"American History is Immigration" and the Honduras Caravan

In The Uprooted (1951) the historian Oscar Handlin observed, "American history is immigration," a statement that stirred pride and perhaps stemmed racism. The Irish, so abused a century before, had settled into the middle class. Other groups became the new kid on the block. Although the tension between the notion of the "natives," sometimes deeming themselves the "real Americans," and the recent arrivals has never been eliminated, the Trumpesque choices to separate Mexican babies and children from their mothers, to turn back the desperate Honduran group on its way to the U.S. border, and to tell the president of Honduras that all aid will be denied if he allows Hondurans to enter the United States, represents yet another un-American low. Trump has normalized trauma, but the wholesale rejection of the huddled masses yearning to breathe free destroys the ideal on which America was founded. Not to mention his earlier scapegoating remarks. Divide and conquer, divide and conquer, divide and conquer: that is Donald Trump's modus operandi. Can we return to the foundational concept of E. Pluribus Unum, out of many, one, instead of the divisive "In God We Trust?" Our gods are as diverse as our origins, Oscar Handlin might have observed. But out of our many, we can still make one group dedicated to the peaceful betterment of all. And that includes welcoming the the wretched refuse of some other nation's teeming shore. America is rich, and could use its wealth to welcome those who want to work, to belong, to help.