ANTI-HAITIAN XENOPHOBIA AND RACISM IS NOTHING NEW - PASSIVITY IS!

That the targeting of Haitian legal asylum-seekers for outlandish, outrageous, racist tropes continue to be politically effective is a testament to the enduring power of racism and xenophobia among the white electorate - especially its anti-Black variety.

Over two centuries of demonizing these immigrants - and all other non-white immigrants and panethnicities - for political gain seems to have led to more - not less - virulence.

Today, it's not just Trump & associates; the anti-immigrant "border enforcement" narrative is shared by both parties, both presidential candidates.

The duopoly is back to its historic hyper-restrictionist consensus forged since the late 19the century, when the Chinese were first targeted for exclusion. The Civil Rights Movement and the Chicano Movement led to a brief period of pro-immigrant legislation. But by the late 1970s rampant xenophobia was embraced by the mainstream media and the GOP. By the mid-1990s, first with Bill Clinton, then with Obama, Biden, and now Harris, the Dems have been retreating and complicitly tagging to the right while the GOP has gone to the openly xenophobic ultra-right.

In 2006, facing another set of draconian laws under Bush Jr., millions of immigrants finally marched in the streets, saying enough! But, in time, by 2014,  their "advocacy" allied organizations in Washington became thoroughly coopted by one of the parties - the Dems - who kept making promises to them and then betraying those promises again and again. Biden was the last one to do so, adopting those hated Trump border policies and failing to push through immigration reform.

The current stand of Kamala Harris on immigration is a complete and opportunist surrender to the Trumpist narrative that paints immigrants and asylum-seekers as a grave danger at the border and in the interior.

Like the genocide on Gaza, the Harris campaign is hoping to glide over the issue with banal generalities. Nothing is farther from their thoughts - and Biden's - than to ACT now to earn the millions of disgusted, disaffected pro-immigrant votes waiting to see them DO SOMETHING.

We have been raising the demand that if the Harris campaign want our vote in November, Biden should issue an immediate PRESIDENTIAL PARDON to all 11 million long-residing undocumented immigrants in the United States. THAT would call the Trumpists bluff, expose their fraudulent and poisonous anti-immigrant narrative, and electrify the panethnicities and immigrant communities to vote for Harris.

But, every sign so far is that the Harris campaign is hell-bent set on "triangulating" the issue, talking "enforcement-only" stuff on the border ("I'll sign the border bill") and keeping conspicuous silence on the 11 million. Same can be said of Gaza, BTW.

What is to be done? As to this November elections, I have been openly advocating that folks should go out and vote down the line races for progressives that have demonstrable strong stands on immigration and Gaza - presidential pardon for immigrants, no more arms to Israel - but vote "Uncommitted" for the presidential ticket.

The Dems have a little over a month to earn that vote. It's on them if they do not.

As to what to do after the elections, regardless who wins, when are the immigrant diasporas & associated U.S. panethnicities going to shake off their political stupor, their current paralysis and passivity due to their cooptation by the unreliable, treasonous Dems, and collectively rise up and act out again, as they have before, to disrupt the status quo?

Will they do so when a triumphant Trump begins to execute his promised mass deportation raids in their communities? Will they do so when a triumphant Harris signs the harsh asylum ban border bill and sits on the issue of 11 million Americans-in-waiting like her predecessors?

The answer is blowing in the wind.

ARTICLE: Racism Against Haitians Didn’t Begin in Springfield, Ohio