Immigrants want to come to America and not shoot anyone. No wonder Trump has banned them
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Version 0 of 1. Trump’s decision to ban immigrants from seven countries is the most flagrant breach of America’s core values I have witnessed in my lifetime. The foundation on which my country was built is being gleefully shredded by an impetuous, whimsical tyrant. It is in times like these that we Americans need to pull our loved ones close, give them a hug, and remind them that – Trump aside – the US is still a place where people of all faiths, colours and personal beliefs are welcome to acquire a handgun and fire willy-nilly at other persons of faith, colour and personal belief. How dare Trump deny someone – anyone!– the God-given flexibility of purchasing a custom hand-gripped 9mm Glock, either at a Saturday-morning flea market or online through a casually licensed intermediary, whose background check consists of the sole question: “Do you needamentally believe it would be advantagemous to own this shootment device?” In recent days, I’ve heard, first-hand, dozens of stories of people from Muslim-majority countries who only wanted to escape oppression and fear and come to a country where more than 100,000 people a year are perforated by bullets. “It’s heartbreaking,” a 22-year-old Syrian graduate student named Maya told me. “I’ve always dreamed of coming to the US and furthering my education in applied marketing. Perhaps an esteemed institution of learning such as Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University, the University of Texas, Ohio State University, the University of North Carolina, UCLA, Central Arkansas University, Orangeburg State, or Umpqua Community College,” she says, mentioning nine campuses that are potentially the safest in the US, because they have been the sites of horrific random shooting sprees and lightning never strikes twice in the same place. Razak Ali, 38, from Somalia, had hoped to bring his entire family to the US. “Primarily, I felt that by relocating myself and my family of nine to a nondescript midwestern town, we could help water down the staggeringly high per capita rate of gunshot fatalities in the United States, which currently stands at around 10.6 per 100,000,” he explained through an interpreter. Ali has never been convicted of a crime, has no known terrorist affiliation and is, in fact, a qualified ear, nose and throat specialist in his home country. But Trump’s blanket ban is clearly intended to bring down the iron fist on those who might come to the US with the intention of not shooting anyone. This is typical Trump. Picking on the small-fry, the pea-shooters. The total sum of terrorist-related deaths committed on American soil by the seven proscribed countries is a sobering zero. As in none. Goose-eggs. (To be fair, there have been several thwarted “terrorist” attacks: two by Somalis, one by an Iraqi. In all three instances, the attackers were wielding a knife. That’s right, a knife. No one in the US has seen a knife since West Side Story.) It’s obvious Trump doesn’t feel the people of these countries even deserve the simple basic right to come to the US and enjoy the duly mandated privilege of shooting random strangers in the lower abdomen over a parking altercation. I guess this is to be expected. Trump’s mind operates like the boardroom scenes in The Apprentice. Bring everybody in, quickly assess who is the weakest and boot them out. Leave the heartier ones to fight it out for another episode. Thus Trump has a grudging respect for the pluckier terrorists. By “pluckier”, I mean those countries that really have created carnage in the US. The last time I checked, flights from Cairo, Lahore and Riyadh were running on time. I, for one, am not impressed by Trump’s flurry of security directives, signifying some kind of Delphic weight. Every wilful, utterly affectless proclamation he makes will end up in a mire of lawsuits and countersuits. The so called “chaos” reported at US airports wasn’t hordes of detainees. It was the clattering hooves of class action lawyers, civil libertarians, news media, protesters and Avengers of the Oppressed Everywhere descending into the departure lounge to challenge Trump’s diktat. Which is just what any traveller desires at an airport … more goddamn people. This is what we have to look forward to in the US for the next four years, or until someone has the guts to push Trump down a long flight of stairs: Indignancy Gridlock. The US was built by the great unwashed. They didn’t all come here and end up rags to riches, all that Horatio Alger bullshit. Many of them ascended through graft, violence and guns. And thank God they did, because those are the stories Martin Scorsese and Sergio Leone and Francis Ford Coppola turn into meaty cinematic fare. Nobody cares about the humble immigrant who got rich scrupulously. The Statue of Liberty says: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …” It doesn’t stipulate where these masses should come from and what they should get up to once they get here. After all, what would the US be if it hadn’t opened its doors to one and all, allowing each of us to carve out a place of our own? Why, Native American, of course. Rich Hall tours from 9 March to 7 July 2017. |