Offensive Statement Against Nigerians, Haitians: Activists Blast Trump

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Latest Headlines, News Sunday, December 24th, 2017

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – Some Immigration activists in the US have blasted President Donald Trump over his reported berated statement against Nigerian and Haitian immigrants.

New York Times had reported that President Trump allegedly made berated comments about Haitians and Nigerians saying “Haiti had sent 15,000 people, they all have AIDS.” and “Forty thousand had come from Nigeria, Once they had seen the United States, they would never “go back to their huts in Africa.”

White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders however denied the statement but President Trump’s previous racist and anti-immigration comments made the New York Times story believable.

Opal Tometi, Executive Director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and a co-founder of Black Lives Matter who is also a Nigeria American said “Unfortunately, it is all too believable that this is how our president speaks behind closed doors because his very public policies have been driven by racism and hatred since Day 1.

“From his xenophobic Muslim ban to his cruel and immoral treatment of immigrant dreamers, this merely adds crass words to the racist policies this administration has been pushing for a year.

“President Trump is mentally incapable of imagining the humanity of anyone who looks different from him or hails from a different nation.

“This is perhaps nowhere more true than of his treatment of black immigrants.”

Jonathan Jayes-Green, co-creator of UndocuBlack Network, a group of black immigrant community organizers, told Journalists that: “I am disgusted but not surprised . . . it’s consistent with the racist, anti-black, queerphobic xenophobe Donald Trump truly is. It was evident from his decision to end TPS [temporary protected status] for Haiti that he’s both willingly ignorant of who Haitian immigrants are and deeply committed to ending migration of Black and Brown immigrants to this country.”

Candis Watts Smith, who teaches in the University of North Carolina’s Department of African, African American and Diaspora Studies, said that the president’s reported comments reinforce inaccurate stereotypes about black immigrants.

The Washington Post says despite White House senior staff denying the president’s alleged comments, the president’s track record with immigrants, including those from Africa, makes some within the community to doubt that Trump’s vision of a great America includes them.

Many members of America’s immigrant communities have felt devalued by Trump since the day he announced his campaign for president.

The policy proposals that followed — combined with comments about black Americans — have led many within the black and immigrant communities to believe that Trump has little to no respect for black people wanting to come to the U.S. to experience the American Dream.

…the AFRICAN EXAMINER