DHAKA, BANGLADESH — Although Donald Trump vowed repeatedly during his campaign to end President Obama’s signature DACA (Delayed Action for Child Arrivals) program as soon as he swaggered himself into the White House, he’s repeatedly waffled, pretending to show compassion “for the children” who were brought illegally to this country by their parents. The children are known as Dreamers, but these days, they’re having a lot of bad dreams, especially since the data in their DACA applications can be used to deport them and their parents.
Trump has since discovered (though he would never admit it) that campaigning with inflammatory, xenophobic rhetoric, is one thing, and governing (or pretending to govern) is another.
Today, he punted, leaving it to Congress to decide the fate of DACA within six months, and he wants Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform within that same hurried time frame.
In 2013, the Senate’s "Gang of Eight" managed to pass comprehensive immigration reform, only to have the House kill the Senate-passed bill, aided and abetted by leading xenophobe Steve Bannon from his fortress at Breitbart, and Jeff Sessions, in the Senate.
Associate solitary reporter Melissa Smith noted that most if not all Congressional Republicans think that Trump, in punting the DACA problem to them, has done them no favors, because this stuff is complicated.
Watching all this from the other side of the world here in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, Mayor Annisul Huq quizzed associate solitary reporter Ko Il-sun, who covers Asia for us, as to how we Americans could be so stingy.
“The United States loves to describe itself as a nation of immigrants,” Huq began, “yet everybody knows that immigrant workers gladly take the lowest-paying jobs in your country; and, not only that, yesterday the CEOs of several major American companies begged Mr. Trump not to kill the DACA program.”
“But we here in Dhaka — please note, same pronunciation — know how to govern, something that Mr. Trump hasn’t the faintest idea about.”
Mayor Huq began his career as a host on Bangladesh Television in the early 1980s. Unlike Trump when he was a celebrity on his TV show, The Apprentice, Huq hosted interviews with politically significant personalities. He’s an entrepreneur and one of the wealthiest persons in South Asia, with over 7,000 employees in Bangladesh’s important textile and garments sector.
Soon, Mayor Huq was joined by Bangladesh’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Hamid, and its Chief Justice, Surendra Kumar Sinha, a Hindu in a predominantly Muslim nation.
“We are left to conclude that we here in Bangladesh are better positioned to make sound decisions on how to govern than the Republicans in Washington,” Huq, Hamid, and Sinha said in unison, as Ko nodded vigorously in agreement.
And in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, NPR’s West Africa Correspondent, Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, said that the leaders of Africa are scratching their heads at Trump’s antics.