Much like Trump wanted during his first term to eliminate “chain migration,” he now threatens that if he wins again, he will try to eliminate all kinds of government benefits that immigrants use to get by when they come here seeking asylum.
And like we found out that Melania’s parents entered the US through chain migration — and therefore would never have gotten here if Trump had been president then and banned chain migration — this one hits close to home, too.
Jared Kushner’s grandparents, Rae and Joseph Berkowitz fled to the United States to escape the Holocaust. They got by on help from benefits set up by FDR’s administration. Trump wouldn’t have the grandkids he does now from his daughter Ivanka if he’d been in FDR’s place at the time.
According to a report in the Washington Post [1], “Trump, in his current presidential campaign, has pledged to suspend the refugee program, ban refugees from Gaza, and turn back asylum seekers.”
The report goes on to say that when Kushner’s family got here, they had $2 in their pocket and no family here to help them. They relied entirely on the asylum programs that are still in effect today.
They were sent to a shelter in Manhattan, where they benefited from generous assistance:
“Echoing New York City’s current policy for arriving asylum-seeking families, the Kushners were given a room for 60 days, a food allowance, laundry service and help with clothing, medicine and other incidentals.”
Rae Kushner would later tell Israel’s Holocaust memorial in a Yiddish testimony that “They thought we were no longer human, that we were animals.”
Does that sound familiar? That’s exactly the way that Trump talks about immigrants.
It’s all in the service of dehumanizing them. It’s not that Donald actually is afraid of taking in immigrants. It’s that he knows that his rhetoric has to make all immigrants seem like filthy, subhuman, dangerous monsters in order to secure the right-wing vote.
The hypocrisy is astounding, even though we shouldn’t be surprised by any of this anymore. A things is good if it benefits Trump, and it is bad if it does not. That’s the ground rule he’s set down, and he’s been doing it publicly since day one.