Reflecting on Immigrant Heritage Month: How Trump Endangers American Immigrants
By Hanna Detwiler, Ohio Democratic Party Communications Intern
For many Americans, Donald Trump’s rogue candidacy can be shrugged off — even made funny. But for the more than 42.4 million immigrants living in this country — it’s a direct threat to their daily lives. I was able to meet with three Ohio residents who shared their personal experiences with immigration in the United States, and the very personal attacks they have faced with Trump now the standard-bearer of the Republican Party. Here are three powerful experiences of American immigrants, who also now face the prospect of a candidate who is campaigning on the promise to make their lives — and the lives of 50 million immigrants, much worse.
LEO’S STORY: THE LONG AND EXPENSIVE ROAD TO CITIZENSHIP
The Trump candidacy has been credited with sparking a surge of applications for citizenship and voter registration from Hispanic and Latino residents. The final three months of 2015 showed a 14 percent increase of citizenship application submissions, compared to the year before. Leo Almeida understands the draw a landmark presidential election has on the decision to become a United States citizen. In 2009, inside a small high school auditorium, he was finally declared a naturalized citizen of the United States of America.
As this new wave of citizens joins the American population, a misconception plagues our country about the ease of the immigration process — it’s really, really hard. For Almeida, it took 17 years from the time he arrived in the United States to the time he was officially a citizen. This almost two-decades-long journey was plagued with endless paperwork, bureaucratic red tape and unforeseen expenses.
Leo Almeida was about to turn five when he and his mother left Porto Alegre, Brazil, in August of 1992. The vast array of opportunities attracted Almeida’s mother to America, to ensure her son was given a better life. The pair started out with a workers’ visa and had to maintain heaps of paperwork each year in order to remain in the country. A caseworker was assigned to Almeida and his mother. However, instead of helping with the process, the caseworker was eventually fired for losing paperwork for multiple cases — including that of the Almeidas. Luckily, the issue was resolved before they were forced to restart the entire process.
For Almeida, it took 17 years from the time he arrived in the United States to the time he was officially a citizen.
Leo finally was able to obtain a green card during his sophomore year of high school. But having a green card just meant that Leo was a permanent resident of the United States and still needed to wait another five years until he was able to apply for legal citizenship. And in addition to waiting, Leo had to pay $700 for the citizenship application and subsequent exam. As a high school student who was saving to go to college, $700 was no small sum, and Leo deemed the price too expensive for him at that time and reluctantly put his citizenship dream on hold.
In 2008, Leo was determined to finally get the money and apply for citizenship in order to be eligible to vote for then-Sen. Barack Obama. Leo tried to get his application and exams approved before the deadline to register to vote, but as he was accustomed to, he had to wait until after the election to see results in the bureaucratic process.
In the beginning of 2009, days before the inauguration of President Barack Obama, Leo was finally scheduled for his citizenship exam. In 2008 there was a transition from a paper, multiple choice test to an “interview” which he says felt “more like a police interrogation”. It was him, the immigration officer and a camera. As one of the exam questions, the immigration officer asked who the current President of the United States was. Leo, being a politically active student, knew that on that day it was George W. Bush. But in only a few days it would be Barack Obama. Leo reflected then on his mother, who would soon after go through the same examination process. His mother was not so privileged as he was to have grown up in the American education system, and she could have easily answered the question incorrectly.
As prospective citizens flood Congressional offices and call naturalization inquiry hotlines, many may be faced with the same 17-year-long reality that Leo and his mother endured. Despite conservative rhetoric, it is not easy to become a citizen of the United States.
AFTAB’S STORY: THE THREAT TO BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP
Donald Trump continues his attack on American immigrants with his promise to end birthright citizenship — using the slur “anchor babies” to refer to citizens naturalized at birth. Trump questions their citizenship, saying he too knows “some very, very good lawyers” who would say there is a constitutional loophole that would take away their citizenship.
Fact: Birthright citizenship is promised by the Fourteenth Amendment, stating “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside.”
Aftab Pureval would not be a citizen without the promise made in the Fourteenth Amendment. For him, this status as a U.S. citizen is directly threatened by Donald Trump.
Aftab Pureval is a Dayton native running for Clerk of Courts in Hamilton County. Aftab’s parents both immigrated to America before he was born, his father from India and his mother from Tibet. Aftab is a citizen because of birthright citizenship. Because Aftab is a citizen of the United States, he is able to run for public office and make a difference in his community. Trump’s proposed revocation of birthright citizenship would dramatically affect the future of countless young people just like Aftab — who will work hard and become the best of our national story.
Aftab feels that his story is the definition of the American Dream. He went from being the son of a family of refugees to appearing on the ballot this November.
Aftab knows one thing: that only one man so far has succeeded with a funny name and a mixed identity, and he’s almost done with his time in the White House.
But the challenge Aftab Pureval’s name brings to his campaign is nothing new. He has spent the majority of his life accommodating those around him by not correcting the common mispronunciation of the long ‘a’ vowel sound in the second syllable of his name. Aftab remembers his kindergarten teacher suggesting he go by the name ‘Adam’ in order to make it easier for the other kids to call on him. The next day, Aftab’s mother walked into the classroom and told the teacher, “His name is Aftab, not Adam.”
