. But historically, the concept of chain migration was actually simpler and less nefarious than it has recently become. The term “chain migration” was coined as a politically neutral term in the 1960s and stands for the proposition that people are more likely to move to where their families live. Although opponents of family sponsored immigration often use “chain migrant” to denote any immigrant relative of a green card holder or U.S. citizen, the modern technical usage refers to extended relations and not immediate family.
Interestingly, conservatives originally supported family sponsored immigration through the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. The Act replaced the nationality quota system, which many viewed as overtly racist, with the family reunification program. Around 1960, immigration from Europe began to decline as the continent became more prosperous. Conservatives hoped that the new program would encourage European immigrants to bring their families to the United States. Today, only about eleven percent of immigrants are European, with forty-four percent coming from Eastern Europe, including First Lady Melania Trump and her parents. Meanwhile, the overall majority comes from Asia and Latin America.
While concerns about protecting national security are real, the visa category is not as important as the screening process itself. The screening process for family sponsored visa applicants is extensive. Applicants must submit to background checks and be evaluated on the likelihood that they will become an economic liability to the state. In addition, immigrants must have a financially stable relative vouching for them, with a household income of at least 125% of the poverty line including the visa applicant. Finally, because of nationality caps and visa backlogs, it can take many years to bring extended relatives to the United States. This limits the potential to build chains of immigrants, especially from countries like Mexico that have many more qualified applicants than distributable visas.
Although no safeguard is perfect, the potential for chain migration to overwhelm the U.S. is more limited than the Administration’s rhetoric would suggest. Unfortunately, this raises the question whether the fierce opposition to immigrant families is truly about security, or whether a fear of cultural and ethnic change is prompting the effort to end the family reunification program.
As of 2014, Hispanics and Asians are the fastest growing groups in the nation for two separate reasons. Hispanics have a higher fertility rate once they arrive in the United States, while Asian immigrants arrive in the greatest numbers. Meanwhile, the percentage of white Americans is declining. All of this suggests that immigration is making America more diverse and less familiar to white Americans, who make up eighty-one percent of the 115th Congress but just sixty-two percent of the U.S. population. In the House of Representatives, Democrats have eighty-three minority members while the Republicans have only twelve, despite holding forty-five more seats as of January 2018.
It is unclear how the Democrats will handle Republicans’ demands for ending the F3 and F4 family sponsored visa programs. Eliminating those visas may be the price of protecting the 800,000 individuals enrolled in DACA. However, Republicans have also run into trouble with this negotiation tactic. As recently as April 25, 2018, a federal judge in the D.C. Circuit decided that the DACA program must remain intact unless the Department of Homeland Security can explain why DACA is “unlawful” within ninety days. If the courts uphold DACA then its effectiveness as a bargaining chip against the family sponsored visa program is greatly diminished.
As an alternative to chain migration visas, President Trump has proposed both cutting immigration overall by forty-four percent over the next fifty years, and shifting to a merit-based immigration system. Republicans have also introduced bills to limit family sponsored immigration and increase the number of merit-based employment visas. Democrats are unlikely to accede to cutting immigration so drastically, and shifting to a merit-based system could imply breaking up families. However, the merit-based system has been successful in Canada, where emphasis on immigrant contributions has popularized immigration as a whole. In fact, Canadians feel significantly more positive about immigration than do many Americans. Canada proportionally accepts about three times more immigrants than the United States, but saves about two-thirds of the slots for merit-based applicants. This may have economic advantages, but it raises humanitarian concerns. On the other hand, if the alternative is slashing immigration across the board, then it might be a necessary compromise. Switching to a merit-heavy system, however, may signal an end to the democratic values of an America that once prided itself, at least superficially, on welcoming the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Caitlin Britos anticipates graduating from Boston University School of Law in May 2019.
