Category Archives: Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) blog
Emil Guillermo: Donald Trump shows he’d really rather be Rush Limbaugh and not the president of the free world
I wrote about Trump here.
And made the historical link for Trump.
This morning, Trump made the link himself.
On MSNBC Tuesday, Trump linked his immigration ban of Muslims to Roosevelt’s classification of thousands of Japanese, Germans and Italians living in the United States during the war as “enemy aliens.”
“This is a president highly respected by all; he did the same thing,” Trump said. The nation was at war in the 1940s, he said, and it is now “at war with radical Islam.”
How’s that for an image: Trump holding up one of FDR’s biggest miscues as some virtuous achievement.
It wasn’t.
Later, Trump clarified that he wasn’t necessarily advocating an internment camp situation, as he wouldn’t apply his harsh ban to U.S. Muslims living abroad.
“If a person is a Muslim, goes overseas and comes back, they can come back,” he said. “They’re a citizen. That’s different. But we have to figure things out.”
Well, the U.S. is still very harsh on Muslims. Just look at Guantanamo. Trump could have called for an expanded Guantanamo approach, a lock’em up and throw away the key plan.
But that’s complicating things.
Trump’s satisfied with just being as his critics are calling him, bigoted and racist.
And this is the man who wants to be the leader of the free world?
Emil Guillermo: After the rage, there should be no debate; Gun violence, mass killings have become like “Groundhog Day” in our country, a wicked cliché and a perversion of American freedom. What are we going to do?
I’ve written so much about gun violence in the last year alone, the broken record has become like the movie, “Groundhog Day.”
You think the president is tired of it?
People who have had a bullet shatter their lives with the loss of a loved one know all too well.
And the best NRA supporters can say is “gun up.” This isn’t a matter of self-defense. This is about public policy now. Guns, and more guns, is like adding one too many jalapeno into the pot. We don’t need more.
Enough is enough.
My cousin Stephen was just a single death. But it doesn’t matter. They all add up. They all didn’t have to happen. And they only happened because laws enabled shooters to become killers.
The 2nd Amendment shouldn’t be open season on Americans.
Emil Guillermo: “Immigration Interruptus” kept Asian American numbers artificially low for 50 years–and then the racist quotas ended and we all came in.
I often wondered why I was one of the few Asian Americans in my elementary school pre-1965.
There weren’t that many of us due to racist immigration quotas.
The flow of immigration was stopped cold.
The few of us Asian Americans in school were really the lucky ones. Our parents got through the political-socio-biological constraints and were able to start families.
But when that dammed up process finally changed, we now have places like my alma mater, Lowell High in San Francisco.
Whole lots of Asian Americans.
And Daly City.
Whole lot of Filipinos.
Asian Americans will be the No. 1 immigrant group by 2065, and we have the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act to thank for that.
It was signed into law Oct. 3, 1965.
No more “Immigration Interruptus.”
Happy 50th Anniversary. Let’s party like it isn’t 1964.