September 4, 2019

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Health September 4, 2019

U.S. Authorities Reconsider Some Requests To Stay From Immigrants Seeking Medical Aid

Immigration authorities are reconsidering some requests from migrants to be allowed to stay in the U.S. to get medical treatment. But others hoping to get care here could be facing deportation.



MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Immigration authorities are now reconsidering some requests from immigrants to stay in the U.S. for medical treatment. This is giving hope to those who were recently denied. But as WBUR’s Shannon Dooling reports, other immigrants hoping to get lifesaving care here could still be facing deportation.

SHANNON DOOLING, BYLINE: On the 10th floor of a Boston hospital, a software engineer from Morocco describes his quest to get treatment for a rare vascular tumor. He says he consulted doctors in Belgium, Germany and South Korea, but they didn’t want to risk the surgery.

MK: I do tests, and then they said, like, we’re sorry. We can’t do that surgery because we’ll kill you. And then I’ve been looking in research papers, and then I found two doctors here in Boston.

DOOLING: The 33-year-old struggles to lift himself in bed. He asked to use his initials, M.K., because he’s afraid speaking out will hurt his case. M.K. entered the country in 2017 on a tourist and medical visa. After extending his visa as many times as he could, he applied for what’s known as medical deferred action, knowing it was likely his last option to be able to stay in the country legally. Last week, he read WBUR’s report that U.S. Customs and Immigration Services was sending letters to patients, denying requests to stay in the U.S.

MK: I called a family member. I was like, check out the mail. And surprise, surprise, there’s the letter.

DOOLING: The agency told him he had 33 days to leave the country. He says he got the news on the same day his doctor suggested yet another surgery. Earlier this week, Customs and Immigration Services ended the medical deferrals with no public announcement, just denial letters. In the future, officials say, any immigrants facing deportation can ask Immigration and Customs Enforcement for a delay. In a partial reversal, USCIS then said it would consider cases that were pending as of August 7. M.K. says he hopes the federal government does the right thing.

MK: It’s impossible for me to go back. It will be like a death sentence.

DOOLING: Sixteen-year-old Jonathan Sanchez has cystic fibrosis. His family received the same denial letter sent to M.K. and others around the country.

JONATHAN SANCHEZ: Every night, I start woken up, like, at 2:55, 3 a.m., thinking, I will wake up tomorrow. I won’t. I’ll be alive. I’ll be dead. What will happen to me?

DOOLING: Jonathan and his family came to the U.S. on tourist visas in 2016. They left their home country of Honduras, seeking treatment at Boston Children’s Hospital. Their medical deferred action request, like M.K.’s, should now be reopened. Gary Sanchez, Jonathan’s father, breaks down when he talks about his son’s future, saying he wants to see him grow up.

GARY SANCHEZ: I have a dream that one day I can see to my son, like, a man with a wife, children.

DOOLING: He says his daughter died in Honduras of cystic fibrosis. He says doctors there had no idea how to treat her condition. On her death certificate, he says, the cause was left blank.

G SANCHEZ: I don’t want that my son die because he is all my life.

DOOLING: There’s no guarantee the Sanchez family and M.K. will be approved to stay. But for now, they have something to hope for.

For NPR News, I’m Shannon Dooling in Boston.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Business September 4, 2019

‘It’s The Stone Age Of Fossil Fuels’: Coal Bankruptcy Tests Wyoming Town

In Gillette, Wyo., miner Bill Fortner stands by stalled trains that normally would be transporting coal. Local production has declined by one-third in the past decade.

Cooper McKim/Wyoming Public Media


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Two months ago, coal company Blackjewel declared bankruptcy, putting hundreds of miners in Wyoming and across Appalachia out of work. Miners affected by the bankruptcy in Kentucky have been camping out on a train track for six weeks in protest.

Blackjewel is the third coal company in Wyoming to declare bankruptcy this year, but this one is more dramatic: paychecks went unpaid, a CEO was pushed out and, most importantly, the gates of the mines in Gillette, Wyo., which calls itself the energy capital of the U.S., were locked, stopping coal production. Miners say that just doesn’t happen.

The move left about 600 people out of work in Gillette. In two months, only 25% of workers have found jobs, according to local management.

Until two months ago, Darlene Rea worked in Blackjewel’s warehouse. She received freight, wrote invoices and found parts. Since the coal company’s abrupt bankruptcy, she’s been stuck looking for work.

“Every day, every day, every day, you keep waiting and wondering if somebody is going to call you up. And then there’s nothing,” Rea says, slapping down a sheet of paper listing all the places she’s applied for jobs.

“Peabody Energy, Cloud Peak, Campbell County Hospital, Walmart, Pegasus,” she says.

Next to many is the word “rejection.”

Rea has a medically retired husband and a mortgage. Worst comes to worst, they might have to sell the house and move — a tough option with grandkids nearby. Rea says her positivity is fading with each passing day of a particularly prolonged bankruptcy.

“I didn’t think it was going to be this long. Seriously.”

Ty Cordingly is one of the few who managed to land a new job.

