When Nancy Pelosi is President after Tr*mp and his cohorts are in prison, I want them to still do what is necessary to dis-spell the myth immigrants take jobs. Since my birthday is next week, having them removed and Pelosi POTUS would be the greatest gift I could get from them, especially since I have to pay taxes soon.
Overwhelming majorities of Americans have their facts right, saying that illegal immigrants do not take jobs away from American citizens or commit more crimes. Finally, 54 percent of American voters disagree with Trump “that the rate of legal immigration should be kept the same, as 24 percent say it should be increased and 17 percent say it should be decreased.”
Let me say why this is on my mind, and it's serious. It is being said that this is the time someone would know what they would do during the rise of Nazi Germany, or if they lived during the Civil Rights Movement. I think the question is, would you take the gun and turn on your own people? Because without doing so violently, that’s exactly what McConnell, Ryan, and the GOP has done, minus “No one objected and no one helped."
Yehudit Rosenweig, an 88-year-old Auschwitz survivor, said: "The Poles around us saw what was happening because we would walk in lines, under the rifles of German and Polish soldiers with automatic weapons. If someone would come out of the line, they would kill him because there was nowhere to run. After the war, people asked: 'Why did you go like lambs? Why didn’t you escape?' No one understood it was impossible.
"The Poles just stood around us, doing nothing, just watching the lines. We were without any clothes on or with torn clothes in the terrible October cold. That's how we marched and that's how they watched us. No one objected and no one helped."
The lessons of the Holocaust haven’t been learned, lessons that should be in the National Collective Unconsciousness. We still have anti-immigration, white supremacist, and Nazi-sympathizing bigots in all branches of government. How relevant is “doing nothing, just watching the lines” today, as Tr*mp has an itchy finger for the button, wants a fascist parade, and citizens are taken to the immigration detention centers?
There were many in the 1940s who, horrified at the violence that had been perpetrated by a regime built on the notion that one race had superior rights to others, asked themselves whether they could have done more to prevent it or stop it. Those sentiments were expressed by Martin Niemoller, a protestant pastor who spent the last seven years of the Nazi regime in a concentration camp, and who believed that leaders of Protestant churches had been complicit in the Holocaust with their silence.
How relevant is “doing nothing, just watching the lines” today? It’s relevant to ones who didn’t vote in the last election, because they hated Hillary or thought she’d win. It’s relevant with racist Tr*mp supporters, who want a pure white race. It’s relevant with all white evangelicals for supporting child molesters and rapists — like Tr*mp. It’s relevant with the GOP turning their political guns on the people — lies — to have the theocracy they crave. And to the “Illegal” sent to a detention center who dies a physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual death. You tell me, what’s the difference except in degree, since the Tr*mp Administration allies itself with Neo-Nazis, who idealize and follow their predecessors wanting a "pure race?" I refuse to be silent. The United States also dwells in genocide denial, which is the stage after the extermination phase of American Indians.
If Neo-Nazis do not have the intent to commit genocide to achieve their "racial purity," then the burden of proof is on them to conclusively show it isn't. How do they plan on having a "pure race?" Politics alone?
Refugees have been through ordeals impossible for most of us to imagine. My grandmother was a teenager when she had to face the horrors of the Holocaust. Right now, the United Nations estimatesthat there are 22.5 million refugees under its mandate worldwide, more than half of whom are under 18. Of the people in need of resettlement, less than one percent are even resettled, and the United States takes only a portion of these as one of more than 30 countries to accept refugees.
I am lucky that my grandmother survived the Holocaust. I am lucky that the United States did not continue that policy and decided to receive displaced Jews after the war. I am lucky that an organization similar to HIAS — the oldest resettlement agency in the world whom we represent in our challenge to the Muslim ban — was able to relocate my grandparents safely to the U.S. I am lucky that my grandmother was able to build a life in this country, raise a family, and see her grandchildren grow into the people we are today.
But her experiences also serve as a reminder to do all we can to help others who may not be so lucky. As HIAS President and CEO Mark Hetfield wrote when we sued over the Muslim ban, “We cannot remain silent as Muslim refugees are turned away just for being Muslim, just as we could not stand idly by when the U.S. turned away Jewish refugees fleeing Europe during the 1930s and 40s.”
I still want the inclusive world I thought I was getting before the popular vote loser "won" and all the racist bigots came out of the cracks. However, "stealing jobs" might be another wedge issue like abortion, which suppiles the Right with its justification.