My Turn: This is about all immigrants, not just undocumented ones

Razvan Sibii

Razvan Sibii

A member of the Texas delegation holds a sign during the Republican National Convention on July 17 in Milwaukee.

A member of the Texas delegation holds a sign during the Republican National Convention on July 17 in Milwaukee. Matt Rourke

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks on Sept. 24 at the Johnny Mercer Theatre Civic Center in Savannah, Ga.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks on Sept. 24 at the Johnny Mercer Theatre Civic Center in Savannah, Ga. AP

By RAZVAN SIBII

Published: 10-14-2024 5:31 PM

Modified: 10-15-2024 9:00 AM


Somehow, even though Donald Trump himself delights in describing how he’ll shut down various immigration programs, I still meet people who are convinced that “He’s not anti-immigration, he’s just anti-illegal immigration!”

I can’t tell whether they genuinely believe that or they just pretend to believe it because they’re not quite ready to openly embrace the old-school nativist tradition that Trump proudly embodies. I’m not sure which motivation is more infuriating.

Sure, Trump’s focus is on eliminating undocumented immigration through “closing down the border” and “mass deportation now.” But legal immigration, too, has always been one of his targets. When Trump promised to build a wall with a “big, beautiful door” in the middle of it “so that people can come into this country legally,” he clearly didn’t mean that second part.

When he was in charge, he took an ax to the U.S. refugee program, the very heart of the “American Dream” mythology long embraced by both Democrats and Republicans. (In the recent past, both parties have elevated a refugee — Madeleine Albright and Henri Kissinger, respectively — to the powerful position of secretary of state).

Under Trump, refugee admissions reached a record low, as he instructed the government to take in no more than 15,000 people in fiscal year 2021. (By comparison, Biden is proposing an admission ceiling of 125,000 people for fiscal year 2025). Refugees are by far the most vetted of all immigrants legally entering the U.S., and so they pose the least danger to national security or public safety. But they’re still foreigners and Trump does not want them in this country.

In 2017, the Trump administration’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to give them the power to revoke a legal immigrant’s American citizenship if they can prove that the immigrant had omitted any information, no matter how trivial, when filling out the naturalization application. For example, not disclosing that you had once driven some 5 mph above the speed limit, which technically qualifies as having broken the law, could get you thrown out of the country 20 years later.

An incredulous Chief Justice John Roberts correctly observed that such an unreasonable interpretation of the regulations would give the Trump administration the power to denaturalize “anyone they want.” (Raise your hand if you’ve never committed a traffic violation.) In the end, Trump lost that particular legal battle, but this outrageous request should on its own dispel any illusions that he’s only ever been interested in undocumented immigrants.

For the past four years, one important component of Biden’s characteristic middle-of-the-road approach to immigration has been to create new paths for refugees and asylum-seekers to come into the U.S. legally. Those will all go out the window the moment Trump assumes the presidency again.

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One such new path is a program that, if scaled up, has the potential to revolutionize how the U.S. does refugee intake and resettlement: the Welcome Corps. Since January 2023, groups of private citizens have been able to sponsor individual refugees, welcoming them at the airport upon arrival into the country and then helping them adjust to their new lives — something that had previously been done exclusively by 10 overworked and underfinanced resettlement agencies.

Earlier this year, I spoke with one Welcome Corps beneficiary at an event organized by the State Department in Boston. In 2004, Ibrahim (whose last name I’m not using because of safety concerns — which tells you something) fled Somalia because of the never-ending civil war there, and then spent the next 19 years as a U.N.-registered refugee in South Africa. In the summer of 2023, he was resettled in the U.S. and received much-needed support from a Christian congregation in Boston, some of whose members had been refugees themselves.

The congregation pastor, the Rev. Simone Bamba, connected with Somali organizations in Boston and slowly assembled a village-worth of people who wanted to help. Abdirahman Yusuf, executive director of the Somali Development Center, sprang into action.

“She came to us and said that she’s getting someone coming from South Africa who happens to be Somali. So then I assigned one of my staff to go with her and welcome him at the airport. And then Simone took him around in the community — businesses and restaurants and the mosque and all those things. And helped him get a job,” Yusuf told me.

“We helped him get housing and connected him with people. It was a collaborative effort from the sponsor, which was Simone’s church, and our organization.”

Ibrahim’s first job was at a supermarket. His second was as a security guard. He’s learning English. He’s planning for the future. For him, the American Dream is absolutely real.

“I want to learn and increase my skills and make a good living, and eventually reunite with my family, hopefully have my wife and kids come here,” he told me, through an interpreter. “Overall, I feel much safer. Life is much better here than the one I had in South Africa.”

Ibrahim is a legal immigrant, no different than the millions of people who came through New York City’s Ellis Island or San Francisco’s Angel Island 100-plus years ago. That so many Americans, whose nonnas and omas came to the U.S. in search of freedom and prosperity, should now endorse closing the doors shut on legal immigration is beyond sad.

Razvan Sibii is a senior lecturer of journalism at UMass Amherst..