Random Thoughts

The episode over what Trump did or didn't say about African countries and Haiti is a prime example of how we the people should and should not engage with this administration. We once again found ourselves burning cycles over what Trump said, or didn't say, what he meant or didn't mean, and what does or does not motivate his comments. I don't have much doubt that Trump did call African countries shitholes or shithouses, did so because he believes those people are essentially human excrement, and is motivated by racism. But focusing on the words he uses and what motivates his actions is a waste of time. We should focus instead on the idiocy of his ideas, not the words he uses to express them.

Engaging on the level of word-choice lets him off-the-hook for the remarkable ignorance of his policy beliefs, and lets his supporters brush off the debate as "political correctness," or the ad hominem attacks of "haters" rather than being forced to acknowledge that his position is not simply being opposed to illegal immigration, but immigration in general.

For the sake of argument let's pretend he asked "Why should the US accept immigrants who are poor, unskilled, and oftentimes uneducated, instead of taking people who are skilled, educated and bring known economic value to our country?" No offense given, no racism, just a really really stupid question.

The answer would of course involve a small dose of logic:

"Um, Mr President, we do bring in highly skilled people through the H1-B Visa program...a program you want to restrict", and a larger dose of history: "and the people who've come here as immigrants have always been largely poor and unskilled, because those are the people who are most willing to uproot their lives to take a chance on better opportunities elsewhere. The English sent us their criminals and political dissidents until we won our independence forcing them to redirect those folks to Australia. European immigrants left poor, unstable, often war-torn countries to give themselves a better chance and often had little education before they came."

"Moreover, we have mountains and mountains of data showing that far from being liabilities and burdens to our countries, first generation immigrants have always pulled their weight here and have in fact been the backbone of our country. The people who choose to make the effort to leave friends, family, culture and language behind because they believe they can do better elsewhere tend to be self-confident, gritty, resilient people; the very people who succeed in challenging circumstances. Would you like to see the data on this Mr. President?"

It's not crazy to think that taking in poor people might be a burden to our country rather than a benefit, it's just that we don't have to guess about these things, we have data to look at. If we can agree to follow the data rather than political narratives perhaps we can yell at each other less and get behind make-sense policy instead.

But we're not having that data-driven policy discussion, instead we're talking about crude, offensive language ("did say it" "didn't say it" "did say it"), and whether or not the GOP Administration is led by a racist and whether its most ardent supporters are racists themselves -- something that is sure to raise the temperature of the discussion and cannot be proved or disproved.

By focusing on the substance rather than the style of Trump's comments we also drive home the point that in fact Trump is not focused solely on illegal immigration, but is instead seeking to reduce legal immigration by half, change the "qualifications" for immigration from what it has been historically -- when we had any policy at all -- and reduce the number of work visas given for highly skilled workers our countries need and cannot fill with domestic talent. Whether that's because most of these people (including the tech workers coming in under H1B visas) are brown is irrelevant. It's stupid, counter-productive policy that is bad for the country. That's the point.