How targeting of immigrants is linked to labour repression, civil liberties

The story of American "nativism" is replete with contradictions and ironies

The Republican pre-election strategy of exploiting “the caravan” was irredeemably ugly.

It’s hard to say what was worse: the shameless and farcical framing of a helpless stream of people as a national security threat, or the president’s off-hand suggestion that these people might actually be funded by the prime villain of most anti-Semitic conspiracy theories: George Soros.

Few commentators have failed to point out the obvious effects of this gutter-politics playbook: the debasement of public discourse on immigration policy; the wink-and-nudge of encouragement offered to the most sinister fringes of the American far-right; or the aggravation racial animosity against people of color