A HARD-WORKING BAJAN MOTHER in New York requested anonymity as she articulated her inner feelings about an issue that’s dividing America in a presidential election year.
“I am frightened. I am scared,” was the way the woman who has lived in Queens for the past five years summarised her reaction to plans outlined the other day by Donald Trump, the Republican billionaire presidential nominee, during a bombastic presentation at his party’s National Convention in Cleveland. It was there that he was officially anointed the GOP’s presidential standard-bearer in the upcoming November election.
The woman spoke last Thursday morning. This was after she had listened to United States (US) President Barack Obama’s eloquent speech at the Democratic Party’s Convention in Philadelphia. After hearing Obama insist that immigrants deserved and would get a better immigration deal from Hillary Clinton if she was elected president, the Barbadian was in a better frame of mind.
“Obviously, if I could vote I would support Clinton,” she said. “It would be in my best interest and that of my children to support Clinton all the way. I hope that Barbadians in America who can vote feel the same way.”
Actually, she can’t vote because she is not a citizen. The upbeat tone of the mother’s response can be traced to Obama’s assertion that if elected to succeed him as commander-in-chief, Clinton, the first female presidential nominee of a major political party in US history would do the right thing. This was fighting for the passage of a comprehensive immigration reform package that would include a pathway to citizenship for millions of foreign-born residents and access to a high level of education at affordable costs that ultimately would boost their quality of life.
“After listening to President Obama and Eric Holder, who was attorney general, I feel relieved,” said the mother, who holds two jobs in order to put a roof over her children’s heads and food on the table.
When compared with Trump’s scheme, Clinton’s plans would become clear why more than two million Caribbean immigrants in the US, most of them from the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and other Caribbean states, are convinced that Clinton is the candidate for them.
For if the real estate mogul turned politician should get his way, immigrants from at least 190 countries and territories would have to pass an odious immigration litmus test that focuses on their religious beliefs and on the country where they were born. They may also be faced with deportation.
“This is scary stuff,” insisted Earl Phillips, a Barbadian who is secretary treasurer of the 40 000 member Transport Workers Union in New York.
Adrian Mapp, mayor of Plainfield, a City in New Jersey, shares Phillip’s concerns.
“What Trump is proposing is wrong, very wrong,” said the Barbadian mayor. “Can you imagine deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants? It is quite unworkable. He also said that he would toughen entry requirements for Muslims. That’s against the principles which the US has followed for more than 100 years.”
At the convention in Ohio, Trump outlined for the umpteenth time his plan to build a wall along the Mexico-US border that would keep out Mexicans and other Central Americans. He would also toughen entry requirements for certain religious groups, especially Muslims, whom he portrayed as terrorists.
And within 72 hours of his convention speech, he went on national television and expanded his tough immigration scheme by threatening immigrants from some unnamed countries with “extreme vetting” before they are allowed to enter the US.
If such measures seem extreme and unpalatable, you aren’t wrong to reach that conclusion.
As the Washington Post put it, Trump is a “unique threat” to the American way of life. He is also a grave threat to the foreign-born in the US.
Obviously, his threat, which he made more than a year ago and which helped him to secure the Republican nomination, disqualifies him from occupying the presidency of a country which prides itself of being a tolerant society. Indeed, the US has the world’s best track record when it comes to opening its doors to the foreign-born. On immigration it is really a tolerant country.
Unfortunately, millions of Trump’s supporters are nativists who fear the future and are uncomfortable with anyone who looks different and holds religious beliefs that aren’t in step with theirs.
For as Professor Calvin Holder, a Bajan history professor in the City University of New York network of colleges, asserted, that kind of thinking ignores the important part immigrants have consistently played in aiding America’s prosperity for hundreds of years.
US Senator Corey Booker, a former mayor of Newark who is one of two black members of the US upper chamber, used the backdrop of the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia, to state a clear and unequivocal case for unity among people of different races, places of birth and economic positions.
He argued against Trump’s distortion of reality, especially when it came to immigrants.
“We are not a zero-sum nation. It is not you or me,” said Booker. “It is not one America against another. It is you and I, inter-dependent and inter-connected, with one single interwoven destiny.”
Clearly, then, what Mapp, the union leader, the mother and the history professor, all Barbadians, plus the US senator, have in common is a belief in decency.
It also explains why green card holders who are eligible for citizenship should take the next step up the immigration ladder so they can become eligible voters. And once they have achieved that cherished goal they should register to vote and go to the polls in November and later years.
Without immigrants many sectors of America’s economy and delivery of social services would grind to a halt in New York, California, Florida, Illinois, Arizona, Texas and Georgia.