There’s an old joke about a man who moved to a small Maine town at two days of age and remained there without leaving until he died at 96. On his tombstones the people put the inscription “He was almost one of us”.
Robert A. George, one of the editors of the New York Daily News, finally uses the right word in describing President Trump’s tweet of a few days ago which, imprudently in my view, seized the attention from the internecine warfare within the Democratic Party to himself:
The person who smears Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers (even grudgingly admitting “some are good peopleâ€) is clearly a nativist bigot.
The person who initially attempted to pass by executive fiat a ban on Muslim immigrants is clearly an Islamaphobic bigot.
The person who caviled for years that the first black president — of Kenyan heritage — wasn’t really born here (despite voluminous, contemporaneous, evidence to the contrary) is clearly a xenophobic bigot.
The person who suggests that four members of Congress should just shut up or “go back†to other countries is clearly an ignorant and xenophobic bigot. Ignorant because of the “four Progressive Congresswomen†Trump alludes to, Ilhan Omar, is Somali-born, but a naturalized American; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a New York-born Latina; Rashida Tlaib is a Michigan-born Arab; Ayanna Pressley is a black Cincinnati-born, Chicago-raised Massachusetts representative.
The word is “nativist”. I recognize it because I have some nativist streaks myself. For example, I think we need to devote significantly more attention and resources to American Indians (AKA “Native Americans”) and native-born blacks, particularly rural blacks, who comprise most of the people in the United States who are genuinely poor, and less to economic migrants from Mexico and Central America. Consequently, I think “the wall” is a waste of resources. What we need is a skills-based immigration system enforced in part by serious workplace enforcement and penalties on employers, much like those in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, coupled with a public relations campaign emphasizing the impossibility of getting a job in the United States without legal immigration.
An interesting point has been raised, however. What are we entitled to expect from immigrants or those reared in immigrant households? I don’t think we’re entitled to gratitude—that would be a bridge too far. I think that at the very least they should not despise us or our history, they should be fluent in speaking the English language, they should abandon the prejudices with which they were reared, and they should not devote their lives to changing everyone but themselves.
And they should stop displaying the flag of Mexico in their front yards, back windows of their pickups, and at public demonstrations.
No vote gold mine in what you advocate Dave.