IN his efforts to restore America’s supposed greatness, Donald Trump has launched a crackdown on migrants — mostly undocumented but also some with papers.

Soon after re-entering the White House a week ago, the US president signed a raft of executive orders designed to deliver on his campaign promises. These orders have included the rounding up of migrants signalling the start of what the White House press secretary has termed “the largest massive deportation operation in history”.

Moreover, a ‘Muslim ban-plus’ has been announced; it goes even further than the 2017 order, which prevented citizens from certain Muslim-majority countries from travelling to the US.

Foreign students in America who dare to speak up for Palestine also risk being put on a plane back home. Also, the US president has frozen the asylum and refugee programmes; at least 25,000 Afghans waiting to move to the US in Pakistan now find themselves in limbo.

For Mr Trump and his MAGA support base, these moves are necessary to preserve what they view as the American way of life. The fact is that the world over, the far right tends to blame foreigners and migrants for all of society’s ills.

And as history shows, such developments have occurred previously as well. For example, Chinese individuals were barred from entering the US under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

For the atavist in Donald Trump, these are probably models worthy of emulation to restore America’s ‘greatness’. Yet it should be noted that Mr Trump himself has a close connection with migration. His wife Melania was born in Slovenia, which was then part of Yugoslavia, while his late ex-wife Ivana was born in communist Czechoslovakia.

If the directives President Trump is championing had been in effect then, both these women from socialist countries would have likely been kept out of the US. Clearly, the US leader does not have a problem with all migrants.

He once observed that America should admit more people from countries like Norway, and not Haiti and El Salvador. Perhaps the colour of one’s skin, and the religion one follows, are the key determinants qualifying one as a ‘good’ migrant in Mr Trump’s world.

Immigrants from around the world have made the US what it is today. Yet these realities matter little to the champions and supporters of Trumpism. Mr Trump’s moves are likely to fuel greater racism and xenophobia in the US, as all foreigners will be seen as standing in the way of America’s greatness.

The US is basically following Europe’s lead, where the far right has practically declared war on migrants. People from across the globe who seek to reach American shores must now accept the new reality: Mr Trump has pulled the welcome mat.

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2025