WILL the New Year baby have orange, coiffed-gelled-in-place hair, wrapped in a 2020 gold-plated Made-in-China diaper?

Despite being very unpopular and a band of Evangelicals breaking away from the Conservative Coalition of Religious Right for Trump, the 45th President may well still remain the occupant of the White House.

Thanks to the Electoral College, which is the only factor that counts.

A recent NYT/Siena polling — a look at the state of the 2020 race exactly one year before Election Day — shows “the Electoral College advantage that landed Trump in the White House (despite him receiving nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton) as being still very much in play.”

The advantage is due to the lack of interest in and emergent extreme competitiveness of Trump against the leading Democratic challengers (Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) especially in the “six battleground states…of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina.”

Unless the denunciation of a prominent Christian magazine, founded by the late famed evangelist the Rev. Billy Graham, cascades into a movement echoing the call to remove the current United States President.

The “unsparing Thursday editorial” of Christianity Today said Trump has a “grossly immoral character” and the Religious Right should actively takes steps to remove the impeached US President out of “loyalty to the creator of the Ten Commandments.”

The surprise move described by Trump’s Evangelical supporters as a voice in the wilderness rattled the White House and Religious Right leaders who have cast their lot with Trump.

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Unless a more viable and acceptable candidate rises from the Democratic Party ranks, or more Evangelical churches exorcise the Devil they know, it will still be the 2020 Baby Trump that will hold the rattle for another four years.

For immigrants, it will be another period of uncertainty, anxiety over the closing of immigration doors, restricting the flow of legal migrants including asylum applicants and refugees as well as the continuing slowdown of visa issuance caused by administrative monkey wrenches in America’s immigration regulations.

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Waves vs migrants in Oceania

Across the Pacific, Australia will hold its next federal election on or before May 21, 2022. Voters from Down Under will select 151 seats for the House of Representatives and 40 of the 76 seats in the Senate.

Australia’s migration program for 2017 to 2018 illustrated the continuing decline of applicants granted permanent residency.

In 2019, the government cut the annual migration cap by 30,000 to maintain the intake at 160,000 for the next four years.” As a token, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) maintained the yearly planned level at 190,000.

The policy of decreasing migrant intake is confirmed by the annual migration report by the DHA. The total permanent migration program outcome for 2017 to 18 was 162,417 places.

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In the next program year, only a total of 160,323 permanent visas were granted, the “lowest intake since 2008 when under 159,000 visas were issued,” SBS Australia reported.

While the plan prioritizes skilled migrants as opposed to the family stream, the chance of being invited to apply for permanent residency through SkillSelect has slimmed down considerably. To qualify for inclusion in the candidate pool, a skilled worker applicant must earn a minimum of 65 points.

The invitation rounds last year, however, shows that candidates need at least 75 to 80 points to qualify for residency in all the subclasses — skilled independent — 189; state/territory nominated — 190 ;and even the skilled regional provisional – 491.

In the Dec. 11, 2019 draw, skilled independent and skilled regional applicants with scores of 95 were invited to proceed with their residency applications. Candidates with 65 points remained in the pool, facing the loss of points by not being invited.

A 32-year-old unmarried applicant with a valid expression of interest (EOI) in the SkillSelect pool will lose 5 points if he or she turns 33 during the two-year validity of the EOI. Assuming the same applicant maintains a proficiency level in English (7.0 in all IELTS components); has a bachelor’s degree considered to be an Australian equivalent; with at least three years of experience in the last five years.

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The potential score of 70 will be reduced to the 65 minimum.

The same applicant may earn points by taking up the required two-year study program in regional Australia and — because of exposure to regional employers or state/territory government — get a job offer then work for at least a year. The SkillSelect score would be 95, despite a five-point reduction in age and get one of the 14,000 visas allocated for this subclass 491which took effect Nov. 16, 2019.

There are caveats to this work-to-residency visa. The applicant should be earning a minimum wage of $53,000 a year for three years. The 491 applicants must live and work in a regional area for at least three years before being eligible for residency. The current application fee is $4,045.

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To get accepted into an academic program (to get the bonus points for regional studies), an applicant must provide evidence of having at least $21,041 to meet the financial requirement in addition to the course fee.

SkillSelect applicants outside Australia would not have these points-earning potentials. They will remain in the EOI pool watching their points and chance of residency slowly vanish unless they opt for the student or temporary work pathway.

New Zealand mirrors Australia’s policy of encouraging temporary migration while keeping permanent resident applicants at bay.

Under the Labor-New Zealand First coalition government, 355,000 temporary worker and student visas were approved to September 2019, up from 335,000 in the year before the 2017 election, according to a Newsroom.co.nz report.

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Meanwhile, permanent residency approvals were down to 35,000 from 42,600 in the election year.

Temporary work visas show an increase of applications accepted in 2018 to 2019 (recorded as 257,127), compared to the 2014 to 2015 program year — 196,611.

Life as international students has also been progressively challenging if not outrightly difficult.

Tuition is to be paid in full after visa approval, in contrast to Australia or Canada where semestral or term payments are accepted. There has been significant delays in visa processing resulting in at least NZ$33.4 million in losses, according to the Institute of Technology and Polytech (ITP) sector.

The New Zealand government is facing significant delays in processing study and tourist visas, which analysts estimate could cost the government millions of dollars in losses.

Visa processing delays and reports of difficulty in the student-work-residency pathway resulted in a significant decrease in each of the ITP and English language school enrolment. In 2014 to 2015, there were 116,581 student visa applications. Two years later, the application numbers dropped to 11,809.

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Natural and man-made events also contributed to international students’ reluctance to take up studies in New Zealand, opting for Canada, Australia or the UK instead. The White Island volcano eruption and earthquakes in the South added to the anxiety.

The trade war between the US and China, the postponed visit of NZ Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern to China, together with the postponement of a planned campaign to attract Chinese tourists were also contributory factors..

“We have never had this many cancellations before,” he said.

The number of Chinese students enrolling in New Zealand schools has plunged by more than 1,000 this year, amid record numbers of last-minute cancellations.

New Zealand Herald reported in February 2019 that Rangitoto College, the country’s biggest school, experienced a 10 percent cancellation in enrollments.

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“John van der Zwan of the Schools International Education Business Association (Sieba) which represents 350 schools, said China accounted for 50 to 60 percent of New Zealand’s 12,400 school-level overseas students last year, and their numbers were down sharply (in 2019).”

Participants in a recent survey of the UK Guardian reveals a desire to “restrict immigration…because of a shortage of housing and services; that immigration needs to be lowered to a more sustainable level.”

Migrants are seen to be straining infrastructure and housing. And, if foreigners-seeking-residency are allowed in, they should be “funneled into smaller towns and provinces.”

Sending immigrants to the regions and provinces are the order of the next year or two for these two Oceania nations. The emphasis is also on less immigrants but more students or temporary workers.

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Permanent residents get the privileges and benefits of social services, which are not available to temporary migrants. More students mean more income from tuition fees and cost of study funds transferred to NZ financial institutions. Keeping students in temporary status later on as workers contribute greatly to general sales taxes and social security funds without the privilege of reciprocity.

Much like depositors in a bank, international students and temporary workers suffer extreme difficulty in withdrawing funds.

Seen from another angle, New Zealand and Australia apparently subscribe to the motto “if you just want the burger, why pay for the cow?”

Looks like the years ahead will be a period of observing the precedents of simply getting the “moo-lah,” meat and milk without the obligation of pastoral care.

The year 2020 may turn out to be perfect vision or policy myopia.