The Fire Down Below
What’s made America great? What’s made America different? Along with whatever else we do on July 4th and afterwards, let’s celebrate this:
We all came from somewhere else.
It’s something we sometimes take for granted. We shouldn’t.
Of the 40 nations I’ve been fortunate enough to visit for work and the many additional ones for play, I’ve never encountered one nearly as diverse as our own.
I never thanked them, but I’m blessed that my peasant grandparents took a leap of faith toward the promise of America, venturing across Europe and the Atlantic to flee persecution. They were but a few of the many millions, from all over the world, represented in the iconic Bruce Springsteen song, “American Land”:
They come across the water a thousand miles from home
With nothing in their bellies but the fire down below
Indeed, and without disparaging any other nation, there’s something special to be said for one springing from souls who largely risked and suffered so much to get here, forming a melting pot of peoples and perspectives.
From Debate to Demagoguery
Sadly, as America turns 250, current immigrants and even our immigrant heritage are under attack.
To be fair, there is room for legitimate debate about this issue. That includes whether Joe Biden was initially too lax in addressing it – though much of the overheated anti-Biden rhetoric significantly overstates the number of illegal/undocumented (pick your politically loaded term) immigrants who entered across the Mexican border and were able to stay.
Furthermore, both sides have politicized the matter. I’ll get to the Republicans in a minute. But Democrats were driven not just by humanitarian values but by some of their pollsters’ misleading public opinion survey results. That research incorrectly indicated that Latino citizens don’t share their fellow Americans’ strong concerns about overly lenient border policies. As a result, Democrats’ political and policy miscalculations damaged their presidential election performances in 2016, 2020 and, especially and disastrously, in 2024.
But there’s a vast gulf between well-intentioned miscalculation and intentional demagoguery. Most of what Donald Trump is doing has nothing to do with removing “illegals” from the country and much to do with racism. He’s repeatedly expressed a preference for white potential immigrants such as Swedes and slurred nonwhites such as Somalis. (In the process, he’s duplicated the bigotry that has always befallen new arrivals here, including 1.3 million Swedes labeled stupid “Squareheads” over a century ago.)
Under Trump, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has swept up people pursuing political asylum or other legitimate immigration claims. It isolates them in for-profit prisons far from their families, homes and legal help. It deports them to dangerous third countries with which they have no connections.
At the same time, Trump purges immigration judges and pressures others to deport detainees for fear of losing their jobs. He accordingly delays or prevents consideration of the detainees’ cases, or even in effect dictates the results.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs…they’re eating the cats.”
The depth and breadth of other abuses are too extensive to summarize. So, I’ll pick just one recent instance, since it illustrates how severely the anti-immigrant demagoguery is playing out.
It’s documented by Timothy Snyder, a leading historian who’s an expert on European and American fascism and Nazism. In a powerful online commentary, he describes how J.D. Vance and then Donald Trump stoked the flames of hatred and racism against (Black) Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
Most notably, building on a woman’s Facebook post about a missing cat, in September 2024 vice presidential candidate Vance spread groundless accusations about them: “…people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people [Haitians] who should not be in this country.” Trump amplified this to 67 million viewers in his presidential debate with Kamala Harris the next day, asserting “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats.”
What’s more, Blood Tribe, a growing neo-Nazi group with chapters across the United States and a leader who worships Hitler as a deity, exploited various Vance anti-Haitian slurs to mount demonstrations in Springfield and otherwise spread this racist gospel.
Putting this in historical context, Snyder explains that such tactics echo Hitler’s and Stalin’s genocidal playbooks:
“In an urban or suburban setting, in which animals are companions, the idea that others mistreat animals can be the signal that they are not like us, barbarians, not fully human. Among the many other accelerating repressions, Jews in Nazi Germany were not allowed to keep pets at home.”
The Truth
Springfield’s conservative Republican mayor and Ohio’s conservative Republican governor disproved and decried these Vance, Trump and Blood Tribe claims, the governor calling them “garbage.”
