“That’s what America is about, a land of dreams and opportunity,’’ said HUD Secretary Ben Carson. “There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters, might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”
It’s a more cheerful vision than “Roots,” for sure – bands of plucky slaves win a cruise and plow the ocean blue chasing dreams of better lives in America. Granted, pretty much any life would be better than that of being ballast in a slave ship, so perhaps the horrors that were to come in America were a still a step up for these involuntary immigrants. Still, America’s first African Americans probably would have preferred to ditch the “American” part of their identity and just stay home.
This is not to suggest that all immigrants don’t get Dr. Carson’s vision of America as a land of dreams and opportunity. For the four million-plus refugees fleeing Syria for their lives, dreams and opportunity must look pretty darn good compared with death and destruction. This is especially true for parents trying to keep their children out of harm’s way. Curious thing about those Syrians – they seem to care just as much about their kids as Americans do. Another interesting factoid about Syrians is that they seem to care less about killing Americans than Americans do. While nearly 13,000 Americans were shot to death by other Americans in 2015, the number killed by Syrian refugees on American soil was zero. In fact, Syrian refugees have never killed an American in a terrorist act in America. Syrian refugees seem like model citizens – or, at least, potential model citizens – if they were permitted to follow in the wake of those immigrant slave ships across the Atlantic.
In order to keep America safe, Trump’s travel ban blocks Syrian nationals from entering the United States along with citizens from five other countries whose people have never killed an American in a terrorist act on American soil. Under the ban, citizens from the four counties that gave us the terrorists that killed 2,996 people on 9/11 are considered safe and allowed to enter the country.
Coincidentally, while the president doesn’t do business in any of the six banned countries, he has personal business interests in three of the four 9/11 countries, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt.
In Emma Lazarus’ poem, The New Colossus, Liberty calls out to the world:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”
In the 18th and 19th centuries, slaves yearned to breathe free from their captors, though their financial value proved irresistible, unlocking America’s doors for the people Secretary Carson calls immigrants. Their worth enabled presidents to suppress the notion that these people were really people, entitled to the same unalienable rights that Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner, wrote about in the Declaration of Independence.
Syrian refugees don’t have perceived value to our current president, though they do share one thing in common with slaves: they aren’t viewed as people. This leaves the president free to chum dark waters for the adulation of a group of Americans who, in the course of forgetting their own immigrant ancestry, have also forgotten what it means to be American.