There has always been tension about immigrants in the United States.

One belief can be represented by Emma Lazarus, a woman of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish descent. She declares in her iconic poem engraved on the beacon of hope, the Statue of Liberty, in New York harbor:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

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The other side of the debate can be represented by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, who warned of the open gates unguarded:

…Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
And through them presses a wild motley throng—
Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes,
Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho,
Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, and Slav,
Flying the Old World’s poverty and scorn;
These bringing with them unknown gods and rites,’—
Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws.
In street and alley what strange tongues are loud,
Accents of menace alien to our air,
Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew!
O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well
To leave the gates unguarded?

If Donal Trump could write a poem or complete a thought, he might rewrite Lazarus’s The New Colossus as The Old Same Old:  

Just like the wealthy elite of Gilded Era fame,
With consuming corporations amassed from land to land;
At our privileged ranks the high beautiful walls shall stand
A white Christian man whose sword
Is the weaponed lightning, and his name
Father of oligarchs of legions. From his masculine-hand
Comes restricted welcome; his fierce words dictate
The tariffed harbors that waterways impose.
“Keep, our lands, our advantages maintained!” cries he
With autocrat’s voice. “Give me your white, your rich,
Your Euro’s select yearning to breed kin,
The owners of massive stock portfolios.
Send these, the uber-rich, Aryans all to me,
I give in hand the golden card to thee!”

Throughout his political career, Trump has exposed the underlying truth of the longstanding immigration policy of the United States, which has forever rested on the foundation of race and socioeconomic class.

In only the first month of his second regime, Trump mandated that his newly designated “Border Czar,” Tom Homan, facilitate the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants, primarily brown and Black people, from our southern border. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security is constructing holding “camps” for detainees.

Though Trump vowed to deport “criminal elements” back to their native lands, the round-up has been indiscriminate. Officials are arresting people with no criminal backgrounds. As reported by watchdog group American Progress: “The Trump administration’s theatrical boasts about securing the border and deporting immigrants who have committed serious crimes tell a very incomplete story. Although framed under the banner of security, President Donald Trump’s rash actions harm public safety and national security while providing no actual solutions to fix the broken U.S. immigration system.”

On the first day of his second takeover of the Oval Office, Trump signed an executive order closing U.S. doors to immigration. He issued a new order only 18 days later, however, making an exception for primarily white Afrikaners from South Africa.

It stems from Trump’s objection to certain South African domestic and foreign policies, including a recently signed law on land expropriation, which Trump’s order terms “racially discriminatory” (against white people).

Trump’s co-president, Elon Musk, a white immigrant from South Africa who grew up privileged under a system of apartheid, posted on his social media platform X (only days before Trump’s executive order) that South Africa has “racist ownership laws” (supposedly “racist” against white people).

Though South Africa’s law does not explicitly mention a landowner’s race, ownership of land, however, is inseparably tied to the legacy of racism in South Africa, where white people have not only controlled all the levers of power but also have held the vast majority of privately owned land.

And in a move that even surprised his staunchest sycophants, Trump publicized his plan for what amounts to an immigration Green Card for the ultra-rich, what he is calling his “Gold Card.”

For the cost of $5 million, to attract “very high-level people,” Trump said that people will be able to apply to become lawful permanent residents. These fees, Trump rationalized, could help pay down the deficit (though he never mentioned that this money could justify his continuation of enormous tax breaks for the super-rich).

In front of a group of reporters, Trump announced: “It’s going to be a route to citizenship, and wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card. They’ll be wealthy, and they’ll be successful, and they’ll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes.”

We all can surmise the racial backgrounds of the vast majority of Trump’s proposed new naturalized U.S. citizens.

The day Donald Trump descended the escalator in his tower of gold, with head raised forward as he held court at his press conference announcing his run for the presidency in 2015, he began to sacrifice the bodies of Mexican people as if they were Trump steaks, calling them rapists and drug mules.

Then he declared war on Islam, calling for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.

