The beauty of the United States of America, apart from being the wealthiest nation on earth, is also the mosaic of cultures and races that it represents. The world looked at the US with awe also for the reason that anyone from any part of the globe could one day hope to become a citizen of this country and enjoy all the benefits that it offers its very own people. It only required a procedure to be gone through over a period of time. Now, there’s going to be a pause.
Whimsical American President Donald Trump has said it’s time for his country to consider a change in the long-held policy of citizenship. A Republican conservative to the core, he’s bent on doing everything to ensure that the nation and its people and their interests, got first priority over and above others, as also humanitarian considerations – a clear break from the past when Americans were willing to be accommodative to the rest of the world. The President’s plan is to stop the existing system wherein a child born of immigrant parents in America will automatically become a citizen. Trump’s argument is, no other nation on earth allows this, so why America?
The US, despite earning the epithet of a war-monger, prided itself on its humanitarian face. It is the highest contributor to not just the setting up of the United Nations, but also to its efforts for human betterment through the multiple agencies working under it. American food programme has for long years reached out to starving multitudes, and India has been a beneficiary of that largesse. Church-induced humanitarianism is at the core of its global policy framework, though there are two opinions about the kind of treatment being meted out to African-Americans by the American establishment. Large segments of them live in ghettos with minimum facilities.
This is the age of the rise of nationalism. Trump rode to victory by upholding the view, America First. It meant that citizens and their children have first priority for jobs and in more spheres of enterprise, including the IT sector where those from nations like India dominate. America is no more the America that existed before the Al Qaeda attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq that followed. The banking sector collapse and the resultant slowing down of the economy have had irreversible impacts. America has reached the height of its glory. Perhaps it’s time for the climb-down.
