Thanks to Trump, There Is No Shame In Racism

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.

Another American Caught Up In Immigration Hell

I have made it well known that the basic premise of my book, “The Dishwasher’s Son” is about an American teenager being deported from the US under our extraordinarily lax and dysfunctional Immigration system. In the dedication to that book, I also mentioned this has happened Approximately 20,000 times since 2003. Just today, I read a report from GQ magazine that the

Border Patrol Has Kept a Teenage U.S. Citizen Locked Up for Nearly a Month.

“Customs and Border Protection (CPB) stopped two brothers at a checkpoint in Texas on June 27. The younger one, Marlon Galicia, was born in Mexico and entered the U.S. illegally; the older one, 18-year-old Francisco Erwin Galicia, was born in Dallas. CBP took both brothers into custody.”

Erwin Galicia had a wallet-sized copy of his birth certificate, his Social Security card, and a Texas ID that’s only available to citizens with Social Security numbers, on his person at the time of the arrest.

Now, whenever a specific portion of our society finds it necessary to carry around all of this identification on their person wherever they go, just to keep from being arrested, that should be a red flag for everyone to see. This is America, not a Nazi-occupied country.

No community of Americans should feel the need to carry around this much ID just to prove they are here legally. As many of us already know, if you carry this much identification around with you at all times, there is a good chance you will become the victim of identity theft. If Erwin were to be robbed, someone could not only steal his money, watch, cell phone, car, whatever– they could also open credit cards, buy items online, and many commit many other crimes in his name. This is the whole reason none of us carry around our Social Security numbers, birth certificates around with us. It is just too easy for someone to steal our identity, and then we would be in a form of hell that can take years to clean up. The fact that this American citizen felt the need to do this just to protect his American identification is just too sad to witness if it weren’t for the fact that even carrying all this ID didn’t help him. He still is in custody for something he isn’t capable of committing. a

The Republican party has already shown its true anti-immigration colors after years of rebuffing any and all attempts to repair our broken immigration system, and, most recently, by making asylum claims practically illegal and after yesterdays announcement of making stipulated removal a nationwide procedure, instead of just along a 100 miles of the US/Mexico border. This change also enables low-level officials to decide if someone should be deported and give them the ability to proceed with deportation immediately.

When I think about reading the news about several CBP facebook groups, from the very people our nation has entrusted to carry out our immigration policies, that was full of anti-immigrant messages and photos, and then hearing about the stipulated removal changes and then reading about this incident of an American citizen getting caught up in the anti-immigration hysteria, I had to ask myself,

“is this improving our immigration system, or making it worse?”

One thing is for certain: when the bottom of this garbage can full of ideas comes off, we will be left with a huge mess and Donald Trump will be blaming the Democrats for the problem as well as the lives that will be broken and lost.

 

Seniors Embracing Cultural Dress at Prom

Many teens around the nation are wearing “traditional” gowns and formalwear showing off their cultural heritage and looking very stylish.

See the link below to the Yahoo.com article that shows beautiful pictures that reflect the pride and beauty of some of the various cultural styles that are making their way to one of the most important nights in a young person’s lives.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/da-culture-teens-embracing-heritage-prom-night-205541160.html

Border Patrol Detained Two U.S. Citizens

A U.S. Border Patrol agent overhead two women, who both were U.S. citizens, speaking Spanish in a Montana gas station and detained them for almost an hour.

Lucky for them, speaking Spanish is not a crime. Unfortunately, it seems being Mexican is.

Full story at the Chicago Tribune.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-border-agent-montana-20180520-story.html

Donald Trump is a huge anti-immigrant President- Huge

Donald Trump is running headlong towards the Guinness Book of World Records for what the US administration that hinders immigration, legal or otherwise, into this country. He has done so much to undo our progress on the immigration problem in the year he has led our nation that it is anyone’s guess how far this man will go to make this country White again.

