How is Trump Anti-Immigrant?

President Donald Trump has been described as anti-immigrant at nearly every corner. According to someone at Vanity Fair, “he is the latest representative of an anti-immigrant, nativist American tradition that dates back at least to the Know-Nothings of the eighteen-forties and eighteen-fifties”.

This sort of charge is left wanting, and his critics proven captious, when these accusations are considered in the context of his real life. Trump is so anti-immigrant that he falls in love with them—he has married and had children with two different immigrants on two different occasions. The cognitive dissonance must weigh heavily whenever he dwells upon his own family.

Or, maybe he isn’t as anti-immigrant as they make him out to be. Maybe a better description would be more apt.

The anti-immigrant canard gained momentum early on in the campaign. When Trump made his now infamous remarks about Mexico—“they’re sending their best” but “people that have lots of problems”: rapists, drug dealers, etc.—his critics pretended he was speaking about the Mexican people and immigrants as a whole.

In the same breath he explicitly distinguished between “their best” and those “that have lots of problems”, between hardened criminals and “good people”. He further clarified that he was speaking about illegal immigrants and no other class of people. Goaded into playing identity politics, he professed his love for “latinos” while criticizing the opposition for claiming he hated them. But the misrepresentation of his stance continued, becoming some of the most useful tabloid fodder and one of the first anti-Trump articles of faith. Reading the slogans on any anti-Trump placard reminds us that much of the division today is based upon this and other small pieces of misinformation.

Trump does indeed have a hardline stance on immigration, both legal and illegal. But it is all in the pretext of federal law and the constitution. On top of this Trump has never spoken ill of immigrants as a group, and whenever his rhetoric was found to be too ambiguous or taken out of context, as they often were, he has always clarified what he meant.

His rebukes have nearly always contradicted the narrative of the intelligentsia, but in the end they came to no avail against the general consensus. The mere repetition of the narrative drowned out any of these inconvenient, and ultimately suppressed details. For a press who only ever claims to report on what Trump says, any and all clarifications were missing, underreported, or dismissed as lies along their assembly-line of articles and op-eds.

There are some unintended consequences of this routine. Ironically, and perhaps tragically, in order to maintain the canard that president Trump is anti-immigrant, critics have needlessly adopted an anti-immigrant, anti-citizen stance themselves.

This reveals itself whenever critics pretend president Trump’s opposition to illegal immigration in particular is opposition to immigration in general. They use the blanket term immigrant or some other euphemism to describe them. By doing so they carelessly and dangerously conflate illegal and legal immigration, and thus legal and illegal immigrants, turning a fundamental distinction into a distinction without a difference. The immigrants who have abided by the country’s laws, who have gone or are going through the legal process on their path to citizenship, are now held in the same regard as those who subvert the laws, sneak past official entry points or overstay their welcome, while unlawfully enjoying the freedom that others work much of their lives to attain.

After all, they’re all immigrants.

When a journalist preached to him the condescending dogma that “illegal immigrants do the jobs American’s don’t want to” at a campaign press conference, Trump took that opportunity to reminded her of his distinction, and a salient fact of America’s history:

“You know what the backbone of our country [is]? People that came here, and they came here legally — people that came here to this country legally, and they worked their ass off, and they made this country great.”

You won’t find a mentioning of these remarks in any anti-Trump screed. But if the president is able to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants, why can’t his critics?

His wives are white immigrants, that's the difference.

Also this:

originally posted by: LordAhriman
His wives are white immigrants, that's the difference.

Also this:

White immigrants come from Mexico as well. Unless you’re one of the types who describe central and South Americans as “brown people”.

a reply to: Propagandalf


Trump isn't anti-immigration, he's anti "huddled masses", and the family members they bring to the US in the future. He's against lottery immigration because he doesn't understand it.

originally posted by: Propagandalf

White immigrants come from Mexico as well.

Right. Those are the "bad hombres" he refers to.

Won’t see me knocking his immigration policy.

originally posted by: Sookiechacha
a reply to: Propagandalf


Trump isn't anti-immigration, he's anti "huddled masses", and the family members they bring to the US in the future. He's against lottery immigration because he doesn't understand it.

Pssshh doesn't understand it, yeah right.