The truth, in fact, as both officials have asserted, is that Haitians have greatly contributed to the revitalization of what had been an economically devastated Rust Belt town. Many have been there for over a decade, after having been granted temporary but renewable legal status in the wake of a devastating 2010 earthquake (which claimed roughly 200,000 lives) in Haiti and in view of widespread political chaos and gang violence there.
Despite these dangers, last month the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration in ruling that the 350,000 Haitians immigrants across America can be deported – putting a million other immigrants with similar status and home country dangers in jeopardy.
In its ruling, the Court in effect ignored an April 2026 State Department travel advisory, which bluntly states, “Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest, and limited health care.”
In addition to this being devastating news for the Haitians themselves, this could be devastating for Springfield and other communities across America who depend on them to fill jobs, run businesses, buy goods and services, and otherwise build or rebuild local economies.
That reflects a larger reality about current immigrants in America, no matter how they got here. Contrary to hostile claims, they actually commit crimes at lower rates than people born here do; do not take jobs from Americans; in fact, generate economic activity that aids employment creation; help hold down inflation; and contribute payments to Social Security and Medicare without (if they don’t have legal status) taking any payments from those programs.
It’s true that we can’t open our borders to everyone. There are legitimate housing, social services and other constraints to consider.
But it’s equally true that our immigration policies should not be driven by hate, lies and racism.
Honoring Our Immigrants
Even more to the point, today’s immigrants are contributing to this country in ways our parents, grandparents and ancestors did. And no matter the nation of origin, most of our predecessors faced the same kind of bigotry here that Haitians and other current immigrants today encounter. The only thing that’s different is the slurs being hurled at them.
Going forward from the Fourth of July, we should honor immigrants, past or present, for their hard work and their sacrifices in the face of so many challenges and so much hostility.
We should honor them for how they embody an American motto, E pluribus unum: Out of many, one.
We should honor them in the spirit of our better angels, rather than our darker demons.
As Springsteen puts it in “American Land”:
They died building the railroads, they worked to bones and skin
They died in the fields and factories, names scattered in the wind
They died to get here a hundred years ago, they’re still dying now
Their hands that built the country we’re always trying to keep out
We should honor them because they are all of us.
*To fully appreciate “American Land,” which explores both immigrants’ fantasies about America and the realities they’ve faced here, you need to hear the song itself:
**And to fully appreciate Springsteen, you need to see him perform the song in concert:
Thank you for this excellent explanation, Steve. You nailed it.
It is striking that the far right’s objections to immigration grow stronger the darker a person’s skin color. MAGA would love to have more Nordic immigration, because they feel Nordic people have an easier time integrating into American society than, say, Nigerians.
But let’s look at this more closely.
Nordic people live in a society rooted in social democracy: free childcare, free education, pensions for all, good wages for all, retirement funding for all, health care for all, paid maternity and paternity leave, and other “nanny state” safety net benefits. These are the same policies which MAGA most despises. They denounce such policies as communist and un-American.
Nigerian society is in many ways much more similar to American culture than is Nordic culture. Low wages, everyone must fend for themselves, little safety net, the wealthy elites control all levers of power.
So why does MAGA celebrate Nordic immigration and despise Nigerian immigration? Nigerians would clearly have an easier time assimilating into American society, since it is so similar to their own. It comes down to skin color.
Every immigrant group takes time to assimilate. The first generation holds more strongly to the culture and society of their homeland, while gradually embracing the social norms and culture of their new home. But each subsequent generation becomes more and more American and more and more assimilated. This is a universal phenomenon and has been true for centuries. It applies to immigrants from Ireland, Sweden, Cuba, Ghana, and every country you can name. And I dare say the U.S. is the only country on earth in which immigrants can come and contribute to American culture and society in such a robust way. As you noted, Steve, the U.S. is the most diverse country in the world. And that is a big reason we are the wealthiest and most powerful country.
Sadly, MAGA rejects “e pluribus unum.” They feel the U.S. should be “ex uno unum.”
Very well stated and on point, Richard.