Trump’s Refugee Rewrite: Why Only White Europeans Qualify

Hey, black people, go away. Hey, Asian people, you're awful. Hey, Hispanic people, stay out of our country. We don't like you. White refugee preference plan sparks outrage. According to the New York Times, the Trump administration is weighing a sweeping overhaul of the US Refugee system that would favor white Europeans and English speakers, particularly white South Africans, while slashing the total number of refugees to just 7,500 next year. Documents show the proposals would prioritize applicants who can assimilate and those opposed to mass migration, including far right European groups. Critics call it racial engineering disguised as immigration policy. Barbara Strack, former chief of refugee affairs, says it exposes, quote, a belief that true Americans are white and Christian, end quote. Officials defending the proposal say they align with the President's objectives. Well, that seems pretty clear. It's a policy that rewrites who counts as deserving, who gets left. Okay, what's the real message here by the President's policy of saying we want to give priority to white English speaking people, especially if they don't like immigrants? Here's the message. Hey, black people, go away. Hey, Asian people, you're awful. Hey, Hispanic people, stay out of our country. We don't like you. That is the real message this is sending. Let's go a little deeper here. So look, I'll be the first one to admit that the term racism has been thrown around promiscuously the last 10 or 20 years in America by people in the center, the liberal, the left, the progressive wing of things. And it got to the point where many Americans were walking around on eggshells. And if Republican wanted to propose something about a tax policy that affects a particular soybean, sometimes people, that's a racist policy. And it just got to the point where it didn't mean much. People like, oh yeah, you're just crying racism all the time. And if everything is racism, well, then nothing is racism, Let me tell you. This is racism. When you say of all the people who are oppressed in the world, refugees fleeing dictatorships and atrocities in places like Syria, and you're saying a relatively rich white South African who has a life cushier than 90% of people in the world is somehow more deserving to get to come to the United States than any place else, that's insanity. The idea that someone in Germany who espouses racist policies and says we don't want any non white people coming into our country and then gets some criticism on Facebook now goes to the front of the line trying to move to the United States because they're an oppressed minority for their views. That's absolute insanity. And this is what we're seeing here. Again, not everything in the world is racism. Point one. Point two, Republicans, I believe, have been unfairly attacked on a whole variety of issues over the last 10, 20 years as being racist, when in fact it wasn't really racist. It was just a different point of view. Point three, this proposed policy from the Trump administration to completely alter the criteria of who gets to come into this country or not is racist because it's putting such a priority on white English speaking people. Let's not forget what has made America wealthy, what's made it great, what's interesting, what gives us the best restaurants in the world and the best technology in the world, is that we let people from all over the world come here. And quite often the first generation doesn't speak English. Certainly the day they arrive on our shores, they didn't speak English. But the second generation is sometimes Steve Jobs. Do you really wish that Apple had been founded in Canada or China? Because that's the implication. Because Syria is not on the list of places where Trump wants more people. And that is where Steve Jobs birth father was from. So let's be very clear about what this is. This is an attack on, on American culture. This is an attack on what made us great. This is an attack on the intellectual and social and cultural capital that has made America great. And yeah, it's an attack on black people, brown people and people of any color other than white. And it's, it actually is racism. I don't toss that word around promiscuous. But just because it is used to promiscuously from time to time doesn't mean it actually exists. You know, someone who says there's a hurricane coming every week and is wrong 51 weeks a year doesn't make them wrong. That 52nd week of the year when they say there's a hurricane coming and an actual hurricane comes now, SS writes, is this against the Constitution, this program? Well, that's a funny area, SS because we now live in a bizarre, twisted world where the Supreme Court is essentially acting like henchmen and henchwomen to Donald Trump. It's like, whatever you want, boss. They are acting increasingly like they are his personal defense attorneys. And they did in fact essentially say he can do no wrong as president. You know, you can't be held guilty of anything. And in decision after decision, they say, hey, whatever you want, boss. Whatever you want, boss. Certainly you can make a case that in normal times where people have any respect for the traditions and the laws and the constitution of this country, this would not be permissible. But again, in normal times you don't indict the former FBI director for doing his job. So we don't actually live in normal times, unfortunately. More about that in our final segment today. SS says I read somewhere that within a couple of generations the minority person ends up assimilating into American culture and eventually they share the same values and oftentimes marry white people. Well that is true. It's certainly true in general and it ends up being true for me in particular and you. And so SS does write one thing and then the child ends up being white. Well that's not quite as clear cut. You know, the whole concept of color and race is fraught with controversy and you don't because become white if you have a white person having a child with someone else, you have someone of mixed race if you even believe in the concept of race. We'll be talking about this more in the future.