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The latest episode of our podcast, “A is for America”, features an interview with our own Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice, who spoke with us about immigration politics and the GOP’s hate-filled agenda in 2018.
This week, a Border Patrol officer detained two U.S. citizen women heard speaking Spanish in Montana, and advocates and commentators wondered when speaking Spanish became a substitute for probable cause. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said that school districts should permitted to report undocumented students, a comment which stands against decades of precedent and a major Supreme Court decision. A Republican gubernatorial candidate in Georgia who campaigned on a “Deportation Bus” lost, while White House strategist Steven Miller made it clear that anti-immigrant fear-mongering and divisiveness are going to be the central thrust of the GOP’s midterm election strategy.
Frank Sharry spoke with our co-host, Joe Sudbay, about the last year in immigration politics and how Republican candidates have tried to ape the Trump anti-immigrant strategy — and failed to win every time. Americans have shown that they want to be brought together and that they want the country to move past divisiveness, yet all Trump and Congressional Republicans can do is offer increasingly ugly attacks. Democratic candidates running this fall should learn to lean into, rather than run from, immigration — especially since polls have shown that xenophobic attacks turn off voters of all stripes. (Interview begins at 6:10.)
“A is for America” is a podcast which tells stories from the front lines of a changing America. Each week, we’ll be talking to advocates and experts working in immigration reform, immigrants’ rights, immigration politics, and the forefront of what it means to be a new American. Tune in next week for more.
