Since Trump has come out in favor of sending some Americans back where they came from, the next logical questions are: “Send back whom?” “Send them Where?”
Is it only uppity women of color (who are also members of Congress), who qualify for the heave-ho if they offend Trump’s “amour propre?” Only one of his intended deportees was born elsewhere, so we may all be at risk. So how recently must one’s ancestors have arrived to be eligible for banishment from Trumplevania?
Trump’s mother wasn’t born in America, nor was his paternal grandfather. She was a Scot, he a Bavarian draft-dodger, illegal immigrant and brothel owner. So the president seems as ripe for eviction as three of his targets. He’s even a person of color. The FBI counterespionage investigators don’t call him Agent Orange for nothing.
It begins to look like only race and animus decide who gets the boot in the America Trump wants to create. Given his aptitude for animus, very few of us are likely to be safe from deportation to the land of our ancestors.
If enough people speak up loudly enough about Trump’s vile behavior, there are going to be a lot of planes aloft and ships at sea taking former Americans back to places they have never been. Will they be welcomed by their ancestors’ countries of origin, or will those lands be as anti-immigrant as Trump is striving to make the USA?
My wife’s ancestors are almost entirely Scotch-Irish and I’m not sure she’d want to be sent back to either of those places, though as long as she could still have her pension and Social Security checks deposited monthly in the Bank of Scotland or the Bank of Ireland they might regard her favorably. And if she could find a bridge game six days a week, she’d cheerfully emigrate to Hades.
My surname is Scottish, but the Monroes married several generations of Germans, so which do I get deported to? Can I choose? The equation gets more complicated on my mother’s side where there’s a grandmother with Welsh and English people and a grandfather with French-Canadian roots.
Can I choose either Canada or France? Canada speaks English, it’s handy if the next president decides I am still an acceptable American, worthy of repatriation, but it’s awfully chilly unless global warming accelerates. On the other hand, I don’t speak French, but would be willing to endure the inability to communicate in exchange for croissants, terrines, foie gras, several hundred kinds of fromage, almost as many sauces, bouillabaisse, moules frites, cuisses de grenouille, crepes, cassoulet, lapin a la moutarde, coq au vin, creme brulee. OMG, put me on the boat immediately. Except French politics is almost as cuckoo as ours.
Since the Trump plan to send undesirable citizens back is a bit vague, one also wonders if there’s an historical cutoff point beyond which Trump cannot pronounce you an honorary alien and cast you into outer darkness.
The most recently arrives ancestors I have are my French-Canadian great-grandfather who left Quebec for Rhode Island in the 1880s and my grandmother’s Welsh grandfather who arrived from Swansea in Maryland in time to fight in the Civil War. Almost all the rest were here before the Revolution. So, when has an American been here long enough to attain permanent citizen status no matter how much Trump dislikes him?
I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know, since his “send them home” policy is clearly no better thought out than the rest of his brilliant innovations —deterring immigration by treating new arrivals worse than the tyrants they are fleeing, deficit-exploding tax cuts for people too rich to need them, economy-undermining trade wars, relying on campaign consultants from the Kremlin to win the presidency. The list is long and shaming.
Maybe instead of imprisonment, impeachment, or defeat at the polls, the cure for Trump is the one he has prescribed for the Squad. Send him back! The problem is, who would take him? The Germans and the Scots seem to regard him with loathing. Maybe Melania’s home country of Slovenia would take him in. If his billions aren’t imaginary, her home town of Sevnica, population 4,993, might even let him run for Mayor.
Failing that, one of his besties – Vlad, Xi or Little Rocket Man — might give him house room. However, he might quickly discover the kind of autocracy he’s trying to create in America is a lot less fun if you’re not the autocrat. They don’t believe in free speech, for example, let alone the kind of incessant, incautious blather he indulges in.
Not that his palaver would be a problem for long. A few years in the gulag, the re-education camp, or the forced-labor camp would certainly curb his penchant or loose talk, and might even increase his appreciation for Constitutional democracy. Better late than never.