Majorityrights News > Category: Immigration and Politics

Visigrad Post, “The Three Seas Initiative: Strengthening Cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe”, 13 May 2017:

By Olivier Bault.

Poland, Helenów – Pressed between Moscow’s energy and military pressure in the east, and the economic and ideological pressure of Brussels, Berlin and Paris to the west, twelve Central and Eastern European countries are taking part in the Three Seas Initiative (The Adriatic, Baltic and the Black Sea) aimed at strengthening regional cooperation and infrastructure in the fields of transport, telecommunications, energy and the environment. On 4 May, Polish President Andrzej Duda’s Head of Cabinet met the foreign advisors of the Presidents of the Three Seas countries near Warsaw: the Visegrád Group countries (V4: Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary), the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia), as well as Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Croatia. The aim was to prepare for the summit which is to be held by these countries in Wrocław, in southwestern Poland, next July, after last year’s Dubrovnik summit in Croatia.

The message that the participating countries want to spread, according to Andrzej Duda’s Chief of Cabinet, however, goes in the direction of integration and solidarity with the European Union as a whole. With regard to infrastructure, this includes strengthening the previously neglected North-South links rather than the West-East links.

The Three Seas Initiative has been at the center of Polish foreign policy since the Conservatives (PiS) came to power in Warsaw. Already between the two World Wars, Poland had dreamed of a great “Międzymorze” Federation of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe to resist together the supremacy of Soviet Russia and Germany. If this project derived its inspiration from the history of the Republic of the Two Nations, the union of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania which extended to its peak (around 1600) from the Baltic to the Black Sea, geopolitics of the 1920s and 1930s did not make it possible to realize it. Polish President Andrzej Duda, elected in 2015, re-launched the idea, this time in the framework of enhanced cooperation within the European Union, with Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic.

It is unclear whether US President Donald Trump will attend the Wrocław summit but he has been invited.

Translated from French by the Visegrád Post.

Visigrad Post, “The indisputable success of the Hungarian border fence”, 15 May 2017:

Hungary – The second fence on the southern border of Hungary is complete. Hungary is now endowed with the most monitored border in Europe, whose effectiveness is indisputable.

Along the 155 km of the border with Serbia, the anti-migrant barrier has been reinforced with a second fence, motion detection systems and thermal cameras, and an asphalted road between the two fences. It took about 15 million euros to erect this second barrier. The cost of mobilizing soldiers and policemen at the border has not yet been established, but the results are there: since 28 March, no one has been able to cross the border illegally.

If, however, anyone succeeds in passing, it is unlikely that they will continue their journey. Any clandestine intercepted in Hungary is taken back to the crossing point of the southern border, to the Serbian side. They are recorded as illegals and are no longer able to file asylum applications.

Prevention is better than cure

This could be the watchword of the government, which, in erecting this reinforced barrier, complied to the urgent demand of Mayor László Toroczkai, vice-president of the right-wing populist Jobbik party, and also mayor of Ásotthalom, a town along the Serbian border that gained worldwide infamy after his viral video aimed at discouraging migrants from passing by his place.

“I asked for the barrier in 2014. From its construction in 2015, the results were very convincing,” the Hungarian local official told to the Visegrád Post. “The double barrier was and is necessary, as is the strong police presence on the ground, as no barrier completely deters those who want to cross. This Monday, police discovered a 1-kilometer long tunnel made by smugglers … ” The government maintains that the barrier was all the more necessary as the wave of immigration of 2015 would be only the first of a potential long series.

Erdogan’s recurring threats to the European Union, in particular, and the millions of Africans waiting in Libya are pushing the Hungarian government to believe that the pressure on its southern border is only temporarily low, and the Hungarian authorities are now on a permanent war footing to deal with the migratory waves.

A vision shared by László Toroczkai, who commented during our phone call that “this barrier and the means to curb mass immigration will not just be necessary in the years to come, but also in the coming centuries.”

“France has already condemned boycotting Israel, and I have no intention of changing this position.” - Emmanuel Macron

TheTower, “Party of French President Macron Boots Anti-Israel Candidate Over Anti-Semitic Tweets”, 15 May 2017:

The party of newly installed French President Emmanuel Macron expelled a candidate for a parliamentary seat on Friday over anti-Semitic comments he made on social media, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.

En Marche removed Christian Gerin, a journalist, from its ticket for next month’s legislative elections after tweets he made were publicized by LICRA, a watchdog that exposes anti-Semitism and racism.

