President Donald Trump's use of Twitter on Sunday to tell four women minority members of the House of Representatives who have strongly criticized his immigration policies to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came" is textbook racism.
That three of the four progressive Democrats were born in the U.S. and the fourth is a naturalized citizen doesn't matter to Trump. That Republican former Ohio Gov. John Kasich scorned Trump and his supporters by saying "we're losing a little piece of our soul every time we ... allow this kind of rhetoric ... to be announced without people pushing back" also doesn't matter to him. As a Vox analysis noted, Trump thinks he won in 2016 by telling white people that they're the victims in modern America and thinks this divisive blueprint will win again in 2020.
But another difficulty for mainstream America is that Trump's four critics _ Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York; Ilhan Omar, D-Minnesota; Ayanna Pressley, D-Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan _ and most Democratic candidates for president are as extreme on immigration as he is, just in the opposite direction.
The government's announcement Monday _ that Trump had used his executive authority to declare asylum seekers who pass through another country first are now ineligible for asylum at the U.S. southern border _ is a stunning, troubling break with the American tradition of offering sanctuary to those who faced persecution or had a well-founded fear of persecution in their home nations.
Yes, the U.S. has a problem with the record numbers of people from Central America who have sought asylum in recent months and overwhelmed the U.S. immigration system. But instead of patiently and conventionally addressing this problem by increasing resources and by rejecting those who are motivated by economic reasons _ sending a clear message to potential asylum-seekers in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and elsewhere _ the president has gone nuclear.
The trouble is that many of the Democrats who properly denounce Trump for the callousness of his decision and for many of his prior border policies are proposing changes that are every bit as out of touch with American norms. Last month's Democratic presidential debates saw candidates embrace the idea that it should no longer be illegal for a noncitizen to enter and remain in the United States _ a core principle of the U.S. immigration system.
Jeh Johnson, President Barack Obama's last secretary of Homeland Security, warned in The Washington Post this month that's "tantamount to declaring publicly that we have open borders. That is unworkable, unwise and does not have the support of a majority of American people or the Congress, and if we had such a policy, instead of 100,000 apprehensions a month, it will be multiples of that."
Johnson is correct. This nation needs an immigration policy rooted in mainstream values. One that recognizes the intrinsic value of a melting-pot society and the importance of border security. One that recognizes the danger and depravity of demonizing people based on their looks and their ancestry and the responsibility of a sovereign nation to set immigration, naturalization and citizenship limits.
In other words, a policy like those of the past six presidents. We are a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants, as President George W. Bush once said.
