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Donald Trump is two months away from being sworn in as the 47th president, but he’s already pleasing his base in one way.
Illegal immigrants and their allies are terrified.
Former and future commanders-in-chief repeatedly vowed during the campaign to begin mass deportations immediately after taking office. Those affected are taking President Trump’s words to heart. Nonprofit organizations and community leaders dedicated to helping immigrants are strategizing how to mount defenses. Sanctuary cities like Los Angeles and Santa Ana are bracing for lawsuits and the withholding of federal funds by the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, migrants themselves are preparing for the worst. I know people who are planning to take their U.S.-born children and leave for their home countries by Inauguration Day. The fear of not knowing what will happen has left far too many people I care about depressed and with little hope for the future.
As the son of a man who first entered this country in the trunk of a Chevrolet in the 1960s, I’m angry because I’ve lived a life where undocumented people were the norm, not on Fox News. I am. As a journalist, I have spent my writing, book, radio and television career convincing skeptics through statistics, anecdotes, and appeals to the logic that people who entered the country illegally are no different from mainland-born citizens. I have persuaded you. of their character. No matter how much Mr. Trump and his future vice president, J.D. Vance, disagree, nearly all of them embody the spirit of those who came here long ago under the view of the Statue of Liberty. That’s what it means.
With sentiment against illegal immigration at an all-time high in decades, and especially among Latinos, writing a positive story about the estimated 11 million U.S. residents who aren’t supposed to be here is more likely than not heading into a hurricane. It may feel as pointless as shouting.
That doesn’t mean I’m giving up.
That’s why, as this country prepares for Thanksgiving, I want to give thanks to undocumented immigrants. That’s a sentiment they don’t hear very often.
Young immigrants line up for classes at an “adolescent” facility for infants, children, and adolescents in San Benito, Texas, in 2019.
(Eric Gay/Associated Press)
Thanks to the estimated 42% of farmworkers who lack legal authority to work in this country, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s latest National Farmworker Survey. There’s a good chance the winnings on your table this Thursday came through their hands.
Thanks to illegal immigrants who paid $96.7 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2022, they paid $25.7 billion in Social Security and $6 billion in Medicare, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. It was also revealed. They are contributing to a system that does not benefit them, but which critics of illegal immigration take advantage of without thinking.
We thank the estimated 500,000 Mexicans and their American-born children who were encouraged to leave this country by federal and local authorities during the Great Depression on the grounds that illegal immigrants did not deserve economic relief. Those who returned left behind almost everything but their dignity.
Despite its offensive name, it was a federal program praised by President Trump for hundreds of thousands of Mexican men who were deported in the 1950s under Operation Wetback. “Thank you for not remaining silent about the abuse and humiliation you all endured.”
To the Cubans who entered the United States on makeshift rafts, knowing they would not be deported if they landed in Florida, but Haitians were denied the same privileges: Exposing the hypocrisy of this country’s immigration policy. Thank you for giving me that.
To all the unaccompanied minors who have come from Central America over the past quarter century: Thank you for showing courage in your young lives that no one in the Trump administration could have dreamed of.
To all the so-called paper sons and daughters and Chinese nationals who have been in the United States under false pretense that you are related to an American citizen: Thank you for the ingenuity you have shown in avoiding sanctioned racism.
Thank you to the Chinese immigrants who fled mass lynching during the Mexican Revolution. Their mere intention to enter this country led to the creation of the Border Patrol — you showed how Americans welcome persecuted people only when the political climate suits them.
To the so-called ship jumpers, immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, especially Greece, who arrived in port cities and slipped through immigration authorities after the United States effectively banned immigration from the region in 1924: Thank you for reminding the nation that: They discriminated against people who are now considered white, but who at the time were considered subhuman.
People who came here undocumented as children, people who have long been known as Dreamers, people who are culturally American but now sent to a country they have only vague memories of or no memory of at all. To those facing the prospect of being cut off: Thank you politicians for forcing us to cut out Ustedes’ protection, Trump’s cronies have not ended their protection despite their superiors expressing some sympathy in the past. I swore I would.
Jose Angel Garibay, Orange County’s first casualty of the Iraq war, to Marines: You came here illegally as a toddler, grew up in Costa Mesa as a legal resident, and became your first citizen until you lost your life in 2003. Thank you for your sacrifice.
To those who were and are my friends, classmates, interns, and colleagues in the U.S. illegally: Citizenship is usually wasted on the ungrateful and under-delivered to those who deserve it. Thank you for teaching me that.
Thousands of people plan to take to the streets in the coming days and weeks, hoping the mass protests will bring about change for a man with a deflated heart and the people who elected him. appreciate. Hope must spring forth eternally, even in the face of darkness, especially in the face of it.
And, of course, my father, who entered this country illegally many times and still proudly calls himself Mohd (Wetback) to remind him of where and how he came from.
Papi: Thank you for leaving Mexico as an 18-year-old bad guy with no chance of getting a green card through the proper channels and proving that anyone can succeed in this country if they put their mind to it.
I don’t care about public opinion, but I can never abandon illegal immigrants because of everyone.
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