President Trump’s recent threat to prevent certain legal immigrants from ever being granted permanent residency exposes the hypocrisy and sheer cynicism of his “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.
It has nothing to do with illegal immigration, as he has claimed. It’s all about skin color. Immigrants from a notably white country like Norway would be fine, he says. Those fleeing Third World “s---holes” are not. I’m surprised he hasn’t had Emma Lazarus’s immortal words of welcome erased from the Statue of Liberty.
This country has always been nurtured by the spirit of people either willing to leave their homeland in search of a better life or, in the case of slaves, able to endure captivity and extreme deprivation. In both cases such tough-minded, tough-bodied survivors have been the new blood that has continually made the USA such a dynamic country.
How many native-born Americans today would be willing or even able to trek more than 2,000 miles on foot across inhospitable land, often with small children, to escape danger and deprivation back home? Not even the Mormon pioneers did that!
With an aging population, reduced life expectancy and declining birthrate (now at an 80-year low), we need more, not fewer, such people.
Instead of turning them back or incarcerating them, we should be welcoming them. Unfortunately, that will have to wait until this once-proud nation is no longer in the racist grip of Donald Trump, Stephen Miller and the like.
Tom Huckin, Salt Lake City