The Big Immigrant Lie Includes Donald Trump

In the proverbial ‘land of immigrants’, Donald Trump has ensured that the word ‘immigrant’ is almost an insult.

It’s ironic for the family of a 16-year German immigrant barber, Friedrich Trump, who in 1885 bought a one-way ticket to America to escape compulsory German Military Service. Friedrich’s manipulative ways to escape conscription would be replicated by his more (in)famous grandson, Donald Trump, who too avoided draft, five times (once for bad feet, four times for college). This unheroic (perhaps even un-German act) made some like Senator Tammy Duckworth, himself a Purple Heart recipient, call Trump ‘Cadet Bone Spurs’!

Always one for fudging facts to suit his convenience, Donald (as suggested by his realtor father, Fred Trump) decided to deny his German ancestry and invoke a fictious Scandinavian ancestry in order to not offend his Jewish friends.

In a book very aptly titled ‘The Art of the Deal’, Trump insists explicitly about his grandfather, “(He) came here from Sweden as a child”. It was a lie, knowingly made. Donald Trump is the grandson of immigrants – German on father’s side, and Scottish from his mother’s side. So much so, the Grandparents didn’t even speak English (even his Scottish side spoke Gaelic). Understandably, neither Germany nor Scotland would like to clarify and set the record straight (more like, take the blame!).

The immigrant context to Donald Trump is even more stark, as he along with Barack Obama are the only US Presidents of the last 10, who had a parent born outside the United States of America.

The immigrant tag is further ingrained to Donald Trump’s case as two of his three wives are immigrants who became naturalized Americans – from Slovenia and Czech Republic. Like in Donald Trump’s case, only one of his five children can claim to be children of American born parents on both sides!

But obviously, the historians have never been able to make any Sweden connect whatsoever, for the author of ‘Art of the Deal’. Incidentally the ghost writer of this book, Tony Schwartz, was to later regret writing the same as he claimed that it had “put lipstick on a pig”!

So, what explains Trump’s rants on immigrants? What explains him conflating the term ‘immigrants’ to inelegant expressions like ‘migrant criminals’, ‘illegal monster’, ‘killers’, ‘gang members’, ‘poisoning our country’, ‘taking your jobs’ etc.?

Like a Goebellian tactic, Donald Trump repeats these insults, conjectures, and innuendoes ad nauseum, till the same acquires an element of acceptance and belief. That it dangerously weaponizes and polarises the society, is seemingly a matter of joy for Donald Trump.

Has Donald Trump managed to draw a wedge in the understanding of the generic term ‘immigrant’ to delineate and differentiate qualitatively within it, depending on race, religion, ethnicity or colour? Has he managed to draw a cut-of line to qualify some people as acceptable ‘immigrants’ and others, not so?

His understanding seems to hark back to the times when the Congress passed the first law about who should be granted US citizenship i.e., not suffering the pejoration of a ‘immigrant’, way back in March 1790. The Naturalization Act of 1790 allowed any free white person of “good character,” who had been living for two years or longer, to apply for citizenship. Essentially without this citizenship, non-white (black) residents were denied basic constitutional protections, including the right to vote, own property, or testify in court. This unbridled sense of exclusivism was upheld in acts like, Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, McCarran-Walter Act in 1952 etc.,

This sort of legitimised discrimination or xenophobic racism defines the fundamental appeal of a Donald Trump, especially amongst the boorish ‘Rednecks’ who are his core constituency. In their eyes, presumably an ‘immigrant’ is anyone who is simply a Non-White or not of European descent.

And this understanding is not a ‘Republican’ thing as the most Republican of all Republican Presidents, Ronald Reagan, too harboured a very different spirit towards ‘immigrants’ as he signed the Simpson-Mazzoli Act in 1986 which effectively granted amnesty to nearly 3 million, living in the United States. Today, newcomers are seemingly less worthy in the land that is almost entirely made up of immigrants.

In a shocking acceptance of falsities, Trump can gleefully and unhesitatingly state, “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats... They’re eating the pets of the people that live there” when there is absolutely no truth in Haitians abducting and eating other people’s pets!

He can blatantly accuse, “our communities are being ravaged by migrant crime” when overwhelming amounts of criminology data points to ‘native’ Americans committing far more crimes than so-called ‘immigrants’.

He can make reckless statements about other countries, “(South American countries are) emptying out their prisons and their mental institutions into the United States of America”, when there is no verifiable data or record to suggest that any country has such a policy, overtly or covertly.

He also readily conflates his electoral rivals i.e., Democrats, as the party of choice for those with malintent towards the nation, “They want (unauthorized immigrants) voting, because they believe they’ll be voting for Democrats every single time”, when no hard data supports such demographic advantage for the Democrats! Unsubstantiated fear mongering continues with Donald Trump claiming that if given a chance, Kamala Harris would, “allow more than 100 million illegal aliens into our country”.

But he continues to do so, for he knows that the language and emotion of ‘manufactured fears’ resonates far more than the banality of truth. In an environment of extreme economic stress and unemployment, hateful blame game and discriminatory rhetoric on ‘others’ (read, immigrants) makes for a winning and supremely distractive spiel.

To be fair to Donald Trump, to suggest curbs on further ‘immigrants’ is not necessarily wrong, but only a matter of preference. As long as the same is predicated on an irrefutable socio-economic logic. But for it to be based on hateful lies, baseless accusations and aspersions that diminish people of various faiths, colours or ethnicity, is amoral politics.

For a person who himself is a ‘immigrant’ with so many personal ‘immigrant’ attachments affixed to his name and familial existence, to speak about the same derogatorily is a bit rich! That, whatever be the eventual outcome of the November elections, the fact that he has consistently commanded about half (plus/minus a couple of point percentages) tells you about the extent of hate, bigotry and falsehood that has got accepted in the USA.

Lt Gen Bhopinder Singh (Retd) is former Lt Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands & Puducherry. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.