Óscar Chacón, co-founder and executive director of Alianza Américas: “A realistic immigration policy is essential”
BY CARLOS MATÍAS
Joe Biden approaches the final phase of his term in office with a debt to immigrants. He won the election to the White House with a friendly speech for them and once he was sworn in as president, he changed it: “Stay home! he tells them.” The United States needs a realistic immigration policy to protect its future and prosperity.
“There is a lack of coherence and realism in U.S. immigration policy,” Óscar Chacón, co-founder and executive director of Alianza Américas, tells Sol de Medianoche, “and this has happened in recent decades, with both Republican and Democrat presidents.”
Óscar Chacón relies on factual data to affirm that “this country needs migrants to remain a strong and prosperous nation. Throughout history, migrants have always represented a great labor force and have been generators of wealth. But our bipartisan politicians have been falling into the trap and falsehood of a xenophobic, racist and supremacist public discourse for decades.”
According to Chacón, the difference between Republican and Democrat politicians is that “Republicans are more abrupt in their manifestations and very extremist, reaching xenophobia and racism. But we must not forget that the worst immigration law in the history of this country was passed by Bill Clinton, and that the highest number of deportations signed by a president is a record held by Barack Obama. Both are Democratic presidents.
The data provided by Óscar Chacón about Obama is striking, especially considering that after him Donald Trump governed this country. “Trump is coarse, grotesque, crude... He is xenophobic and racist... But he did not deport as many migrants as Obama,” insists Chacón.
In the opinion of the co-founder and executive director of Alianza Américas, the reference to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, made by Sol de Medianoche in its January 55 issue, “has been very accurate, because the president’s Jekyll and Hyde syndrome is becoming more and more evident. At times he is sympathetic to the worrying situation of migrants in the United States and at others he seems inflexible, distant and a spokesman for those who say that we migrants in this country are displacing the real Americans, white people, from their jobs, from their streets, from their homes...” “This xenophobic and supremacist discourse does not stand up to objective analysis, grounded data that is real and can be contrasted. The next presidential elections should be approached with the strength of this evidence and the determination to carry out a realistic immigration policy, essential for the construction of this country. But I am very much afraid that the candidates of both parties (Republican and Democrat) will continue to employ the fallacy of a petty ideology.”
