Cuban Immigrants

Sad Attack On Immigration, When Immigrants Have Always Been The Lifeblood Of American Progress!

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Donald Trump and JD Vance have waged war on immigration, demonizing immigrants from Haiti and Venezuela specifically, but really promoting the concept of nativism–that America should not welcome “foreigners”, despite the reality that it is immigrants who have been the lifeblood of America since its founding.

First, it was French immigrants in the 1790s who were victimized by the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.

Then it was Irish and German Catholic immigrants who were victims of hate and prejudice in the 1840s and 1850s, including the creation of a nativist party, the American or “Know Nothing” party.

Then, it was Italian and Polish Catholic and Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the fifty years from the 1870s to the 1920s who were subjected to discrimination, leading to restrictive immigration laws passed under President Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s.

Asian immigration–from first China until banned in 1882—and then Japan, banned in 1924— suffered from terrible mistreatment and hatred.

Latin American immigration, particularly from Mexico, but from all of the nations of the hemisphere, was subjected to constant discrimination, and still are, with the one exception of Cuban immigration due to the perceived threat of Fidel Castro after 1959.

And as people migrate to escape bloodshed, violence, and poverty from nations around the globe, they face new demagoguery now being promoted by the Republican Party under Trump and Vance, and this despite the fact that Trump’s third wife is an immigrant, and Vance’s wife is from an immigrant family.

“Natural Born Citizens” And The Issue of George Romney, John McCain, And Ted Cruz

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With Texas Senator Ted Cruz angling to run for President, showing up in Iowa this past weekend, the question arises as to whether he is a “natural born citizen” and eligible to be our President.

The thought of Cruz being the nominee of the Republican Party, and a possible occupant of the White House, is literally horrifying, as the Texas Senator is like a bull in a china shop, out to antagonize and confront Democrats, progressives, the news media, and anyone who is not a believer, as he is, in the Tea Party Movement.

So Cruz has been criticized by John McCain and other Senate Republicans, as well as the Republican “Establishment”, as he represents a radical right wing extremism, who has no problem in making enemies, and showing a level of arrogance and hubris rare in a first term, first year Senator.

In many ways, Cruz would be worse than Barry Goldwater represented in his right wing views in the Presidential Election of 1964, showing just how far right the GOP has gone in recent years.

It seems clear to most observers that Cruz could not unite the GOP, and would be likely to be an electoral disaster against Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or any other Democrat, but one can never be too confident or too cocky to believe that the world could not turn inside out and upside down in a time of difficult economic conditions.

This author will spend a lot of time on Cruz as we get closer to the 2016 primaries and caucuses, as he is certainly going to be an important factor in the Presidential campaign of 2016.

But right now, the question is whether Cruz, born in Canada of a US citizen mother and a Cuban immigrant father, is even eligible to run for President in the first place.

This will be the third time this issue has arisen, as Michigan Governor George Romney, a likely candidate in the Presidential Election of 1968, was born in Mexico of American Mormon parents, and John McCain, who was the GOP nominee in the Presidential Election of 2008, was born in the Panama Canal Zone.

Romney never got that close to the nomination, and not much was made of his Mexican birth at the time, while McCain had little challenge on his birth, as he was born to a military family in what was then US territory in the Panama Canal Zone.

While one might wish that Cruz was ineligible to run for President, there is unlikely to be a serious challenge to his candidacy for the Presidential Election of 2016.

It is also ironic that these three cases all involve Republicans, and yet a person born in Hawaii, Barack Obama, two years after it became the 50th state, still faces challenges from “Birthers” who contend he was born in Kenya! This would be unlikely to be an issue were Obama not a Democrat, but rather a Republican, and of course, if he was white, instead of African American! What a sad state of affairs!