Washington sources reported that President Donald Trump’s lament this week that immigration is “changing the culture” of Europe echoed rising anti-immigrant feelings on both sides of the Atlantic, where Europe and the United States are going through a demographic transformation that makes some of the white majority uncomfortable. Meanwhile the historians and advocates immediately denounced Trump’s comments, saying such talk would encourage white nationalists.
Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project said “The way he put this argument about changing our culture about Europe becoming less nice than it is, in other words, these people are here and they are making the culture crappy and making the place lesser, that is straight out of the white supremacist/white nationalist playbook”.
Earlier in January, Trump questioned why the U.S.
would accept more immigrants from Haiti and “shithole countries” in Africa as
he rejected a bipartisan immigration deal, according to one participant and
people briefed on the conversation. Moreover in recent weeks, Trump bowed to
tremendous political pressure and issued an executive order ending his
administration’s practice of separating migrant children from their parents
when families cross the border with Mexico illegally.
