A CENTRAL tenet of President Donald Trump’s administration is to transform the US into a white Christian nation. Towards this end, fully armed Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are harassing everyone who is not white. Refusing to adhere to any constitutional constraints, they are dragging out black and brown children from high schools, employees from stores and travellers from airports and taking them to detention centres even if they are US citizens. In Minneapolis, where a white woman Renee Good was killed as a result of this frenzy, ICE agents were going into Somali-American neighbourhoods and pulling out entire families for detention.

It is no surprise then that this week, the State Department tweeted that it would “pause immigrant visa processing from 75 countries whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates. The freeze will remain active until the US can ensure that new immigrants will not extract wealth from the American people”. Following this, the list of countries was released, with the implicit allegation that those applying for immigration from these states were dependent on public benefits after arriving in the US, i.e.,........

© Dawn