The tweets in question were posted between 2013 and last year. One tweet by Gerin asked, “When will there be a separation between CRIF and state?” CRIF is an umbrella organization representing the Jews of France. Its opponents say that CRIF wields too much influence in France.

Gerin characterized former Prime Minister Manuel Valls as “virulently Zionist, racist and an Islamophobe.” He also advocated for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

LICRA, which is one of the oldest civil rights organizations in France, characterized Gerins’ tweets as having “clear anti-Semitic connotations.”

A spokesman for En Marche, Laurence Haim, confirmed that Gerin was suspended over the tweets.

As interior minster and later prime minister in the previous Socialist government, Valls was vocal in expressing his opposition to anti-Semitism. In 2014, he said, “Criticism of Israel that is based on anti-Zionism — that’s anti-Semitism today, this is the refuge of those who do not accept the State of Israel.”

A year later he said in a Paris synagogue that the fight against anti-Semitism in France “must be renewed.”

Macron also denounced boycotts of Israel during his campaign, deeming them anti-Semitic, The Jerusalem Post reported.

“The role of France is to conduct an independent and balanced policy that would guarantee a dialogue by all sides and the construction of peace,” Macron said as he visited Lebanon in January. “France has already condemned boycotting Israel, and I have no intention of changing this position.”

The Court of Cassation, France’s highest court, ruled in October 2015 that the BDS campaign is a form of hate speech.

Brescia

Council of Canadian Citizens, “Brescia, Italy: Suicide of the Lioness?”, 15 May 2017

Known as the Lioness of Italy for its resistance to the Austrian army in 1849 during the First War of Italian Independence, is the city of Brescia blindly building its own funeral pyre as it takes in thousands of African migrants on a daily basis? It has been argued by liberals and many Catholics that the city is a model of integration and that Italian “conviviality” can succeed where Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism and French assimilationism have failed.1 Indeed, Brescia supposedly offers a third way: “interculturality” involving face-to-face “dialogue” between different cultures.2 What this actually means in practice is difficult to decipher. In any case, such claims are dangerously optimistic and utopian, to say the least.

History

Before considering the current wave of (state aided) migration let us take a very brief look at the origins of the city and its experience during another period of large scale of migration: the Völkerwanderung. We will see that during and after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, Germanic tribes settled in and around Brescia, as they did in many other parts of Italy, but that these warriors and their families were ultimately assimilated into the Roman population. It could be said that Brescia conquered its conquerors. But what of the current migrants? As one former mayor put it, Brescia is in effect a “frontier city.” Can Africans and other non-Europeans arriving in such huge numbers also be assimilated? And, assuming for the sake of argument that they can be, how long will the process take and at what cost?

         

The Roman historian Livy wrote that Brescia, or Brixia as it was then called in Latin, had been the chief settlement of the Cenomanian Gauls who crossed the Alps and established themselves in Italy north of the River Po,3 which is thought to have been inhabited by the Ligurians, possibly a pre-Indo European population. In the period before and after the Second Punic War (218/201 BC), the Roman Republic defeated the Celtic tribes south of the River Po and founded colonies in the area. The Cenomanian Gauls north of the Po for their part were defeated in 197 BC and Romanisation gradually ensued. In 27 BC, Octavian Augustus granted Brixia, now a significant urban centre, the status of colonia civica augusta.

As the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century and in the centuries that followed, Brescia frequently found itself centre stage of the Völkerwanderung. In 402 AD the city was ravaged by the Ostrogoths under Alaric and in 451 it was besieged and sacked by Attila the Hun. In 496 Odoacer, the general who had deposed the last Roman Emperor in the West, Romulus August, was defeated and killed by the Ostrogoths under Theoderic who styled himself “King of the Goths and Romans.” The Ostrogoths finally succumbed to a resurgent Byzantine Empire and Brescia fell in 562. But Brescia remained in Byzantine hands for just six years when another Germanic tribe, the Lombards, invaded Italy almost unopposed and established a Kingdom that lasted until the Frankish conquest of 774. As least as far as Brescia was concerned the barbarian incursions and migrations had now largely come to an end. What is striking about these arrivals is the ultimate assimilation of these conquering Germanic populations into the Roman population. The Lombards gradually abandoned their social customs and clothing and the use of their Germanic tongue was replaced by the neo-Latin vernacular of the local population.

