Trump’s rhetoric on immigrants at the Republican National Convention (RNC) was shameful and showed he’s still the old divisive, unchanged demagogue contrary to what Republican handlers were attempting to reinvent him to be after the failed assassination on his life.
The first half of Trump’s speech at the RNC – the part Trump said he edited after getting shot – was an encouraging start with talks of unity for our country. Then halfway into that speech, he pivoted to that same dark place with dark energy that’s classic Trump. No one really expected a kinder, gentler Trump 2.0. But Americans were willing to hear him out and tuned in to watch his RNC speech.
Yes, Americans do support legal immigration
Certainly, a vast majority of Americans support legal immigration and securing our borders. Furthermore, the Biden administration in his first two and half-years let the asylum migration at our southern border get out of hand following its reopening after COVID-19.
Massive numbers of asylum seekers (actual legal entrants) poured into the country putting immense stress on border communities. Local politicians in these states appealed to Biden for help – asking Biden for new procedures like having asylum seekers wait in Mexico until their case comes up in immigration court. Local politicians in these border states – both Democrats and Republicans – were asking Biden to implement pre-screening of asylum seekers to determine legitimate cases from illegitimate cases, and even to change asylum quotas.
Biden slow-stepped with minor reforms and did close to nothing, until he eventually backed a proposed bi-partisan legislation that addressed many of these concerns. The legislation was passed in the Senate but left untouched in the Republican-led House because as politicos say, Republicans did not want to pass immigration reform for reasons we are now seeing play out – fearmongering for votes.
Hateful rhetoric is the big turn off, feeds into xenophobia
We already know most Americans, Democrats included, are concerned about illegal immigration. Polls consistently show it is the number two top issue behind the economy. What immigrant advocates and immigrant communities do not approve of is Trump’s demonizing of illegal immigrants as rapists, murderers and made-up numbers that, as he says, hundreds of thousands of Americans are being killed by illegal immigrants – a patent lie.
Trump even compared undocumented immigrants to Hannibal Lector, a fictitious serial killer who ate his victims, in what is arguably the most absurd kind of fearmongering, suggesting that not only could you be killed by an illegal migrant, but be cannibalized. The imagery is so lurid that it was comical when Trump mentioned it in his speech at the RNC.
The vitriolic speech Trump pushes not only arouse paranoia for illegal immigration, but it casts a larger dark cloud over all immigration that includes law-abiding immigrants seeking legal migration into our country. It creates a racist, xenophobic environment.
At the RNC, what set off ire among our Asian community was Trump’s reuse of the “China flu” to describe COVID-19. That dangerous moniker was responsible for arousing bitter hatred of Asian communities in the U.S. during the peak of COVID-19. Hatred that led to tens of thousands of violent hate crimes on Asians, even murders. Asians of various origins, including Filipinos, and not just Chinese, were openly discriminated against and violently attacked then – which our community must not be made to endure again.
Republican scapegoating of immigrants and people of color
Besides the anti-immigrant rhetoric, we also see Republican politicians bemoaning wokeism, critical race theory and DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion). Upon analyzing carefully all these popular Republican grievances, what they have in common is they’re all rhetoric against people of color. And the Republican Party is framing a narrative that America is in decline because of people of color. It’s a racist indictment suggesting to White working and poor Americans, “that all your struggles are a result of those ‘others’ who shouldn’t even be in this country in the first place.”
But the reality is the U.S. is in decline and increasingly more Americans are financially struggling for other reasons: 1) decades of overfunding the nation’s Defense budget that has been used on needless foreign wars and the policing of the world (at the expense of neglecting domestic areas needing urgent care); 2) selling out to big corporations (at the expense of organized labor, fair wages, and the rise of concentration of industry-monopolies, the increasing disappearance of small and midsized businesses); and 3) rising global market competition.
What’s ironic is not only do none of these real causes for the nation’s slide have nothing to do with race as Republicans suggest through their rhetoric, but instead have to do with policies that Republicans support – larger funding for the Military Industrial Complex and continued foreign military adventurism (at least in the Middle East and now directed at the Asia-Pacific). They also want to further empower big corporations with even lower corporate taxation, have less regulation, and oppose anti-trust laws.
Trump’s race baiting is simply scapegoating from the real drivers pulling down the country. Trump is not the middle- and working-class hero he purports to be. It’s a public relations scam.
Sadly, too many Americans have bought into Republicans’ deflection and believe that immigrants are the problem for America’s decline. As an immigrant community, we can’t allow that to happen. We hope our community can see through the lies and vote.
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