OPINION: How to Have a Happy New Year in 2024
By Emil Guillermo
This holiday season, I extend to you the gift of history.
But, first, consider the stark contrast in the recent immigration-speak between the two candidates who will more than likely be contesting for the U.S presidency in 2024: President Joseph R. Biden and former President Donald J. Trump.
There’s Biden. Then, there’s that other guy, the twice impeached, quadruple-indicted, former president who seems intent on driving the U.S. into full-speed reverse mode.
That would be the desire of Donald Trump, who as Liz Cheney says, has America sleepwalking into dictatorship.
Don’t think it can’t happen. Seventy percent of Republicans say, despite Trump’s criminality, they would rather see him return to the White House, according to a recent New York Times/Sienna College poll.
Good for them, bad for America.
There’s still enough time to reverse the reversal before Trump actually debases American democracy.
TRUMP’S VIEW ON IMMIGRANTS
Just before the Christmas holiday, Donald Trump was on the campaign trail in Iowa, denouncing immigrants. “They’re ruining our country. And it’s true, they are destroying the blood of our country,” he said.
Trump, the phlebotomist, was talking about the southern border, but the arrivals aren’t just from Mexico, or Central and South America. Increasingly, the border crossers have been Asian, particularly from China and India.
He’s talking about all of us “others.”
Compare Trump’s hate speech with the public statement Biden made on Dec. 17.
That day, President Biden honored Chinese immigrants by remembering the 80th anniversary of the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first and only major law that barred a specific national group from immigrating to the U.S.
Even when the Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943, some restrictions remained. Chinese may not have faced wholesale exclusion, but Chinese immigration was limited to just over 100 people a year. The racist quota was in place until the Hart-Cellar Act gave the U.S. the immigration reform needed in 1965.
“The Act, along with racism and xenophobia in other parts of American life, was part of the anti-Chinese “Driving Out” era which included the Rock Springs and Hells Canyon Massacre,” Biden added.
In Rock Springs, Wyoming, in 1882, at least 28 Chinese miners were killed and 15 injured by angry White miners who feared the Chinese were taking their jobs. Rioters then went on to burn down 80 homes in Rock Springs’ Chinatown.
Five years later in 1887, Oregon’s Hells Canyon Massacre, also known as the Snake River Massacre, saw 30 Chinese laborers gunned down by a gang of White horse thieves.
No one was ever held to account.
President Biden cared enough about that history when he remembered the anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
“Today, there are those who still demonize immigrants and fan the flames of intolerance,” Biden said in his statement. “It’s wrong. I ran for President to restore the soul of America. To bring people together and make sure we give hate no safe harbor.”
You want a Happy New Year? Let’s put the present in an historical context and keep moving forward, with undeniable clarity — together.
About the Author
Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He does a micro-talk show on YouTube.