African and Asian Invaders

National Geography and Academics call them the “New Italians”

It is estimated that less than 3% of those who cross the Mediterranean are actually fully-fledged refugees. In Brescia the situation is even worse with around 72% of the arrivals classified as illegals. And these figures refer to 2016 only. Few clandestini are ever deported and most drift into the black economy, try to reach northern Europe or end up in the criminal underworld. A truly monstrous situation has arisen which amounts to failure by the state to fulfill its fundamental duty of upholding the rule of law and defend its citizens. A whole industry has now grown up around migrants: lawyers, think tanks, hotel owners, landlords and liberal/catholic cooperatives providing accommodation for them. The costs are enormous. According to one report, in 2016 the system of “accoglienza” (welcoming) was costing the province of Brescia around 2 million Euro a month!

The phenomenon of migration from Africa began in the late 1980’s but, to be fair, the much-maligned Berlusconi actually managed to get the situation under a degree of control thanks to his relations with Libya. Then came the chaos caused by the overthrow of Gaddafi and the civil war, the ousting of Berlusconi and a series of “technocrat” and liberal governments appointed by President Napolitano, a former communist who in 1956 backed the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Key figures in government circles are known globalists with connections to refugee organisations. Laura Boldrini, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, is a former spokesperson for the UNHCR in Rome and was editor of its magazine Rifiugiati (Refugees).

Now, in addition to this onslaught from Africa, Brescia already has a non-European population that makes up around 13% of its roughly 200,000 inhabitants, the biggest groups being North Africans, West Africans and South Asians.5 This is the one of highest in percentage terms in Italy and the real figure is without doubt higher because of illegal immigration and the figures do not include foreigners naturalised as Italian citizens. The vast majority are unskilled workers and their dependents. Foreigners suffer a disproportionately high rate of unemployment and it goes without saying that they make up the bulk of the prison population. The member of the Lombard Regional Council in charge of Security, Civil Protection and Immigration called Brescia “the capital of foreign crime” in Northern Italy.6 Brescia too has had its fair share of terror plots, foreign fighters and Islamists.

Political Climate

Italian opinion now reflects the divisions we see over much of the Western World between the globalist metropolitan establishment on the one side and “provincials” and defenders of the nation state on the other. Much of the media, academia, big business, the professions, the church, the school system and polite society generally are politically correct and anti-populist. The courts too have taken controversial decisions. In a town near Brescia recently, a member of Lega Nord, the northern separatist party critical of mass immigration, was fined for writing that certain cooperatives “profit from the traffic in illegal immigrants.” The judge held that the statement was “discriminatory” as asylum seekers are given temporary leave to stay in the country and technically are not in Italy illegally!8 As public anger over the situation rises (see below) such cases are likely to mushroom in future. Comparisons have been drawn with medieval heresy trials as a nervous establishment seeks to criminalise beliefs contrary to prevailing liberal orthodoxy.

Africans demanding that Italians live up to the ideals of Freedom and Democracy first nurtured in Africa

However, when pressed on the issue one finds that even people within these milieus will privately express deep concern, especially about Islam. There may be self-censorship as well because opposition to mass immigration is considered provincial and low status. A survey of ten European countries conducted by Chatham House (hardly an evil populist hotbed) suggested that over half the population of those countries wanted a ban on Muslim immigration. The survey suggested that 69% of Italians have an unfavourable view of Muslims. Fortunately, two national newspapers Il Giornale and Libero Quotidiano and websites such as Tutti i Crimini degli Immigrati (All the Crimes of the Immigrants) do not hesitate to cover immigration related issues.

The liberal and liberal elements in the Catholic church in Italy have a curious belief they can succeed where so many others have failed. In autumn 2015 the liberal newspaper La Repubblica ran an article claiming that a school in downtown Brescia where the children are entirely foreign is an example of how Brescia is a “model” and that integration “works here.”

Yet the journalist goes on to say that one reason that the school population is almost entirely non-Italian, and indeed largely non-European, is that Italian parents no longer send their children there because of the concentration of foreigners. Indeed, at times the teachers have to “educate” not only the kids but also the parents who hold regressive social attitudes in relation to activities such as mixed swimming classes. Even the journalist admits that sometimes it is “they,” i.e. the foreigners, who create problems, citing a Nigerian parent who said that boys must be served by girls.

