It's our country too

Mehdi Hassan runs short debates with a room full of usually young peoole. Who have some conservative ideas.

I had a debate with a local guy named Tim on a FaceBook forum. he and some others noted my name and it was going toward "if you don't like it here, why don't you go back to where you came from?"

Me: I've been a citizen 50 years. How long have you been a citizen, Tim?

He did not come back for that. But I would say 35. I have paid taxes that built his interstate highways.

So we are here, some 50 million of us. They can't send us all back. And it would require a court case for each. For now, opposing the president does not qualify as treason, or opposing one before you had citizenship. As green card immigrants, most of us were not very political in public. But now my friends in that status do not dare to post political stuff at all. They remove all social media off their phones if they travel and re-enter at a busy airport. A few cases of deportation took place as the person had not kept papers up to date and some anti Trump comments were found. You have to renew your visa every year.

As a young man I experienced some threats from authority figures. At the time I did not take them as a serious threat, a policeman controlling a crowd for example. But now the new generation of immigrants, legal immigrants, is essentially silenced. I had accepted America as it was for 50 years. I had political leanings and I voted to at least contain authoritarianism. Reagan was not a favorite. He cleaned up Peoples' Park in Berkeley in the way Trump is "deporting" the homeless now. All those things back then were somewhat under control. Now they are not. Only the states are holding Trump back. 

Homelessness is a difficult problem and will not go away soon. Countires with money provide homes for as many as they can. The step to get them indoors is the most improtant one.