Supreme Court rule on immigrant wealth test hurts Miami

The Statue of Liberty and Miami’s Freedom Tower should be cloaked in black today. The Supreme Court ripped a piece of this country’s soul when a majority divided along partisan lines ruled in favor of re-engineering what it means to be an American.

We’re no longer a nation of refuge to courageous people who left it all behind, worked as hard as they had to in their new homeland, and made a good life for themselves, and us, their children.

We won’t be anymore a nation of immigrants who rise from humble backgrounds to achieve in professional fields, to become inventors and innovators, or simply to prove that, through determination and grit, the American Dream is still alive.

Only the wealthy need apply now for green cards. Only immigrants who meet President Donald Trump’s wealth test can knock on our door, apply for residency, the highest court in the land affirmed Monday in a brief order split along ideological divide, 5-4.

It is as sad as it will be devastating for cities like Miami — held up as an iconic example of rags to riches immigrant stories — as it is for the economic health of the Americas.

The invitation to the rich to emigrate will result in wealth and brain drain from countries already struggling to become budding democracies and compete in a global economy. This rich-only rule is also a blow to refugees from countries like Cuba and Venezuela, where their credible claims of persecution will get a second hearing to examine what assets they have in a bank account.

There’s nothing gained in a decision that allows the Trump administration to start enforcing new rules designed to screen out green card applicants believed to have the potential of becoming a public charge.

The ruling impacts every aspect of social life for immigrants, from children being unable to receive free school lunches to the disabled who need access to healthcare.

It allows the federal government to deny admission — or residency to keep an immigrant already here — based on a person’s use of programs like Medicaid, housing assistance, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and other kinds of benefits.

Children will go hungry and people will die for fear of using public services that could ruin their shot at permanent status, even if they were used occasionally.

“What we are seeing from this administration is what I call the end of compassion,” says Alejandro Portes, a renowned Cuban-American professor and author, now at the University of Miami. “What had been the hallmark of past administrations’ policy — to be a beacon for the rest of the world, and for groups that needed refuge, seeing immigration as necessary for the economy rather than a threat — that ends with Trump.”

It is shameful that the wealthiest country in the world can be this petty, this scornful of the less fortunate when the parameters to receive public service are already quite strict.

But the destruction of core American values like generosity, open arms and human rights is the price to pay for President Trump and his GOP allies’ lowclass, low-blow attempt to keep brown and black people from rising in this country.

That the Supreme Court would go along with discriminatory policy is the direct result of a hyper-partisan election based on stoking the real and imagined fears of Americans in a post 9-11 world.

To understand the breadth of the Supreme Court’s blow to immigrants, consider this:

Miami wouldn’t be what it is today under Trump’s public charge rule if only the wealthiest of Cubans had been allowed to come to the United States after Fidel Castro rose to power and installed communism on the island.

Waves of immigrants fleeing Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War ended, Haiti during the brutal Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier regimes, and Central and Latin America dictatorships wouldn’t have qualified, either.

But that’s the point of a Trump policy shaped by an adviser on immigration who spews white-nationalist rhetoric as truth, Stephen Miller. He is the son of liberal Jews whose patriarch, a Belarus farmer, arrived on Ellis Island on January 7, 1903 with $8 in his pocket.

His dishonorable self-loathing, which found a conduit in Trump’s presidential ambition, belittles our nation’s quintessential immigrant history.

And he isn’t alone.

So do other immigrants who support Trump and his policies — and came to this country on airlifts, boatlifts, refugee programs, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, and overstaying tourist visas.

It is evil, this taking pleasure in crushing the oppressed, the persecuted, the most needy.

The Statue of Liberty and the Freedom Tower in Miami should be cloaked in black today.

It is a day of mourning for us, for who we have become as Americans.