In the mail recently I received a political flier urging me to vote against a Republican candidate because the candidate, according to the flier from another Republican, would allow “foreign workers” into the United States.
I wish that were true. Kansas could use foreign workers.
But as Kansans have witnessed, most Republicans competing for their party’s nominations in the Aug. 4 primary are trying to be the Trumpiest of all the candidates, and that means opposing immigration.
President Donald Trump has worked to severely restrict immigration to the United States — both legal and illegal — and Kansas Republicans have tripped over themselves to get in line behind him.
Their anti-immigrant fervor defies U.S. history, which shows plainly that immigrants have been a vital source of blue-collar muscle, white-collar innovation and scholarly advances in virtually every field you can think of.
Here’s just a sampling of “foreign workers” of whom you might have heard: Albert Einstein, Martina Navratilova, Wolfgang Puck and John James Audubon.
There are millions more you haven’t heard of, as well as most of our ancestors. For me, it was my great-grandparents, who immigrated to Kansas from Germany, mostly in the 1880s.
Over the years, I’ve counted “foreign workers” as in-laws, as colleagues and as friends.
But, politically, immigrants have become the scapegoats of choice. Whether it’s crime, social welfare spending or unemployment, the go-to strategy is to blame immigrants.
So when a health crisis creates an economic crisis, it’s no surprise that rather than work on answers, some politicians foster resentment and hate toward people who aren’t like us.
Except that … immigrants are like us.
Well, not all of them. Some immigrants are criminals. And some are heroes. And the vast majority fall somewhere in between.
Just like us.
The pandemic and the federal government’s botched handling of it has created a huge unemployment problem. In such a situation, Trump’s revved-up restrictions on immigration might seem to offer relief.
But you can’t have your free-enterprise cake and eat it too.
