Donald Trump, the billionaire real estate mogul and GOP Presidential
candidate, has called Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers who are
demoralizing the country. His popularity among a certain section in the
Republican party has surged as a result, and Trump continues to stand by his demagogy.
Trump’s latest foray into
immigrant scapegoating for political gain is nothing knew. Anti-immigration
movements have been around since this nation’s inception, and Trump is
following in their footsteps. The good news is that they became irrelevant very
quickly, and so will Trump.
Between 1830 and 1860, when there
was virtually unrestricted immigration, 4.5 million immigrants arrived into the
United States. Amongst them were Irish and Germans who were Catholic, and there
was an over simplified view that Catholics would never be good citizens as they
were beholden to the Pope and subject to the orders from the church. Samuel Morse, well known as the inventor of the telegraph and Morse code, was also a
nutty xenophobe, who warned:
How
is it possible that foreign turbulence imported by shiploads, that riot and
ignorance in hundreds of thousands of human priest-controlled machines should
suddenly be thrown into our society and not produce turbulence and excess? Can
one throw mud into pure water and not disturb its clearness?
The
Know
Nothing movement emerged in the 1850s with the objective of preventing the Irish
from participating in national affairs. One of the pamphlets of the Know
Nothing party warned:
It
is notorious that the grossest frauds have been practiced on our naturalization
laws, and that thousands and tens of thousands have every year deposited votes
in the ballot box, who could not only not read them, and knew nothing of the
nature of the business in which they were engaged, but who had not been six
months in the country, and, in many cases, hardly six days.
After the Irish got assimilated, Jews and Italians in
the latter part of the 19th century became the targets of
accusations that they could never become 100 percent Americans. A leading
sociologist of his time Edward
Ross stated that Jews were “the polar opposite of our pioneer breed.
Undersized and weak muscled, they shun bodily activity and are exceedingly
sensitive to pain.” Regarding Italians, Ross noted that they “possess a
distressing frequency of low foreheads, open mouths, weak chins, poor features,
skewed faces, small or knobby crania and backless heads.”
Trump’s remarks
over 120 years later about Mexicans are not too different, and in the same vein
as the anti-immigrant demagogues that preceded him:
“When Mexico sends its people, they're not
sending the best," Trump said last month when he announced that he was
seeking the Republican nomination. "They're sending people that have lots
of problems, and they're bringing those problems. They're bringing drugs.
They're bringing crime. They're rapists and some, I assume, are good people,
but I speak to border guards, and they're telling us what we're getting."
The
good news is that many corporations, including Macy's, NBC, ESPN and two
celebrity chefs, have severed business ties with the real estate magnate. While
Trump’s popularity may grow with a certain segment within the Republican party,
he and his party should always remember the drubbing that Mitt Romney got in
the 2012 Presidential elections when he advocated that immigrants “self deport”
from the United States. Trump will viciously sue for breach of contract, and it
is hoped that courts will be sympathetic to possible defenses that the contracts
may have became impossible to follow through by the other party caused by Trump’s
inflammatory remarks. Any business association with Trump will cause embarrassment
to the other contracting party resulting in business losses, it can be argued.
Trump’s
hypocrisy also comes through loud and clear since many of his properties have
been built on the backs of the hard and honest labor of immigrants, and the
current construction of a luxury hotel in Washington DC may have undocumented
immigrants, according to a Washington
Post article. In response to whether
he has hired undocumented workers, Trump cavalierly and insensitively said
in a CNN interview, “I can't guarantee
it. ... I wish they'd give us the names. We would get rid of them
immediately." This statement is legally problematic. An employer verifies
all employees on Form I-9, and the USCIS
Handbook, M-274,
provides clear instructions to employers. If the documents that were submitted by the
new hire are facially valid, an employer does not have a clear basis to terminate
a worker soley based on a tip that the worker is not legally in the country.
Indeed,
the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Practices at the
Department of Justice remains especially vigilant against employers who may
indulge in discriminatory practices. In an OSC
letter to an employer dated October 14, 2011, the OSC provided the
following caution regarding employers responding to anonymous tips on an
employee’s immigration status:
OSC cautions employers to respond to
anonymous tips with restraint because these tips may be based, in whole or in
part, on such factors an individual’s presumed citizenship status, national
origin, accent, or cultural customs. Such factors are not relevant in
determining whether an individual is authorized to work in the United States.
In addition, whether an employer should respond to an anonymous tip depends
upon the specific facts at hand, including the credibility and substantive
nature of the information provided.
An
employer is only under a duty to investigate further if it knows or has
knowledge that would lead a reasonable person to believe that an individual is not
authorized to work in the United States, and a clear example would be if the
employer received specific information from the government that certain
employees have committed document fraud. See
Mester Mfg. Co. v. INS, 879 F.2d 561 (9th Cir. 1989); New El Rey Sausage v. INS, 925 F.2d 1153 (9th
Cir. 1991). By that token, a mismatch letter from the Social Security
Administration that an employee’s name and number may not match should not give
rise to a conclusion that the employee is not authorized to work in the United
States as the mismatch may be caused for a number of other reasons. The same
reasoning should apply to an anonymous tip that lacks credibility.
Probably
Trump does not care to know these nuances, but he should if he dismisses
workers on tips and suspicions especially if the documents verified on the Form
I-9 are bona fide, or his company may be penalized by OSC for unfair
immigration related employment practices. This would further damage his party’s
credibility with Hispanic and new American voters if not already damaged, as
Trump shared the podium with Sheriff Joe Arpaio who has a federal conviction
for racial profiling.
Like all
the other anti-immigrant personalities and movements who have come before him,
Trump too will become irrelevant and will be consigned to the trash bin of
history if he continues to indulge in demagogy against Mexican immigrants. Even
if Trump tries to justify his anti-immigrant remarks by linking immigrants to
crime, these unfortunate incidents are isolated when compared to crimes
perpetrated by American citizens. Indeed, immigrants
tend to have lower crime rates than the general population. Trump has been losing business, and his towers
if still emblazoned with his name will also embarrass, and will probably soon be
viewed in the same way like other symbols that are now despised such as the
Confederate flag.
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