Consider this an invitation to the right side of history.
An opportunity, if you will, to avoid aligning yourselves with the immortalized images of Racists of Years Gone By — the folks shouting at Ruby Bridges, the angry women behind the Little Rock Nine, the goobers standing beside the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama, and on and on.
Here’s your chance to move away from the hate, the disgusting behavior, the certain-to-be-a-stain-on-history moment in this country. Simply by saying: I didn’t vote for this.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago that you did vote for this, or at the very least you were indifferent to the potential human suffering your ignorant vote for an ignorant racist man would bring about, but I forgot how much this country loves a redemption story. Especially when the figure at the center of that redemption story is a white person realizing the error of their ways (no matter how late they might be in that realization).
And now is your opportunity. Because now is the first real, up-close glimpse a whole bunch of you have gotten of the Trump administration’s immigration policy in action.
I understand that for conservatives, seeing is imperative. First-hand experience is often a must. It’s why so many Republicans suddenly found compassion for gay couples when their own children came out of the closet – they had to experience it firsthand to have a true understanding of another person’s reality.
We’ve got some reality happening right now across America that I don’t believe most middle-right voters are OK with.
I believe it because I’ve heard them. I’ve heard the contractors and store owners and CEOs and preachers and a whole variety of others who have watched the videos of families being torn apart, of good and decent Americans — and that’s what most of these people are, even if they don’t have legal citizenship — being tricked at legal hearings, and they don’t like what they’re witnessing.
To be fair, this president and Stephen Miller, that human vampire bat who is handling immigration policy for the Trump administration, repeatedly told Americans that the immigration policies that would be employed would target criminals, and not families, not workers, not people who are here contributing to the betterment of our country.
But that’s almost exclusively who this administration is targeting.
They’re targeting the most law-abiding immigrants in America. And we know this because they’re targeting them at legal hearings, where the immigrants are showing up on time and as scheduled for standard hearings, to follow the laws.
It’s disgusting.
And don’t sell me this absolute bunk about these people being here “illegally.” First off, very few of them are here illegally no matter what definition you try to apply. Secondly, even those who are here without documentation, particularly those who have been here for decades, were invited here.
By all of us.
We invited them when we ate in their restaurants. When we shopped in their stores. When we hired them to do work at our homes. When we put them on construction crews. When we advertised for them to pick our produce. When we made it acceptable for hard-working, law-abiding immigrants to come here, regardless of legal status or language skills, and make a good life for their families — in some cases, for multiple generations of their families.
You know that’s true. You know damn well that you sat in those restaurants and knew with absolute certainty that the people working there likely weren’t legal residents. You know without a doubt that the houses we all bought, or had built, were constructed with primarily immigrant labor.
And with each instance, it was another invitation. It was another signal from that beacon on the hill, shining brightly and warmly to distraught, frightened, would-be immigrants who were facing violence and poverty in their home countries.
We invited them. And we were all better off because they came.
Don’t try to tell me you weren’t. You’re lying, and you know it.
Even when the influx of immigrants was at its most extreme, when floods of asylum seekers showed up to our border between 2021 and 2023, the costs were minuscule — less than a fraction of one percent of state and federal budgets. The rest of the time, those immigrants are a net positive.
On both the bottom line and the culture of this country.
A culture built on diversity and shared experience. A culture that has been about a mishmash of heritages ever since a bunch of people who look like me stole this place from its inhabitants and promised freedom and equality and a country that would welcome the tired, the hungry, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
What’s happening right now, as masked thugs literally rip crying children from their parents and haul away some of the people who truly make America great, is a stain on this country. It’s a black eye that we won’t ever live down. It will be marked in history books, and the photos and stories and videos will haunt us for the rest of our lives and become cautionary tales for future generations.
Here’s your chance — probably your last one — to make sure you’re on the right side.
