Stopping The GOP's War on Refugees, Immigrants, and the American Dream

America has always been the place people could nurture hopes that found welcome nowhere else; the adoptive home for dreamers from every square inch of the planet who came as refugees from the legion of nightmares of this life.We have been the door of radical hospitality (at least in theory), opened wide to a disparate world fleeing the cruelty of their geography and circumstance, those living in close proximity to injustice and violence and oppression.It’s easy to forget that at one time in history, the American Dream was a thing. It once meant something. It was a declaration of possibility; the idea that this place was supposed to be refuge, rest, and level ground for a weary humanity not used to such things. It was a beautiful aspiration.As James Truslow Adams wrote, this dream was to be "a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."And this place called America was intended to be the incubator of these dreams; a brilliant beacon to the world so often disoriented in thick, man-made darkness. In Emma Lazarus' words etched beneath the feet of Lady Liberty, we see the mission statement of our nation, and the invitation to the dreamers and seekers:Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door.But lately, the tempest-tossed, rarely find sanctuary from the storm here. The huddled masses get few deep, uncontested breaths of freedom these days.The dreamers are daily roused violently from their sleep.Donald Trump promising the greatest deportation in history if reelected, isn't a surprise, nor is his harassment of undocumented people, nor is his hostility toward refugees. It's who he is. It's what his party has become. It's what those still supporting him are: white American Dream Hoarders. Their Project 2025 would fashion this nation into a fortified, gated community of whiteness and wealth. MAGA’s rank-and-file foot soldiers are men and women who've come to believe that being born here is some kind of moral merit badge they've somehow earned, one that makes them superior to those without such good fortune. They've forgotten that their ancestors were immigrants; that their forebears were all foreigners who came here to escape something oppressive and to find something better for their children. America’s entire genesis was the product of human beings fleeing oppression, and now that they’re here they want to lock the doors behind them.Through the worst of theology and politics, Conservatives have been taught to see dark skin, strange accents, and unusual head wraps as imminent threats to their well-deserved stranglehold on America, and on every opportunity that resides here. They see their own pigmentation as a special birthright to blessing, and as a result, every movement towards equity feels to them like an unmerited attack.The absolute random chance that resulted in their trip down the birth canal depositing them in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave—is something they've come to claim as personal achievement or Providence.And now they, themselves the offspring of immigrants, who have been the beneficiaries of every privilege and advantage and foothold America has to offer—are making sure no else ever get within reach. They are guarding it all with great urgency and malice and violence.The tragedy of this latest assault on marginalized communities by the GOP, is that it all seems so commonplace. It feels like just another day in Donald Trump's cruel, callous, malevolent MAGA movement. It now seems so congruent with the heretical American Evangelical Church that justifies and amens his every atrocity, that it isn’t as shocking as it should be.And for those of us who recognize our privilege, who understand the good fortune we have to call this place home, who have been allowed to live the American Dream with very little effort or resistance or adversity—we realize it is simply another day to push back against it all.We know that just as yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, we're going to fight the American Dream hoarders—and we're going to do it until they no longer have the power to force their nightmares upon those who wish to dream; who want to give and build and love and worship and contribute here.We're going to stand with the hurting and the vulnerable and the silenced ones, because that is what Americans are supposed to do.With our life, our liberty, our happiness none of which has never been in question—we're supposed to defend other people's desires for a better life and give them a space to dream again… and that’s what we’re going to do. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. 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