“Foreign farmers in our county were the first to become prosperous,” Cather’s (grown-up) narrator notes. That’s the “real America” that today’s immigrant-bashers, starting with the president, pretend to venerate and constantly traduce. You don’t have to favor sanctuary cities and the abolition of ICE to be on the right side of this debate. That we have a president who doesn’t believe this, and a party bending constantly to his prejudices, is a stain on the United States. We can erase it by recalling what we’re really about, starting by re-reading “My Ántonia.”

Source: New York Times July 20, 2019 00:33 UTC