Liberals and immigrants protest against Italian “racists” in Brescia, 2010

We are told that time, patience and resources are required. But here we are speaking about relatively new arrivals. Other countries now face the failed integration of many adult second and third generation Muslims turning to traditionalism, fundamentalism and even terrorism. It is surely complacent to argue that such problems can be avoided by time, patience and resources. Is it not more realistic to admit a basic incompatibility of cultures? Italian progressives who pride themselves on their cosmopolitanism and openness actually seem to live in a national, or in the case of Brescia, provincial bubble, complacent in their belief that when it comes to integrating immigrants Italians do it better. They seem to have learned little or nothing from the experiences of other countries.

So far the Italian state so far has had no official policy of multiculturalism and does not engage in practices such as affirmative action. It is rare to find members of ethnic minorities working for the state as mass immigration is, compared to most other countries, a relatively recent phenomenon. Further, the country also enjoys relatively restrictive citizenship laws which also tends to exclude individuals of foreign origin from working for the state and voting in elections. The country has therefore also escaped the sort of scandals seen for example in UK where there have been cases of electoral fraud in South Asian communities in London10 and reports of a disproportionate number of misconduct proceedings against ethnic minority police officers.

That said, the Italian education system in particular suffers from liberal bias. History textbooks, for example, are heavily influenced by multiculturalist thinking, provide a vulgar Marxist interpretation of colonialism, push cultural relativism and fail to conduct any analysis of crimes committed by communist regimes. Classroom tasks and activities with a pro-immigration bias are commonplace.

But will Italy go down the same path as some other Western countries and loosen its nationality laws, introduce diversity quotas in the state and, in effect, discriminate against its indigenous population? Will its liberals also play the identity politics card and seek to buy support from enfranchised Africans and Asians? Or will Italy learn from mistakes of other countries now enjoying the bloody harvest of mass immigration that went too fast and too deep? Some of the things we see do not augur well as liberalism in Italy is slavishly enamoured with what it sees as more “advanced” multicultural societies.

There are, however, signs of resistance at a popular level. In August 2015 villagers in Collio near Brescia protested the arrival of migrants and in November 2016 200 residents of the town of Montichiari also near Brescia staged a week long protested outside a former barracks that was being transformed into a refuge centre for hundreds of asylum seekers. The rejection of the left’s referendum proposals and the downfall of Matteo Renzi in December 2016 was arguably in part due the government’s open door migrant policy.

One Sicilian Public Prosecutor has raised questions about possible connections between people traffickers and NGOs operating in the Mediterranean and even went so far as to say that some NGOs might have “interests in the manoeuvres of international speculation.” But without evidence and without the resources to conduct further enquiries the Prosecutor has said that the investigation has suffered a setback. It was reported in the Italian press that on 3 May 2017 Prime Minister Gentiloni held a meeting with wealthy liberal philanthropist George Soros, a man who reportedly funds NGOs operating off the Libyan coast, to discuss “investments in Italy.”

We shall see whether the prosecutor gets his resources. Until the next general election, expected to be held in 2018, and until perhaps we see a thorough going transformation of the political culture and collapse of liberal consensus, we can expect migrant numbers to swell still further as Brescia, like the West generally, continues to build its own funeral pyre.

ItaliAnthro, “Mediterranean Sea as Genetic Barrier”, 16 June 2014:

This new study confirms that the Mediterranean Sea has acted as a strong barrier to gene flow through geographic isolation following initial settlements. Samples from (Northern) Italy, Tuscany, Sicily and Sardinia are closest to other Southern Europeans from Iberia, the Balkans and Greece, who are in turn closest to the Neolithic migrants that spread farming throughout Europe, represented here by the Cappadocian sample from Anatolia. But there hasn’t been any significant admixture from the Middle East or North Africa into Southern Europe since then.

Genes Mirror Geography Across the Mediterranean Basin

We first used principal components analysis (PCA) to visualize the genotypic distances between studied populations. Populations on the southern and northern coasts of the Mediterranean appear to be separated by the geographic barrier of the Mediterranean Sea. The role of the Mediterranean Sea as a barrier for gene flow among populations was also supported by our analysis using the BARRIER software, which implements Monmonier’s maximum difference algorithm. In accordance with this finding…the PCA distribution of the populations closely resembles the geographic map of the countries circling the Mediterranean Sea. On this PCA “map” of populations, the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea is appropriately occupied by the Palestinians and the Lebanese Druze. Yemenites and Bedouins branch out from the Mediterranean populations and are closer to the populations of the Near East.

