Remember the Felipe Garza-Donna Ashlock story from about 30 years ago? It was a heartwarming, and heartbreaking, tale: a Latino teenager in Patterson, California fell for a white classmate who happened to have a heart condition. In January 1986, Garza died suddenly after a blood vessel burst in his brain–and his heart was transplanted into Ashlock’s body, keeping her alive for nearly three years.
I’m sure that when Donald Trump read that story, he vomited all over the newspaper.
Of course, Trump wants rid of DACA. Of course, Trump wants rid of those who have primarily benefited from the program. His hatred knows no bounds–and the same can be said for the 62 million people who cast their vote for him ten dark months ago. When will the “objective” Fourth Estate report the objective truth–that the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election was, for all intents and purposes, a hate crime?
Watch as the GOP’s base pressures House and Senate Republicans to deny any assistance to the Dreamers. Watch as right-wing media entities smear all 800,000 Dreamers as future members of MS-13, welfare recipients and threats to property values in “good” neighborhoods. Watch as mainstream-media entities refuse to call this stuff what it is: open, naked bigotry.
Paul Krugman is willing to do so, of course, but the only problem is, he’s not a reporter:
[F]irst note that whatever you think about the economics of less-educated immigrants — most of the evidence suggests that they don’t depress wages, but that’s another discussion — none of it applies to DREAMers. Their educational and behavioral profile, as Cato notes, doesn’t resemble the average immigrant, let alone the average undocumented immigrant; they look like H-1B visa holders, that is, skilled immigrants we have specifically allowed in because they help the economy.
Beyond that, DREAMers are young — which means that they help the economy in not one but two big ways, because they mitigate the economic problems caused by an aging population…
[T]his is a double blow to the U.S. economy; it will make everyone worse off. There is no upside whatever to this cruelty, unless you just want to have fewer people with brown skin and Hispanic surnames around. Which is, of course, what this is really all about.
Ten years ago, after right-wingers mobilized to kill an immigration reform bill, then-Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) asked:
We know what [opponents of immigration reform] don’t like. What are they for? What are they going to do with the 12 million who are undocumented here? Send them back to countries around the world? Develop a type of Gestapo here to seek out these people that are in the shadows?What’s their alternative?
The 62 million people who voted for Trump don’t give a damn about what will happen to the Dreamers if and when they are forced out of the country they love and support. They don’t care if they’re condemned to a fate of pain and slaughter; they just don’t want any one of them going out with their daughters.
30 years after Felipe Garza warmed America’s heart, a heartless American president has made it clear that he wants a whites-only country. His voters agree with him. Deep down, they want every last Latino–native-born, legal immigrant and undocumented–forced out of the United States. They’re proud of their ignorance and hate. It’s up to the rest of us to reject and resist their racism…so we can truly make America great.
