Let us not suffer from a national amnesia that causes us to forget who and what we are.
–Meir Kahane
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, left, requests entrance to the holding facility for immigrant children in Tornillo, Texas, near the Mexican border.
Public amnesia is a common theme in the political history of every nation. One thing that people learn from history is that they learn nothing. Nowadays, the White House is under the occupation of a populist president, Mr Donald Trump. Among many other regressive policies that he want to implement includes a more strict policy on immigration to the United States of America. What is ironic is the fact that the present day America is a composition of different immigrants from the rest of the world irrespective of ones colour.
Coming to 21st century American attitude towards immigration changed a lot. Presidents irrespective of what party they belonged to in the past had adopted harsh approach on immigration. Former president, Barack Obama, favourite of many white liberals, holds worse record than Trump on immigration. While Trump rightly deserves admonition for separating children from their immigrant families as such actions tear families apart, very few criticised Obama for doing the same. Under Obama administration, the US official detained more than 90,000 children. Obama holds the record for deporting more immigrants than any president, with more than 2 million deportations over eight years. Trump is carrying forward the mission of closing the American lands to immigrants from where Obama left it.
One can say it with ease that the effects of Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy for prosecuting illegal entry this spring are reminiscent, for those who have been following the immigration phenomenon for a while, of what the Obama administration did in 2014.