Trump’s Immigration Policies Follow US History of Racism and Classism

A tension has always existed since colonial times to when the United States became a nation up through the centuries to the present time regarding whether, who, and how many new immigrants should enter its shores.

Emma Lazarus, a woman from a family of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish descent, give her idealized perspective in her iconic poem engraved on the beacon of hope, the Statue of Liberty, in New York harbor:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

— E. Lazarus, “The New Colossus” (1883)

Donald J. Trump, as President of the United States of America during the entirety of his first term and for his so-far brief second term has proven conclusively the fact that immigration policies mirror the country’s racial and socioeconomic class policies.

If he could actually write a poem or complete a thought, he might rewrite Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” as “The Old Same Old Same Old”:  

Just like the wealthy elite of Gilded Era fame,
With consuming corporations amassed from land to land;
At our privileged ranks the high beautiful walls shall stand
A white Christian man whose sword
Is the weaponed lightning, and his name
Father of oligarchs of legions. From his masculine-hand
Comes restricted welcome; his fierce words dictate
The tariffed harbors that waterways impose.
“Keep, our lands, our advantages maintained!” cries he
With autocrat’s voice. “Give me your white, your rich,
Your Euro’s select yearning to breed kin,
The owners of massive stock portfolios.
Send these, the uber-rich, Aryans all to me,
I give in hand the golden card to thee!

Donald J. Trump, throughout his political career, exposed the underlying truth that immigration policy of the United States has forever rested on the foundation of race and socioeconomic class.

In just the first month of his second regime, Trump mandated his newly designated “Border Czar” Tom Homan the deportation of literally millions of undocumented immigrants, primarily brown and black people, from our southern border. Trump’s department of Homeland Security is underway constructing holding “camps” for detainees.

Though Trump vowed to deport “criminal elements” back to their native lands, the round up has been indiscriminate in arresting people with no criminal backgrounds. As reported by watchdog group, American Progress:

“The Trump administration’s theatrical boasts about securing the border and deporting immigrants who have committed serious crimes tell a very incomplete story. Although framed under the banner of security, President Donald Trump’s rash actions harm public safety and national security while providing no actual solutions to fix the broken U.S. immigration system.”

On his first day of his second takeover of the Oval Office, he signed an executive order closing US doors to immigration. He issued a new order only 18 days later, however, making an exception: for primarily white Afrikaners from South Africa.

It stems from Trump’s objection to certain South African domestic and foreign policies, including a recently signed law on land expropriation, which Trump’s order terms “racially discriminatory” (against white people).

Trump’s co-president, Elon Musk, a white immigrant from South Africa who grew up privileged under a system of apartheid, posted on his social media platform X only days before Trump’s executive order that South Africa has “racist ownership laws” (supposedly “racist” against white people).

Though South Africa’s law does not explicitly mention a landowner’s race, ownership of land, however, is inseparably tied to the legacy of racism in South Africa where white people not only controlled all the levers of power but also held the vast majority of privately owned land.

And in a move that even surprised his staunchest sycophants, Trump publicized his plan for what amounts to an immigration Green Card for the ultra-rich: what he is calling his “Gold Card.”

For the cost of $5 million, to attract “very high-level people,” Trump said that people will be able to apply to become lawful permanent residents. These fees, Trump rationalized, could help pay down the deficit (though he never mentioned that this money could justify his continuation of enormous tax breaks for the super-rich).

In front of a group of reporters, Trump announced:

“It’s going to be a route to citizenship, and wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card. They’ll be wealthy, and they’ll be successful, and they’ll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes,” Trump said.

We all can surmise the racial backgrounds of the vast majority of Trump’s proposed new naturalized US citizens.

The day Donald Trump descended the escalator in his tower of gold, with head raised forward as he held court at his press conference announcing his run for the presidency on June 16, 2015, he tossed down the bodies of Mexican people as if they were Trump steaks as bloody red mean for the carnivores on his march to the White House.

“[Mexico is] sending people that have lots of problems, and they are bringing those problems to us. They are bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and they’re rapists.”

Then Donald Trump declared war on Islam at a campaign stop on December 7, 2015:

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.

Trump attempted to appease his base of supporters, especially conservative Christian Evangelicals, with his continuing attacks on Muslims in its various incarnations of executive orders.

After two of President Trump’s travel bans from majority Muslim countries were struck down in the courts, on June 26, 2018, the Supreme Court approved Trump’s September 2017 travel ban into the U.S. from 5 majority Muslim countries: Somalia, Iran, Libya, Yemen, & Syria, plus North Korea and senior government officials from Venezuela.

In Trump, President of the United States, et al. v. Hawaii, et al., by a narrow 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that “The [Trump] Proclamation is squarely within the scope of Presidential authority,” on national security grounds.

In a blistering dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor,

“The majority here completely sets aside the President’s charged statements about Muslims as irrelevant. That holding erodes the foundational principles of religious tolerance that the court elsewhere has so emphatically protected, and it tells members of minority religions in our country ‘that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community’.”

In an Oval Office meeting, Jan. 11, 2018, Trump became frustrated with legislators when they proposed restoring protections for immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries as part of a bipartisan immigration plan.

“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump said, referring to African countries and Haiti. He then suggested that the United States should instead bring more people from countries like Norway.

From a series of papal bulls (decrees or edicts) beginning of the 1100s, began sanctions, enforcement, authorizations, expulsions, excommunications, denunciations, and, in particular, expressions of territorial sovereignty for Christian monarchs supported by the Catholic Church.

These bulls established what would come to be known as the “Doctrine of Discovery”: a spiritual, political, and legal justification for colonization and seizure of territories not already inhabited by Christians.

Two of these papal bulls particularly stand out:

Pope Nicholas V issued his “Romanus Pontifex” in 1455 granting Portugal a monopoly trading status with African and authorizing the enslavement of indigenous populations.

In 1455, Pope Nicholas V called his Christian followers to “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans,” take their possessions, and “reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”

And Pope Alexander VI issued “Inter Caetera” in 1493 to justify Christian European explorers’ claims on land and waterways they “discovered,” and to promote Christian domination in Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the Americans (Pope Alexander VI, 1493).

The United States justified its “Monroe Doctrine” in the 1880s by declaring U.S. dominion over the Western Hemisphere, and its claim of “Manifest Destiny” of expansionism westward as its destiny to control all land from the Atlantic to the Pacific and beyond (Miller, 2008).

In 1823, in the Supreme Court case, Johnson v. M’Intosh, the Doctrine of Discovery became part of U.S. federal law used to dispossess Native peoples of their lands.

In a unanimous decision, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, “that the principle of discovery gave European nations an absolute right to New World lands” and Native peoples certain rights of occupancy.

If we as a country had heeded the warnings of the anti-racism leaders and grassroots activists from the very beginning, we might have been spared the tragic and brutal legacy of racism – this original and perennial sin – that has infected the United States of America.