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bigtree

(93,297 posts)
Thu Dec 11, 2025, 01:09 PM Thursday

So they sent the slobbering shithead felon president on the road to slur Americans while his followers cheer him on

...the republican president whose grandfather's surname was Drumpf when he immigrated to the U.S.; and despite affinity for Germany and Austria, changed his name to Trumpf, and then Trump before obtaining a U.S. passport to conceal his country of origin (his father later claiming to be of Scandinavian descent to improve relations with Jewish tenants and business partners who might have had negative associations with German roots after World War II); he was on the road this week demagoguing Somalians in Minnesota like a klansman.

Trumpf's rant included an attack on a congresswoman of Somalian descent as he derided Minnesota Somalis as “garbage” and said he didn’t want them in the U.S..

This isn't just an attack on what many Americans may regard as 'refugees' who sought and received asylum in this country from withering violence and deadly poverty in Somalia; it's a broadside attack on what Americans have understood to be part of the fabric of a nation comprised of the descendants of individuals and families from numerous nations which sought to make this land their home.

It's been understood for generations that life in American is to be considered an ideal, as opposed to the relative challenges people in less capable nations face in their struggle to survive and prosper. But that specialness isn't self-actualized by the mere existence of the nation. That refuge of opportunity is the product of the collective will of the myriad influences from around the globe who've settled in these lands.

That welcome to this country wasn't the edict of any one privileged group of Americans. Indeed, it's been the collective decision of the majority of this country to remain a beacon of hope and opportunity which has been opposed by a consistent minority mostly comprised of a majority of white American males who have advantaged most of what they consider to be their exclusive own off of the labor and enterprise of a diverse nation of immigrants.

That reality has been reduced to some anecdotal homily about the past by some eager to claim immigrants are a drag on their own sweet selves; their own nativist contributions to America supposedly essential based in little more than a narrative about their entitlement based on some Anglo-Saxon notion of citizenship.

Racists, bigots, and demagogues like Trump who get attention and the most support in America for their views and campaigns against 'illegal' immigrants - have become just fine with the white Anglo-Saxons who have become a large part of the fabric of America, having turned the majority of their hatred, fears, and self-interest against Mexicans and Latin Americans voting in our elections and competing for jobs - not just the ones who run afoul of our immigration laws, as evidenced by the republican administration's military campaign waged against entire ethnically-diverse communities.

We have a mob action against immigrants today, sanctioned and exercised by Trump and his federal government, all in Americans name. We don't need defense against the people we work and live among everyday; to be brought to fear our neighbors because of some politicians' opportunistic lies; hiding antipathies behind vastly unfounded fears and the outright lies our politicians have taught Americans to use when they mob up against migrants in our legislatures and railroad them out of the country in Potemkin, Kafka-like hearings with 'administrative' judges meting out criminal penalties of punishment against mostly working people and their families like they're terrorists; LIES politicians have revived from our nation's racist past to curry the favor of Americans fearful of and hateful toward mostly Mexicans, Latin Americans, and Asians, perpetuating and expanding that prevaricating racism across the country.

It's no different than the way politicians a century ago exploited Americans' fears about people immigrating to this country as an extension of their own political and religious zeal; to consolidate political power for their own narrow and partisan interests.

But what is coming from Trump today is behavior that was supposed to be part of an unfortunate past that was ostensibly repudiated by a nation resolved to recognize ALL people in this country as potentially important and vital to all of our successes, right from birth.

What then is to be made of a republican president who's campaigning in an off-election year for a return of the country to a time where our government and society devalued people who didn't possess, or couldn't pretend to be associated with the physical or geographical attributes of the white American majority?

More importantly for the nation, what does the nation gain by the present white male majority distancing our government from the benefits of the diversity of the nation which has allowed that white male majority to prosper from their labor and contributions?

The economic argument against even 'illegal' immigration is pure bullshit.

from 'Americans for Tax Fairness' in March:

In 2022 America’s 10.9 million undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in taxes.

..That included $19.5 billion in federal income taxes and $32.3 billion in federal payroll taxes.
..On a state and local level, undocumented immigrants contribute $37.3 billion in taxes, and in 40 of 50 states, they pay a higher effective state/local tax rate than the top 1% of households. The top 1% of highest-income households paid an average effective state/local tax of 7.2% in 2023, while the average undocumented immigrant paid a 10.1% effective tax rate to state/local governments.
..It is estimated that $40 to $137 billion of additional revenue could be generated each year if these people were granted work authorization. This is because a less exploitable workforce would be paid higher wages (thus pay more taxes) and tax compliance by both employers and employees would increase.

Undocumented Immigrants paid an effective federal income tax rate of 5.27% in 2022, which was higher than some of the wealthiest Americans and mega corporations.

