Everyone wants to live in safety in a place where they can work and eat and have a roof over their heads.
We want that. South and Central Americans want that, too.
That’s why an estimated 7,000 migrants fleeing the poverty and violence of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have entered Mexico in a large caravan headed to the United States.
But of course there’s a rub.
The U.S. – at least the Trump administration – doesn’t want them. And neither does Mexico, where many, like some in the U.S., have lashed out in fear and worry that the migrants might steal jobs or increase criminal activity if they are allowed to stay there.
Certainly, no country can easily take in such massive waves of migrants. We did centuries ago, before we were the United States of America, but now we’re the fact-challenged and xenophobic country that Trump treats as his newest reality show audience.
Xenophobia – the fear and distrust of anything perceived to be foreign or strange (with the exception of Russia) – thy name is Trump.
This caravan rolls northward as data from the Department of Homeland Security shows that nearly 400,000 people were apprehended on the U.S. Southern border in fiscal 2018, and arrests reached 107,212. Just last month, the Border Patrol apprehended 16,658 people traveling as families.
With policy and practice (remember separated families and caged children?), the Trump administration sends a clear message: As a place of refuge, America is closed.
Under “zero tolerance,” asylum seekers who enter the U.S. without first presenting themselves at Border Patrol offices automatically face criminal prosecution. Under President Barack Obama, they were prosecuted only if they had been caught crossing the border illegally in the past.
Victims of domestic or gang violence previously qualified for asylum if their home countries were unable or unwilling to protect them. But in June, Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, ended that.
This week, no doubt seeking to flavor midterm election mania, Trump has sharpened his script – the subtitles of which read “BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID.”
He’s even twisted an off-the-cuff discussion comment from Fox and Friends into a tweet assertion that “Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy [sic]. Must change laws!”
What to do? Ignore him? He’s the president, whether he acts like one or not.
Mostly, he’s a fraudulent actor looking to use race and immigration – again – to drive voters to the polls.
Sadly, it may well work. After all, Americans raised on television rather than books love nothing more than a long-running train wreck of a show.
It hasn’t been that long ago that Trump insisted special counsel Robert Mueller take no more action in his probe of Russia’s meddling in our 2016 election until after the Nov. 6 elections. It wouldn’t be fair, the president said.
But not only is Trump of a mind that he’s above the law, he also thinks he’s above fair, so invoking fear and loathing over a caravan of migrants with imaginary terrorists in tow is just fine.
And Trump isn’t acting alone. A number of Republican candidates and political committees also are playing the overt race card to stoke cultural anxiety among white voters.
Why does Georgia Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp try to suppress minority voting and claim to drive a big truck to pick up “illegals” as he campaigns against the first black female Democratic gubernatorial nominee in the nation’s history?
Why does Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn in a news release call the caravan an “illegal alien mob” as she campaigns for U.S. Senate against Democrat and popular former two-term Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen?
By default, Trump and the GOP want to paint Democrats as soft on immigration. In fact, Trump on Monday tweeted that Democrats were to blame for the caravan for “not giving us the votes to change our pathetic immigration laws.” Wait. Doesn’t the GOP have a super-majority in Congress?
In ads, Blackburn touts her support for Trump’s proposed border wall, eliminating sanctuary cities and ending the nation’s diversity visa lottery system. She says Tennesseans are for the wall. Actually, not so much. Two separate September polls found Tennesseans much more concerned about the economy and health care.
Bredesen said the United States has the right to control its borders and who enters the country. He recalled that as governor, he sent members of the Tennessee National Guard to the Southern border in 2007.
“I just think the wall is kind of a 1950s solution to a much more complicated problem,” he said, adding that modern technology such as sensors, drones and satellites would be much cheaper and more effective than the “political theater” of building a wall.
Political theater is exactly right.
Surely Americans won’t fall for it again.