OK, this joke’s gone on long enough. As of Nov. 11, Donald Trump had either led or tied for first place in Republican 2016 polls for 114 days. But his performance in this week’s debate proved what a disaster a Trump presidency would prove for the Republican Party – and for the republic.
Trump only has one issue: his relentless, racist attack on illegal immigrants. He began by calling them “rapists” in his June 16 campaign kick-off, while promising to build a “great wall” along the Mexican border and have Mexico pay for it. He’s now expanded his broadside to include rounding up all 11 million people estimated to be in the United States illegally and deporting them south of the border: a pledge he lustily repeated in the Fox Business Channel debate.
“We either have a country or we don’t have a country,” Trump bellowed. If we are really a nation of laws, he argued, “We have no choice” but to “send people out” who came to the U.S. illegally. All 11 million of them. In one fell swoop. On “Morning Joe” the next morning, Trump said he’d do so by mobilizing a massive “deportation force.”
Thank God there were two grown-ups on stage, John Kasich and Jeb Bush, who dared challenge Trump. “We all know you can’t pick them up and ship them across, back across the border. It’s a silly argument,” Kasich fired off. Bush correctly observed that people were probably doing “high-fives” in Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters, watching Republican candidates declare war on 11 million people who may have come here illegally, but are otherwise still law-abiding, taxpaying residents.
But the rest of the cowardly candidates remained silent, afraid of alienating the Republican primary base, which is so fiercely anti-immigrant that they appear willing to crown the unelectable Trump with their party’s nomination. This is insane! Has the Republican Party lost all its marbles?
Imagine, first, the logistical nightmare of identifying these 11 million people, tracking them down, rounding them up and transporting them by bus, truck, train or plane. Has Trump done the math? I have. The standard Greyhound bus holds 55 people. Carrying 11 million people to the border would require 200,000 buses. The entire Greyhound bus fleet numbers 1,230. Is Trump going to build new buses? Or is Mexico going to provide buses, too? And where exactly are they going to be dumped? In Tijuana? Nuevo Laredo? The middle of the desert?
Imagine, next, the human toll: families torn apart in the middle of the night, kids ripped from their parents, grandparents left stranded, communities and businesses destroyed. Nothing could be more cruel, inhumane or un-American.
Then imagine the impact on the rest of the world. While the United States urges European countries to make room for 6.5 million Syrian refugees, the airwaves and social media will be showing video of American storm troopers attacking residential neighborhoods, rounding up immigrants, dragging them out of their homes, herding them into trucks or buses and abandoning them somewhere south of the border.
In his defense, Trump says he’s only doing what President Eisenhower did in 1954. True, Ike did approve deportation of some 1.5 million immigrants, in what was then called “Operation Wetback” and in which many immigrants died. But it was accompanied by the “Bracero” program, which allowed hundreds of thousands of agricultural workers to enter the country. And it’s still considered one of the most shameful moments of our history, right up there with FDR’s internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II.
At the same time, Trump and his fellow Republicans totally ignore what Ronald Reagan did about illegal immigration. In 1986, faced with a similar problem of millions living “in the shadows,” the man Republicans worship as their political god actually signed legislation granting 3 million people, anyone who’d been here for four years, permanent residence in the United States. Reagan even called it the “A” word, or “amnesty” – the word no Republican today dares to utter. How convenient to praise Reagan’s reputation while contradicting his record.
Anti-immigrant hysteria, of course, is nothing new to this country. It’s been directed against the Irish, Italians and Jews in turn. Pat Buchanan made it his hallmark against Latinos in 1992. But the fact that a major political party would embrace it is shameful. We can only hope Republicans come to their senses before the Iowa caucuses, some 80 days away. This is America. Mass deportation of immigrants is never going to happen – and should not.
|