He attempted to appease his base of supporters, especially conservative Christian Evangelicals, with his continuing attacks on Muslims through executive orders.

After two of Trump’s travel bans from majority Muslim countries were struck down by the courts, the Supreme Court approved Trump’s September 2017 travel ban from 5 majority Muslim countries: Somalia, Iran, Libya, Yemen, & Syria, plus North Korea and senior government officials from Venezuela.

In a narrow 5-4 decision in Trump, President of the United States, et al. v. Hawaii, et al., the Supreme Court ruled that “The [Trump] Proclamation is squarely within the scope of Presidential authority” on national security grounds.

A blistering dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued, “The majority here completely sets aside the President’s charged statements about Muslims as irrelevant. That holding erodes the foundational principles of religious tolerance that the court elsewhere has so emphatically protected, and it tells members of minority religions in our country ‘that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community.”‘

In an Oval Office meeting on January 11, 2018, Trump became frustrated with legislators when they proposed restoring protections for immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries as part of a bipartisan immigration plan.

“Why are we having all these people from sh*thole countries come here?” Trump said, referring to African countries and Haiti. He then suggested that the United States should instead bring more people from countries like Norway.

Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions quoted scripture to justify the Trump administration’s choice to follow a government policy (not law) – never before enacted – to physically separate thousands of children from their undocumented migrant parents seeking sanctuary as they fled oppression.

Romans 13: Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves. Consistent and fair application of the law is in itself a good and moral thing, and that protects the weak and protects the lawful.

Nation of sins

Though the official terms “colonization,” “colonizer,” and “colonized” may have changed somewhat, nowhere in the world have we experienced a truly post-colonial society. Imperialism remains, though at times in less visible forms.

A series of papal bulls (decrees or edicts) in the 1100s began sanctions, enforcements, authorizations, expulsions, excommunications, denunciations, and, in particular, expressions of territorial sovereignty for Christian monarchs supported by the Catholic Church.

These bulls laid the groundwork for what would come to be known as the “Doctrine of Discovery,” a spiritual, political, and legal justification for colonization and seizure of territories not already inhabited by Christians.

The Doctrine of Discovery gives license to genocide of Black, brown, Asian, and non-Christian people across the world. It was the stimulus for Columbus’ travels and is based on patriarchal Christian heteronational white supremacy.

Pope Nicholas V issued his “Romanus Pontifex” in 1455, granting Portugal a monopoly trading status with Africa and authorizing the enslavement of Indigenous populations.

In 1455, he called his Christian followers to “invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans,” take their possessions, and “reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”

In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued “Inter Caetera” to justify Christian European explorers’ claims to land and waterways that they “discovered.” The decree also promoted Christian domination in Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the Americas.

The United States justified its “Monroe Doctrine” in the 1880s by declaring U.S. dominion over the Western Hemisphere. America’s claim of “Manifest Destiny” regarding expansionism westward justified the nation’s quest to control all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific and beyond.

Though great strides have been made, racism has been a permanent and pervasive feature of the United States since the voyage of Christopher Columbus; it is embedded into the very foundation of the country.

In the 1823 Supreme Court case, Johnson v. McIntosh, the Doctrine of Discovery was enshrined into federal law and used to strip Native peoples of the right to their land.

Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in a unanimous decision that “the principle of discovery gave European nations an absolute right to New World lands.”

No issue has plagued this country more than racism. From the colonial conquest of Indigenous peoples to the kidnapping and enslavement of Africans to the evil idea that Providence has willed white people to expand their holdings.

Then, from Jim Crow to the KKK to lynchings to voting restrictions to the fight for civil rights. From the marches to the sit-ins to the urban riots to taking a knee to Black Lives Matter to I Can’t Breathe to the multiple police murders of unarmed people of color.

If we as a country had heeded the warnings of anti-racism leaders and grassroots activists from the beginning, we might have been spared this tragic and brutal legacy, this original and perennial sin that has infected our nation.

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