Immigration, citizenship and those “go home” tweets

The condemnation has been so universal that they’ve even passed a resolution in Congress about it, but Matthew is not convinced that it’s racist:

I’m not sure that, in his offensive comments about the four Congresswomen of colour whom Donald Trump has been insulting in his tweets, the president was dabbling in racist politics.

I don’t like his attacks but I think they will strike a chord among millions who should not be called racists. It’s just futile to suppose that arrivals from another country, and their children, immediately and automatically assume an identity as citizens that is indistinguishable from that of the population already there. They have all the same rights, but will be seen, for a generation or two, as neither better nor worse but different.

We do still speak of “second generation immigrants” and the expression has meaning. And, yes, there is such a thing as courtesy to a host country, even if it’s now theirs too. If in earlier centuries the many Irish and Italian (white) immigrants to the US had seemed to attack too fiercely and too early the beliefs and values of the country that had taken them or their parents in,  they would have attracted irritation.

“Why did they come there, then?” is a question that, like it or not, would be asked. I think I’d ask it too: or at least think it.
– THE TIMES

There has been widespread condemnation from, among others, fellow Times columnist Caitlin Moran, writers Musa Okwonga (“for shame”) and Jolyon Rubenstein (“deeply disturbing”).

The Verdict

One of Matthew Parris’s many strengths is that he is not on Twitter; he is nearly seventy, uninterested in social media and floats loftily above the fray (or did until his self-confessed Brexit madness). On this occasion, I’m afraid to say, it seems he floated so high he snapped the moorings.

One of the great strengths of the nation state is that membership is binary. You’re either a citizen or you’re not. It’s sacred. Once you’re in, everyone has the same rights. You can’t be a half-member for a few generations, tiptoeing around being grateful and charming until you have earned the right to say what you think.

Yes, some people might think “why don’t you go home” when they see immigrants they don’t like, and by accounts people even say this out loud depressingly often: that behaviour is generally grouped under the term “racism” and is rightly considered not cool. The example Matthew gives of earlier Irish immigrants in the US isn’t great, because they were the victims of horrendous bigotry until recently (remember “No Blacks. No Dogs. No Irish” signs?). Whether this historic abuse was technically racism or not is frankly not that interesting. It stinks just as much.

Trump is supposed to be all about “America First”, protecting his citizens. But when the President starts suggesting some citizens’ “home” is elsewhere just because they are immigrants he is undermining exactly the rights of the people that he’s supposed to be all about defending.

Ironically, it’s a very globalist, unTrumpian world view, in which people are all sloshing about and if they don’t like it somewhere they should simply move. Coming from Trump, it gives energy to the unspoken idea that the only true citizens are the white ones.

The best argument for nation states – something people forget amidst all the current concern about rising nationalism – is that they act as a bulwark against racism, because they provide an alternative way of grouping people that supplants ethnic/religious/language groups. Any distinctions between degrees of membership dangerously undermines this core concept.

Sorry Matthew, you got this one wrong.

Matthew Parris’s Response