Author: Bryce W. Ashby and Michael J. LaRosa

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Make America Hate Again: Trump’s Inhuman Border Policy

CREDIT: Latino Memphis/Facebook

President Trump has built his presidency on a foundation of untruths and a defense of false equivalence. His defenders have followed suit. Now, the lies and the hypocrisy of an administration that cares only about preserving power and privilege for the loyal few are literally tearing families apart.

Latino Memphis/Facebook

It all started before the 2016 election. In October 2016, the Access Hollywood audiotape showed candidate Trump bragging about how status as a “star” gave him the power to sexually assault women. Initially Trump fumbled through an apology, but he quickly switched to what has become a more familiar posture: normalizing his behavior via diversionary tactics, i.e. by claiming that Bill Clinton had said much worse to him on the golf course.

Next, after multiple indictments of his staff, including his campaign manager and his first national security advisor, Michael Flynn, Trump argued that Hillary Clinton’s emails were a more significant scandal, despite repeated FBI investigations, including the recent inspector general’s investigation, finding no basis for her prosecution.

The president’s proclivity for lying is well-documented but is too often met with the familiar refrain that “all politicians lie.” The truth, however, is that no politician in modern times has engaged in such a continuous and willful effort to mislead the public. The Washington Post recently reported that by May 1, 2018, Trump had lied more than 3,000 times in his presidency, averaging 6.5 lies per day. In one 80-minute speech, Trump lied 44 times.

As the daily lies mount, the administration has begun a truly reprehensible campaign against our neighbors to the south. This administration, in a “zero tolerance” policy they alone concocted, is criminally prosecuting every individual who crosses the U.S. border without documentation. Many are crossing to seek asylum as they flee violence, political unrest, and economic despair. This is a new Trump administration policy; it is not a policy developed — as claimed by Trump and his acolytes — by the Democrats. There is no “law” requiring the separation of families.

Instead of treating migrants with dignity, Trump refers to them as “animals.” The administration, evidently, didn’t think the U.S. public would care about dividing up families, poor people, mostly from Central America. They were wrong. Public outcry followed and forced the president to back down; he signed an order last week ending the policy of family separation. But, the ramifications of this policy have been deadly, and the problem isn’t solved by any means.

One Honduran father killed himself after being separated from his wife and child. Child psychologists have warned about the emotional well-being of children who are held in detention centers without parents and relatives. Last week, a heartbreaking photograph of a two-year-old Honduran girl, in tears, witnessing her mother’s arrest became the symbol of Trump’s cruel immigration policy.

In response to complaints about Trump’s policy, Senator Lamar Alexander initially claimed that “Previous administrations have separated children when their parents were detained for criminal charges or other charges that required their detention.” Senator Alexander has since condemned Mr. Trump’s actions as public opposition has grown.

The senator’s reflexive use of false equivalency is telling. President Trump’s border policy is unlike any that the U.S. has deployed in our history. No administration has ever systematically removed children from their parents, simply for crossing the border. Alexander’s initial claim that previous administrations have separated children when their parents were detained obfuscates the fact that previous administrations took such actions only when the parents engaged in criminal activities beyond simply crossing a border to seek asylum and a better life.

The time has come for Republicans and anyone who clings to a moral compass to quit excusing President Trump’s actions. His words have been callous, his actions cruel and unusual, and if Congressional leaders won’t act now, in the face of objective cruelty to children, then the great American experiment is truly at its end stage.

Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and board chair of Latino Memphis. Michael LaRosa is an associate professor of Latin American history at Rhodes College.

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“They’re Animals”: Trump Plays to His Base’s Worst Instincts

President Trump’s “animals” comment on May 16th clearly reflects his views on immigrants and immigration from the global south, and it successfully shifts focus away from a presidency fully engulfed in criminal investigations.

Whether the president was referring to all immigrants as animals or only MS-13 gang members hardly matters: What matters is the rhetoric and the political objectives from a man known for exuberance rather than eloquence.

The wholesale dehumanization of vulnerable societal groups is dangerous. History smolders with disingenuous demagogues selectively targeting (and dehumanizing) socio-political opponents to gain/maintain power, while incentivizing others to slaughter the innocent: Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, Guatemala in the 1980s, and Rwanda in the 1990s are but a few examples. While epic killings won’t begin anytime soon in the U.S.A., Trump’s focus on immigration is a source of solace for his loyal base. Their percolating anger holds real consequences for people “not” in the base camp and represents a troubling trend in Trump’s political calculus.

