Immigration
Gayle Robbins
"As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time." — E. B. White
Republicans are again going on about the evils of immigration, hoping their misstatements and outright lies about the threats to “the American way of life” posed by brown people entering the country will scare enough voters into supporting them this fall in the midterms.
Republicans like to use the phrase “illegal immigration” because they can advertise their racism without actually having to say outright they hate brown people, like their use of the phrase “welfare reform” to couch their hatred of Blacks.
That immigration is vital to the American economy fails to register with the GOP — but then, what understanding of the economy do Republicans profess beyond the ancient sophism that tax cuts for the wealthy spur job growth??
... what solutions have Republicans proposed except the impractical and wholly unrealistic building of a wall along the southern border with Mexico??
And, supposing immigration were, in fact, something to worry about, what solutions have Republicans proposed except the impractical and wholly unrealistic building of a wall along the southern border with Mexico??
Putting aside slavery, immigration has long been a sticking point for conservatives, from the days of Federalist paranoia about French Jacobins coming to America to spread their revolutionary fervor all the way up to this current hysteria over “securing the border.” Same old same old.?
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Arguments against immigration used 200-plus years ago are being recycled by Republicans; they’re still based on race and bigotry, a need to scare anxious voters into supporting a party that’s devoid of ideas. Know-nothingness redux.
My people, on both sides, have been in America more than 400 years, the earliest arrival, Isaac Gill on my father’s side, reaching these shores in 1611. Richard Lucey on my mother’s side would reach Virginia around 1615.
Neither Isaac nor Richard could be described as an “opulent and respectable stranger,” to borrow George Washington’s phrase, nor were they necessarily “oppressed and persecuted,” at least not beyond the norm for 17th century England.
They were more like those immigrants arriving today at U.S. ports of entry along the southern border, looking for a chance to start anew, to have a better life than the one they’d left behind.
They helped build this country, as immigrants always have.