For all of my adult life, despite years as a journalist reporting and writing about abuses and cruelty, I have thought of my country, the United States of America, as moving toward a more just society. I’ve thought of the USA as a country where civil rights and other laws protect the most vulnerable and where, slow though it may be, we are making progress toward more equality and opportunity for all.
I’ve considered it a place where, inadequate though it may be at times, Americans, through their government, have chosen to extend a safety net to those who lack the ability or the resources to provide for themselves.
I am well aware of our nation’s history of the slaughter of Native Americans and slavery of Black Americans and Jim Crow oppression. But I believed the Constitution written by our founding fathers, many of them slave holders, gave us a framework for forming a more perfect union, one ruled by fair and equitable laws that applied to everyone.
News stories detailing events over the past two months have shaken that belief profoundly. Take just one area, immigration, for example.
Consider, President Trump plans to deport millions of immigrants who have long lived and done back-breaking work in the United States, abided by its laws, contributed to its economy, paid taxes and reared their American-citizen children here. Meanwhile, he has appointed an immigrant South African named Elon Musk to gleefully run roughshod over Americans who have worked for their government, delivering vital services, many of them for decades.
One employer told the Asheville Watchdog that more than 60 percent of his workforce is Hispanic. As many as half of the 50,000 or so people who identify as Hispanic or Latino living in Western North Carolina are undocumented, according to a study from the Charlotte-based Camino Research Institute, the Watchdog reported. That means about a third of this employer’s workforce is at risk of being deported.
“I’ve been working here for more than 15 years,” one undocumented man told the Watchdog. “I have four kids. My wife is from a different country, and she has papers here, but mine haven’t been processed yet. I have a lawyer here to help me get a green card. It’s been three years since I applied and we haven’t seen anything.”
He’s afraid, he said. “Last night we went to church, and my friends were telling me, ‘You don’t want to go to church because of ICE.’”
Stories spreading in the Hispanic community surely fuel the fear. In Asheville, federal marshals broke down the door of the home of Tito Aguilar Ramírez, and injured him in front of his two young daughters. They were apparently looking for someone accused of criminal activity, but they presented no warrant or paperwork. When Ramírez’s identification was located, they said, “Oh, sorry, we have the wrong house.”
Ramírez had hidden in the bathroom with his daughters, but he did not resist the officers. Mistakes will be made, but why employ such belligerent tactics? They took his ID with them. Will they return it? Will they replace his door? Pay his medical bills?
Consider, President Trump’s White House appears to think Americans will find it entertaining to watch as people who have picked apples, cared for children, put roofs on houses, served food, cleaned hotels, built roads, and started businesses that boosted the U.S. economy are trussed up in shackles and put on planes to be deported. The White House recently posted a video on X of rattling chains, roaring jet engines and what looks to be an ICE officer placing immigrants in handcuffs and chains before marching them onto a plane. The video is captioned “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.” The acronym ASMR stands for “autonomous sensory meridian response,” a pleasant physical sensation triggered by certain sounds that has become a genre of videos on social media.
Musk retweeted this video with the caption “Haha Wow” and a troll emoji.
Another video shows Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in full body armor during a raid in New York talking about getting “dirtbags” off the street. Really? The sweet guy who did such a fantastic job of trimming the hedges? Undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than your average American. They don’t want to draw attention to themselves.
Consider, while deporting immigrants who provide vital labor to many American farms and businesses, Trump has ordered government officials to prioritize resettlement in America of Afrikaners who, he claims, are being discriminated against by the South African government. These are people who make up about 7 percent of the South African population and own more than 70 percent of the nation’s land. There are many fine white South Africans, I am sure, but they are not being discriminated against, despite Trump’s and Elon Musk’s claims. They live in a vibrant democracy with a Constitution that guarantees them and every South African freedom and equality. They have lovely homes, while the majority of their Black countrymen live in poverty (a legacy of apartheid), many in townships without electricity or running water.
I know this because, unlike Musk, I just spent most of a month in South Africa and I saw it for myself.
Now, in an irony too profound for words, President Trump wants to offer a “gold card” (that’s an upgraded green card, one supposes) to any would-be immigrant who can fork over $5 million. Even more outrageous, if you are a native-born American, is the fact that President Trump wants these rich new American wannabes to get a tax break that won’t be available to you. President Trump touts this visa scheme, which would offer a path to citizenship, as a way to raise money. But the tax break he’s offering means the government would likely lose far more in potential tax revenue than it would raise.
Is this what our nation has become?
A nation that allows one man and the sycophants who do his bidding to spread fear among vulnerable people? A nation where an immature, arrogant immigrant oligarch can intimidate federal workers and decide what government services are essential?
I don’t believe the majority of Americans want that, no matter who they voted for in the last presidential election.
In his farewell speech to the nation, President Ronald Reagan said, "I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still."
The light of President Reagan's shining city grows dimmer by the day.
Joy Franklin is a journalist and writer who served as editorial page editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times for 10 years. Prior to that she served as executive editor of the Times-News in Hendersonville, N.C. Franklin writes for Carolina Commentary.
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