Kirstjen Nielsen

For example, in early May, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that folks crossing into the U.S.A. (usually at the southern border we share with Mexico) without inspection will be prosecuted, using the criminal — not civil — code. Generally, criminal prosecution for entering the U.S. without proper documentation was reserved for those who enter illegally after having been previously deported. Now, anyone caught without proper documentation entering the country, even for the first time, will face criminal, rather than civil/misdemeanor charges. Criminal prosecutions can result in incarceration. Under the civil code, those unlawfully present face deportation and a bar to reentry.

Trump’s administration is seeking to incarcerate those who, in Jeb Bush’s words, are engaged in an “act of love”: They come to the U.S. seeking an opportunity to free their families from grinding, generational poverty or seeking asylum from violence in their home countries.

This aggressive, Department of Justice-sanctioned approach will separate families; Sessions also announced, earlier in the month, that people who cross our border with their children will be prosecuted for smuggling — and separated from their children. The Trump administration is preparing to place the children of those detained parents (awaiting criminal prosecution) on internal military bases. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense is studying the feasibility of sending children under 18 years of age to four or more bases in Arkansas and Texas, reminding some of Japanese Internment during World War II. For those familiar with 20th-century history, the thought of a powerful nation dividing families and placing children at military installations congers up an even darker past, from a distant continent.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen has energetically supported this plan, despite reports of a recent public “dressing down” by the president, she remains a champion enabler. She reflects the administration’s most loyal voters, those who feed on Trump’s cruel demonization of immigrants. These migrants are mostly poor, brown-skinned people who seek asylum, work, or a better life in the United States given that their own countries (especially Honduras, El Salvador, and segments of Mexico) have been ravished by gangs, violence, and drugs. The United States’ recent and historic policy toward the region has exacerbated the upheaval; we’ve provided military and police training to some of the most repressive elements of those societies; and America’s insatiable appetite for illegal narcotics, which drives the illicit markets there, needs no further comment.

People are not animals; even the worst people are still people. People are never “illegal”; they sometimes commit illegal acts. Murderous regimes, like the Third Reich, which categorized their neighbors as “subhuman, inferior races” are not remembered fondly. Demagogues, like Cuba’s Castro, referred to those who disagreed with him and fled the Marxist island he commanded as escoria — literally, scum.

President Trump, the leader of the free world, must do better than referring to people as animals. The comment is shameful, but the real shame is born by all citizens of this nation who willfully refuse to understand the magnitude of the dangerous demagogue dug-in at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It is time to act, and the most significant next step in restorative justice, for our nation, takes place on Tuesday, November 6, 2018.

Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and board chair at Latino Memphis; Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.

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Forget Trump

CREDIT: Joshua Roberts | reuters

In Memphis last week, civil rights leader Reverend James Lawson commented on the recent peaceful, anti-gun violence March on Washington, suggesting that the decision to go to the nation’s capitol was a tactical error. He noted how the leaders in D.C., especially those who occupy the White House and Congress, will never change unless a movement takes hold first in our local communities.

Joshua Roberts | reuters

Previously on President Trump

Sound reasoning from the leading tactician of the civil rights struggle — a man rooted in peaceful protest, the man who invited Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis in support of striking sanitation workers 50 years ago.

As immigration becomes the defining 21st-century social struggle, Lawson’s thinking is prescient and steeped in historic relevance. The leadership in Washington is using “immigration” as a wedge political issue, and for the moment, they seem to be winning.

Immediately after his inauguration, President Trump and his cohort of nativists took aim at the the refugee and immigrant communities by attempting to enforce a discriminatory travel ban while pushing immigration enforcement resources back into the interior of the country — into schools, apartment complexes, and businesses where families live, work, and play. After some success rebuffing such executive orders in the courts, many thought Trump had been sufficiently brushed back and that he’d move on.

But on September 5, 2017, Trump announced that his administration would end DACA, declaring simultaneously that he was giving Congress time to act because he had “a great heart” and “great love” for those whose security he was submerging in a sea of uncertainty. Of course, like most people for whom Trump claims to have had a “great love,” the romance didn’t last long.

