[Melissa Sanchez and Mica Rosenberg at ProPublica]

Important resentments coming to the surface here:

"Her anger is largely directed at President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party for failing to produce meaningful reforms to the immigration system that could benefit people like her. In our reporting on the new effects of immigration, ProPublica interviewed dozens of long-established Latino immigrants and their U.S.-born relatives in cities like Denver and Chicago and in small towns along the Texas border. Over and over, they spoke of feeling resentment as they watched the government ease the transition of large numbers of asylum-seekers into the U.S. by giving them access to work permits and IDs, and in some cities spending millions of dollars to provide them with food and shelter."

The issue is not so much with asylum seekers as such - it's that asylum makers could make progress while immigration reforms that could help people who were already here stalled. These resentments mirror other complaints about the struggles of working class people who saw other groups receive what they perceived as preferential treatment.

What's particularly sad is the idea that Trump will help immigrants (or working people) in any meaningful way. He's been very clear that he wants to conduct unprecedented mass deportations - not just for criminals, but potentially for tens of millions of people.

"But the Democrats “promised and they never delivered,” Garza Castillo said. “They didn’t normalize the status of the people who were already here, but instead they let in many migrants who didn’t come in the correct way.” He believes asylum-seekers should have to wait outside the country like he did."

And of course, the challenge is that these reforms were blocked by Republicans - it's not that Democrats didn't want them (although it must be said that Democrats have not done a stellar job of backing the kinds of grassroots reforms that are really needed). There's a whole base of people out there who simply don't like immigrants. I find that point of view repellant - but it's prevalent, and it doesn't seem to be going away soon. Certainly not over the next four years.

#Democracy

[Link]