People on one side of the current debate surrounding immigration enforcement consistently and intentionally racialize the issue, employing gross generalizations and ignorance to advance their agenda. However, contrary to the media narrative, it is not the rule of law contingent that uses such unwelcome rhetoric. Instead, the open borders contingent consistently plays the dangerous game of racial politics.
The primary example of this phenomenon is their regular reliance on a false portrait of immigration enforcement as a white vs. non-white issue. Consider Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s claim that President Trump’s now-abandoned Census citizenship question was part of an effort to “make America white again.” Or the statement by Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) that the purpose of deportation is to “go after minority people.” Or California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell’s tweet that said, “If you’re Hispanic, there’s nothing @realDonaldTrump wont [sic]do to break up your family, cage your children, or erase your existence.”
It is simply untrue that immigration enforcement has anything to do with race. Instead, decisions about who to deport from the United States are entirely on a legal distinction between those who are U.S. citizens and those who are not. Many immigration violators subject to removal are from European countries, and the U.S. Border Patrol consistently records apprehensions of significant numbers of people from places like Romania, Ukraine, Germany, Russia, and even France and Canada.
To U.S. immigration authorities, the color of a person’s skin makes no difference. The only thing that matters is whether or not a particular individual has complied with our immigration laws or has violated them. Immigration enforcement doesn’t “go after minority people,” like Sanders claims – it goes after lawbreaking people, who come from all corners of the globe.
Additionally, immigration enforcement doesn’t just seek to remove lawbreakers of all races and creeds – it also seeks to protect law-abiders, who are an equally diverse group of people. When open borders advocates claim that the only people helped by immigration enforcement are white people, they willfully ignore and marginalize the millions of minority American citizens and legal immigrants alike who stand to benefit from stricter immigration policies.
Accordingly, Speaker Pelosi displayed tremendous ignorance when she equated immigration enforcement with making America “white again.” She of all people should know that an America without illegal aliens would by no means be an America without racial minorities. To hold otherwise is to imply that only white people can be law-abiding Americans, a belief that we all know is antiquated and racist.
In fact, a recent poll shows that majorities of Hispanics and other non-white American citizens actually support stricter immigration enforcement measures and the proposed citizenship question on the U.S. Census. These Americans understand that illegal immigration lowers their wages and hurts their communities – a reality that open borders advocates would prefer to ignore in order to score cheap points in their game of virtue-signaling.
Pelosi, Sanders, Swalwell and many in the media might believe that they are defending minority rights by depicting the immigration debate as a white vs. non-white issue. In reality, however, their arguments attack and slander the very people they seek to protect by grouping them in with immigration violators instead of with law-abiding Americans. This country needs an honest discussion of immigration enforcement if any progress is to be made on this issue, but that will be impossible until leaders stop racializing a debate that only has to do with legal distinctions.
6 Comments
I wonder how many of these reparation types, had their fore fathers not been sold to the Dutch and New England slave traders by their fellow African captors would be trying to break in to this country through the southern border.
Further, since there are now Africans trying to break in to the US through the southern border, will they be eligible for reparations if 1. None of their forefathers were sold into slavery thus trapping them in Africa for generations or 2. Some of their relatives were sold into slavery but their side of the family was not thus trapping them in Africa for generations.
Its Not Racist
To chant “send ’em back” to where they came from. My gosh that’s their beloved Motherlands they wave their flags proudly when they invade America…
When the immigration act of 1965 was being debated in Congress, Ted Kennedy scoffed at critics who predicted a million immigrants a year would be the eventual outcome. He also promised that it would not change the ethnic makeup of the country. Sort of like pretending that there would be, is, no “crisis”? Teddy’s assurances were as bad as his driving record. He also promised in 1986 that “never again will another amnesty bill be brought to the floor of the Senate”. But that’s the left. Say whatever you have to at the time and then when you are proved wrong, blather on and blame your opponents and insist that only you have the solutions for the problem you said didn’t exist.
A couple nights after the NYC blackout NBC Nightly News did a report on our electrical infrastructure. The problem is that it is stretched to the limit now, without the added millions of people that the open borders advocates, aka most of the Democratic party and big business, want to add to our population every year. Just like adding all those people won’t further add to the congestion on our already overwhelmed freeways. Or the water supplies, schools, housing. It’s all gravy according to them. All those $9 an hour workers paying little or no taxes will “grow our economy”.
Pingback: The Pitfalls of Racializing Immigration Enforcement – The Importance of Business
How can you racialize something of which the majority is true? 80%!
As of 2014, the majority of illegal aliens in the US, 56% were Mexican, 24% were of other Latin American (80% Hispanic), 9% were Asian, 6% were European and Canadian, and the rest were from the rest of the world.