Last fall, Trump said that he would sign any immigration bill that came across his desk, then as a compromise plan gained ground, he declared that he would never support it after talking with immigration hardliners in his administration (Stephen Miller) and listening to Ann Coulter and his media friends at FOX News.

Throughout all of this back-and-forth, immigrants and their allies have tied the rise and fall of their hopes to the 140-character whims of an individual who has demonstrated that he has “great love” only for himself.

At the same time, we have allowed our local communities to fall in line with the nativist policies of Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. During the week of MLK50, the MPD arrested a local Hispanic journalist and eight activists for crossing a street. The immediacy with which the charges were dropped highlighted the unreasonableness of the arrests.

But quickly dropping the charges did not end the damage caused by the MPD, because the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department chose to honor an ICE hold and turn Manuel Duran, the journalist, over for deportation proceedings. In less than a week, Duran went from covering the events of MLK50 in Memphis to a detention center in Jena, Louisiana.

This incident comes just a few months after the Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) arrested 20 workers locally, and District Attorney Amy Weirich initially charged them with using fraudulent documents to obtain employment. The collaboration between ICE and THP was so tight in this case that the THP had them processed by ICE before taking them to the Shelby County jail. Weirich’s office dropped the state charges, but only after the U.S. Attorney’s office charged the workers with a federal crime: obtaining employment using false documents.

These incidents show that our local police, sheriff’s department, and district attorney are being co-opted by the Trump administration to upend the lives of our neighbors and friends, whose greatest crimes were working to support their families and providing media coverage of a protest.

We can’t wait any longer for Trump to show his “great heart.” This dangerous administration is doubling down on harassing immigrants — because that plays well to the base. We can fight by engaging locally — the Lawson way — to ensure that Trump’s efforts at tearing families apart does not occur in our community with the cooperation and consent of local elected officials and law enforcement. Local officials, it’s useful to remember, face a local electorate.

Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and board member at Latino Memphis; Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.

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MS-13 For Dummies

The term MS-13, (Mara-Salvatrucha) is from “Mara” (gang) + Salvatrucha, which derives from a common expression in Salvadoran street Spanish, “Ponte Trucha” — an informal way of saying “stay alert!” Mara-Salvatrucha roughly translates to “a gang of young, alert Salvadorans.” The number 13 is a universal badass gang number.

The common link here is El Salvador. During the late 1970s up through 1992, El Salvador was the site of a vicious civil war between conservative governments propped up by the U.S. and insurgents who aspired to a more communal society. At least 70,000 people died. Most were innocent civilians, including the Archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Romero. He was gunned down while celebrating mass in 1980 on orders of right-wing paramilitary fighters.

The war caused such disruption in such a small space — El Salvador is roughly the size of Massachusetts — that at least a million people left the country, and many headed north to the United States, where they joined family in Los Angeles and around Washington, D.C. U.S. immigration law, dating back to a comprehensive reform in 1965, offered “family reunification” as a primary objective. Recently, this policy has been rebranded as “Chain Migration” by anti-immigrant and alt-right hardliners. The term itself is sinister and purposefully pushes (some of our) thinking back to the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke and away from law-abiding families living together in American neighborhoods.

Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, and Guatemalans literally ran for their lives during the decades of civil war in these three nations. Many faced harrowing journeys through Mexico — passages depicted in the classic 1984 Gregory Nava film El Norte. The southwest border was certainly more porous at that time; not exactly an open border, but analogous to the way Americans thought about airport security prior to 9/11.

Between 20 to 30 percent of El Salvador’s population fled during the civil war, about half a million of whom headed to the United States. The U.S. government under Ronald Reagan referred to these people as “economic refugees,” making them ineligible for protection under the Refugee Act of 1980. However, more than 1,000 churches, organized through the “Sanctuary Movement” provided protection and community for the Central Americans during the 1980s.
Some relief came through a 1986 comprehensive immigration reform, offering amnesty to 2.7 immigrants who arrived prior to 1982, but some Salvadoran youth during this period, primarily to defend themselves on the mean streets of L.A., joined gangs.
In the aftermath of the 1992 L.A. riots, hundreds of these kids were “repatriated.” Thus, a made-in-the-U.S.A. gang (the MS-13) got exported to El Salvador. There it metastasized in a society devastated by decades of war, unwilling and unable to confront the criminal organization.