“I got some co-workers that had to go to Nevada, Montana, South Carolina, you know, Arizona,” he said. “When there’s not very many jobs — our entire community is based around the energy industry.”

Gillette isn’t just losing people — it’s losing money, too. Blackjewel owes the county $37 million — funds that support not only local services but state education. It’s left local vendors unpaid. The company even owes the federal government more than $60 million. Cordingly thinks Wyoming relies too much on energy.

“This isn’t a story about one individual or one generation. The state has always just counted on us being the cash cow for the state of Wyoming and they didn’t have to do any planning because the oil kept flowing and the trains kept rolling out with coal on it,” he says.

Ty Cordingly and his dad at a local Gillette diner. He’s seen coworkers leave the state for jobs and thinks Wyoming relies too much on the energy industry.

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Cooper McKim/Wyoming Public Media

Over the past year, Campbell County produced the most tax revenue for the state: 15% of it. Oil and gas are certainly still flowing, but coal isn’t having as much luck.

Driving to his regular diner, retired coal miner Bill Fortner says, “It’s the Stone Age of fossil fuels, coal is. It’s done.”

His ancestors homesteaded here four generations ago. Fortner is a staunch Republican who has mined coal for much of his life. He says President Trump has been the best shot coal has had, but it hasn’t been enough. Production in the Powder River Basin has declined by one-third in the past decade. Fortner says the area needs to adapt, and quickly.

“Otherwise, we’re going to be sitting here looking at another ghost town,” he said.

Local leaders say Gillette is already taking steps to diversify its economy. While that’s underway, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon says there may be some tight financial years ahead.

The future is still uncertain for Blackjewel’s two mines. The former owner says it plans to buy them back but would only keep them open for the short term.

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Sports September 4, 2019

Sports Commentary: Does The NFL Pay For Pain?

The National Football League’s regular season kicks off Thursday. Sports commentator Mike Pesca offers his take on NFL monetary incentives.



STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

The NFL season begins tomorrow without some of the top players in the game. Some players are contract holdouts; one made a high-profile retirement. Commentator Mike Pesca says, many players face a question. How much money makes it worth the injuries and pain?

MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: When Andrew Luck, the NFL’s most accomplished quarterback under age 30, decided to become an ex-NFL quarterback 10 days ago, he explained that his frustration and pain were adding up to true despair, essentially asking us to consider his humanity. And we should. But we should weigh the humanity against the monetary because that’s the calculation that NFL players have to constantly perform. Andrew Luck’s contracts have paid him close to $100 million up to this point. There’s no way to know how much he kept. But after taxes, expenses and agents fees, it’s safe to say that Luck has tens of millions of dollars to his name.

Now, I ask you, if I put $20 million to $40 million in your bank account and told you you could earn an extra hundred million dollars over the next few years, but you’d have to break a bone a year or maybe lacerate a kidney or spleen every third year, would you do it? The money matters, of course it does, but it also incentivizes decisions in ways fans might not appreciate. The NFL is a pay-for-pain enterprise.

Let’s take the case of Melvin Gordon, running back for the Los Angeles Chargers. Like Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott, Gordon is a great talent who refuses to play for the amount his contract calls for. You should know that their contracts call for these running backs to be paid in the mid-seven figures this year, which seems like a lot of money – and it is except when you realize that other running backs, who might not even be as good as them, are being paid in the low eight figures. All sports have rookie contracts before a period of free agency that players have to suffer through. But in football, the suffering isn’t figurative.

Last year, Elliott ran or received the ball 381 times. A few of those possessions ended with him touching a foot out of bounds or, perhaps, scampering into the end zone untouched. But in the vast majority of occasions – literally hundreds of times – Elliott’s labor ended as he was knocked to the ground by a 200-to-300-pound man – not fun. I’d try to get every dollar I could in exchange for that inconvenience. If someone told me, 250 times this year, I’d be tackled by a 300-pound professional athlete and that, in exchange, I would get $3 million to $5 million, I would probably take it. But if you also told me that if I refused to participate in 50 to 100 more pre-season tackles by the 300-pound man and that by doing so I might be able to get $13 million, I would be really interested in the part where I didn’t have to get tackled for free.

We’re not talking about practice basketball drills or batting practice. We’re talking about pay for pain. Fans want their players to play. In fact, if every Chargers fan and owner of Melvin Gordon in fantasy football were allowed to contribute a dollar to a hypothetical GoFundMe, we could solve his contract holdout tomorrow. And fans generally know intellectually about the costs of the game and accept it. But knowing the costs and feeling them – really feeling them – is what makes football an entertainment to its viewers but, too often, an affliction to its practitioners.

INSKEEP: Commentator Mike Pesca is the author of “Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs In Sports History.” And it looks like the Dallas Cowboys had been listening to Mike Pesca because – this just in – the team has announced it has agreed to terms with running back Ezekiel Elliott.

(SOUNDBITE OF RAPPER BIG POOH’S “TOO REAL [INSTRUMENTAL]”)

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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