Trump’s immigrant bashing escalates illegal refugee issue

There’s a new trend in the Bay Area’s Afghan community: sending children to classes in the language of Afghan Pashtuns.

Parents who come here from China and Mexico want their kids to learn Mandarin or Spanish to stay rooted in their culture, but this is different. The Pashto classes are motivated by fear. Refugee families among the thousands of Afghan immigrants here are afraid that the Trump administration will send them back — and that their kids, becoming more American every day, won’t know the Afghan language.

A year ago, we’d have said that fear was ridiculous. Today it’s all too valid. In this once honorable nation, Republican President Donald Trump vilifies immigrants, including those who are here legally — and has begun to target refugees for deportation.

This is wrong.

So far 300,000 refugees who were accepted after natural disasters in their homelands have either been told to leave or are under review. Many have lived here for more than 20 years and have assimilated into American communities.

Now some 30,000 Haitians have been told to return to a homeland newly ravaged by hurricanes and still desperately poor. So have several thousand from El Salvador. Honduran and Nicaraguan refugees are expected to be next.

The Afghans’ fears are poignant because they fled a war the United States started in its hunt for Osama bin Laden. Some worked for the Americans and, as a consequence, their families were persecuted by the Taliban. Congress passed special laws to expedite their rescue, but many were left behind. Those who are here should be able to stay.

Trump doubled down on immigrant bashing Friday in a speech to FBI trainees. He singled out immigrants admitted through what’s known as the diversity lottery for nations the State Department describes as having “historically low rates of immigration to the United States.”

The president said these nations pick “the worst of the worst” and “put them in a bin” to ship to the United States. We hope FBI recruits know better.

To get into the lottery, people apply, file copious documents and are screened. They have to have enough education or work experience to show they can succeed here, and they pay their own fees. Authorities reject applicants with any red flags of radicalism or criminal activity.

Sayfullo Saipov, the alleged driver of the truck that killed eight people on a New York City bike path in October, was a Uzbek national who came here in 2010 on a lottery visa. Authorities say the 29-year-old had no indications of radicalism at that time. They believe his extremist views developed here.

As mass killers go, from Sandy Hook in Connecticut to Aurora, Colorado, America does just fine developing native-born mass killers. Stephen Paddock, 64, was the all-American gunman who killed 58 people and injured nearly 550 in Las Vegas earlier in October.

We are better for our immigrant population. We can only hope those Afghan parents are wrong.

So far 300,000 refugees who were accepted after natural disasters in their homelands have either been told to leave or are under review.