The Trump administration’s fake narrative concerning immigration can be characterized as a sin (or series of sins) of omission. The immigration hardliners provide just part of the story. Like all petty, tyrannical regimes, they’re expert at manipulating public opinion. The State of the Union focus on American victims of gang violence, while certainly tragic, masks a more profound, prevalent reality: There are millions of young immigrant kids in schools, not in gangs or prisons, hoping to live in America and achieve the American dream.

Trump’s promise of a “big, beautiful wall” costing $20 billion or more cannot keep young, energetic people from South/Central America and Mexico from traveling to America. The opportunities here are too real and too tempting. But the contradictions of America — our helping destroy Central American nations through war, repatriating gang members there, and then constructing a wall to keep those same people out — are transparent to those who know the history. The real tragedy, however, is how seamlessly cruel intimidation, hostile tactics, and deceit link two malevolent organizations: The MS-13 and the Trump administration.

Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney; Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.

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Prospects for good-sense immigration policy were reawakened by “Chuck and Nancy.”

CREDIT: Reuters

Reuters

Sixteen years ago, Senators Dick Durbin and Orrin Hatch introduced the DREAM Act on the Senate Floor. Had it become law, the DREAM Act would have offered permanent residency and a pathway to citizenship for young people who graduate from our high schools, have clean criminal records, and want to live and prosper in the U.S.A. These non-citizen kids were (in most cases) brought here by parents fleeing either economic insecurity in Mexico or socio-political violence in Central America and other places in the Americas and the world.

Since the United States shares a 2,000-mile border with Mexico, most of the Dreamers (as kids eligible for protection under the DREAM Act are called) are from that country. When the DREAM Act came up for a Senate vote in late 2010, it was killed by 41 Senators; three Republicans voted for the bill, but two — Senator (now Attorney General) Jeff Sessions (AL) and Lindsey Graham (SC) — campaigned vigorously against the bill, and they prevailed.

Fast forward to 2012 and a tough political campaign between the sitting president, Barack Obama, and former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney. Obama wisely chose to fortify his base with Hispanics and others, and he signed an executive order called DACA, for “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.”

This temporary “fix” allowed young people who had been denied congressional protection through the DREAM Act to apply for “deferred action” concerning deportation proceeding by submitting to a background check and paying a processing fee.

So far, about one million people have taken advantage of DACA; they can attend college, they can work, they can serve in the U.S. armed forces. Additionally, they can buy automobiles, pay rent, contribute to the tax base of cities and towns, and apply their talents and energies in ways too numerous to mention here.

Five years later, we’ve inaugurated a president who championed an anti-immigration platform and promised a problem-solving “beautiful” wall that would separate the U.S. from our Mexican and Central American neighbors.

Apparently prompted by his base — represented in this case by nine attorney generals from conservative states and a looming September lawsuit — to end Obama’s executive order, President Trump announced (through Attorney General Sessions, who gave a disconcertingly giddy but remarkably revealing press briefing) that DACA would not accept new applications and would, essentially, expire six months from now. Trump then kicked the conversation back to Congress, instructing them to come up with a permanent fix (i.e., an ad hoc law) before DACA expires.

Enter Chuck and Nancy. President Trump, since assuming the presidency, has nourished the base with talk of walls, border security and protecting American jobs from rapacious foreigners. But by feeding Chinese food to Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic minority leaders, at the White House last week, the president now seems to understand that lasting policies cannot be made exclusively through the medium of an angry partisan base representing a fraction of the electorate.

Will the DREAM Act become law in the near future? We hope so, but we also know that, for years, the Dreamers have been savaged by detractors as law breakers, jobs takers, and “bad hombres.”

We believe Republicans at the base will turn on their elected officials who support the DREAM Act and, with the Republican Party in control of the House, Senate, and executive branch (plus the majority of statehouses in the nation), it’s refreshing to watch the head of that party, Mr. Trump, offer support for a “deal” that would permanently regularize the immigration status of the Dreamers. Luckily, Trump may have cared more about making a deal than the risk of offending the “Fifth Avenue Phalange” — i.e., those members of his base who, putatively, would support him even if he should walk onto Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody.

