More Racist Venom from Trump
August 24, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Donald Trump, currently the leading Republican presidential candidate, issued a “position statement” on immigration this past week. Trump’s program oozes with outright hatred for immigrants—in particular for Mexican immigrants and Mexican people generally. It portrays immigrants as violent criminals and threats to U.S. national security.
Trump’s plan is, as a Bloomberg article noted, an attack on “legal and illegal immigration from all angles. It leaves no option except for mass deportation of the estimated 11 million people in the country illegally.”
Bob Avakian, "Why do people come here from all over the world?"
Its central “principle” is that “a nation without borders is not a nation. There must be a wall across the southern border.” It says that the U.S. must “make Mexico pay for the wall.” One of the means for achieving this, according to Trump’s plan, will be to “impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages”—money sent by heavily exploited Mexican immigrants to support their families in Mexico.
Trump calls for tripling the number of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents, and deporting everyone detained by ICE in the future. His plan will end what he calls “catch and release” and require criminal penalties for people who overstay a visa.
As Revolution wrote recently, “undocumented immigrants are not criminals, they are criminalized.” Millions of immigrants, both with and without papers, work endlessly, and their exploitation is not only an important source of profitability to particular capitalists, it is a crucial part of the basis for the ongoing functioning of the entire capitalist-imperialist system. Millions who work in some of the lowest paying and most dangerous and unhealthy jobs this country has to offer—such as in construction and agriculture—live in the shadows of this society and are subject to being deported at any time. Countless families have been torn apart because of these deportations. Latino youth are routinely criminalized by this system, and brutalized and murdered by the police.
A Call for Extreme Escalation of Repression
Trump’s program calls for “End Birthright Citizenship.” This is perhaps the ugliest expression of the extreme escalation of repression Trump is fighting to see enacted and implemented. “Birthright citizenship” refers to a constitutional mandate that anyone born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen.
Trump has repeatedly used the deeply racist and offensive term “anchor babies” to describe the children of Mexican immigrants who are born in the U.S. (And it’s worth noting that Jeb Bush, the “mainstream moderate Republican” who likes to portray himself as sympathetic to immigrants, also insists on using this foul language.) Trump claims that “this [desire to give birth to a U.S. citizen] is the biggest magnet for illegal immigration into the U.S.”
It is no exaggeration to say that Trump’s immigration program is a serious plan for massive pogroms, U.S. style, upon immigrants and people of Mexican descent. This is the program being embraced by a section of the U.S. ruling class. And as part of this they are working to enlist the support of broad sections of the people in this country in the name of “making America great again” and putting “American workers first.”
In his position on immigration, Trump claims to all of a sudden be concerned about the job prospects of Black youths—saying they deserve the jobs now held by immigrants. He says he will start a “job resume bank” for inner city youth to take the jobs of the immigrants being deported. This ruling class decided some time ago that it has no place in the economy for millions of Black youths—in part because of their rebellious and defiant attitudes. But they never tire of looking for ways to pit the oppressed against each other.
And remember, Trump is the racist who whipped up a lynch mob atmosphere towards the Central Park 5—Black and Latino youths falsely accused of a violent crime in New York. (See “Propaganda Instruments of the Ruling Class... And the Railroad of the Central Park 5,” by Bob Avakian.)
This fascist agenda has to be called out and opposed by everyone.
STOP The Demonization, Criminalization and Deportations of Immigrants and the Militarization of the Border!
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