WEDNESDAY AUGUST 21 2019
MIAMIHERALD.COM
Daycare centers are still using dangerous
products that have been recalled
BY ADAM GARBER AND NANCY
COWLES
Los Angeles Times
The history of recalled
children’s products is long
and tragic.
Take the story of 16-
If you’re a skilled
worker, but not from
India, good luck
getting into the U.S.
BY IRA J. KURZBAN
ira@kktplaw.com
A
t the same time
that the Trump
White House is
crushing the hopes
and aspirations of asylum
seekers and those seeking
a better life in the United
States through illegal prac-
tices, Congress is about to
seriously disrupt, if not
end, immigration of high-
skilled workers into this
country for the foreseeable
future.
With lightning speed and
without any hearings, the
House of Representatives
passed HR 1044. The legis-
lation, proposed for years
by the tech industry, grants
permanent residency to
Indian nationals by allow-
ing them to use all avail-
able visas in the skilled-
worker categories for most
of the next decade. Be-
cause Democrats want to
help their high-rolling
friends in the tech industry
and Republicans gleefully
see an end to employment-
based immigration, the bill
has strong bipartisan sup-
port.
The problem is, it is
terrible public policy.
For many years, Indian
nationals in the computer
fields have rightly com-
plained that they are being
held in limbo without any
chance of becoming lawful
permanent residents. The
current waiting time to
obtain residency is more
than 10 years. There are
550,000 nationals waiting
to obtain residency in one
of the employment-based
categories (EB-2) and
512,000 are Indian nation-
als. HR 1044 (and its Sen-
ate counterpart S 386) end
country quotas, make visas
available based solely on
waiting times and, after a
short transition period,
essentially give all the visas
to Indian nationals.
There are two pro-
nounced effects of this
policy. First, other high-
Congress is considering a bill with bipartisan support to
give skilled workers from India more visas.
month-old Danny Keysar.
Twenty-one years ago, he
died in a crib at his child-
care facility. What nobody
realized — not even the
state inspector who visited
the facility a few days be-
fore the incident — was that
the crib had been recalled
five years earlier.
Danny’s parents founded
Kids In Danger to bring
attention to this problem.
But despite some progress
made in the product-safety
system in the past two dec-
ades, unsafe products that
have been recalled still
ended up being used in
childcare facilities in 2019.
One example is the con-
tinued use of the recalled
Fisher-Price Rock ‘n Play
Sleeper in many daycare
centers. Almost 5 million of
skilled workers in health-
care and medical research
— two areas of great signif-
icance to the nation, and
especially Florida — will be
shut out of residency for
well over a decade. But it
will also mean all other
high-skilled workers in
basic science, engineering,
chemistry, physics, artifi-
cial intelligence, climate
change and many other
fields will be discouraged
from ever coming to the
United States. Second, the
waiting times for residency
under HR 1044/S 386 will
range from 10 years to 31
years after Indian nationals
use the visas.
The solution to the
problem is not fighting
over the few visas that are
available and pitting Indian
nationals against the rest
of the world, but creating a
system where more visas
are available, where the
health industry is consid-
ered a priority and where
the system encourages
skilled workers to remain
in the United States.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ken-
tucky, has introduced such
a bill — the BELIEVE Act
— designed to accomplish
that goal by doubling the
number of visas; ending
the ridiculous process of
counting spouses and chil-
dren of high-skilled work-
ers when allocating visas;
giving some limited pri-
ority to healthcare workers
in rural areas; allowing
early filing of residency for
such high-skilled workers.
The United States gets
highly skilled immigrants
from all over the world, in
a wide range of valuable
professions. Tech employ-
ers want to cut off all of
that, simply because it is
not IT workers from India.
A single industry wants to
sole-source American im-
migration policy at the
expense of health care,
cutting edge research, and
well, the whole world.
Congress should at least
hold a hearing before going
over the cliff.
Ira Kurzban is senior
partner at Kurzban,
Kurzban Tetzeli and Pratt,
PA and author of
“Kurzban’s Immigration
Law Sourcebook.”
Getty Images
these inclined sleepers were
recalled in April after more
than 30 babies had died in
them. But that recall didn’t
take this dangerous product
out of circulation.
A new survey conducted
by the U.S. Public Interest
Research Group and Kids
In Danger found that one in
10 of 376 licensed childcare
facilities that responded
still used the Rock ‘n Play
and another recently re-
called product, the Kids II
Rocking Sleeper. We even
found the products in use in
states, including Wisconsin
and Texas, that have
banned recalled products in
childcare facilities.
The recall system can be
effective at removing dan-
gerous products from store
shelves. But it falls short in
Some Trump supports say they think universities are biased and coddle students too much.
All of a sudden, valuing a
college education has
become old school
BY LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@miamiherald.com
Y
ou’d think it would
be the one thing we
could all agree
upon.
Life grows ever more
complex. Planetary over-
heating threatens a future
of floods, food shortages
and mass migration. We
carry supercomputers in
our pockets. Robots are
taking our jobs.
