The Right Doesn't Want Legal or Documented Immigrants, It Wants White Ones
Let’s be honest, when it comes to human beings entering this country, Republicans, Evangelicals, and MAGAs don’t give a damn about documentation. It’s all about pigmentation.
If all the immigrants were white, the violent and illegal I.C.E. abductions would suddenly cease.
Conservative talk shows would magically stop declaring a "national emergency" at our southern border.
There would no longer be talk from our MAGA neighbors of the lawless streams of bad people currently “overrunning" us.
Republican politicians wouldn't be continually working to create connections between exhausted, desperate families—and drug dealers, rapists, and gun runners.
Trump supporters would never utter the phrase “doing it the right way”—because the right way is the white way.
No one would be blasted with tear gas or taken from hospital rooms or hounded at workplaces.
If the immigrants were white, children wouldn't be stolen from the arms of their parents and left orphaned.
A single human being wouldn't be allowed to die from clear neglect, or there would be universal white outrage and immediate alterations made.
People wouldn't be denied healthcare and hygiene products, and the most basic level of human decency.
If the immigrants were white, Evangelical preachers wouldn't be pounding their pulpits and leveraging their social media platforms in passionate support of an inhumanity that Jesus would be sickened by.
Our white neighbors wouldn't be buying into nonsensical ghost stories about the advancing horde coming to take their jobs and rape their children and live off the Government.
Fox News wouldn't be incessantly perpetuating fear and intentionally manipulating gullible viewers about the violence these alleged opportunistic predators are supposedly unleashing on us.
The Government wouldn't be talking about "rounding up" thousands of these light-skinned lawbreakers per day, and brutally weaponizing agencies to that end.
If the immigrants were white, Donald Trump would have never said a single vile word, never generated one incendiary tweet, never uttered a lie-riddled stump speech, never given one damn about "defending America" from this apparently dangerous threat.
If the immigrants were white, they would be treated like human beings by white Americans.
There would be compassion and kindness.
There would be welcome and generosity.
There would be shades of gray to be seen in their stories.
There would be creativity in seeking solutions.
There would be no lazy stereotypes and racial slurs.
We'd be doing so much more with our resources and our time to address actual human rights atrocities and national emergencies.
If the immigrants were white, Republicans would suddenly find vast resources—and working hearts. (South Africa, I’m looking in your direction.)
The white Evangelical church would embrace its calling to care for the least of these—and recover its soul.
White America would be less able to disguise the prejudice and racism it is still so afflicted with.
But these immigrants are not white, which is why they will continue to be made into the convenient monsters by white leaders in power who want to distract from their own grievous malfeasance while stoking the irrational fears of suggestible white people.
They will continue to be painted as the enemies of a portion of Americans who cannot exist without having one to rail against.
They will continue to be the targets of a single, terrible, dangerous white lie that is hindering America's diverse greatness.
I was 12 years old when Jose M, a soft-spoken, light brown boy, was assigned the desk next to mine in social studies class. His smile and his eyes were gentle, and he always wore a clean and well-ironed shirt, though I noticed that it was always one of two shirts, which rotated on a daily basis. I began crushing on him because he always took class seriously, writing reams of notes and treating the teacher to his complete attention. Which meant he never as much as looked my way. Sadly. But even if he had, my grandmother used to send me to school in homemade calico dresses, which she sewed herself. (Like the Coat of Many Colors Dolly Parton sang so movingly about, I loved them because she made each stitch by hand,) She also plastered my flyaway hair to my head with about a hundred bobby pins, as if afraid it would otherwise cause a commotion. At any rate, after 8th grade I moved to another town and we lost touch. But one day, years later I saw a notice in my hometown paper that a Jose M had been accepted into Harvard, and I rejoiced. I never knew if he was one of those Mexicanos whose family had been in the state, like, for 150 years longer than mine had, or the son of recent immigrants. Just relating this little story as a way to smash a few idiot prejudices before I eat lunch. Here's to you, Jose, wherever you are now.
As is always the case, any allegation by Trump and by extension the right is always a confession. As in the case of immigration. For years, Republicans have been insisting that Democrats wanted to admit immigrants for political purposes, that is, to gain electoral advantage. No surprise to learn that the Republicans want only immigrants with their approved skin color. I assume this also applied to their desire to increase the birth rate…as long as the new babies are white.
Of course, neither strategy will achieve what the right wants. Those hoped for white immigrants are likely to have some serious reservations about emigrating to an authoritarian state. Want proof? Look at Russia.