UK-born actor Alan Cumming went on the attack against Americans who support enforcing the country’s immigration laws, accusing them and President Donald Trump of racism and people who “deny” that America is a nation of immigrants.
Cumming, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Scotland, assailed and generalized Americans in an op-ed published by NBC News in which he conflates supporting immigration laws with being a racist. The actor also sets up a series of base assumptions and straw men that he then knocks down to scold anyone who wishes to put limits on immigration.
Noting that the U.S. is only a few hundred years old and all Americans have a near familial history with immigrants and immigration, Cumming slams America for being “self-hating” for not supporting untrammeled immigration.
The Instinct star exclaims that “from the outside — from a place like Europe — the idea that Americans are not connected to immigration and our immigrant pasts seems like we are denying ourselves. We sound very self-hating about the very notion of immigration, but we’re actually just confusing racism with a desire to fix the immigration system.”
Cumming may wish to conflate wanting to set limits on immigration with “racism,” and he may want to insist that pro-enforcement activists are somehow “denying” their own history, but just who are the proponents of limiting immigration who deny that immigration is a key part of America’s success story? Indeed, activists who want some limits on immigration also encourage immigration; they just want it done legally.
But to Cumming, people who support limits and regulations on immigration are just “racists.” And it is all Donald Trump’s fault:
I see that all the time: Things that are being said about immigration and the ideals of immigration are basically just being used as a thinly veiled form of racism. It’s so blatant. The president himself actually said he doesn’t mind people coming from countries like Norway — white people; it’s the people from “shithole countries” he doesn’t want. It seems almost pedantic and obsolete to actually have to talk about the fact that it’s racism.
Cumming obscenely adds, “The contributions of all immigrants has been so derided by our present administration, so I felt that I needed to celebrate immigration rather than have it openly derided.”
These are flat out lies. First of all, as Breitbart News’ own John Nolte recently reported, the Trump administration has actually looked to boost immigration from a list of more than 50 Asian nations.
Secondly, conservatives, Republicans, and other pro-limits supporters do not “deride the contributions of immigrants.” The pro-immigration law activists Cumming derides don’t want an end to immigration. They want a logical immigration system, an orderly system, and one that benefits the country. They don’t want an open border mess that throws open the door for just anyone regardless of what they can do for our country.
Cumming also indulges another conflation thrown around by many rabid open borders advocates when he writes, “this country is what it is because of immigration.”
This is simply not true. Yes, we have prospered from immigration, and yes, immigration is an integral part of the American success story. But America is not great merely because of immigration. America is great because of the ideals and systems the founders created that allows immigrants to succeed when they come here. Our American ideals are what made this country what it is. Unlike what Cumming is trying to promulgate, immigration alone is not the reason America is great.
Cumming goes on to accuse Trump of “brainwashing” America.
This government is trying to brainwash its citizens into believing that the very thing that has made America what it is and has made America great — immigration — is a negative thing. That is complete doublespeak. The idea that if you’re pro-immigrant, you’re anti-America, and if you’re anti-immigration, you are pro-America is completely wrong.
Once again, Cumming sets up a straw man and knocks it down to supplement his proclamations. Neither Trump nor any enforcement supporter says immigration is a “negative thing.” What they do say is that illegal immigration is a negative thing. Also, no one says that if you are “pro-immigrant, you’re anti-America.”
Cumming ended his op-ed by accusing the administration of “brainwashing,” destroying America’s “powers of analysis,” and being “dumbed down” by no less than U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
I really do believe that people have lost the power of analysis in this country because of the duality of the political system: Politics in this country is a team sport. I also think that, with people like Betsy DeVos running the Education Department, it’s going to take a long time before we have a generation who can regain the powers of analysis. It’s all a multilayered effort to dumb us down, in order to be able to brainwash us and feed us propaganda. We need to stand up and take heed before it’s too late.
Betsy DeVos does not run America’s system of education. Leftists thoroughly control education in America. That’s something Cumming may want to consider.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.