Today's Immigrant Haters Are Repeating An Old Mistake

Donald Trump, and his Republican sycophants, are counting on demonizing immigrants to give them a win in November. Trump has said he wants to close the border and deport millions of undocumented immigrants - and sadly a small majority of the population seems to be on board with that.

Of course, he is only talking about nonwhites being excluded and/or deported. Trump has said he only wants immigrants from Northern Europe (i.e., white immigrants). That's racist - and it's also nothing new.

In 1882, 1924, and 1965 the same kind of sentiments were expressed, and resulted in laws that allowed whites to enter but severely restricted nonwhites. The purpose was to maintain the United States as a majority white country.

It didn't work in the past, and it won't work now. Currently, about 40% of the United States population is nonwhite. And by the middle of this century, nonwhites will be a majority of the population. That is scaring Republicans, because their pro-white policy stances mean that most nonwhites don't vote for them. They could change their policies, but they would rather try to shut down the border and deport nonwhites.

It wouldn't work anyway. Even if we completely shut down our souther border, we would still become a majority nonwhite country. That's because the nonwhites (both citizens and immigrants) are having more babies than the white population.

That is a big mistake. We need the immigrants - both those here already and those trying to come. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs going unfilled because citizens don't want them (because the are usually low-wage, dangerous, dirty, no benefit jobs. We don't need highly-skilled workers from developed nations. We need the desperate people needing those jobs, and those are the nonwhite persons from south of the border.

We also need the taxes those immigrant workers pay - both income and Social Security taxes.

We must reject the racist anti-immigrant policies of Trump and the Republicans. And we must stop worrying about what color the immigrants (and our fellow citizens) are. It's immoral and stupid, and it hurts our economy.