Host Joy Reid asked, “We have reported that Stephen Miller sees this crisis as an opportunity to install his long-term vision of shutting down much of nonwhite immigration. That is a story, very important to Texas, very relevant to Texas. What do you make of the fact there are people in the White House who see this as an opportunity to keep more brown people out of the United States?”
O’Rourke said, “You’re absolutely right about this being part and parcel of a much larger trend and a much more encompassing effort on the part of the Trump Administration to stop nonwhite immigration into the United States. We know from the leaked phone call transcript, reported by The Washington Post, that this is not just a 60-day order as we were led to believe by the president. This is part of a long-term plan to stop immigration. Really important for us at this moment to remember that a quarter of those who are working in our clinics, in our hospitals right now, were born in another country. If your life is saved during this pandemic, good chance an immigrant saved your life.”
“At a time of increasing food insecurity, nearly 80% of the people working in the fields, those when our restaurants reopen working in the kitchens, born in another country,” O’Rourke continued. “Those who come up with the innovations including the cures for the vaccines, good chance they’re going to be immigrants as well. So this is self-defeating, against the national interests of this country, but it is also morally repugnant because, in addition to what you just described, we have what will soon be COVID death camps on our southern border. The Orwellian named migrant protection protocol, which forced those who traveled 2,000 miles to lawfully apply for asylum in this country. No money, no connections, no access to healthcare. This is a perfect breeding ground for Coronavirus. We should follow our own laws and higher moral calling and make sure we allow these people to asylum to stay with families and in communities where they can be kept safe and by extension all of them can be kept safe. We’re all connected at the end of the day.”
He added, “So this anti-immigrant rhetoric and anti-immigrant policies very dangerous, very deadly. One more point, Joy, we knew before that what the president was signaling was being picked up by the far-right white nationalist terrorists. One of whom drove 600 miles to El Paso, Texas, and opened fire in a Walmart last August, killing 22 people, trying to stop the invasion and the infestation that President Trump has been warning everybody about. So very, very dangerous rhetoric, very dangerous policies, at a very dangerous time.”
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