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.

These welcoming words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty located on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, which were once true, are today something less than that. US immigration laws have become highly selective in who is allowed in to pursue the American dream.

These days one notices a virulent strain of racism showing its ugly head in American right-wing politics, especially relating to immigration policy. It was always there, but subtle, until brought into public glare by Donald Trump in his speech on June 16, 2015 announcing his run for the presidency.

His grand entrance to mainstream politics on the golden down-escalator is ignobly etched in American history. So, too, are these words racially stereotyping Mexican immigrants: “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

The most prominent feature of his political platform during the campaign was building the modern-day Berlin Wall along the southern border of the United States with Mexico, ostensibly to keep out illegal immigrants from Central America. Enough people bought into the overt display of racism to elect Trump the 45th president.

During his term in the White House, he persisted, reportedly revoking the status of naturalised citizens and deporting them in numbers never seen before. This was confirmed by Stehen Miller, far-right and anti-immigration senior advisor to the president on immigration policy in the Trump Administration. He recently said: “We started in the first term and in 2025 — should we regain the presidency — it will be denaturalisation on steroids.”

For his part, Trump, on the campaign trail, openly promised mass deportation on a scale never before seen. There will, he says, be an immigration ban to prevent migration from what he refers to as “infested countries”.

In his debate against the Democratic candidate for president, Kamala Harris, Trump made the claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets. This was widely disputed. But he persisted, putting the lives of Haitian immigrants at risk.

In a campaign speech, Trump said America has become the “garbage can” of the world, used by other countries to dump their undesirables. Echoing these sentiments, one of the featured speakers at a wrap-up event at New York’s-famed Madison Square Garden referred to Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage”. Trump never personally disavowed the racist, anti-immigration comment. Instead, he characterized the event as a “love fest”.

Most egregiously, in language reminiscent of that used in Nazi Germany by Joseph Goebbles, head of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in the mid-1930s, to influence public attitudes and behaviour toward Jews, at the behest of Adolf Hitler, Trump has spoken of immigrants “poisoning the blood” of America.

Taken as a whole, the combative, incendiary and isolationist rhetoric fits the philosophy of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. First used by Ronald Reagan in 1980, and trademarked by Trump, MAGA espouses the belief that America, which was once a great country, has lost its standing in the world because of the effects of immigration and multi-culturalism within its borders. The antidote to reverse the curse is America first.

If one were to say ethnic cleansing similar to that perpetrated against Bosnian Muslims by Serbia under Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic is coming to America, the reflexive and resounding reaction by right-wing zealots would be: “That can never happen in America.” On the basis of evidence that’s in full view, that may very well turn out to be comfort to a fool.

Tuesday, November 5, 2024 American voters went to the polls to elect their 47th president. Donald Trump prevailed against the odds. Time will tell if his pronouncements were merely loose talk or the foretelling of a sinister plot born of a nativist instinct to make America not just great again, but white again.

Dr Henley W Morgan is founder and executive chairman of the Trench Town-based Social Enterprise, Agency for Inner-city Renewal, and author of My Trench Town Journey – Lessons in Social Entrepreneurship and Community Transformation for Policy Makers, Development Leaders, and Practitioners available at Amazon.com. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or hmorgan@cwjamaica.com.