It’s nobody’s saying that the US should not deal with illegal immigrants. It should, but in a humane manner. Trump should bind and heal and not stoke contention
The lines by Emma lazarus, inscribed on The Statue of liberty, which stands tall and majestic on liberty Island in New York Harbour off New York City, read, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: / I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” The door is now going to be shut, certainly on the kind of people who fit the description above. Instead a wall to keep some of them out will be erected along the United States-Mexico border. Many of them, who may number as many as three million according to the US President-elect Donald Trump, would be deported or incarcerated immediately after he assumes office on January 20 next year.
Hundreds and thousands of people, including those who had come to the US as children and are now young men and women, will have their lives blighted. While this may not mean much to Trump and his advisors and supporters, the move to deport them and press ahead with some of the contentious items that featured in the agenda held out during his campaign, can be disastrous for the United States. They should be seriously concerned about the matter. For one thing, the United States is a bitterly divided country today, which is underlined not only by the bitterness of the campaign and the high percentage of polling but the growing demonstrations against the election of Trump. One has not seen anything like this in recent history.
What will happen if these demonstrations turn violentIJ Desperate people with their backs hard pressed against the wall and nothing more to lose, will resort to extreme measures of protest, which will be a particularly dangerous development in the United States which is awash with firearms and individuals can buy the most sophisticated automatic weapons from shops. India had a hard time before the final collapse of a small fringe of its two million Sikhs who had taken to terrorism under Pakistan’s sponsorship, training and support.
Given all its resources and intelligence organisations, the United States should be able to suppress such a movement, though it will not be in a day, particularly since terrorism on its soil will have support in large sections of people who may believe that they would be targeted next. If terrorists in Punjab, as well as in Jammu & Kashmir, had Pakistan’s support, those in the United States will have increased support from the Al Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and allied organisations.
It is no secret that, with the large chunks of the territory it had won, lost, and the fall of its strongholds in Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq increasingly appearing to be a matter of time, the IS is looking at carving out new bases and strongholds in
Pakistan and Afghanistan. Given the chance, they would certainly try to establish their presence in the US, perhaps the country they hate the most.
There will be two very serious consequences of the emergence of the kind of scenario scripted above. First, it will seriously undermine the process of recovery from the Great Recession of 2008, currently under way in the United States. large-scale unrest and economic recovery do not go hand in hand. Second, the laws and measures Washington will have to resort to for putting down a massive and fierce combination of street violence and terrorism, will have the potential to severely undermine the country’s celebrated democracy, and will be precisely of the kind that Americans have always condemned. If this will be most ironical so will the fact that the country that had always condemned the notorious Berlin Wall built by East Germany to prevent people escapng from its oppressive Government to West Germany, should now be constructing one of its own to keep Mexicans out.
It is nobody’s contention that the United States should not deal with the issue of illegal immigrants. It should, but compassionately and humanely, particularly since the people in question are weak and vulnerable. Trump, as President, should bind and heal and not exclude and stoke contention.
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)