Trump Wants It White

     At this point in time it's simple to see what drives Trump's statements reflecting his immigration impulses.  I would say policy, but that would suggest that there is a policy.  What Trump has in mind is to stem the inevitable changing demographics of the United Sates.  The white majority is decreasing; the non-white population increasing.  For him, and others like him, this change signals not just a tinting of pigmentation, but the eradication of American and Western culture.

     To get a full view of what Trump fears as he envisions hordes of Hispanics flooding across the southern border one just has to listen to and read what Pat Buchanan (A Nixon unrepentant supporter) has to say on the subject.  Last week on "The Laura Ingraham Show," Buchanan expressed in the clearest terms what he feels is at stake: "This is the great issue of our time.  And, the real question is whether Europe has the will and the capacity, and America has the capacity to halt the invasion of the countries until they change the character - political, social, racial, ethnic of the country entirely."

     Rather than lamenting the cruel separation of children from their parents, Buchanan dredges up the old racist canard that migrants (foreigners) endanger the purity of a country's culture.  In his language one even hears echoes of Germany in the 1930's, within his use of the word, "will."  One wonders what inspires Buchanan to see these obviously desperate people who are either seeking asylum or escaping extreme poverty as a threat to the culture of America.  Perhaps fear; perhaps malice.  In a blog he wrote shortly before his interview with Ingraham he stated his approval of Trump's grasp of the migrant problem: "Trump may be on the wrong side politically and emotionally of the issue of separating migrant kids from their parents.  But on the mega-issue--the third world invasion of the West--he is riding the great wave of the future, if the West is to have a future."

     For Buchanan, nothing less than the survival of "our civilization" is at stake.  Buchanan has spouted similar anti-immigrant rhetoric before against the "Islamic invasion" of Europe.  And while there is no doubt Europe has had difficulty assimilating some of the Muslims who settled there, most have integrated quite well into their new countries.  As wrong as he is about the cultural calamity he foresees as a result of migrants settling in Europe, Buchanan's analysis of the effects migrants from Latin American countries will have on the United States couldn't be more inaccurate.

     When Buchanan and Trump descry the adverse effects of migrants coming across the border, they ignore important facts or "truths" concerning who these people are and what they have to contribute to the United States.  Research has established that more than  anything else, those who come to America provide needed labor for American businesses.  And although the initial strain on public resources that migrants place on local community schools and health services, these parents and their children, over time, give back in taxes more than they take from the system.

     As to the threat migrant currently crossing the border pose, Buchanan might observe more closely the American culture and character he fears will be destroyed by these "non-whites."  These invaders threatening American culture are in fact more closely aligned with the most rooted cultural practice of the West-religion.  The overwhelming majority are Christians, with most professing to be Catholic.  For a Catholic such as Buchanan, one would think he'd welcome more Catholics, given his history of animus against Muslims.

      And what of this "western culture" Buchanan believes will be extinguished by the presence of these invaders?  Western culture?  Where?  Does he fear for the fate of the American cultural "hegemony" that dominates the globe with its hip-hop music, its MacDonald and Starbucks franchises, its movies?  Those who migrate to the United States already have absorbed our culture; they arrive preconditioned to be as American as those of us who have been living here for generations.

     Maybe Buchanan worries that the new arrivals won't be steeped in the writings of the founding fathers.  Then again, he should look around and discover that most Americans possess very little knowledge or understanding of the Enlightenment tenets upon which the country was founded.  But they have what matters most: white skin.