I am not a fan of Donald Trump, the incumbent President of
the United States. I didn’t stand with him. I stood with her- Hillary Clinton-
in the last US Presidential election. No other election in recent American
history has been more international in terms of interest and emotional
involvement. Trump’s election even divided the Nigerian middle class.
Majority of Christians in Nigeria stood with Donald Trump. They liked his
anti-Muslim rhetoric, and in a country where religion is such a volatile
subject and the Christian community feels as if it is under siege from radical
Islamic extremism, it was easy for a category of Nigerians to see Trump’s
politics being in sync with their own fears and expectations.
Pro-secessionist, Biafran and Christian protesters in the
South East also supported Trump. On his Inauguration Day, they organized a
rally, some of them were killed, in the process, by Nigerian security
agents. It is always so easy to read American politics into every other
politics globally because of America’s status as a superior power and the
global dominance of its culture. Many Nigerians who opposed Hillary
Clinton of the Democratic Party also did so, for example, for partisan reasons,
because they felt the Democratic administration of President Barrack Obama was
responsible in many ways for the outcome of the 2015 Presidential election in
Nigeria. They wanted a pound of flesh – they wanted the Democrats out of the
White House, the same way the PDP exited Aso Villa. The funny thing is that
Nigerians who do not hold American citizenship, were not in a position to vote
in the US election, but this didn’t deter us from weeping more than the
Americans. In my case, I opposed Trump because I consider him a vile,
navel-gazing, crude, child-like nativist, whose Presidency could pose a threat
to the free world.
I have been proven right. The United States is in trouble
because of Donald Trump. In less than two weeks in office, President
Trump has signed executive orders, which amount to an assault on the liberal
international order. America is great because it became the dreamland and the
symbol of freedom, prosperity and fulfillment for persons and families across
the world. It is great because it became the melting pot for global genius, the
preferred destination for generations of talented persons in all fields of
human endeavour. America is great because its diversity and multiculturalism
became pillars of its exceptionalism.
Donald Trump, on twitter where he spends his waking hours, and
on the podium, where he rants, says his ambition is to “Make America Great
Again” (#MAGA), but it is beginning to look as if Trump will end up making
America small. The Executive Orders which he has signed so far, are
intended to upturn America’s foreign policy in the last 50 years, isolate the
country from the rest of the world and turn it into an island. America appears
destined to become a pariah state for the next four years. With Trump, America
now sees the rest of the world as an ocean of enemies, with this persecution
complex dressed up as national interest.
The most pernicious of the Executive Orders is Trump’s
suspension of the US refugee programme for four months and the entry ban for 90
days imposed on nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and
Yemen. Is the action legal? Section 212(f) of the US Immigration and
Nationality Act (INA) (1952) empowers the President to restrict immigration
access to the United States:
“Whenever the President finds that the entry of any
aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to
the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period
as he shall deem necessary suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of
aliens as immigrants and non-immigrants or impose on the entry of aliens any
restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”
The sentiment behind this legal provision is protectionism,
which is ironic in a country of immigrants.
This is Donald Trump keeping his campaign promise to protect
America for Americans and review immigration policies. Is this new? No. Over
the years, America has always tried to control the influx of immigrants.
This was the case even under President Barack Obama. Trump reminds us of the
1882 Chinese Exclusion Act which turned back the Chinese, and a similar law in
1924, which targeted Asian and African immigrants, both of which were corrected
by the Immigration Act of 1965, which forbids discrimination on the basis of
national origin, ancestry and race. The only problem is that Trump’s
approach is crazy, a case of policy mixed with bigotry and narcissism, and an
unconstitutional gambit which violates the First Amendment, hidden under the
banner of “protecting the nation from foreign terrorist entry.” Given the
contradictions between the 1952 and 1965 Acts and the First Amendment, Trump’s
actions are perhaps better tested in the court of law.
He wants to build a wall at the Mexican border. This
has already caused a rift with Mexico. He is also holding radical Islam
responsible for security breaches in the United States, and this is certainly
because foreign-born Muslims have been responsible for many acts of terror in
the US: the 9/11, the Boston bombing, the Nigerian underwear bomber; across
Europe, radical Islamic extremism has also proven to be a problem.
