Immigration plan attacks our identity as America

Donald Trump’s support of limiting legal immigration is part of an ongoing effort to make America white again. It is an egregious insult to our shared national soul. Let’s be clear: I’m a white girl. Ohio born. Arizona raised. For decades I took the privilege of my birth for granted.

Then I fell in love with a Mexican man.

When I took his name, I got a glimpse of the other side. Just a glimpse mind you.

Maybe it was in that extra moment of silence on the line when I called for dinner reservations and gave my new name.

Certainly it was in all those letters and emails that came in response to opinion pieces I wrote in defense of the humanity of undocumented people.

“Just what you expect from somebody with your last name,” they’d tell me. “Go back where you came from,” they’d tell me. And they didn’t mean Ohio.

I was called “scum” for marrying a Mexican. And worse.

No. I can never know what it is like to be a minority in this country. But I’ve had a taste of it. A tiny taste. And that taste is getting more and more bitter as I watch what’s happening to my country. To the country my husband took as his own when he became a U.S. citizen. To our daughter’s country.

The bullies, the bigots, the xenophobes are in ascent. They have their champion in the White House.

The president who considers the White House a “real dump” is equally disrespectful of other great American traditions. Our traditions.

At a time when police agencies across the country are sensitized by police shootings of unarmed black men, Donald Trump tells police “please don’t be too nice” to suspects.

Suspects are innocent until proven guilty. Cops know that. The president should, too.

A year after the U.S. Supreme Court said colleges could use race as one factor in determining who gets admitted, the Trump Justice Department announced its intent to sue universities over policies it deems disadvantageous to white applicants.

Schools know the value of diversity on campus. The president of a diverse country should, too.

The Trump Justice Department blessed a Texas voter ID law that is widely seen as an effort to limit minority turnout at the polls. It’s a law Obama’s Justice Department found discriminatory in practice and intent.

It’s a clear effort to marginalize mi-

nority voters.

In a New York case, Trump’s Justice Department argued that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not protect against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, on the other hand, argued in this case that the civil rights law does ban discriminating against LGBT people in the workplace. Why shouldn’t it? Why shouldn’t transgender people be allowed to serve in the military? Trump has no good reason.

Nor is there a good national security reason to ban Muslim immigration or encourage irrational fear of Muslim Americans.

The Trump’s support for the RAISE Act reveals the true agenda when it comes to immigration. This isn’t about law and order. It isn’t about illegal immigration.

This House Republican bill would slash legal immigration and sublimate family reunification – ostensibly in favor of “merit-based” immigration.

The Southern Poverty Law Center says the bill “reflects a white nationalist agenda” in favor of long ago discarded policies that “discriminated against people who weren’t white and northern European.”

And the wall Trump wants on the southern border? It’s an expensive, unnecessary and environmentally damaging sop to his core supporters.

Like insulting Mexico and denigrating the humanity of undocumented immigrants, it is all about dog whistles and ugly symbolism.

It’s about making America white again.

That goal manifests itself in inhumanity that is both breathtaking and wasteful.

At the end of the Obama Administration, about 13 percent of the estimated 11 million undocumented people in this country were considered a priority for deportation. Those on the priority list had criminal convictions, recent removal orders or a recent re-entry, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Going after them was a wise use of limited resources.

Under Trump, nearly all undocumented people are targets – including those who have lived and worked here as lawabiding citizens for decades.

In June, Thomas Homan, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement told Congress: “If you’re in this country illegally...you should be uncomfortable...You should look over your shoulder, and you need to be worried.”

Is this an America you can be proud of? A country that wants the hard-working undocumented parents of U.S.-born children to live in fear?

This isn’t about minority populations. It’s not about identity politics. It’s about America’s identity. This is about all of us.

All Americans need to pick a side — that goes for Republicans, too.

Stand with the bigots. Or stand up for our gloriously multi-cultural, multi-colored, multi-dimensional America. There is no middle ground.

Nor is there any doubt about the intentions of Trump and his supporters. linda.valdez@