Horowitz: Shutting the Door on Bahamian Hurricane Victims

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Rob Horowitz, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

President Donald Trump

President Trump’s decision to shut the door on Bahamians whose homes were leveled by Hurricane Dorian is the latest example of needless cruelty that has little or nothing with cracking down on illegal immigration.

Explaining why he is refusing to grant temporary protected status to Bahamians seeking shelter in the United States in the wake of the unprecedented wreckage resulting from Hurricane Dorian, President Trump declared, "I don't want to allow people that weren't supposed to be in the Bahamas to come into the United States, including some very bad people and some very bad gang members, and some very, very bad drug dealers. So, we're going to be very strong on that."

Apparently undeterred by the at least 50 people dead, 2,500 people missing and 76,000 people left homeless, the president went to his all too familiar move of demonizing people seeking to come to the United States with no evidence to back up his assertions. No one in his Administration could supply any documentation about the so-called Bahamian drug dealers and gang members cited by Trump--or more precisely invented by Trump.

“Temporary Protective Status” (TPS) provides impacted residents of nations made unsafe by natural disasters or wars and designated as such permission to stay and work in the United States for 18 months with the option to apply to extend their stay if conditions in their home country have not substantially improved. Established in 1990, there are currently 300,000 people staying in the United States under this program, which the Trump Administration is seeking to severely curtail.

Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ ) introduced legislation last week to reverse the Trump Administration’s decision and grant TPS status to Bahamians seeking to come to our shores. This would be a good first step, but this decision is part of a broader administration effort to implement a crabbed “blood and soil” conception of our nation.

President Trump’s refusal to help people in desperate shape just off our shore is part of an all-out effort to turn away refugees, abandoning our traditional leadership role in helping the world’s most at risk and threatened people, and to restrict legal immigration, removing a source of American economic and cultural renewal. At a time when the number of refugees in the world is at one of its highest peaks, the Trump Administration has already reduced the annual number we take in by 70% to only 30,000 a year and is considering cutting that low number by half or more.

As President Harry Truman said in leading the successful fight for the adoption of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act in words that still ring true today, “We are dealing with a human problem, a world tragedy. Let us remember that these are fellow human beings now living under conditions which frustrate hope; which make it impossible for them to take any steps, unaided, to build for themselves or their children the foundations of a new life. They live in corroding uncertainty of their future. Their fate is in our hands and must now be decided. Let us join in giving them a chance at decent and self-supporting lives.”

This is the expansive, compassionate and welcoming vision of our nation-- a vision that an overwhelming majority of our citizens still share and for which it is time to return.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.