Reasonable people can differ on immigration policy. How many immigrants should we be letting into the country? What criteria should we use? There's plusses and minuses to every choice. I can respect a difference of opinion on policy.
But the demonization of immigrants and asylum seekers is absolutely disgusting to me. Donald Trump isn't the only one to use this rhetoric, obviously, but his embrace of this hate-filled attitude has kicked open the door for every other right wing blowhard to say the quiet part out loud.
The great columnist Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer comes out swinging, not just defending immigrants as individuals, but making the point that frequently gets lost in all the noise and the hate: new waves of immigrants are the central driver of the energy and force of the American experiment. They (or should I say "we" since that's many of us) are actually the engine that has propelled us to the top of the economic and cultural mountain and have kept us there for multiple generations.
His column starts out by looking at one of the workers who died in the Key Bridge disaster, a man named Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval:
Suazo was described by friends and family as happy, outgoing, and tireless. He had to be. While supporting a wife and two kids, he was also sending $600 to $800 a month back to Azacualpa, enough to help family members buy a small hotel and even support youth soccer.
Then Bunch gets to his larger point, and he pulls no punches:
When the Dali cargo ship demolished that bridge support on Tuesday, it also obliterated all the ridiculous lies and myths our demagogues have been spreading around immigration. There were no sex traffickers aboard the Key Bridge that night. Nobody was dealing fentanyl. They were not "animals," but fathers and husbands like Suazo and Luna, whose wife occasionally showed up in her food truck to bring the men tacos and pupusas. They were filling potholes so their children could have an even better life.
These six workers who perished were not "poisoning the blood of our country," they were replenishing it. This is a moment of clarity when we need to reject the national disease of xenophobia and restore our faith in the United States as a beacon for the best people like Suazo. They may have been born all over the continent, but when these men plunged into our waters on Tuesday, they died as Americans.
Well said and not said often enough.