Let’s hope no shots are fired, and let’s hope that we have a permanent Congressional solution to 16 years of uncertainty for good kids who want to live here, work here, and study in the America that has always been a nation of opportunity for immigrants.

Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and board chair at Latino Memphis; Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.

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The ICE-man Cometh: The Tragedy of Trump’s Immigration Policy

CREDIT: Latino Memphis

As with almost all his policy initiatives, President Trump’s administration has resorted to obfuscation and lies; this is particularly true with regard to immigration enforcement.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump claimed that his administration would focus on arresting undocumented criminals, the so-called “bad hombres.” Homeland Security insists that this, in fact, is official policy. The most current Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Memphis suggest a very different reality.

From July 23rd to July 26th, as part of a regional operation, ICE arrested 83 individuals on immigration charges in Nashville, New Orleans, and Memphis. Of the 83 arrested, 64 had no significant criminal background.

This means that 80 percent of the arrests made during these raids were conceivably of people who were taking their kids to day care or the grocery store. These arrested and detained individuals are our friends, family, and neighbors. They are an integral part of the cultural, economic, and social fabric of our cities.

Unfortunately, we have been growing accustomed, since January 2017, to Trump administration deceptive-speak and aggressive actions. Last week, we should remember, Trump told police on Long Island, New York, that it’s “okay” to rough up individuals during detention and arrest.  

But the president is not solely responsible for the fear facing the Latino community in Memphis and around the country. For nearly two decades, both political parties have recognized that our broken immigration system serves neither our economy nor the individuals caught in its archaic, outdated structure.

Latino Memphis

Latino Memphis members distribute immigration information

Rather than taking proactive measures, most politicians, business owners, and citizens have remained silent while a shadow economy developed in agriculture, construction, and the service industries. The vast majority of Americans said nothing as generations of undocumented immigrants toiled in the U.S.A., constructing our houses, preparing our food, and taking care of our children.

We Americans perpetuated the lie that this system was somehow mutually beneficial. We professed our personal support for legislation reforming this broken system, but failed to take effective action to make reform a concrete reality.

Our silence and inaction have created the perfect storm, whereby entire communities live under siege as a callous opportunist seeks political gain by tearing families apart. The greatest enemy to these communities is not President Trump, but the apathy of those who profit from decades of work undertaken by the undocumented. If Trump is to be stopped in his supposed “patriotic” pursuit of deportation, American apathy must end immediately.

In light of deep fears spreading through a community under attack, the response of our elected leaders has been silence. County Mayor Mark Luttrell has said nothing. Several months ago, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland stated that the city would not enforce immigration laws and that Memphis remained a “welcoming city.” Those were important statements at a time when the threat was largely theoretical.

But now our community is struggling to make sense of the ICE incursions. With the school year starting, families will be exposed to ICE stops and raids while carrying out the most mundane of tasks, such as taking their kids to school. The time for broad platitudes from our mayors is over. We need action immediately.

First, school property must be declared a safe zone from ICE enforcement. Second, the Shelby County Sheriff should refuse any future collaboration with ICE at the Shelby County jail. Third, our city and county mayors should begin monthly meetings with the Latino community to explore policies to help resist and impede ICE enforcement within our city and county.  

But resistance to this assault cannot be left solely in the hands of our local government. Individual citizens must demand action. We can begin by contacting local, state, and federal government officials, demanding a stop to ICE’s cruel tactics. We should also call for passage of comprehensive immigration legislation that includes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. As the government continues its raids, we can push back against the ICE machine via sustained resistance both in the courtrooms and in the streets.  

Silence and apathy have led us to where we are today, together with a political neophyte president in D.C., who reveals, daily, dictatorial tendencies.  If Memphis is truly a “welcoming city,” we must not sit idly by while ICE tears families apart.

Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney. Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.

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Slouching Toward Refuge

A looming battle is building between United States cities, some states, and the federal government. The issue involves sanctuary status for communities reluctant to cooperate with officials of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), given the Trump administration’s stated goal of detaining and deporting all undocumented persons.

The modern sanctuary movement began in the 1980s when perhaps a million people from Central America fled their war-torn homelands (the wars, in all cases, partially financed by the United States). Reagan-era (1980-88) policy referred to these folks as economic migrants. (According to this logic, the migrants were fleeing poverty, not the wars we promoted.)

