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Lisa Parisio is policy director at the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project.
Last week, President Donald Trump announced another piece of his administration’s vision for the U.S. immigration system — the Trump gold card. Under the plan, people who can pay $5 million can buy permanent residency and a path to U.S. citizenship. The gold card would include a tax loophole making it so its ultrawealthy beneficiaries are not subject to taxes on their overseas income, unlike other U.S. residents.
Trump touted the program during his address to Congress on Tuesday night, saying it would be a boost to the economy through both the $5 million fee and the jobs it would create (while he simultaneously plans to deport America’s immigrant workforce).
And what if you come up a little short of $5 million but are fleeing for your life? No entry and you’re likely labeled a criminal.
The fabled American dream is an immigration story. It’s about coming here with nothing in your pockets and still having a shot at something more. It’s about a place that’s free from monarchies, oligarchies and other power structures that shut people out of ever having a chance to escape systemic poverty and oppression. It’s about having a voice in the government under which you live, a chance at self-determination, and the opportunity to build and own something for yourself.
First, we absolutely need to recognize that this version of what America represents fails to acknowledge so much about the history of our country — including the atrocities committed against indigenous people, that the United States was built on the forced labor of enslaved people, today’s mass incarceration of people of color and much, much more.
But the American dream is not impossible if we leave the door open for it. My great-grandfather fled Sicily’s dire poverty, starvation and political unrest at the turn of the 20th century. He arrived in New York City with nothing to his name and worked his way up to starting his own fish market on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, a business that supported his family for generations to come as well as his local community and economy. Maybe your family’s story is similar.
Since my great-grandfather and the ancestors of millions upon millions of others in the U.S. arrived from Europe in the late 1800s and early 1900s, our immigration legal system has changed dramatically. The truth is, few to none of those immigrants would have a pathway to a green card or citizenship today. In our modern system, people fleeing life-threatening poverty or general political unrest have virtually no opportunities for permanent immigration status. The current administration is trying to gut and restrict that system, which is already badly in need of reform, even more.
So many Mainers have benefitted from their ancestors’ opportunity to cross borders to save their lives, become citizens and begin again in the U.S. Those seeking the same today are often forced to be undocumented, called derogatory terms like “illegal,” and falsely accused of eating cats and dogs.
The Trump administration’s vision of a pay-to-play immigration system, a slammed-shut door for those in need of humanitarian protection and spending billions on a violent, mass deportation campaign is not the country our ancestors or today’s immigrants were looking for. I believe it is profoundly un-American and will rob all of us, our children and generations to come of the riches that only exist in a thriving, culturally diverse melting pot.
So many of Maine’s recently arrived immigrant communities have overcome incredible odds to make Maine home and infuse our state with their resilience, resourcefulness and dreams. They, like the immigrants who came before them, may have come without much, but are building and strengthening our communities, businesses and economy every day. Imagine the potential if we offered them citizenship instead of cruelty.
We are still a far ways off from a U.S. that lives up to its highest ideals and principles, but let’s not abandon the dream now. At the end of the day, the state of our immigration legal system, and all the systems we live under, are a series of law and policy decisions and budget priorities made by human beings. In short, they are choices, and other choices can be made.
Lady Liberty still lifts her lamp beside the golden door for her tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Let’s keep following her light and not sell out the promise of America to the highest bidder.
