Biden must adopt a pro-immigrant vision of America
If the president truly wants to defend “the soul of our nation” during his speech on Thursday at Independence Hall, he must address how the vilification of immigrants threatens our democracy.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden will speak at Independence Hall in a much-hyped prime-time speech reported to focus on defending democracy and fighting for “the soul of our nation.”
This “soul” reference, of course, was Biden’s primary argument for running (again) in his initial 2019 presidential campaign announcement video. While I fully agree with the president that America’s soul is in deeper danger than at any other time in recent memory, he continues to miss the critical point of why our democracy is so in peril.
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One of the key driving engines of this growing authoritarian movement in our country was referenced heavily in that 2019 Biden video. In fact, Biden cited the Unite the Right tragedy in Charlottesville, Va., as one of the reasons he decided to run again. And while we remember Charlottesville and the images of hundreds of white supremacists marching with tiki torches, we must also remember their chants of “you will not replace us.”
These chants were a direct reference to “replacement theory,” which claims that immigrants are being brought to the U.S. to replace white citizens politically, economically, and culturally. As outlandish as this conspiracy theory might seem to many of us, it’s a pillar of the white power movement’s ideology and has been cited as motivation for numerous mass shootings, from El Paso, Texas, to Buffalo, N.Y., to the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. Last year’s July Fourth weekend in Philadelphia saw an estimated 200 members of Patriot Front, an openly fascist group seeking a white ethnostate, hold an abbreviated march through our city, with demonstrators holding a banner that read “Reclaim America.”
Reclaim for whom you might ask?
According to its manifesto, citizens of the “European diaspora.” This disturbing anti-democratic fervor is built on the fear and hatred of immigrants of color and is finding its way into our mainstream political dialogue.
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A recent NPR/Ipsos poll found that a slight majority of Americans agreed that what’s occurring at the southern border could be called an “invasion,” a term popularized by white nationalists, Donald Trump, and Fox News talking heads. In other words, the xenophobic authoritarian movement is building momentum.
The mission of my organization, the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition, is to advance immigrant rights and create a more welcoming, inclusive, and just Pennsylvania. We believe the president must stop ducking immigration because of fears he is losing politically on the issue. You don’t win a political argument by not showing up, and ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away. Now is the time for leadership, political courage, and bold action.
In this moment, Biden must learn that pushing an anti-racist immigration vision is one of the most effective ways of taking head-on the “semi-fascist” movement.
This disturbing anti-democratic fervor is built on the fear and hatred of immigrants of color.
So what can be done? The president can move to dismantle the structures that allowed Trump to assault our immigrant communities. This means winding down and canceling the detention of immigrants awaiting their immigration court hearings, the overwhelming majority of whom have no criminal record and pose zero threat to the public. Here in Pennsylvania, that includes shutting down the Berks County detention facility in Reading that continues to imprison women, something my organization called for during a demonstration in front of the White House last week. It also includes shuttering the much larger facility in Clearfield County, which now incarcerates family members from across the Northeast.
Biden can also end the practice known as 287(g), a federal program that encourages and authorizes local police to arrest undocumented community members, driving an even larger wedge between our communities of color and law enforcement. There are several agreements in place in neighboring states such as Maryland and Virginia; in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed a bill mandating local law enforcement to participate in 287(g), and other states are trying to follow suit.
Most importantly, President Biden must model political courage to his fellow Democrats by ending the use of the Trump-Stephen Miller policy of Title 42, which leveraged COVID-19 as an excuse to deny asylum-seekers at our southern border their due process.
These are all first steps toward an anti-racist immigration policy. To truly restore our nation’s soul and defend our democracy, we must aggressively move toward a pro-immigrant vision of America. Whether he knew it at the time or not, it is at the heart of why Biden decided to run for president.
Andy Kang is the executive director of the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition and cochair of FIRM Action.