A recent news item tells us that Trumpist Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis staged an anti-immigrant campaign stunt by importing from Texas 44 immigrants legally in the country as asylum-seekers from Venezuela—a country that is currently on the U.S. shit-list because it is supposedly governed by a repressive “socialist” regime—and exporting them to upscale Martha’s Vineyard in Democratic Massachusetts to make them “their” problem. Ha-Ha. Everyone should know what a fascist jerk DeSantis is by now; unfortunately, not enough people in Florida seem to realize this, as polls still suggest that he will win by a comfortable margin over his Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist.
Of course we are now learning the real story behind all of this. There is no illegal immigrant “crisis” in Florida, as DeSantis is trying to paint this move as, since the asylum seekers were not in Florida to begin with. It seems that Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott—another Republican wishing to create a panic attack among right-wing voters who fear that that the state might eventually turn “blue” because they don’t understand that shitting on people tends not to persuade them to be “friendly” come election time.
Naturally, it gets worse. We learn that the asylum-seekers were approached at the Migrant Resource Center in San Antonio by a blonde white woman who called herself “Perla,” accompanied by a man driving a truck for transportation, who offered them free shelter and work. This was clearly a con-job to get these people into legal jeopardy, since they cannot legally work in the country without a government-issued work permit. Although there is some “confusion” in the media of whether a crime was committed, there technically was, if “Perla” and her confederate were guilty of fraud and trafficking.
One thing that is certain is that the asylum-seekers (again, legally in the country pending an update of their status) were the victims of political theater to inspire hatred toward them. DeSantis isn’t the only Republican governor to perform this stunt—flying or busing immigrants to “sanctuary” cities or states to make them their “problem,” which only proves the dearth of simple human decency inherent in being a Republican—but this also indicates that the Trumpist/fascist far-right are more than eager to do shady things whose lawfulness is a matter of “interpretation,” and demonstrates that there are fewer and fewer limits to where Republicans under the influence of a criminal like Donald Trump will go to deceive the public and create an atmosphere of fear and paranoia which they hope will win them elections.
Immigrants have always been a source of angst in a country where anyone who isn’t Native American is only here because of an immigrant ancestor—and not one of them ever asked the original inhabitants of this land if it was “legal” for them to stay, let alone visit. In time even people of the same color were the subject of fear mongering; here, Irish and German immigrants were the first targets of this “great replacement” fear…
…who were then joined by the Chinese, who, according to this political cartoon, would eventually swallow up the country as their own:
Of course today, the country is being threatened by the next “great replacement,” a swarm of vermin from across the southern border, frightening-looking aliens from another world as portrayed in this 2010 political ad by Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle:
Naturally it didn’t matter that it turned out that these were not actually illegal immigrants, but a random image taken from a stock image source that had just enough of that “scary” look. In 2018 you saw this ad which identified these people as DACA recipients (“Dreamers”):
Every group has their share of bad apples (like, say, Trump), and some more than others. Those obviously appear to be gang members who do bad things; but to suggest that they represent the "generality" is despicable. People in this country tend to want to ignore the fact that migrants (legal or illegal) don’t enter this country with the idea joining gangs, but to find a “better” life; the reality is that gang "culture" is a peculiarly American phenomenon that it habitually "deports" to terrorize communities in other countries.
Unfortunately, the joke in this country is that immigrants will be “accepted” if all they do is this:
But the reality is that to far-right racists, “assimilation” means only one thing: “disappear,” and don’t make any noise, and better yet, don’t vote unless it is for one of your Republican masters. The message is how can you expect these uncivilized, swarthy barbarians to be capable of “assimilation” when they invade your beautiful white neighborhood and just walked up behind a lovely white girl and shoot her in face for no reason say—well, that’s just what they “do," according to another racist anti-immigrant campaign ad from 2018:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVhnhwvCFvE&t=9s
Actually, the shooter looks Caucasian, but you just have to say the word "illegal" as they do in this ad, and everyone knows who you are talking about, even though one-in-nine people of Asian extraction are also in this country illegally, according to Pew Research. Because of this "assumption," anyone who looks "Mexican" is suspect. During the 2016 campaign season when Trump was calling Hispanics "rapists," "violent criminals" and "drug dealers," with the "caveat" that a few might be "good people," Noah Berlatsky, writing in Quartz, noted the hypocrisy in this country to only allow blacks (or now, Asians) to be victims of racism, denying that you can be racist against dark-skinned, indigenous Hispanics because they are an "ethnicity":
Racial divisions aren’t scientific; they’re ad hoc cultural groupings. And that means that race can actually be defined in a whole host of ways. Yes, you can organize people on the basis of their skin tone, if you want. You can also define race in terms of ethnicity, or nationality, or language, or religion.
Racism doesn’t mean hatred of a particular race, because there is no such thing as a particular race of humans. Instead, racism is the process whereby a heterogeneous group of people is defined as a homogenous group in order to single them out for specific hate. When Trump points to people of Mexican descent and says that they are criminals and un-American, that they are biased and can’t be trusted, he is, deliberately working to turn Mexican into a race. He is saying, over and over, that Mexicans are different and lesser. His remarks are not just racially tinged. They are designed to stoke racism, and justify discrimination.
During the opening years of The Great Depression, Pres. Herbert Hoover—rather than pass relief acts through Congress because of his commitment to the right-wing free market “solution” to the suffering—instead searched for scapegoats, rather than placing the blame where it belonged, on reckless greed, financial mismanagement and trade policies. No, it was the "fault" of the most vulnerable targets, which largely encompassed immigrants who were “stealing” jobs even though whites always had the first digs, and those from Mexico in particular. In his 1930 State of the Union address, this is what Hoover claimed was his idea of a “fix” to the economy:
Visas from Mexico are about 250 per month compared to about 4,000 previous to restrictions. The whole subject requires exhaustive reconsideration. I urge the strengthening of our deportation laws so as to more fully rid ourselves of criminal aliens. Furthermore, thousands of persons have entered the country in violation of the immigration laws. The very method of their entry indicates their objectionable character, and our law-abiding foreign-born residents suffer in consequence.
What would occur with Hoover’s approval would be state and local governments being given a free hand to gather up and “repatriate” up to a million people of Mexican extraction to Mexico, an estimated 40 to 60 percent of them U.S. citizens, the majority of those of whom were children born in this country. Prof. Kevin Johnson of the UC-Davis School of Law noted that this repatriation met the “legal definition” of “ethnic cleansing.” Of course nobody talks about this; at least the Japanese internees were allowed to remain in the country and continue their lives after the war unmolested. Even many so-called “progressives” have fallen into this racist trap of accusing Hispanics of “stealing” jobs from “real” Americans.
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