Today a father was speaking about the bullying his son endured in the public school system in Michigan. Instead of a unified sympathetic response to the shameful display of racism, someone piped up with, “So why didn’t you stay in Mexico?”
This public display of racism would have been rare in recent years past, but now has become commonplace among Trump supporters who feel it is their patriotic duty to call out minorities whenever the opportunity presents itself. The ensuing public outcry of racism and shame does not phase these people. Their president uses racial remarks and public policy to harm immigrants and minorities all the time, so their show of support is now a display of national pride for them.
How far our national reputation for standing up for the little guy and treating everyone with the same degree of fairness and justice has fallen. To be fair, the United States has never been a consistent, safe-haven for minorities, even though our Statue of Liberty reflects a different attitude. We have struggled with our relationship with immigrants throughout our entire history, with relatively brief passeges of love and respect for the people who left everything behind to make their lives in a new land.
Ever since Trump announced his run for the presidency, racism has become a front and center issue that has taken half of our nation into a direction that seeks to humiliate and deter people from coming to America. This position has been proven time and time again to be a losing position.
If it were not for immigrants, our nation would not be a quarter as powerful and strong as it is today. Nearly half of the wealthiest companies on the planet are American companies built by and staffed by immigrants. a Citigroup and Oxford University report found that two-thirds of U.S. GDP expansion since 2011 was “directly attributable to migration.”
Making immigration more difficult is like turning off future GDP growth and returning to an agricultural nation, leaving future industrial and economic growth to every other country on the planet that is more open to the hungry and energetic immigrants.
The United States is losing its position as a global economic leader, and killing immigration is why.