Trump’s solution is to demonize Muslim-majority countries and arrive at the
simple solution that the best way to protect America is to shut out the
Muslims. He insists that “This is not about religion – this is about
terror and keeping our country safe. There are 40 different countries worldwide
that are majority Muslim that are not affected by this order.” I don’t believe
him.
The chosen seven countries that have been shut out have not
in any way been responsible for most of the acts of terror in the US in recent
times. Trump leaves out Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and other
Muslim-majority countries, but the kind of chaos that has been generated makes
every Muslim going to the United States vulnerable. You don’t have to be from
the seven targeted countries, once you bear a Muslim name, you could be
subjected to greater scrutiny by Customs and Border Protection Officers.
Some of the people who have been harassed at the borders since last Friday when
the Executive Order was passed are American citizens with dual nationality.
While Donald Trump is proposing greater vetting and scrutiny
of the influx of Muslims, and refugees, he is nevertheless willing to allow
more Christians into the United States. This is the message that comes across:
Christians are welcome. Muslims should be carefully scrutinized before they are
allowed in. In other words, Christians are better than Muslims. This may
sound like an over-simplification, but that is just how it is. President Trump
is likely to make the United States more unpopular in the Muslim world, damage
established friendships and promote a culture of hate that has proven a threat
to American foreign relations in parts of the world.
American liberals are justifiably upset and angry. President
Trump’s policy moves and rhetoric depart from the America they have known for
the past 50 years. But right now, America is so divided, nobody can
comfortably sit on the fence, and that is why public opinion is so viciously
divided too. Trump addresses the fears of those Americans who, like him, don’t
want more immigrants and asylum seekers. This is the ultimate rise of American
xenophobia and an attempt to turn that country into “a camp of saints.”
But there are limits to nativism as seen in Jean Raspail’s novel, The
Camp of the Saints (1973) and The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants
vs. The Environment (2011) by Lisa Park and David Pellow.
But no matter the tone of global outrage, Donald Trump
obviously doesn’t give a damn. Mexico has cancelled a meeting with Trump, a
protest calling for signatures to prevent his proposed state visit to the UK
has attracted over a million signatures, Iran is threatening reciprocal action,
the entire Muslim world is outraged and inside America, California is
threatening to secede because of Trump! And Trump? He wants to be President of
the United States, not President of the world. He wants to serve the American
people who voted him into power, not some immigrants coming from the slums of
Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Across the world, there
are millions who look up to the United States as the land of freedom. Trump is
saying America is no longer ready to be the world’s Atlas nation. It is
not just immigration that will be affected: trade, aid, military relations as
well. This has created a regime of fear among many who depend on the
United States.
There are millions of Africans living in the United States,
particularly Nigerians. They don’t all have the papers granting them the
right of stay. There are asylum seekers, refugees and many who are still
processing their residency papers. An American for Americans only policy is
likely to place them at the risk of rejection and eventual deportation. When
you talk to some of them, you can actually sense panic, fear, despair. They
panic because America has become their adopted home. It is their place of work,
their source of hope, and the best place in the world where they are happiest.
They panic because their original homeland offers them
little hope. They don’t want to return to a Nigeria where there is no regular
power supply, employment opportunities, good roads, communications or
transportation system. Living in America confers a special status on them among
friends, family members and the community at home. There are others who
are already naturalized Americans, and who may have nothing to fear, and there
are those Nigerians who have helped to build America with their talents and
intellect, and who don’t really care on what side of the bed Donald Trump is
likely to wake up tomorrow morning.
Then you have the big crowd of I-must-go-to-America-by-force
set of Nigerians who are daily trooping to the American embassy in search of
visa. Since the Executive Order by President Trump, that crowd has not been
smiling at all. I know many of our compatriots who have suddenly become experts
in analyzing American immigration rules. Nigeria is not one of the seven
countries on the Trump list and the review and restriction are supposed to last
for 120 days, but long-time US visa applicants in Nigeria believe that what a
typical American immigration officer has actually been looking for is a
President like Trump. An inconsolable applicant tells me he is no longer sure
he will ever get a visa to the United States.
I assured him that the world will always need America and
America will always need the world. Isolationism discounts the ideal of
an interconnected global order. President Donald Trump’s success will be
determined in the long run not by the arrows he shoots in the international
arena from North Korea, to China, to Mexico and Somalia, but how well he
fulfills the promise to make America greater than he met it. If they don’t want
you to stay in America, come home, please. Stay at home, e go better…
or go to Canada or Taiwan.
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