… The majority of the women were from Latin American countries, but some were from India, China, Iran, Afghanistan and Gaza. “Most of them were asylum seekers, but there was this handful of new people who had come in recently who did not know why they were here.” Lewelyn joined the dorm a few days after Becky. She had just returned from visiting her family in the Philippines; she had been living in the US since 1976, working as a lab technician at the University of Washington hospital’s cancer centre. “She’d had a visa issue that had been resolved many years ago, but now it was flagging on the system again.” Kseniia, a Russian woman who had been working for two years in a California nail salon, had permission to work in the US but was handcuffed while waiting for her husband to come out of an Ice interview. “She was so confused. She kept saying to me, ‘I’ve got a work permit.’”
There were other tourists, too. Bana, from Romania, was on holiday in Canada and visited Peace Arch park, on the international boundary between the US and Canada. She told Becky she had been taking selfies with her husband when a US border official told her they had strayed into American territory without the right visa and took her into custody…
These stories are horrific.
Alongside the lack of demonstrated humanity is yet another long game of bankrupting everyone. This is how you destroy fifty states worth of tourism, and all the jobs that go with it. North Dakota and Iowa might not notice it, but most states will.
In addition, this is how you assure a lack of skilled labor and scientists, while speeding up brain drain. Education is done here, importing the educated is also done here. I guess the idea, for Trump, is to die with all the money and power and leave a sarcophagus of a nation in his wake.
Yup, like a lot of what Trump is doing, there will no recovery. It would take decades to rebuild the agencies and trust that’s been shattered, but the world doesn’t have decades. Even if it did, the new normal is that Republicans get to dismantle & destroy anything they don’t like.
Everything about America As It Was is finished. The new America will have only as much freedom and democracy as Republicans are willing to tolerate, which isn’t much.