New low in Trump approach
Images and audio recordings of crying children being separated from their parents and held in cages at detention centres in Texas represented a horrifying new low in the Trump presidency.
It’s the zero-tolerance approach, which is code for zero compassion and zero morals.
It came in the same week that Italy’s interior minister Matteo Salvini refused permission for a humanitarian rescue boat to dock in the country’s southern ports and chillingly called for a census of the country’s Roma community and a “mass cleansing” of migrants.
The most worrying thing about both these moves is that they are popular.
Donald Trump’s meteoric rise to high office came about partly because he indulged in the very worst kind of ‘othering’.
He pledged to ban Muslims and build walls and people voted for it.
Right-wing, antiimmigration sentiment is on the rise across the western world and politicians like Trump and Salvini are cashing in for short-term political gain.
Their populist rhetoric feeds insecurities and falsehoods about migration to mask their own failures in domestic policy.
When Theresa May talks about bogus migration targets or taking back control over our borders, she strays dangerously close to playing along with that populist rhetoric.
The situation in Texas hasn’t happened overnight. It is the result of years of unchallenged mythology on the issue of migration.
It is easy to turn the other cheek when people talk in the abstract about immigrants taking jobs or living an easy life on benefits but these misconceptions fall apart when brought under even the mildest of scrutiny. It is much more difficult to engage in a frank and honest discussion about the benefits and challenges of migration, to explain that curbing migration will damage our economy and that we need more people to come to Scotland to grow our working age population, to talk about why it is important to treat people with compassion, even when they have come here illegally, because what they are fleeing is much worse than any of us could ever imagine.
These conversations can be difficult but they will never be more difficult than explaining to a young child why they have been taken away from their parents and locked in a cage.
Last Saturday I joined my colleague Monica Lennon MSP to host a Great Get Together event on the weekend that would have been the 44th birthday of Labour MP Jo Cox. It was fantastic opportunity to bring people in the community together and to celebrate an inspirational woman who was dedicated to tackling the hatred that robbed her of her life.
I never got to meet Jo but I am reminded of her almost every day when I see her coat of arms at the back of the House of Commons chamber, behind the Labour benches.
It contains a reminder of those powerful words from her maiden speech, words that continue to serve as an important lesson to us all: “We have far more in common with each other than things that divide us”.
Right-wing, anti-immigration sentiment is on the rise across the western world