Trump’s Rule Attacking Disabled and Low-Income Migrants Has Violent History | originally published in Truthout.org. Aug. 2019 | read by Talila A. Lewis June 2025

This is a June 8, 2025 reading of a piece I created and published with truthout.org in fall 2019.  The editor created the title, "Trump's Rule Attacking Disabled and Low-Income Migrants Has Violent History".  I have a number of titles but will share the following, "Public Charge: The Current Move to a Permanent Underclass of Migrants has its Roots in American Enslavement." 

I consider this piece to be one of my most important offerings during the 20-teens.

The piece can be found in English text in full here and in spoken English here.

These were some of my notes from 27 Jan. 2020 about this:

"Today the US Supreme Court decided to allow this administration’s “public charge rule” to move forward (while litigation continues against the rule). The rule targets migrants, disabled, negatively racialized, low/no income, working folks. The public charge rule literally replicates laws that were used to separate Black enslaved families and limit/control movement, migration, freedom of Black folks (mostly elderly, disabled, no/low income Black folks) in the 1600s-1800s in the US. Public charge laws and public charge rules have wreaked havoc on the most marginalized communities since the 1600s. In no uncertain terms: these laws and policies are the embodiment of intersected racism, classism, ableism.

They are DEADLY. Generationally.

Racism, classism and ableism depend on and give life to each other. Ignore this truth at all our peril. Know your history. It is present.

Excerpts from the piece:

". . . U.S. 'immigration' policy was not established to attend to a moral obligation to welcome diverse people to this land to pursue the 'American Dream.' Quite the opposite: U.S. immigration policy is part of a protracted sociopolitical project steeped in settler-colonialism that has long sought to expand and protect the white population’s settlement and dominance. The Naturalization Act of 1790, the first federal law dealing with 'naturalization' and national citizenship, held that the only 'alien' who could apply for naturalization is a 'free white person … of good character' who has occupied this stolen land for at least two years. . . Immigration laws that ostensibly prioritized family-based immigration, for example, have done so to 'reassure lawmakers who feared the law’s other changes would dilute the distinctly European nature of immigration to the United States'. . .

. . .Settler-colonialists who violently helped themselves to millions of acres of land and Black enslaved people’s bodies and labor are not [im]migrants; and people indigenous to the Americas and those kidnapped from the African continent also did not 'immigrate' to the U.S. 'Immigration' exists because white European settler-colonialists committed genocide, forcibly removed millions of Indigenous people, created borders, and drafted policies to legitimize, formalize and legalize this violent appropriation. These truths are central to understanding the origin of the public charge, but, more importantly, to understanding 'citizenship,' 'immigration,' and the 'United States' as fabricated by white people for white economic, social and political gain. . .

In this era of authoritarianism, there are concessions we simply cannot make. Demonization of any group that is intentionally made politically, socially or economically marginalized fans eugenics flames, stokes genocidal tendencies and emboldens white supremacists. Therefore, advocacy that supports migrants because migrants 'pay taxes,' are 'important to the economy,' 'do not have criminal records,' 'work, long hours for low wages in jobs that Americans won’t accept,' etc. only serve to reify the systems that we should be seeking to dismantle. People everywhere must ardently contest messaging that ties people’s value to their labor productivity or that establishes categories of inferiority and superiority of marginalized people. Migrant justice work must be intentionally rooted in anti-ableist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist frameworks. . .

​. . . Migration and the provision of public benefits should be supported because migrants are human and deserving of freedom of movement, residence and security. Further, the United States’s colonial-imperial capitalist legacy divests it of moral and legal authority to deny entry to humans seeking security — especially Indigenous people. There is more than enough wealth in this nation to ensure that everyone is cared for. Impoverishment is a political choice. In the face of a swiftly advancing global neo-Nazi resurgence, it is unwise and unsafe to cling to aspirational symbols of equality and hollow untruths. This nation must confront its past, which, in too many ways mirrors our present. To erase parts of American history that are difficult to confront is to acquiesce to white supremacy and invite its flood of injustice and terror to endlessly recur. Demands for migrant justice must uplift the inherent value of all people and be grounded in historical truths that center Black/Indigenous peoples’ experiences. Anything less increases opportunities for eugenics, plays into the boorish hands of a demonstrably authoritarian administration, and will result in yet more deaths."