The US has historically produced some pretty horrific immigration legislation over the years, including; the 1798 Aliens and Sedition Act that required immigrants to have lived in this country for 14 years prior to being allowed citizenship, the 1892 The Geary Act that Prohibited the coming of Chinese Persons into the United States for an additional 10 years, the 1917 Asian Exclusion Act that created an Asian ‘Barred Zone” that excluded people from certain asian countries from coming into the US, and many more.

Don’t be surprised to see some of these ideas return to the discussion of what to do about our “immigration crisis.”

IT should stand to reason that this administration may want to actually roll back our immigration laws to 1790 and re-establish the 1790 Immigration act that establishes citizenship to free white persons who have established residency for at least 2 years and have committed no crimes.

How far will Trump’s insanity go towards changing our political ideology

Trump has influenced our current political landscape in so many ways its hard to keep track. Americans don’t seem to care if he knows what he’s talking about, or if he just makes things up in order to get his agenda across. There are websites dedicated to counting his many lies, The Washington Post has listed over 3000 of them, CNN too, as well as the Washington Post, NY Times and many, many more. Evangelicals,  like Rev Jerry Falwell Jr , Franklin Graham, and  others, who often used to keep politicians in line with theology on things like divorce, infidelity and honesty are now just fine with anything Trump wants to do that they don’t even whisper foul when he commits an act against the ten commandments, let alone morality in general.

But the reason many Americans can so easily overlook Trump’s many lies and indiscretions is simple: he’s only human (Republicans are allowed that, Democrats are vilified for it) and he’s not lying as much as he’s telling people what they already believe, so to them, he’s the only one telling the truth.

We have become a nation that no longer looks to the news for truthful information. We are now a society that looks to the news to tell us what we already believe. And the politicians know this, so they are free to lie to us all they want as long as they tell us what we already think the truth is, not matter how far from the truth that idea is.

So what is the next logical step? Americans hopping on the Trump bandwagon and boldly espousing hateful, prejudicial, un-American views.

Current Georgia Congressman hopeful Brian Kemp has just released the video below showing him holding a gun and espousing his Trumpian values completely unafraid of any counter reaction this may bring, just like his idol, Donald Trump.

And its only going to get worse. How much more is this going to spread before we stand up and say we’ve had enough?

First Indian-American Congresswoman responds to citizenship question

A congresswoman responds to questions about her citizenship.  If Presidents have to deal with this, even Congressmen have to answer this type of questioning.

America is uniting for immigrants

Labor unions, women’s movements, muslims and more are marching together to stand with their immigrant friends and relatives to show support against an antagonistic President who has recently enacted an unjust travel ban, ended Michelle Obama’s “Let Girls Learn” program and has just begun a push to build his oppressive and highly un-neighborly Wall.

The president seems to be trying very hard to disassociate America from so many of the people that make up this country one has to imagine what country he thinks he is the president of.

And the people of this nation are rising up against his idea of what makes America Great.

If you look at the makeup of people who are uniting against him, one thing is going to be certain; making America great will mean getting a new president.

Todd Schulte on mass deportations

Unknown-1A great article on what mass deportations would do to our country by Todd Shulte, the president of FWD.US, an immigration reform advocacy group. This article goes into some good statistics and helps to visualize what Donald Trump’s immigration policy would really do to our country and the people who live in it.

It’s one thing to say something provocative and get lots of people’s attention. It’s another thing to actually do what you’re talking about, and if Trump does get elected and he actually tries to mass deport 11.5 million people, this will not be a pretty place to live.

I also suspect that foreign investment in this country would plummet. Who would want to build factories or buy companies in a country that treats foreigners with such disdain?

The battle for the 14th Amendment

For as long as our constitution has been around, certain members of our community and their hired guns in Washington have tried to change our immigration laws in an effort to “keep our country white.” The 14th amendment has been under attack since it’s inception during the civil war.

This infographic helps to demonstrate the effects on such an attack.

14th Amendment2