  [...]

Seljuk Turks settled in Anatolia in the 12th century AD; however, the Anatolian Cappadocians we included in this study belong to the population that have kept the religion and the language of the pre-Seljuk Cappadocians and, therefore, most likely carry the genetic makeup of the ancient Anatolians. The only important gene flows from Near East to Europe must have occurred in prehistoric times and, as genetic evidence suggests, the most prominent migrations should have occurred during the Neolithic.

  [...]

Although the Southeastern Mediterranean islands seem to have acted as a bridge from Anatolia to Southern Europe, the relatively small degree of gene flow between the African and the European coasts shows that the Mediterranean Sea also had a barrier function as also suggested with studies of mtDNA polymorphisms. Thus, the Mediterranean seems to have facilitated the migrations of Neolithic farmers along its Southern European coast but it mostly acted as an isolating factor between its European and African coasts.

Adua del Vesco is from Messina, Sicily

Diversity Macth Frei, “France’s Chief Rabbi urges Jews to work with Muslims against nationalists”, 10 May 2017:

France’s Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia has said that the country’s Jewish community must seek cooperation with French Muslims against far-right political forces in the country, Israel Radio reported on Wednesday.

“It is very important that we work also with the Muslims against National Front,” Korsia said, referring to the populist anti-immigration party led by defeated presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

Le Pen lost the second round of elections at the beginning of the week to centrist Emmanuel Macron, who will be sworn in on Sunday. Le Pen, 48, had portrayed the ballot as a contest between the “globalists” represented by her rival — those in favor of open trade, immigration and shared sovereignty — and the “nationalists” who defend strong borders and national identities.

Korsia’s comments came against a wider trend in which European Jewish and Muslim leaders are coordinating activities against anti-religious legislation in the continent. Arab religious leaders are also involved, including some from Saudi Arabia, the radio station said.

Among other efforts, Jewish and Muslim groups have held meetings and seminars in pursuit of an agreement on joint action against parliamentary motions banning ritual slaughter or religious symbols in public places. The talks have led some Muslim leaders to back action against Muslim attacks on Jews in Europe, the report said.

In Europe, the Jewish and Muslim slaughter customs have united opponents both from liberal circles who cite animal welfare as their main concern and right-wing nationalists who view the custom as foreign to their countries’ cultures.  Source

This is, of course, unsurprising, because, as I discussed the other day, the Jews created Islam as a weapon against Christians and are still using it as such to this day. Unfortunately, knowledge of this truth is confined to, most likely, a few thousand people in the world; at worst, a few hundred; at best, tens of thousands. Yet if we could successfully establish this idea in the public mind - that the Jews created Islam -, even just to the extent of making people aware of it as a “conspiracy theory”, as everyone is now aware of the claims of 9/11 truthers or birthers,  it could genuinely alter the world. 

First of all, it could unravel Islam itself if Muslims realised they had fallen for a 1400-year-old Jewish con trick. Second, it would weaken Jewish domination of our societies if recognition spread that the Jews and Muslims were working together against us. Third, and perhaps this is fanciful, but could it even sow self-doubt among Jewry itself, since I’m sure very few Jews know the role their people played in fostering the emergence of Islam?

If the Counterjewhad movement were really interested in undermining Islam, there is no more effective means of doing it than spreading awareness of the fact that Jews created it in the first place. Muslim antisemitism would then self-detonate, potentially taking Islam down with it, or, at the very least, significantly weakening it. Of course they won’t do that, however, because their primary interest is not weakening Islam but promoting the interests of Jewry and it is not in the interests of Jewry to be known as the authors of this monster.

Please help disseminate the meme that “Jews created Islam” on forums and comment sections you participate in. Use those exact words and link to the Hagarism post with those words. Because of the way search-engine algorithms work, this makes it much more likely that when someone types those words into Google, the Hagarism post will come up.

Italian reporter Francesca Parisella attacked

Breitbart, “Reporter Attacked Live on Air During Report on Immigration in Rome”, 9 May 2017:

An Italian TV reporter and her cameraman were assaulted during a live broadcast whilst covering the living conditions of African migrants hoping to break into northern Europe in search of higher welfare payments.

Matrix Channel 5 journalist Francesca Parisella was showing viewers scenes at Rome’s central train terminal, where dozens of migrants were sleeping outside the station. The reporter told viewers the migrants, who have been arriving in boats to Italy this year in record numbers, had gathered cardboard and other items “to protect them from the cold of the street”.

