Looking to blame someone, Americans rediscover favorite scapegoat

As a Mexican American, I have a complicated relationship with the motherland. Sometimes, I feel like a man without a country: “Mexican” north of the border, “American” south of it.

So I’m not eager to defend Mexico.

My ties to our southern neighbor are weak. Both my parents were born in the United States, and three of my four grandparents were born not in Mexico but in Texas. The outlier — my dad’s father — was born in Chihuahua, and he came here with his family as a boy during the Mexican Revolution. Because he was poor, uneducated and dark-skinned, Mexico had no use for my grandpa.

Now, I return the favor. I have no use for Mexico.

Having said that, as a journalist, it’s my job to debunk lies and pummel liars. And when charlatans try to connect immigrants to a recent surge in COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths, there are plenty of lies that need debunking and many liars who deserve a good pummeling.

In the parade of falsehoods, Republicans are the grand marshal. They’re not all racists. Some, I assume, are good people. But most Republican politicians today, either by necessity or natural inclination, are fluent in the language of racism and nativism. So much so that Democrats who are equally fluent get a pass from Latino voters. If your instinct is to look upon Mexicans with fear, hatred or superiority, the modern GOP — which is cut less from the cloth of Ronald Reagan than Stephen Miller — promises you a white sheet and matching hood in every closet.

And naturally, Republicans are not about to let the crisis of COVID-19 infections go to waste. They’re trying to twist the health crisis to suit their goal of scaring up votes from White people who think they’re being displaced by an invasion. The overlap between coronavirus and immigration? Advance the lie that immigrants bring not just a fierce work ethic that puts Americans to shame but also bring COVID-19.

Enter a Republican politician aiming to become the Liar-inChief: Florida Gov. Ron Desantis.

This week, President Joe

Biden bashed GOP governors who are blocking vaccine mandates, saying they won’t “do the right things” to stop spreading the virus. Desantis — who issued an executive order banning mask mandates in the Sunshine State — returned fire.

The likely 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner recently blamed immigrants for “helping facilitate the spread of COVID-19.” If so, Florida, must be a superspreader given the state’s dependence on illegal immigrants to staff restaurants, hotels, construction firms and other businesses.

In Florida, or Texas or Colorado, show me a pro-business governor, and I’ll show you a hypocrite that bites the immigrant hands that feed the economy. If they really cared about the problem as much as they pretend, they could go after employers. But they lack the courage to fight those who punch back. They prefer to pick on immigrants. Such tough guys.

Alas, I digress. For Desantis — a simpleton educated at Yale and Harvard Law School — the connection between COVID-19 and the border is naturally quite simple.

“”You have hundreds of thousands of people pouring across every month,” Desantis said. “Not only are they letting them through, they’re then farming them out all across our communities across this country, putting them on planes, putting them on buses.”

The governor didn’t provide any proof to support his wild claims that “whatever variants there are around the world,