Politics of Hate category archive

Petty, stupid, and vicious–the tripod of Trumpery.

Canadian nurses working at Michigan hospitals were shocked last week when border security officers stopped them from entering the U.S. because of changes to their working visas under new immigration policies.

(snip)

She (one of the nurses denied entry–ed.) was told advanced practice nurses and nurse anesthetists no longer qualify for the working visas because of policy changes under U.S. President Donald Trump.

“We really question the motives,” said immigration lawyer Marc Topoleski, whose firm is retained by the (Henry Ford–ed.) hospital. “All of the immigration executive orders and all the things being rolled out have been focused on national security first, and this is clearly not an issue of national security whatsoever.”

Follow the link for the full story.

Via Raw Story.

Afterthought:

I wonder whether Canada will register an official diplomatic protest about this. I would not be at all surprised if they do.

Were I the Canadian government, I’d consider this an attack on my citizenry and a deliberate provocation.

The Philadelphia Daily News’s Sandy Shea tries to make sense of recent events. A snippet:

The recent desecration of tombstones in Jewish cemeteries in Missouri and Philadelphia and a Catholic cemetery in Philadelphia, bomb threats in Jewish centers across the country, and the recent slaying of Indian IT worker Srinivas Kuchibhotla in Kansas have slammed us back into an ugly past. Surely we abandoned this mindset long ago – and not only those in the “bubble.”

What worries me is that the reappearance of these incidents says something ugly about all of us – and not only those who are filled with hate.

We’ve told ourselves for generations that we are a tolerant nation, that we welcome outsiders, that we are a melting pot of cultures and nationalities. I’ve believed it. But now I have to wonder: Was that tolerance only skin deep? Was collective hatred so close to the surface that all it took was implied (and explicit) permission from someone who encourages suspicion and fear?

A descendant of immigrants muses on the Trumpling of immigrants. A snippet:

So what’s the difference between my ancestors and the Guatemalans and uncounted others trying to cross America’s borders today? Timing, pure and simple. My people had no more natural “right” to be here than the latter-day transplants who walk in their footsteps. They found homes in this country because someone, however grudgingly, let them in. The America that Donald Trump so vehemently insists on putting first rests on a foundation built by generation after generation of newcomers, including his own ancestors. We are their heirs, and our good fortune in finding ourselves firmly rooted here and not knocking on the door in 2017 should be the occasion for humble gratitude, not chest-thumping chauvinism.

And, in related news . . . .

Image via The Bob and Chez Show Blog.

A doctor describes the results of being mean for the sake of mean.

I work at a health clinic in South Seattle, where the majority of patients are immigrants from Mexico and Central America. Recently, I had a 5-year-old come to my office whose mother was complaining that he was urinating on himself at home and at school. She also reported episodes of inconsolable crying and outbursts of rage, including kicking and punching other children. Upon further questioning, it was discovered that all of his symptoms started the week after his father was arrested in front of him and deported to Mexico. I was diagnosing a 5-year old with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Follow the link for more.

Pamela Grundy sees a parallel:

Enslaved African Americans (before the Civil War–ed.) were escaping a violent and immoral system that defined them as property. Those in bondage were required to peacefully accept their servile status. Today’s undocumented immigrants are escaping dead-end, often violent situations by coming to a country that needs their labor, but that has a broken immigration system that makes it virtually impossible for most of them to enter legally.

Follow the link for the rest.

The number of reports of gratuitous cruelty, mixed with a large dose of bigotry, by those charged with patrolling the nation’s borders during the last month has been staggering; I’ve noted a few of them in these electrons.

Innocent citizens and non-citizens, distinguished personages and ordinary persons alike have been detained solely because of the sound of their names or the color of their skin.

Will Bunch writes of this today; here’s a snippet from his article.

“The men and women who reportedly handcuffed small children and the elderly, separated a child from his mother and held others without food for 20 hours, are undoubtedly ‘ordinary’ people,” American University professor Chris Edelson wrote. “What I mean by that, is that these are, in normal circumstances, people who likely treat their neighbors and co-workers with kindness and do not intentionally seek to harm others. That is chilling, as it is a reminder that authoritarians have no trouble finding the people they need to carry out their acts of cruelty. They do not need special monsters; they can issue orders to otherwise unexceptional people who will carry them out dutifully.”

It was a striking piece, but now a few weeks later the situation seems actually worse than what he wrote, with these so-called “unexceptional people” actually finding “fun” in carrying out brutal policies for America’s new strongman in the White House.

Read the rest.

Addendum, Later That Same Day:

Yes, it can happen here.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., channels George Santayana.