I would laugh at the schadenfreude if they introduced legislation to remove the citizenship of anyone whose family came to the country illegally, only to the have to report a ton more people some of whom would be white people who voted for him not thinking about the fact that their grandparents might have come in illegally.
My mother came to Canada from Ireland and when racist people she has volunteered or worked with have complainted about immigrants to her she just straight up ask them if that's what they think about her. They almost always stammer something about how she doesn't count somehow as an immigrant even though she is 100% an immigrant.
It's a distraction, it's important to remind people of the value and humanity of immigrants but hatred and anger is a byproduct of people struggling and the only major politicians who aren't ignoring them or gaslighting them that actually things are going great are the ones telling them immigrants are to blame. The left needs to get much, much better at organizing and the Democrats need to either go left for real or die as a neoliberal but with enough decency to not be preferred by anybody and to not be able to propagandize effectively.
Many immigrants are lured into moving to Western countries with promises of a better life—safety, prosperity, and even the allure of things as trivial as Coca-Cola or a suburban home. The promise of no longer living under the threat of being shelled with U.S.-made weapons is understandably compelling.
But once they arrive in the very countries that invited them to "save the economy" and fill labor shortages, they’re suddenly labeled a national security threat. They’re painted as part of criminal gangs or conspiracies, blamed for societal issues, and treated as if their presence is an affront. In reality, their migration often isn’t about seeking a better life at all—it’s about enriching local businessmen who refuse to pay livable wages, instead trapping vulnerable people with exploitative worker visas.
I love Robert Reich but if he thinks we're gonna "well actually" our way out of xenophobia and racism he needs to do some more reading.
Off the top of my head I can think of three people that are first generation here. Two came illegally. One had a despised 'anchor baby' that she then used to bring her parents over.
I'm OK with deporting them, or herding them into the gulf of Mexico, whatever Trump's current plan is.
Their names are: Melania Trump Elon Musk Peter Thiel
DHS please rid us of these foreign criminals.
Nah dude thats not right, they are not immigrants they're white and rich
You hit the nail in the head. Think about it, immigrant is just an euphemism for people of color. Maga is not afraid of white immigrants, not even of white Muslims. It's just good old fashioned racism. They just can't call it that... Yet.
The crowd that needs to hear this ain't listen', friend.
What does crashlanding from space count as?
Smallville very directly addressed this in an episode where Clark Kent's mom got mad at him for hiding an undocumented immigrant on their farm. He had to remind her his own paperwork was also less than legitimate.
They also revere Columbus, and call white Christians “real Americans.”
Mexicans are real Americans. White people in America are immigrants.
And, the first settlers moved here because they were such religious extremists that no one wanted them around.
People forget the Puritans, and how insufferable they were. Like modern evangelicals, sorry, Christofascists.
Yeah, always worth bearing in mind that the original pilgrims were such insufferably uptight Protestants, the English said, "Come on, fuck off then, you lot are miserable to have around," in the decades leading up to Parliament starting to pass laws banning Christmas in 1644, and Oliver Cromwell taking over rule of the country a decade later. Really says something about them.
Tbf Europe at the time wasn't exactly open to religious freedom. You followed your king's religion or you were in trouble, and then you still had to hope the Catholics didn't call a crusade on your ass. Or the Protestants. Or the Anglicans...
So I agree that this is awful, and our family is most definitely the result of immigrants coming here due to persecution in the country they were in.
But my MAGA family’s response to that? They were “legal” at the time (1700’s). These immigrants are coming here illegally.
Never mind that ~ 100 years ago my grandparents were punished at school (beaten) for speaking their native language there - because they made that illegal, too.
But they’re still the “speak English this is murica” MAGA types. But this time it’s different. They do not see the hypocrisy. They do not care. They just hate brown and black people.
People who hide their bigotry behind the law disgust me. They'll say that they're only against illegal immigration while they work to make it harder and harder to immigrate legally. What is legal isn't the same thing as what is moral. You're just sidestepping the entire issue by hiding behind the law.
“legal at the time“ - I guess native indians who were displaced from their land would see things differently
It is also the must bs of all arguments. Gassing jews was legal between 1937 (?) And 1945 doesn't make it right. Killing people trying to flee over your countries border to the neighbouring country was legal between 1949 and 1990 and that still is and was wrong.
Just because something was legal does not mean it was right then nor now
George Carlin Youtube Short mildly related
[...]
In fact there are no natives anywhere in the world,
everyone is from somewhere else.
All people are refugees, immigrants or aliens.
If there are natives anywhere, it would have to be people still living in the Great Rift Valley in Africa.
So everyone is just visiting. [...] So much for native. [...]What a convenient attitude for a colonizer to have :)
A lot of that was forgotten a long time ago.
everyone is worth equally less. don't put yourself above others, we all come from a splash of jizz
Desperately needs to read Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - Not a Nation of Immigrants
Another book on the reading list. I will never get through all this will I?
One of the listed reasons is not like the others...
