Immigration crackdown never was about the law

The issue of illegal immigration, however legitimate, provides a convenient hiding place for bigotry. But the Trump administration is not hiding.

The White House’s next reported move to prevent lawful immigrants from becoming permanent residents or citizens is another strike in its escalating war on immigration regardless of legality. In targeting the immigrants who are least likely to be wealthy or white, these policies dispense entirely with any pretense that President Trump’s anti-immigration agenda is about law, order or anything other than xenophobia.

The proposal at hand would make it more difficult for immigrants who have used any of a range of public services, including the Affordable Care Act, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and nutritional assistance, to obtain a green card or citizenship, NBC News reported. Attributed to the Mephistophelian White House adviser Stephen Miller, a glowering anti-immigration zealot associated with the administration’s inhumane family separations, the proposal would target law-abiding immigrants of modest means.

Potentially affecting tens of millions of legal immigrants, this would be among the more ambitious but far from the first of the administration’s efforts to reverse the United States’ fundamental embrace of immigration.