Weekly Writers Round-Up: Withdrawing from Afghanistan, Price-Gouging Laws, and Low Immigrant Crime Rates

Each week, we’ll be featuring opinion pieces from the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. Do you dream of having bylines like these? See here for info on how we can help make that a reality.

The options for U.S. withdrawal in Afghanistan? Either a bad deal or no deal at all by Gil Barndollar (Summer 2018) in The Los Angeles Times
After almost 18 years of war, the United States may finally be on the verge of withdrawing from Afghanistan.

Opponents of an Afghan withdrawal or even drawdown justifiably point to the clear limits of the proposed deal U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has negotiated with the Taliban: The Afghan government has been sidelined, a ceasefire could prove transitory and the Taliban could renege on any pledge to renounce Al Qaeda. Yet there is also a clear reason for such an unsatisfactory agreement. Despite nearly two decades of fighting — and overwhelming superiority in manpower, firepower and money — the U.S. has remarkably little leverage in Afghanistan…

How Price Gouging Laws Will Make Hurricane Dorian Even More Destructive by Trace Mitchell (Summer 2019) in Townhall
As Hurricane Dorian stays on course to blast parts of the U.S., the National Hurricane Center has urged Floridians to brace themselves for trouble. Florida’s Attorney General Ashley Moody has sprung to action, announcing that the state government will activate its price gouging hotline to enforce its anti-price gouging law — one meant to prevent desperate Floridians from being overcharged for essential goods, like water and generators. And it certainly sounds like the humane way to go, but it could very well end up doing far more harm than good…

New research shows illegal immigrants are actually less dangerous than Americans by Brad Polumbo (Summer 2018) in The Washington Examiner
Do illegal immigrants pose a threat to public safety? It’s one of the key questions at the heart of today’s debate over immigration policy. But new research from the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute suggests that the common tough-on-crime talking point just isn’t true.

A new policy brief authored by Cato’s Director of Immigration Studies Alex Nowrasteh sheds light on the issue. After examining 2017 data from the Texas Department of Public Safety, Nowrasteh found that “399,155 native-born Americans, 16,275 illegal immigrants, and 18,235 legal immigrants were convicted of crimes” that year in Texas…