By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on April 9, 2024
An Editorial Opinion
During his fundraiser at billionaire John Paulson’s Palm Beach mansion last Saturday, former president Donald J. Trump railed against migrants of color coming into America at our southern border. He also proclaimed his preference for immigrants from “nice” countries like Denmark, Norway, and Switzerland.
Of course, the populations of Denmark, Norway, and Switzerland are overwhelmingly white.
In 2018, Trump referred to African nations, Haiti, and El Salvador as "shithole countries." Interestingly, Trump has never acknowledged America's exploitation of Haiti, which included the following despicable acts:
In 1915, under pressure from First National Bank of New York, President Woodrow Wilson ordered the U.S. Army to invade Haiti. The Army seized Haiti's national capitol and took all of the gold from the country's treasury. This seizure wrecked Haiti's national economy. After 111 years of independence, Haitians no longer had a voice in the administration of their national affairs. America ruled Haiti with an iron fist until the U.S. Army's armed occupation of the Caribbean country ended on August 21, 1934. The U.S. never returned the gold that it wrongfully seized from the Haitian government.
In 1931, Marine Corps General Smedley D. Butler summed up our financial intervention in Haiti this way: "I helped make Haiti .... a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in .... Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints."
On February 28, 2004, some 200 years after Haiti declared its independence, French, Canadian, and U.S. forces backed an armed insurgency against Haiti's first democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide. President Donald Trump referred to African countries, Haiti and El Salvador as " from Norway
At his fundraiser, Trump also complained about migrants who were coming to the U.S. from Yemen, “where they’re blowing each other up all over the place,” and claimed that migrants from Latin America “make the Hells Angels look like extremely nice people.”
Of course, Trump failed to mention that Friedrich Trump, his grandfather, was able to migrate to America from a part of Germany with his wife Elisabeth despite his checked past and after his German citizenship was revoke for dodging the country's compulsory military draft.
Trump’s statements about migrants of color were overtly racist. Yet, the millionaires who paid $250,000-a-ticket to attend Paulson’s fundraiser simply chuckled at Trump’s remarks.
The Most Glaring Examples of White Racism in U.S. Immigration Policies
The adoption and implementation of racist immigration and naturalization policies in the United States did not start with Donald Trump. He is merely the loudest and most current drum major for this movement.
The following acts represent some of the most glaring examples of white racism in America's immigration policies:
1. In 1862, the federal government passed and administrated the Homestead Act of 1862. The Act awarded 270 million acres of land that was seized from more than 500 Native American tribes to nearly 3 million white European peasants (for free) who were openly recruited to America from 1862 to 1986. The U.S. government placed ads in European newspapers seeking white migrants to help America become a majority white country.
2. Congress passed, and the U.S. government vigorously enforced, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned persons of Asian descent from entering the U.S. for a period of 80 years. Exceptions were made for Asians who worked for white companies as indentured servants. They were forcefully deported when their services were no longer needed.
3. "Operation Wetback" is a 1950s-era U.S. State Department program that rounded up approximately 1.3 million undocumented non-white Mexican nationals who were living in America and deported them in railway cars to Mexico. Undocumented white Mexicans who immigrated to America (via our southern and northern borders) were not subject to deportation. The term “Wetback” is a racial slur for non-white Mexicans.
4. The U.S. government has strictly enforced disproportionally limited immigration "quotas" on migrants from countries where the indigenous populations are people of color, while openly and continuously welcoming Europe's "tired, poor, and huddled [white] masses" into America with few restrictions. France thanked America for receiving French peasants by giving the United States the Statue of Liberty.
5. Since 1990, rich people from around the world have been able to buy their way into America through the EB-5 Investor Visa Program. The program, which was created by the Immigration Act of 1990, allows eligible immigrant investors to become lawful permanent residents -- informally known as "green card" holders -- by investing at least $1,000,000 to finance a business in the United States that will employ at least 10 American workers. About 80% of EB-5 investors come from China, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. Others come from Canada, India, Mexico, Iran, and Japan.
Epilogue
After crippling national governments around the world and causing endless cycles of political turmoil, economic instability, and violent factionalism in them for over a century, America needs to stop its ongoing white racism against migrants of color from countries that were victimized by the United States' relentless campaign of state-sponsored assassinations and destabilization of national governments.
Donald Trump’s perpetual demonization of migrants of color have made them “undesirables” to his MAGA political base. This is why Trump was able to get away with separating migrant children from their parents at the southern border and putting them in cages during his presidency.
Every immigration “solution” implemented by Trump during his presidency was rooted in a race-based immigration system that has historically favored white immigrants from “nice” European countries like Denmark, Norway, and Switzerland.
Immigration is the one area where government-sponsored affirmative action for whites goes unchecked and unchallenged.