Donald Trump's failed State of the Union echo opinion

An Indiana point of view on immigration by Fred Niedner ~ an echo opinion published in the Northwest Indiana Post-Tribune - Chicago Tribune

Fred Niedner: A welcoming country doesn't need a wallBy now, everything about the Donald Trump State of the Union address has undergone analysis, from each of the president's 5,200 words to the possible symbolism of the first lady's white pants suit.

Whether the president's words warrant such scrutiny remains debatable. 

After all, Trump and his spokespersons have sometimes claimed his words, like those that described his habit of groping women or that touted the good character of white supremacists in Charlottesville, either meant nothing or didn't mean what their plain sense suggested.

Thus, when the president vowed to make lower prescription drug costs and proper care for our military veterans top priorities, perhaps he meant these things, or maybe he didn't. 

We must wait and see. He also said he would ask Congress to give every cabinet member authority to reward good workers and dismiss federal employees "who undermine the public trust or fail the American people." Such words could mean almost anything, including authorization of ideology-driven purges of anyone suspected of party disloyalty.

One thing seems certain. We'll spend months, if not years, in a difficult, high-stakes struggle over a tangle of issues related to immigration.

At the moment, it seems the president means to force those who want to help the so-called "dreamers" to first approve funding for his beloved border wall. 

No wall, no dreamers, and certainly no policy that lets people stay here merely to keep families intact. And this from a man whose wife is an immigrant, who by the rules he proposes should have been deported before he met and married her. (MaineWriter ~ Moreover, Donald Trump's mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, was a Scottish immigrant.)

If I had Chuck Schumer's job, I'd choose to save the dreamers and concede the president his dream wall and the $20 billion needed to build it, so long as every 200 feet or so, the wall features 12-foot-tall letters that say TRUMP. Some day school children will ask why our nation has a wall. This way, no one will forget.

The president's most chilling words about immigration didn't mention immigrants directly, but one couldn't help noticing them. After recounting the story of a North Korean refugee who escaped to freedom in South Korea, he recalled the freedom-seeking American colonists 250 years ago who found themselves "caught between a great ocean and a vast wilderness." They dreamed of charting their own destiny, so that one day, they might light up the world.

That "vast wilderness" was far from the no-man's land the president's words imply and our national myth pretends. It was home to many native peoples, some with highly developed civilizations. Then, and for generations thereafter, white Europeans were the immigrants, and like others before them they set out to take the land and banish its inhabitants, often through extermination.

One way to view a land soaked in so much blood and purchased at such a terrible price is to recognize its remarkable holiness. A place so precious we could only have it at the price of genocide must be used for some sacred purpose, not for dissipated selfishness or incessant practice at keeping others beneath our heel. Instead, we work to light up the world.

We cannot do that by posting signs that say, "Keep out — unless you're white, born again, and speak English." 

In truth, we're all guests here, and everywhere else for that matter. Our wisest welcome mat should say, "Come, share with us the bread of freedom. Heal us. Tell us of your faith. Teach us your songs and the things your words see that ours cannot. Give thanks with us that such a place exists, and that for a thousand odd reasons, we get to share it."

Fred Niedner is a senior research professor at Valparaiso University .