President Ronald Reagan refused to acknowledge the political dimension of the conflict, and thus, migrants were ineligible for protection under the 1980 Refugee Act. Against this backdrop, some cities with significant Hispanic populations organized a “sanctuary” movement to provide shelter (mostly in religious houses of worship), protection, and aid for people who, literally, were running for their lives.

So we go, historically, from bad to worse.

Back in the 1980s, our nation actively pursued Cold War proxy wars in Central America, the arms industry profited from those wars, we helped destroy infrastructure in three Central American nations displacing multitudes, and then we shut our doors to fleeing refugees. All of this seems, when looked at holistically, especially cruel, written not in conformity with reality but for a modern, tragic Italian opera.

Now we have Mr. Trump, a Reagan redux but without the charm, affability, or charisma of the great communicator. The two presidents share one important characteristic: cluelessness. Given Trump’s recent executive orders, we see a rapid descent back to the ’80s, but this time, thanks to technology, the world can watch the tragedy in real time.

Trump’s executive order regarding refugees seeks to ban people from some majority Muslim nations and is especially unkind, given that one of the nations on the original list, Iraq, was completely destroyed by the U.S. in the illegal (but profitable) war of 2003 that never really ended. Syria is on the list, a country we’ve begun bombing with cruel consequences for a civilian population stuck in a sectarian civil war. Trump’s order, rewritten to pass constitutional muster in the eyes of skeptical judges, has been enjoined once more by skeptical judges.

The President’s executive order on immigration seeks to fulfill an unfulfillable campaign promise: to deport all “illegals.” Given that the administration is determined to win somewhere, sanctuary status for cities — and a few states — has reappeared in the media, with Trump threatening to pull federal grant money in retaliation for these cities’ noncompliance with federal mandates.

The current sanctuary movement is about city leaders protecting the people within their jurisdictions from federal overreach; the central concern involves trust and public safety.

For example, police departments need support from people living in cities and communities who witness crimes; their job is not to enforce federal (and, in this case, politically motivated) immigration executive orders, but to protect people from petty and more serious crimes. When the police are seen as potential agents of deportation, police work and public safety collapse. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions doesn’t seem to understand any of this and has reacted by bullying local officials, reminiscent of the mid-19th-century Alabama leadership style that defines him.

Trump has already made it clear that raids and deportations will occur as America cracks down on the undocumented. Unlike his predecessor, Mr. Obama, who deported a lot of people, Trump wants to round up everyone who is not in the country with proper documentation — including women and children. People who cross a border without permission, or overstay a tourist visa, have committed a civil code violation, not a crime. Only a cruel cynic could accuse a child who crosses a border with parents or relatives of having committed any type of legal violation. But this administration, unfortunately, is bringing new meaning to cruel and unusual.

We need collaboration between federal and local officials. We don’t need a mass roundup of innocents to appease the political positions of a few fanatics. A showdown between some states/many cities and the federal government is approaching, but given the path this administration is charting, we might be heading back not to the 1980s, but way back to the 1860s.

Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and board chair at Latino Memphis. Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.

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Twitter Diplomacy

The ongoing Twitter war between the presidents of the United States and Mexico strains the imagination of those who believe serious issues shouldn’t be discussed in 140 characters. Or 18 words.

Tweeting, often used as a tool for self-promoters and narcissists, has become an acceptable form of communication, allowing our president (and the president of Mexico) to push out content-free propaganda statements. Those statements have riled up newsrooms around the world, exasperated the leaders’ detractors, and nourished the embittered and the bored.

The rising tensions between the two nations recalls a time in the mid-1840s when the U.S. actually invaded Mexico, on false pretenses, and took half of their national territory via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848. While we don’t anticipate another actual war between the U.S. and Mexico, there are very serious issues facing the two nations: Migration and trade are the most salient stressors in the U.S.-Mexican relationship, with secondary issues that include drugs and crime. With regard to migration, exaggerated numbers and populist rhetoric are the theatrical tactics used to obscure substance.

Trump has promised to end undocumented migration between our two nations, without any understanding of the socio-economic, political, or historic implications of the migratory process. As a starting point, our current, anachronistic and inequitable immigration system makes it nearly impossible for poor people to “legally” immigrate to the United States from Mexico. The number of Mexicans in the United States is actually lower now than it was eight years ago.

