Today’s US presidential election is needlessly controversial because of the continued candidature of former president Trump. However a few pertinent facts address his key immigration issue and arguably self-resolve the Trump debacle.
1. Trump claims migrants are causing high real estate prices in America. However he’s a real estate developer who went bankrupt six times and his running mate Sen. Vance’s Acretrader app sells American farmland to foreign investors thus contributing to real estate prices. Indeed corporate investors not migrants are chiefly to blame for high home-buying costs.
2. Trump claims migrants are criminals but he is the one convicted of 34 felonies. Three people involved in separate suspected assassination attempts on him are all white male Americans and not migrants.
3. Trump claims America is giving aid to people abroad and neglecting Americans. However, it was Trump who took critical covid supplies and gave to America’s archenemy Putin as one million Americans were dying.
4. Trump claims migrants are “poisoning the blood of America.” However, his father was the son of immigrants, his mother was an immigrant, his wives were immigrants and all his children were born by immigrants. Immigrant blood runs deep in his family. If anything, it’s his vicious rhetoric that is poisoning America, dividing families and inciting insurrection against the state.
5. Trump says that migrants are taking American jobs. However, he printed his $60 bibles in communist China losing American “Christian” jobs ironically. He has generally produced his products in China consistently depriving Americans of those jobs.
6. Trump says migrants are taking black jobs. However, it is Trump’s company that was cited for discriminating against black renters. Migrants continue to pick farm produce keeping food prices affordable at a micro job level. At a macro level, immigrant medical doctors (Nigerians inclusive) critical human capital support to the massive U.S. healthcare system which is premised, predicated and sustained by importation of medics.
7. Trump says migrants are violent. However, the worst attack on the US since 911 was the January 6th insurrection which he incited. It wasn’t by immigrants but by American Trumpists. White nationalism and domestic terrorism is now America’s biggest national security threat. Trump and co were literally the enemy within unlike Al Qaeda foreign terrorists.
8. Trump claims that FEMA isn’t helping Americans because their funds were given to migrants. However, FEMA is helping American disaster victims and their funds were not given to migrants. Strangely enough during Trump’s presidency, he actually took money from FEMA and gave to ICE for migrants and refused to help states that didn’t vote for him during disasters.
9. Trump says illegal immigrants were eating Americans’ cats and dogs. However, these were legal US residents and they did not eat any pets. They were here legally because of the chaotic situation in Haiti which has been a U.S. neighbour for centuries. So Trump attacks both illegal and lawful migrants. Ironically Trump’s family is pictured killing lions (a member of the cat family) just for sport! Much worse, Trump stole the children of migrants from them in a bizarre and barbaric act that outweighs fake pet stories.
10. Trump said he would build a wall that Mexico would pay for. However, his top aide raised millions from Americans for the wall and stole the money. No immigration bill was passed by Trump and the first comprehensive immigration bill done in decades was sabotaged by Trump so he would have a problem to run on.
From the above, without even referencing his opponent’s platform, Trump is the biggest ad against Trump just from reviewing his inconsistent words and actions on migrants. They are scapegoats for his failures and his crimes – a convenient political distraction by someone who has nothing else to offer.
This inspired me to rephrase a famous quote I first heard when late New York City Mayor Dinkins testified along with me at a council meeting advocating against military dictatorship in Nigeria in the ‘90s:
“He came for the migrants calling them “Animals” but I didn’t mind because I wasn’t a migrant.
He came for continental Americans in opposition calling them “enemies within” but I didn’t mind because I wasn’t a Democrat.
He came for the non-continental American in Puerto Rico calling them “trash” but I didn’t mind because I was wasn’t Puerto Rican.
Then he came for the undecided and there was no one left to speak out for us.”
Some Trump followers have threatened to leave USA for other countries if he loses. Ironically they would be illegal migrants in those countries because while political persecution is a grounds for political asylum seekers under international law, mere political differences of ideology or opinion is not. This merely underscores the absurdity and hypocrisy of Trump’s odious anti-immigrant platform.
Worse still, he’s the son of an immigrant, married to immigrants, all of whose children were born to immigrants. In 2024 elections, Trump is again his own worst enemy. Trump is the number one reason not to vote for Trump. America may not have been ready for a female black president but America is certainly not ready for another Trump presidency.
•Emmanuel Ogebe is a Washington-based lawyer and US Nigeria international affairs expert with the U.S. Nigeria Law Group, Washington.