..According to ProPublica’s released tax data from the 400 highest-income individuals, undocumented immigrants paid a higher effective tax rate than five of the richest Americans.
..Undocumented immigrants also paid a higher effective tax rate than 55 mega corporations. Here is a list of the Fortune 500 corporations that paid less that same year. These corporations had a combined pre-tax income of nearly $200 billion but paid just $3.7 billion in federal income tax, 90% less than undocumented immigrants.

Undocumented Immigrants make significant contributions to our economy.

Undocumented Immigrants make up around 5% of the total workforce, but play even larger roles in key industries: 1-in-7 construction workers, 1-in-8 agriculture workers, and 1-in-14 hospital workers.

Deporting millions of undocumented workers would shrink the economy by $1.1 to $1.7 trillion, a more devastating contraction than what happened during the 2008 financial crisis.

https://americansfortaxfairness.org/undocumented-immigrants-contribute-economy/


...the argument that they are a threat is belied by who is actually getting deported at the height of the most discriminatory and arbitrary enforcement scheme ever in our nation's history:

Cato Institute's June 20, 2025 report states that as of June 14, ICE had 204,297 book-ins in FY2025, with 65% (133,687) having no criminal convictions and over 93% never convicted of violent offenses, based on ICE data.

New nonpublic data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) indicate that the government is primarily detaining individuals with no criminal convictions of any kind. Also, among those with criminal convictions, they are overwhelmingly not the violent offenses that ICE continuously uses to justify its deportation agenda. ICE has shared this data with people outside the agency, who shared the numbers with the Cato Institute.

As of June 14, ICE had booked into detention 204,297 individuals (since October 1, 2024, the start of fiscal year 2025). Of those book-ins, 65 percent, or 133,687 individuals, had no criminal convictions. Moreover, more than 93 percent of ICE book-ins were never convicted of any violent offenses. About nine in ten had no convictions for violent or property offenses.

ICE also books individuals who have pending criminal charges into custody. As of June 14, the agency had booked 44,897 individuals with only a pending charge. The agency sometimes erroneously calls these people “criminals,” even without a conviction...

If we look at the net increase in immigrants detained by ICE after an ICE arrest, 70 percent of the increase in detention has come from people without criminal convictions.

https://www.cato.org/blog/65-people-taken-ice-had-no-convictions-93-no-violent-convictions


...yes, some immigrants commit crimes. But a 2024 study showed that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans.

There is also state level research, that shows similar results: researchers at the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, looked into Texas in 2019. They found that undocumented immigrants were 37.1% less likely to be convicted of a crime.

Beyond incarceration rates, research also shows that there is no correlation between undocumented people and a rise in crime. Recent investigations by The New York Times and The Marshall Project found that between 2007 and 2016, there was no link between undocumented immigrants and a rise in violent or property crime in those communities.

The reason for this gap in criminal behavior might have to do with stability and achievement. The Stanford study concludes that first-generation male immigrants traditionally do better than U.S-.born men who didn't finish high school, which is the group most likely to be incarcerated in the U.S.

The study also suggests that there's a real fear of getting in trouble and being deported within immigrant communities. Far from engaging in criminal activities, immigrants mostly don't want to rock the boat.

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/08/1237103158/immigrants-are-less-likely-to-commit-crimes-than-us-born-americans-studies-find


...so who's really into Trump's latest Klan rally? It's bound to be the most ignorant, self-destructive people in the nation who can't possibly make up even a fraction of the contributions to the nation from the people they're hollering to be thrown out.

These people don't even have an interest in helping themselves, much less have the capacity or will to help anyone else in this country. They're not only mindlessly self-centered, they're a demonstrated danger to themselves and others, having elected a convicted felon to the highest office in the land to lead us.

Trumpfs of America who think their skin color, or their ability to hide their family's place of origin makes them superior to those who don't share their Aryan attributes aren't really as confident in themselves as they pretend. Most of them are concealing or ignorant of their own associations with the world outside of America that they're posturing their virulent xenophobia off off.

They're leaning so far into their racism that they can't even claim to be from Scandinavia anymore.


“Your country? How came it yours? Before the Pilgrims landed we were here. Here we have brought our three gifts and mingled them with yours: a gift of story and song—soft, stirring melody in an ill-harmonized and unmelodious land; the gift of sweat and brawn to beat back the wilderness, conquer the soil, and lay the foundations of this vast economic empire two hundred years earlier than your weak hands could have done it; the third, a gift of the Spirit. Around us the history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of the nation's heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice, have billowed over this people, and they have found peace only in the altars of the God of Right. Nor has our gift of the Spirit been merely passive. Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation,—we fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to despise not Justice, Mercy, and Truth, lest the nation be smitten with a curse. Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood. Are not these gifts worth the giving? Is not this work and striving? Would America have been America without her Negro people?”

W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

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