Analysis

Another Trump outrage

By Oren Spiegler August 24, 2017, 4:01 pm 0 Edit

I appreciate the Chronicle noting its disagreement with President Donald Trump’s latest scheme, a plan to reduce legal immigration to our country by 50% percent over a 10-year period (“Remembering the tired and poor,” Aug. 11). If anything, the editorial’s disagreement with the proposal is too tepid.

The inscription written on our beloved Statue of Liberty in which we establish our nation as one that welcomes “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free” is something that is not taken seriously by the administration, which shamefully downplays its significance. Certainly, Trump would act to erase it from the statue if he believed he could get away with it.

My paternal grandparents were murdered by the Nazis. I conclude that a president who has demonstrated contempt for immigrants with the exception of his wife would have slammed the door on those like my ancestors, relegating them to persecution and death as was acceptable to many in an era of significant anti-Semitism. It is difficult for me to fathom how anyone who has lost relatives in the Holocaust or whose family has suffered as a result can support a president whose impulse is to stereotype, marginalize and place in a state of fear those who were not born here. May there be a sufficient number of honorable members of Congress to stand in the way of yet another Trump outrage.

Oren Spiegler
Upper Saint Clair