About 55 percent of the approximately 11 million undocumented persons in the U.S. are citizens of Mexico. Of all the undocumented, about 40 percent arrived here through airports and overstayed tourist visas. Trump’s solution — constructing a “beautiful” wall along our 2,000-mile border with Mexico — will do nothing to prevent this scenario, and as long as our country’s insatiable appetite for cheap labor continues, ingenuity will find its way around, over, and under Trump’s $15 billion barrier.

On the second big issue of trade, we must remember that Mexico is the third-largest trading partner of the United States, behind Canada and China. The souring of diplomatic and political relations between the two neighbors makes no sense from a business standpoint, nor does adding a 20 percent tax to Mexican imports, as Trump has suggested. Such an import tax would not be tolerated by consumers or the business community, and Mexicans would retaliate. If Mexico were the 30th-ranked trading partner with the U.S., a 20 percent tax would matter less, but as the third-ranked partner, it’s an enormous and complicated situation, one that won’t be solved via Twitter.

About $25 billion a year flows from the U.S. to Mexico as “remittance” payments; much of that money ultimately wends its way back to the U.S. as purchases of real estate, vacations, and goods made in the USA. Mexican nationals are the leading tourists in the U.S., and they are vital to the massive U.S. tourism industry. The trade war Trump appears to be planning will be bad for business and will ultimately hurt U.S. interests — political, manufacturing, and social.

History, trade, culture, economics — it’s complicated. But Trump hopes the American people will fall for the facile and the false as he explains history in 18 words. On January 27th he tweeted, “Mexico has taken advantage of the U.S. for long enough. Massive trade deficits and little help on the very weak border must change, NOW!”

What needs to change, now, is our leadership in Washington. People need to put down the tweets and take to the streets.

Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and board member at Latino Memphis; Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.

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For Latinos, It’s Apathy, No Mas!

Five days after Donald Trump’s presidential victory, the cast of SNL parodied the electoral upset by toasting “the Latinos.”  Ironically, of course, the Latinos neither delivered the all-important state of Florida for Secretary Clinton nor voted enthusiastically for the Democratic candidate, when compared to other elections.  Many stayed home on Election Day. Thirty percent voted for Mr. Trump.

We’re guilty, with others over the years, of supporting a fairly simple reductionist argument and referred to Latinos as a monolithic voting bloc. The fact is the Latin American presence in the United States is complex and extraordinarily varied in terms of race, culture, history, place of origin, educational attainment, and economic status.  

For example, Puerto Ricans (U.S. citizens since 1917) who moved to New York City in the 1960s aligned traditionally with big-city, Democratic Party agendas and priorities.  The grandchildren of those early migrants and more recent arrivals to the mainland (many of whom now live in and around the Orlando, Florida, area) are no longer tied to the old-line Democratic platform. Some, in fact, vote Republican based on social issues (opposition to Roe v. Wade, discomfort with same-sex marriage), and Puerto Ricans who favor statehood for the island support Republican candidates who agree with that agenda.

Many older Cuban-Americans in Florida came out to support Donald Trump, not because they liked him but because they traditionally vote Republican.  They also loath to support Democratic candidates — some still blame President Kennedy’s failed Bay of Pigs invasion for the growth of Communism on the island. Thus, they have been hostile to President Obama’s normalization of diplomatic relations with the island nation. They were unimpressed with Obama’s March, 2016 Cuba visit, which featured a “bromance” with Raúl Castro; the two men sat together during a baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays’ minor league team and the Cuban national team.   

Politics is one thing, governing another. We’re fearful that President Trump will order immigration enforcement into communities shortly after he takes office; during his first nationally televised interview since the November 8th election, the president-elect stated his intention to deport or incarcerate 2 or 3 million people.  

This is worrisome, because immigrants are entitled to due process, and deportation proceedings must be conducted fairly through a federal immigration judge of whom there are fewer than 250 nationwide, all with jam-packed dockets.  

Moreover, President Obama has already deported more immigrants than all other U.S. presidents combined. It is not clear where Trump came up with the 2 to 3 million figure he cited or how he’ll reach that deportation objective, given Obama’s deportation track record.