Chain Immigration, Lottery Immigration, anchor babies, all need to stop.

originally posted by: Sookiechacha
a reply to: Propagandalf


Trump isn't anti-immigration, he's anti "huddled masses", and the family members they bring to the US in the future. He's against lottery immigration because he doesn't understand it.

He’s for a merit based immigration system. That doesn’t mean he’s “anti huddled masses”.

originally posted by: LordAhriman

originally posted by: Propagandalf

White immigrants come from Mexico as well.

Right. Those are the "bad hombres" he refers to.

Mexico is quite a racially diverse country.

He is not .

The progressive doctrine of immigration has attempted to redefine the concept, just as they've tried to redefine almost every other aspects of reality to fit their twisted world view. Historically, legal immigration and illegal immigration were two different things. (Still are for anybody with any sense of how the real world works, which excludes the typical progressive.) One is legal and the other is against the law of the land! DUH!

The progressive definition of immigrant is now absolutely anybody who wants to cross the border into the U.S., legality be damned.

The two sides are arguing from two different lexicons. It's like when a progressive says that a person with testicles and XY chromosomes is a woman and I say he's a man. They are delusional.

:

a reply to: Propagandalf

Yes, its ran by an upper class white Spanish class lording over the brown natives.

Mexico is crooked, I totally understand why even Mexican nationals dont want to live there anymore.

Libs are so anti trump, which means trump has to hate everything to justify their hate.

He would have made a DACA deal, if the libs did want to use the criminals as political tools

originally posted by: Butterfinger
a reply to: Propagandalf

Yes, its ran by an upper class white Spanish class lording over the brown natives.

Mexico is crooked, I totally understand why even Mexican nationals dont want to live there anymore.

Focusing on the skin-colors is a very reductionist way of looking at things.

originally posted by: Propagandalf

originally posted by: Butterfinger
a reply to: Propagandalf

Yes, its ran by an upper class white Spanish class lording over the brown natives.

Mexico is crooked, I totally understand why even Mexican nationals dont want to live there anymore.

Focusing on the skin-colors is a very reductionist way of looking at things.

It is also a racial and exclusionary way of looking at the world.

It's called projection....for a reason.

originally posted by: Propagandalf

originally posted by: Butterfinger
a reply to: Propagandalf

Yes, its ran by an upper class white Spanish class lording over the brown natives.

Mexico is crooked, I totally understand why even Mexican nationals dont want to live there anymore.

Focusing on the skin-colors is a very reductionist way of looking at things.

But that's what the leftists do.
Focus on skin color.
Because they're racist, they view everything through the lense of racism, and all they see is racist.

a reply to: Propagandalf

He’s for a merit based immigration system. That doesn’t mean he’s “anti huddled masses”.

Of course not. His words, actions and policies mean that.

a reply to: Propagandalf

The constitution doesnt handle travel or visiting workers. It gives some authority to Congress and Congress itself has granted itself more power than constitutionally given anyhow. The constitution really only mentions naturalization.

This problem is not about "illegals" since that is a term created by Congress who fails to create a guest worker program for industries with labor deficits.

Illegals really didnt exist until the great depression and jobs were being fought over.


This whole issue is the exploitation of both sides of the aisle in Congress of guest workers. One side wants votes the other cheap labor. Well both sides probably use the cheap labor that has no real workers rights.

a reply to: Propagandalf

Is it not true?

a reply to: Sookiechacha

There's nothing wrong with being "anti 'huddled masses'" when we have plenty of unemployed and homeless people in our nation as it is. There is nothing written anywhere that says that being a part of a "huddled mass" guarantees you the right to asylum or legal immigration...or green cards, or anything else that gets people in this country legally.

I mean, don't get me wrong, that neat little poem by Emma Lazarus has a decent spirit to it, but it was written at a time when our nation's population was about 51-million people and we were in the midst of rapid expansion; we are currently a nation of about 326-million. When our population has increased over 600%, our ability to receive the world's tired, poor, homeless, huddled masses diminishes greatly.

To put it in slight perspective, the population of Los Angeles at the time that this poem was written was 50,000 people; now that area is home to 18.8-million people and suffers from overcrowding. And that's not the only city that has exploded like that, which is an increase of 37,600 times its population in the 1880s.

As for your comment about lottery immigration, I'd be interested to hear what you think is misunderstood by POTUS.

a reply to: watchitburn

I brought it up because it seems to be a blind spot for the left, facetiously.

I guess it must be racism by the new standards