President Trump announced more than a month ago that he would be proud to shut down our government if he did not get his wall.
Now, after the longest disruption in our nation’s history, it remains to be seen whether Trump has met his match in “The Art of the Duel” with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Our government has been reopened until Feb. 15. Pelosi achieved her goal of no policy votes until the government was functioning.
Comprehensive immigration reform could be achieved in 2019. But it will need to be accomplished over the resistance of the current President of the United States. He continues to repeat, falsely, that Democrats don’t care about border security.
Sure, there are legitimate questions about kinds of border security, and about how they will be developed in a larger context of international relations.
Because Trump has so regularly disparaged other countries and other people, his narrow view of barricaded nationalism, like much of his other conduct, rests on distortions and outright lies.
When he announced the end of the shutdown on Friday, Trump’s overriding theme was to play the fear card. However, he said more about humanitarian issues than any time previously. If sincere, even this modest expansion of consciousness and language could open better negotiating and policy pathways.
In 2013, a bipartisan super-majority of U.S. senators voted for a comprehensive immigration reform bill. It was labeled “amnesty” by Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. Then, it was blocked in the House by the so-called “Freedom Caucus” (contributing to John Boehner’s many distresses as Speaker for the GOP).
Immigration policies and practices have become increasingly complex. We should not underestimate the challenges of reaching common ground (which is harder than compromises).
Citizens and elected officials must always be mindful of the huge physical size of our nation, its vast numbers, and our dramatic diversity (more than 150 ethnic nationality groups are in Queens County alone — the most diverse place in the world).
The narrow, barricade nationalism of Trump exacerbates “America first,” which he repeated persistently during his campaign. As many observers have noted, Trump’s sense of American history is “stupid” (that’s worse than “ignorant”).
In her recent book “These Truths” (headed for a likely Pulitzer prize), Jill Lepore concludes that Trump and “nationalists who had few proposals for the future, gained power by telling fables about the greatness of the past.”
In 2019, two paths lie before us. Trump’s approach reinforces a distorted and negative view of immigrants and of our nation’s history and principles. Trump’s constant theme has been to stoke fear of newcomers — with falsehoods, and (until very recently) with total lack of attention to America’s “civil religion” and the humanity of refugees and newcomers.
In these regards, he has the perfect partner for xenophobia with his White House aide Steven Miller. These two men seem solely obsessed with the southern U.S. border. Have you ever heard Trump or Miller indicate that half of the unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. did not cross the Mexican border?
They came as students, on travel or work visas — and then stayed. That is a part of our challenge beyond the hostility directed at Latinos.
Confronted by a new Democratic House majority, Trump expanded his “border crisis” beyond “national security” to include occasional “humanitarian” references.
If this is more than a verbal fig leaf, the Democratic House majority along with thoughtful Republican legislators in both Houses can open an alternative path to immigration policies and practices.
The second path involves more complex negotiations, but, with good faith and common sense compromises, this path can affirm our nation’s distinctive history.
It can encompass empathy for other peoples based on what Lincoln and many great leaders celebrated as America’s “beacons” of liberty, equality, inclusion, rule of law, and justice (all central themes for Lepore, emanating from “The American Experiment” of our nation’s founding).
Of course, every nation has a duty to provide security for its citizens. That important matter can be addressed without Trump’s resort to denunciations of people with genuine and serious asylum requests. It can also proceed without accepting the Trump/Miller goal of large reductions in legal immigration.
We need leaders from both parties who recognize that immigration and refugee matters are urgent and persistent global issues (see Time cover story (Feb. 4/11): “Beyond Walls: Why Forces of Global Migration Can’t Be Stopped.”)
Consultations, cooperation and coordination with other nations will help to provide constructive paths forward. This year, the U.S. can still be a beacon for democratic leadership, as well as helping to make the world a safer and more just place.
(My next column will offer a list of proposals that could garner bipartisan support.)
