Judas’ ladder - The debate on immigration
It’s election season, and a former P.O.T.U.S. is running for a non-consecutive term. The former president is going around the nation speaking about the ills of foreign “invaders”. These immigrants bring crime, they take jobs, and worse of all they want to destroy America!! They’re drug users and dealers poisoning the nation, at least that’s what the former president says, his lackeys are even more crude. If it wasn’t clear I am of course describing the election of 1856, the former president is none else than the overweight New Yorker Millard Fillmore and the immigrants he’s warning the American people about are of course the dastardly Irish. Fillmore lost and the “American party” (more famously known as the Know Nothing party) that nominated him soon dissolved, but its nativism didn’t die with it.
In last year’s election, we saw a similar situation with different names but the core was the same. From the 19th century up to the early 20th century, the Irish, Italian, and other immigrants were persecuted, discriminated against harassed, and attacked by the KKK for their religion. A hundred years later we saw the descendants of those same immigrants making the same statements made against their ancestors, using the same bigoted language, spouting the same long-debunked lies. We don’t have to speak in broad terms let’s bring this down to one family. In 1885 a 16-year-old German immigrated to the United States of America to avoid conscription into the German army, like most of his time he arrived in New York ready to start a new life. A few years after that in 1891 he moved out west with his savings and bought a restaurant beginning his long career as a business owner. After trying out many different ventures our German died in 1918 at 49 years of age. Before immigrating to the afterlife he fathered a son. That American-born son would go on to become a giant in the construction industry but he thought it was necessary to lie about his ancestry. For decades the family maintained that they were Swedish, not German, first because of the world wars then to avoid embarrassment from the lie being uncovered. The name of that immigrant was Friedrich(later Frederick) Trump his son was Fred Trump who’s known now mostly for being the father of Donald Trump.
Politicians exploiting the nativist side of voters instead of running on a real policy isn’t a new situation it’s a tale as old as American politics. It’s been here before Trump, before Buchanan, and before anybody now living was born. This movement however relies on deeply un-American ideas and principles. It has to assume that either America at some point stopped being a nation of immigrants or more preposterous she never was. The second case is blatantly false and requires no explanation. The first case is entirely arbitrary the immigrants of 2025 have the same desire to improve their lives as did the immigrants of 1925 or 1825. Denying entry to the 2025 immigrant is nothing more than pulling up the ladder after the ancestors of the ladder pullers have already made their journey.
In recent years we’ve seen a rise of nativist arguments amongst the mainstream of the Republican Party, and more worryingly amongst the Democratic Party. The nativist movement after flirting with the Reform Party in 2000 found its home in the Republican Party and more importantly within the right-wing media ecosystem where it grew and spread like a cancer. This media sprawl was and is spouting the same old lies about the evil immigrants this time coming from the southern border, they’re rapists, murderers, and drug dealers and they’re stealing the jobs of hard-working Americans. Harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric was seen before in America. Still, with continued unanswered assault the public perception started to shift. The thing that disturbed me most of all was the fact that instead of fighting back with facts such as the crime rates among both documented and undocumented migrants, many people on the left surrendered to the right’s narrative, especially in terms of the “Job Stealing” argument like in this NYT article. The truth is that immigrants aren’t just numbers or some flow that needs to be dialed back, they’re real people who went through great hardship be it bureaucratic or physical to have a chance at a better life in the shining city upon a hill that is America. Those immigrants are guided by the same impulses that the old immigrants were. The author notices this at the very end of the article, he knows that “dialing back” is nothing else but pulling up the ladder but the best defense he can muster is “at least reasonable people will do it”. The fact of the matter no matter who is pulling up the ladder it’s still wrong. He concludes that the public’s opinion is set in stone, but that’s nothing but defeatism, by broadly agreeing with the right’s argument he’s only strengthening this perception.
Winston Churchill once said that America will do the right thing after exhausting all possible alternatives. That remark seems to remain true as we’re witnessing right now a struggle for power in the not-yet-formed Trump Administration. Elon Musk who before was in on the nativist rhetoric suddenly started pushing the former president and current president-elect towards expanding visas for high-skilled workers. I am writing this on January 2nd, 2025, and as of this time, Donald Trump seems to have accepted this policy. Some people on the left have a contrarian response and opposed this move due to some problems within the H1B visa program. Though the program isn’t perfect and its expansion won’t fix the immigration system it’s a step forward. On the campaign trail, the former and now future president expressed interest in granting permanent residency to foreign students, he retracted that statement but perhaps this wind of change will bring this older idea back.
To conclude I’d like to reiterate that immigrants are not the enemies but the builders of America, they have contributed greatly to all aspects of American life, having been the foundation of America itself since the very beginning. I urge every American to remember where their ancestors came from, and what’s the difference between them and the newer influx. I also urge people who like me aren’t happy with the result of this election to not oppose this new shift in Trump’s rhetoric on immigration which is a definitive step forward not seen for a long long time. Many of us see his tech friends as evil puppet masters that’ll wreck the American government. But we have to work with what we have not what we want, so it would be prudent to welcome this new faction in Trump’s coalition as opposed to the white nationalist blood and soil crowd like Stephen Miller. Though I strongly disagree on most issues with Musk and Trump I see an opportunity for reform that shouldn’t be squandered. So let us do to Trump what all the rightists have been doing to him since 2016, push him in the direction we want him to go, and perhaps the wind will blow into the sails of USS Trump sailing on a path of good policy. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
