Aug 7, 2017 2 min read

Although I would agree with the Trump administration that immigrants to our country should learn English and be able to demonstrate that they will eventually become self-sufficient, I could not disagree more with its latest scheme, a plan to ultimately cut legal immigration by 50 percent. It’s a proposal which reveals the contempt that the president has for those who are foreign born, the exception being his wife.

The inscription on the Statue of Liberty is meaningless to President Trump and his minions, and I would expect that he would attempt to have it removed if he could get away with it.

This is a country abandoning its credo of welcoming the stranger and the refugee. It is something that hits home for me, as one whose paternal grandparents were murdered by the Nazis. Just as the president has attempted to slam the door on those who seek to escape persecution and death in countries like Syria, so too would he likely have shut out my grandparents and others who were slaughtered in the Holocaust if he had been in a position of authority at that time. It was a tragic and ugly era in which the world refused to act until it was too late.

The United States of America is increasingly becoming unrecognizable to its citizens and to the rest of the world. It will take a long time for the stench of the Trump administration to dissipate once the circus finally ends.

Oren M. Spiegler

Upper St. Clair