Trump’s “deportation force” sounds a little too 20th-century European for our sensibilities, but we’re relieved to see that many police departments around the nation have re-stated their commitment to “sanctuary city status,” i.e. local police officers will not act as federal deportation agents, because they want to preserve local public safety and harmony. 

One of the most heart-wrenching potential effects of Trump’s election involves undocumented youth who have received protection under Obama’s 2012 executive action known as DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. This program has allowed good, hardworking young people who were brought to the USA as children by their parents to apply for “relief” from deportation proceedings.

About 750,000 young people, the so-called dreamers, have been granted protection under this program. With a stroke of Trump’s pen, though, DACA could die. Eliminating this program would represent a catastrophic setback for kids who are American in every sense of the word, except for their immigration status. We really don’t want to see the president-elect begin his administration by punishing hundreds of thousands of innocent kids.  

Those who didn’t vote for Trump — around 2 million more Americans than voted for him — are deeply concerned about this tumultuous transition and worry that the nation is turning an uncharitable, cruel gaze toward our immigrant brothers and sisters.  

Election Day anger and apathy has delivered us a Trump presidency. We can’t allow that same apathy to tear apart our communities should Trump try to enforce promises from a quixotic, cruel campaign that won at the polls but tossed the collective serenity of a nation into the sea.

Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and board member at Latino Memphis; Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.

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Opinion Viewpoint

President Machado?

CREDIT: Reuters.com

Reuters.com

Donald Trump and Alicia Machado in 1997

In 1995, a young Hispanic woman, Alicia Machado, was crowned Miss Venezuela in a nation known for oil, income inequality, and beauty pageants. In Las Vegas, a year later, Machado won the Miss Universe contest. This was about the same time the pageant came under direct management and ownership of Donald Trump.

By now, Trump’s hostility toward Hispanics is well known. He began his political campaign last year by referring to Mexicans as “criminals and rapists.” That opening salvo earned him the media attention and political oxygen he needed to move forward. Now, here we are, about a month from the 2016 presidential election, and Trump, in some polls, is virtually tied for the presidency against Hillary Clinton, a woman who served as senator from New York and secretary of state in the Obama administration. How could this be?

Trump’s two hostile obsessions — Hispanics and women — track together nicely in the Machado story. He referred to Machado as “an eating machine” (she gained some weight after being named Miss Universe — fame can be stressful). He called her “Miss Piggy,” and purportedly referred to her as “Miss Housekeeping.”  

A beauty, yes, but a Hispanic beauty and thus, in the welterweight mind of Donald Trump, limited exclusively to the cleaning crew. Recently we learned that Trump would fire women at his California golf club if they didn’t meet his exacting, frivolous (and illegal) beauty standards: They had to be thin and attractive — to Trump.  

This man is now in a position where he could be elected president of the United States. Our media elites have let this carnival continue for too long. Les Moonves, chairman of CBS and one of the most powerful media tycoons in the nation (he earned $57 million last year), succinctly summed up the circus in February: “It may not be good for America,” he said, referring to Trump’s candidacy, “but it’s damn good for CBS.” 

Have we become so callous, so greedy, that only profit matters?

For Trump, we know two of his primary concerns are weight gain in women and personal profit. But we really don’t know too much about Trump’s profit margin, or any taxes he paid to state and federal government, because he refuses to release his income tax returns, as all presidential candidates have done for the past 40 years. But this standard doesn’t apply to Trump, who seems to think that taxes are something that should be paid by everyone else. He admitted as much during the first presidential debate when he told the world that he was “smart” for paying little (or nothing) in the way of federal income tax.  

You know who does pay taxes in the U.S.? The very same “criminals” Trump vilified when he opened his campaign. According to a recent report by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented workers pay $11.64 billion each year to state and local coffers. Here in Tennessee, they pay $105 million in state and local taxes. Federally, unauthorized workers pay about $13 billion per year into the Social Security Trust Fund, and take out perhaps $1 billion in benefits. It is no wonder that Trump’s campaign has aroused so many misgivings. 

A growing number of political observers, including many prominent members of Trump’s own Republican Party, have charged that he is not minimally fit to serve as president of the United States. Ironically, though the Constitution stands in the way of foreign-born Alicia Machado, the spunky Miss Venezuela of 1995 would make a better president. She is at least as experienced as Trump, and vastly more likable. Besides, she pays her taxes.

Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and board chair at Latino Memphis; Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.