For Aftab, Trump’s proposed ban on birthright citizenship is a personal attack. To Donald Trump, our nation would be better if Aftab Pureval was never given the chance he was — and he’s staked his candidacy on taking that away from future generations. Aftab feels that his story is the definition of the American Dream. He went from being the son of a family of refugees to appearing on the ballot this November. He cites the demonizing of immigrants from the Trump campaign as only damaging to the ability for families to reach the American Dream our country promises.
EMILIJA’S STORY: WHAT A “BAN ON MUSLIMS” REALLY MEANS
An official press release for the Donald Trump campaign stated, “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” For immigrants from the Balkan region of Eastern Europe, this ban sounds all too familiar. For a girl named Emilija Papić, this ban is identical to the one that caused the war and ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia that her parents escaped nearly 20 years ago.
I was introduced to Emilija through a colleague, and she was eager to share her story of being a first-generation immigrant in America. Emilija is preparing for her first semester at Ohio State University in the fall. The campus is in the heart of the electoral battleground state, and it will certainly be a backdrop for the two presidential candidates come October and November. Emilijia was born in Germany, where her parents took asylum during the years of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. Her parents left Yugoslavia as the country shattered under nationalist leaders. Her family moved to America when she was two years old, causing Emilija to feel tethered to both the deep history of her Balkan roots and the American culture she grew up in.
Given the deep scar of the destruction of Yugoslavia, Emilija’s family can hardly stand watching the rise of the GOP nominee, Donald Trump. During dinner, the Papić family often discusses their past and the political discord that has dominated the majority of their lives. Emilija took a moment to ask her father how he feels about Trump, noticing that she had never heard her father mention him before. Emijia’s father mentioned his disgust from seeing the man dominate the news media. He usually turns his attention away when the billionaire is being broadcast over the news.
But then Emilija’s father heard him mention his desire to put a ban on Muslims in the country. A wave of impending doom washed over the Bosnian refugee. He heard those same words come out of the Slobodan Milošević’s mouth before his home country descended into war. To Emilija’s father, Muslim people were his brothers. He shared his home country with Slavic Muslims, their experiences were the same despite his Catholic upbringing. Emilija’s father was afraid the United States was going to turn into the exact environment that he had escaped.
Unfortunately, this was not the first time Emilija’s family had felt threatened in America. Before I finished talking to Emilija, she wanted to make sure I knew about the one story that has stuck with her and defines her experience as a first-generation immigrant. Emilija recalls a time when she, her mother, her brother and two family friends went to Rising Park in Lancaster to enjoy a sunny day. When the group parked, Emilija noticed they were near a truck with a large Confederate flag displayed in the window. Emilija immediately felt her stomach drop, a feeling similar to her father’s reaction to Donald Trump’s nationalistic speeches. The passengers in the truck turned their attention to Emilija’s family as her mother began to speak Bosnian. Emilija recalls the passengers turning to each other and tapping each other on the shoulder, directing attention to her group.
Emilija’s father was afraid the United States was going to turn into the exact environment that he had escaped.
Emilija and her family kept walking, but the truck shifted gears and started to follow them. Emilija immediately felt threatened. She recalls that this happened around the same time that innocent black people were being killed across the country, and she couldn’t help but wonder if their situations began in a similar manner. Emilija begged her family to get back into their car before anything terrible happened.
Once everyone was safely back in the car, Emilija’s mother uttered words that perfectly describe the climate Donald Trump is inciting: “I now know what it’s like to be scared in America.”
Emilija has never felt un-American. Her family is Eastern European and therefore white. The only reason the people in the truck thought to terrorize them was because they happened to be speaking a different language. Emilija spent the majority of her life in the United States, she has people call her Ema instead of Emilija (to avoid confusion from the silent ‘j’), and she enjoys spending time with her friends.
Her safety, the safety of all Muslim families in America, is being compromised by Donald Trump’s vitriolic campaign. More people are expressing their interest in alienating and threatening people who seem different from them. Trump validates these people’s biases, enabling racial violence in the name of making “America Great Again.”
It’s hard to celebrate Immigrant Heritage Month without talking about the impact the Donald Trump candidacy has had on the topic of American citizenship. Donald Trump is dangerous. He has proposed bans on Muslims from entering the country, mass deportation of Mexican Americans and even upending the Constitution by reversing birthright citizenship. And now as Trump has clinched the Republican nomination, first-generation immigrants are concerned that his dangerous rhetoric could become more than just words.
Trump’s rise within the GOP shouldn’t be a surprise. The Republican Party has elevated offensive policies and extreme voices using divisive campaigns for years, and now they’re stuck with Trump.
Voting for Democrats this fall has never been more important. We need to continue moving forward and ensure all Americans feel safe in their communities. This Immigrant Heritage Month it is important to listen to the stories of those who have come to America to escape tyranny, to pursue a better life, to chase the American Dream. America’s diversity has always been its strength, and the immigrant experience is central to our nation’s history and identity. This June we must recognize the struggle and the progress American immigrants have experienced and especially remember these stories when we go to the polls later this year.
