Buried deeply in Donald J. Trump’s fiery immigration speech last night was a series of provisions he set forth that hasn’t yet gotten much media attention.
Perhaps it will. It certainly should, in my humble view.
Here’s what the Republican presidential nominee said that caught my attention:
“The time has come for a new immigration commission to develop a new set of reforms to our legal immigration system in order to achieve the following goals:
“To keep immigration levels, measured by population share, within historical norms
“To select immigrants based on their likelihood of success in U.S. society, and their ability to be financially self-sufficient. We need a system that serves our needs – remember, it’s America First.
“To choose immigrants based on merit, skill and proficiency.
“And to establish new immigration controls to boost wages and to ensure that open jobs are offered to American workers first.”
Do you know what he said right there? You perhaps have your own interpretation. Mine is that my own grandparents, all four of them, quite likely could have been denied entry into this country had those principles been put in play at the turn of the 20th century.
Trump wants to screen all immigrants to ensure they meet certain skill levels, that they demonstrate certain proficiency and that they meet some kind of standard of merit.
I’m going to speak only about my own family, but my grandparents — as great and as loving as they were — were uneducated individuals. They came here from southern Greece and from Turkey. With the possible exception of my maternal grandfather, a merchant seaman who was fluent or conversant in about a half-dozen languages, none of them brought any “skill” to this country.
All they brought to the United States of America was a desire to live in the land of the free.
They also became the greatest American patriots I’ve ever known.
They were the living embodiment of the inscription carved into the Statue of Liberty. You’ve heard of Emma Lazarus’s poem that proclaims in part:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Donald Trump, with that remarkably arrogant proclamation that sets certain standards that go far beyond potential criminality or the threat of terrorists has just crapped all over that inscription.
