Donald Trump has announced a scheme to deport millions of immigrant families with their U.S.-born children. His extreme racist and dangerous rantings against Mexicans and all Latinos as well as mocking Asian-Americans, have gone virtually unchallenged in the media, with the exception of Latino journalists who strongly denounce his virulent fascist scapegoating.
An estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States. They contribute enormously to U.S. society and economy, yet they suffer extra exploitation, record deportations and fear of persecution, due to racist scapegoating by politicians like Trump.
Trump has made a centerpiece of his campaign the whipping up of vicious racism, making outrageous and false claims against Mexicans. As a result, there have been incidents of physical attacks on Latinos in recent weeks.
This attack on immigrants and citizenship rights is nothing new and is a continuation of racist attacks since the founding of this country, regardless of party affiliation of the U.S. administrations. Let us not forget that the Democratic president Barack Obama has had more people deported than his Republican predecessor George W. Bush.
The history of racist immigration policy and citizenship denial is extensive, from the forceful removal and genocide of Native Americans, denial of citizenship to Black people, the Chinese Exclusion act, the so-called “Mexican Repatriation” of the 1930’s, and even of people who today would be considered “white,” such as the Irish and Italians.
When racists like Donald Trump attack U.S.-born citizenship, it is a direct assault on the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that was won through the freedom struggle waged by the African American community.
After the Civil War and the end of chattel slavery, African American people, who were being brutalized by both the State and racist vigilantes, were pushing for more protections under federal law.
The 14th amendment was one of the reforms won by this struggle which granted citizenship to African American people who were had been excluded from citizenship by the Supreme Court 1857 ruling of Dred Scott v. Sanford.
The amendment had its limitations, as it excluded Native American peoples. Nonetheless the 14th Amendment reform has helped in the struggles of all oppressed people in the U.S. since, as well as guaranteeing federal Due Process rights to all people in every state.
A case similar to Trump’s brutal immigration proposal is that of the “Mexican Repatriation” of the 1930’s. From around 1929 to 1936, during the Great Depression, unemployment reached record levels due to the world capitalist economic crisis.
The government, politicians and media quickly scapegoated Mexicans and Mexican-Americans throughout the Southwest. Immigration and Naturalization Service, INS, (today, the Immigration and Control Enforcement, ICE) brutally rounded up Mexican families living in the Southwest for forced deportation. It is estimated that 1.5 million natural-born U.S. citizens were forcefully deported to Mexico, separating countless families and loved ones.
The forceful deportations were conducted without due process of the law and ignored the 14th Amendment of birthright citizenship. It is estimated that around 2 million people were forced out of the country.
It is noteworthy to mention that in all of these historical examples the targets of hate were subject to demonization campaigns fueled by the mainstream media of the time. Every single one of these groups, like the immigrants of today, were portrayed as ignorant, as lacking values, being rapists, drug users and/or traffickers, and being portrayed overall as being unfit or unable to be integrated into society.
In 1858 the California Legislature tried to ban all Chinese people from entering the state. This gave the racists and bigots some steam and led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Similar to Trump’s proposal, the racists of that time wanted to exclude and deny citizenship to even those Chinese people who were born in the United States.
This was met with resistance from the community. It is estimated that over 10,000 Chinese people appealed against these laws. Although the racist law excluded and at times deported countless numbers of Chinese people, the community won the right to birthright citizenship culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling of United States v. Wong Kim Ark of 1898.
The racist stance that Donald Trump takes on immigration and citizenship, along with his soaring popularity in the mainstream right-wing Republican party, shows us that the struggle against racism and semi-fascism is still very real.
For every reform we win in the struggle against this capitalist system we must realize that we sometimes must fight even harder to hold on to them.
Without a complete overthrow of the existing order of society, a revolution, we can never be safe in holding on to the rights we have won.
In the PSL we stand and fight with those who are most oppressed against racist bigots like Donald Trump.
