The Irony and Hypocrisy of MAGA Immigrant Hostility

Immigration is a difficult issue and it is roiling every wealthy country.  Liberal democracies have tried to control immigration but have been fairly receptive to it for both humanitarian (wars, famine and repression) and economic reasons (to compensate for declining citizen birthrates).  Populist groups within these countries have emerged as almost single-issue parties, riding a wave of hysteria about the economic, cultural and crime aspects of immigration. 

 

In the USA, Donald Trump won his first nomination almost solely on the basis of his anti-immigrant rhetoric after race-baiting his way into public awareness with the infamous birther conspiracy theory.  And there is little doubt that his dark denunciations of immigrants were a major factor in his election last November.

 

In a troubled world with political, economic and climate catastrophes on every front, it is not surprising that large numbers of people dare to attempt crossing into countries where there is much more opportunity to live freely and in peace, and to become economically stable.  There is a very fine line between refugees, economic migrants, and climate migrants.  The motivations are really no different than they were when our ancestors made the trip to this new land.

 

How much immigration is manageable for a country without destabilizing it in some way or another is a tricky question.  It is particularly fraught in a time when globalization is giving way to unilateralism, and the post-industrial economy is dramatically changing the labor market.

 

It is reasonable, though somewhat dubious in terms of moral and ethical principles, to say no when immigration rates become too high.  But this refusal should be made with a heavy heart and as much empathy as a government and its people can express.  It should break all of our hearts to have to turn away the stranger in need.

 

But the MAGA world, strongly characterized by its self-proclaimed evangelical Christianity, indulges an almost maniacal animosity toward immigrants.  Trump and Vance routinely slander undocumented immigrants and describe them with racist and demeaning language.  They are cast as criminals, drug addicts, terrorists and lazy opportunists.  The MAGA Christians cheer as masked gestapo-like ICE agents round up dreamers who have been here since childhood.  

 

Where is their Jesus in this?  “For I was a stranger, and you welcomed me”.  Where is the love and the sacrificial charity that is the very essence of Jesus’s teachings?  It is both ironic and deeply hypocritical that the MAGA world, with its loud pretense of Christian piety, should be so stridently and heartlessly vindictive to the desperate people that have risked all and started anew as strangers in our land.  Shame on them!