At the moment, Donald Trump, deservedly, is all of the rage for remarks he made regarding Mexican immigrants to the United States:
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Democrats and Republicans, both politicians and their apologists in the “mainstream” and “conservative” media, wasted no time in pouncing upon Trump.
Some thoughts:
First, it is obvious to those with a modicum of intelligence and honesty that Trump never intended to suggest that all Mexican immigrants are reprobates. For starters, Trump himself qualified his statement by including “good people” among Mexican immigrants. But even if he hadn’t done so, it is either bad faith or intellectual density that could lead anyone to confuse a general remark of the sort that Trump made with a categorical one.
If I say that men are physically stronger than women, do I risk being accused of “sexism” lest I explicitly acknowledge that there are exceptions?
Not coincidentally, I’m sure, the indignant who now judge Trump by this standard have been exempting themselves from it for as long as they have been condemning whites for slavery, Jim Crow, and so forth. Notice: Even though the overwhelming majority of white Americans never owned a slave, and even though there were no fewer than 4,000 black slave owners in the antebellum South, talk of historical injustices suffered by “blacks” at the hands of “whites” is never, ever fine-tuned by modifiers like “not all,” “some,” “most,” etc.
When Jeb Bush says that immigrants who enter America illegally do so out of “love,” no one complains that he “paints with too broad of a brush.”
This leads us to our next point.
Second, both those Hispanic “leaders” (read: racialist lobbyists) who are now demanding that GOP presidential contenders distance themselves from Trump as well as those among the latter who are all too eager to comply have hurled themselves onto the horns of a dilemma.
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On the one hand, since Trump never implied that all Mexican immigrants are criminals, drug dealers, and rapists, his critics must object to his assertion that there are some criminals, drug dealers, and rapists coming to America from Mexico.
But if this is their grievance, then they have before them the impossible task of defending a position—there is no criminal element among Mexican immigrants—that is demonstrably, patently false.
On the other hand, if this is not their view; if they concede that there are criminals among Mexican immigrants and that some of them are among the worst of the worst, then they acknowledge that Trump spoke truthfully and, hence, have no intellectual or factual basis for being upset with him.
That they remain upset with him proves that their motivations are political or ideological.
Third, that immigrants from Mexico (and other Central and South American countries) are indeed bringing “lots of problems” with them is undeniably true. That some of them are “bringing drugs;” that some of them are bringing other sorts of “crime;” and that some of them are “rapists,” is true.
Fourth, the 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche memorably remarked that the truth is “hard.” For our politicians, partisan media pundits, Hispanic special interest/activist groups, the Immigrant Lobby, the Chamber of Commerce, and the agents of the Racism-Industrial-Complex generally, certain truths about the relentless wave of Third World immigration that’s descended upon America for the last 50 years or so aren’t just hard.
They are intolerable.
Thus, it’s not enough that Trump’s position be repudiated. Trump must be demonized.
Fifth, that some of Trump’s staunchest critics are fellow Republicans speaks volumes—about his critics.
Larry Elder once said that between the GOP and the Democrats, there was hardly a dime’s worth of difference. If the issue of immigration is a barometer of anything, it’s painfully clear that Elder was right on the money.
For years, Republicans, including and especially many of those who have entered the presidential field, have ached every bit as much as their Democratic counterparts for “comprehensive immigration reform”—i.e. amnesty. And this aching has endured despite the fact that the last amnesty—presided over by the Republican, Ronald Reagan—failed miserably to resolve any problems.
Republicans, like Democrats, have done nothing to secure the southern border. Even when Republicans controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress, GOP politicians still did nothing to resist the flow of illegal immigration from the south. This, in turn, encouraged more of the latter.
Republican governors like Rick Perry and Jeb Bush, presidential candidates who have taken to blasting Trump, along with their colleague, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, have all arranged for illegal immigrants in their states to avail themselves of in-state tuition rates in the event that they decide to attend college while living illegally in America.
Finally, even assuming, for argument’s sake, that it’s the case that “immigrants” commit fewer crimes than native born Americans, this is utterly irrelevant to anything that Trump has said.
Immigrants, and illegal immigrants specifically, may be in America, but they are not of it. An American immigration policy should be designed to benefit America. No American benefits from the importation of any criminals.
Trump never said that Mexican guttersnipes in America are overrepresented or not among America’s guttersnipes. He simply pointed out that there are guttersnipes coming to our country from Mexico.
Again, if his opponents believe that this empirically verifiable statement is inaccurate, they should say so. And if they don’t object to its truth, then they have no intellectual ground on which to object.
As for their political motivations…Well, that’s a different story.
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