So you’d think, for all the
partisan and ideological
rancor in this country, the
one thing upon which we
could come together is
education. You’d think
we’d all agree it’s a good
thing.
And you’d be wrong.
Monday, the Pew Re-
search Center published a
new study, “The Growing
Partisan Divide in Views of
Higher Education,” which
found that the share of
Americans who say colleg-
making sure the products
are returned, which hap-
pens with only a fraction of
recalled products. The
system largely leaves it to
parents and childcare pro-
viders to find out about and
deal with the danger. But to
get the crucial information
they need to keep children
safe, they must either sign
up for alerts or see recall
notices in the news, both of
which are easy to miss.
One effective fix is for
companies to notify con-
sumers directly by part-
nering with retailers who
often retain customer in-
formation for direct mar-
keting. These companies
often buy or collect signif-
icant amounts of informa-
tion to identify those most
likely to buy certain prod-
es and universities have a
negative impact on the
country has jumped by 12
percentage points since
2012. But here’s the kicker:
“The increase in negative
views,” said Pew, “has
come almost entirely from
Republicans and independ-
ents who lean Republican.”
GOP antipathy toward
higher education is driven
in part, the study says, by a
belief that colleges have
gone overboard in protect-
ing students from views
they deem offensive. On
the other hand, most Re-
publicans also think profes-
sors should stop bringing
their social and political
views into the classroom.
We will pass lightly over
the contradiction of saying
students should not be
sheltered from differing
opinions while at the same
time, wanting to shelter
students from differing
opinions.
The larger issue here is
this notion that education
is the enemy. Not that this
is new. Pew merely cod-
ifies something that has
been anecdotally clear for
years. Who can forget Rick
Santorum’s 2012 com-
plaint: “President Obama
once said he wants every-
ucts, like infant sleepers.
That same marketing
tactic could be used to warn
consumers as well. And for
shoppers of child-related
products, posting notices in
store aisles could expand
the reach of recall noti-
fications.
As for informing child-
care facilities, the Public
Interest Research Group
was able to find the phone
numbers and email ad-
dresses of tens of thousands
of daycare facilities across
the country in a day. A
company like Mattel, the
maker of the Fisher-Price
Rock ‘n Play Sleeper, could
easily do this. It shouldn’t
be up to parents and child-
care operators to seek out
information about a
problem the manufacturer
created.
At the moment, only 18
states have laws that ban
the use of recalled products
at childcare centers. We
believe that this legislation
should be standard in all
states. This is common
body in America to go to
college. What a snob.”
Pass lightly — again —
over the fact that Obama
never said any such thing.
What’s more fascinating is
that Santorum — holder of
an MBA from the Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh and a
Juris Doctor from Dickin-
son School of Law — would
identify higher education
as a mark of elitism.
But he understood some-
thing about his base and its
suspicion toward education
that the rest of us are only
belatedly catching up to.
Indeed, for all the attention
that has (rightly) been paid
to how bigotry ( whether
theirs or his) motivated
Donald Trump’s voters, we
need to recognize that
education — and the lack
thereof — also determined
who did and did not sup-
port him.
Shortly after the 2016
election, Nate Silver of the
influential FiveThirtyEight
blog documented how
Trump trounced Hillary
Clinton in the 50 largest
counties with the lowest
percentage of college grad-
uates. His headline: “Edu-
cation, Not Income, Pre-
dicted Who Would Vote
For Trump.” So when
Opinion 11A
H1
sense. Unfortunately, as the
new survey showed, a ban
is only effective if daycare
facilities are directly noti-
fied. This is why the federal
Consumer Product Safety
Commission needs to work
with state agencies to cre-
ate a process that automat-
ically sends recall notices to
each facility.
Unfortunately, the case
of the dangerous sleepers is
not unique. In this year
alone, we’ve also seen re-
calls of toy vehicles, Disney
plush toys and even toddler
boots. There are many
dangerous children’s prod-
ucts in the marketplace,
and though we should try to
prevent them from making
it to store shelves in the
first place, we must also
strengthen the systems that
ensure that these products
are found and returned.
Adam Garber is the U.S.
PIRG consumer watchdog.
Nancy Cowles is the exec-
utive director of Kids In
Danger.
Getty Images
Trump said, “I love the
poorly educated,” he had
good reason to do so.
The rest of us cannot be
so sanguine. Not simply
because the education gap
helped elect our present
embarrassment, but also
because of what it portends
for America’s ability to
effectively govern itself
and meet its challenges. It
is a telling, chilling and
ominous sign of the times
that a nation that once
engineered missions to the
moon now regards climate
change with a helpless
shrug.
If the great divisions of
the past centered on race
and class, the divisions of
the future will likely also
be along lines of know-
ledge. Yet Republicans are
hostile toward knowledge
right at the moment when
it is becoming a valuable
international currency.
That may make sense as a
short-term political strate-
gy, but it is a long-term
existential threat.
Yes, the poet Thomas
Gray famously said that
“ignorance is bliss.” But he
died in 1771.
There were no robots
then.