Noting that Italian volunteers had recently visited the site to bring the migrants hot food, Parisella said the men disperse during daylight hours then return to the station to sleep, “because their hope especially is to reach Milan and other cities in the north [of Italy] and then move to northern Europe”.

Just after the reporter told viewers that she and her team “don’t want to disturb [the migrants] further”, the camera was visibly shaken and appeared to have been turned on its side, causing Parisella to alert the Matrix host Nicola Porro that her party was under attack.

Following Porro’s warning to the TV journalist to “get out of there”, Parisella could be heard running from the station before the assailants caught up with her.

“What do you want? You’re crazy!” she said, and emitted screams of terror. “Oh God, Francesca, get out of there,” said Porro, before instructing the Matrix producer to alert police to the attack.

From the Matrix studio a few minutes later, the presenter explained that “Francesca is upset but well. [Assailants] destroyed the camera and beat up the cameraman. A situation like our show this evening should resemble reports from a war zone. Thanks to a taxi driver, a much worse outcome was avoided.”

Shortly after, Parisella confirmed this version of events on the programme by telephone.

“We were stood at a distance to report on the type of welcome [Italy] can give [migrants], but they were disturbed and then assaulted us. They chased me and grabbed me by the jacket,” said the journalist.

Police, who are investigating the incident, said: “This type of aggression is unacceptable and casts a haunting shadow on press freedom in our country, on security conditions in Italy’s largest station, and also on the possibility of violence towards a young woman working in the centre of our capital.”

Porro said he felt “guilty” for having sent a woman out to report from the station late at night, but said the case “raises serious questions” about how somewhere in the centre of Rome was able to become a “no man’s land” where attacks are commonplace, with no fanfare nor acknowledgement from the media.

According to local media, a 37-year-old man hailing from the Ivory Coast has been detained in connection with the attack. The alleged aggressor was known to police for a list of crimes including domestic violence and was ordered by the prefect of Rome last September to be deported.

Vice, “Jared Kushner’s sister courted Chinese investors with a controversial visa program Trump just extended”, 8 May 2017:

Jared Kushner’s sister Nicole Meyer, right

The $1.2 trillion spending bill President Donald Trump signed Friday extended the controversial EB-5 program, which grants U.S. visas to foreigners, mostly from China, who invest at least $500,000 in a domestic development project.

A day later, Jared Kushner’s sister stood at the Beijing Ritz-Carlton pitching the program to a ballroom-full of at least 100 wealthy Chinese investors. “Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States,” a brochure for the event read, according to the Washington Post. The family business, Kushner Cos. LLC, needed $150 million in financing for a housing development in Jersey City, New Jersey, the New York Times reported.

While Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser at the White House, promised to fully divest from his family’s multibillion-dollar real estate empire, the presentation Saturday highlighted clear conflicts between his lingering business interests and policy decisions. Kushner has become a key diplomat in increasingly tense U.S.-China relations, among his many roles with the administration.

During the presentation, Nicole Kushner Meyer didn’t hold back linking Kushner Cos. to the current U.S. administration. She:

- mentioned that her brother left the company to work for Trump, according to the Post

- showed a slide that pictured Trump as the “key decision-maker” on the fate of the EB-5 visa, according to the Times

- encouraged attendees to invest early before the Trump administration decides to roll back the program — as Congress is pushing for, according to the Post.

Footage of U.S. President Donald Trump is shown on a video screen as workers wait for investors at a reception desk for a presentation at a Shanghai hotel. The event promoted EB-5 investment in a Kushner Companies development in the U.S., Sunday, May 7, 2017.

“It’s incredibly stupid and highly inappropriate,” Richard Painter, former White House ethics counsel for President George W. Bush, told the Post. “They clearly imply that the Kushners are going to make sure you get your visa. . . . They’re [Chinese applicants] not going to take a chance. Of course they’re going to want to invest.”

This isn’t the first family’s first ethically questionable brush with Chinese investors and the EB-5 program. Kushner Cos. could earn as much as $500 million in a planned real estate deal, which relies on the EB-5 program for funding, with a Chinese company that has close connections to the Chinese government. And loans obtained through the EB-5 program funded about one-quarter of a Trump Tower in New Jersey.

Kusher Cos. apologized “if that mention of [Meyer’s] brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors,” in a statement emailed to NPR.