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(Washington, DC) 15 Julyo 2019<\/strong> <\/span>– Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson don\u2019t think she\u2019s dangerous. They hate that she\u2019s full of potential.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson attacked<\/a> Congresswoman Ilhan Omar for her ingratitude. \u201cAfter everything America has done for Omar and for her family,\u201d Carlson told his viewers, \u201cshe hates this country more than ever.\u201d He called it \u201cominous\u201d that Omar should have such disdain for his country\u2019s values. \u201cOur country rescued Ilhan Omar from the single worst place on earth,\u201d said Carlson. \u201cWe didn\u2019t do it to get rich\u2014in fact it cost us money. We did it because we are kind people. How did Ilhan Omar respond to the remarkable gift we gave her? She scolded us and called us names.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is so much miseducation and bad faith in that tiny word we<\/em>. Carlson had nothing to do with Omar\u2019s rescue from Somalia. He is just a privileged man who won the lottery of birth. If it were up to him, she would never have been allowed in. But even if he had been the very asylum officer who swung the door open for Omar\u2019s family, the we<\/em> implies that a place in America was his to give, that he is somehow entitled to (but she has been gifted) the freedoms and education and powerful voices they both enjoy.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t watch Carlson\u2019s show. I found out about this incident because I have a Google alert for \u201cungrateful refugee,\u201d a term his followers began to throw around<\/a> shortly after his comments aired. That phrase also happens to be the name of my new book and a major intellectual and philosophical preoccupation since I escaped Iran in 1988 and arrived in the U.S. via an Italian refugee camp 16 months later (at 10 years old, the same age Omar was when she arrived).<\/p>\n

The term \u201cungrateful refugee\u201d is designed specifically to remind us that immigrants will never be as American as the native-born, no matter how much time passes, how much good they do for their new country, and what citizenship they obtain. It is a calculated attempt to reinforce nativist power dynamics between the children of the rooted and the children of the displaced, to remind the latter that they will forever owe their lives to someone else. And yet, it is uttered most often by those who have never had or will ever have anything to do with anyone\u2019s rescue\u2014these are, in fact, the very people who wish to shut the door and throw away the key.<\/p>\n

More baffling is that the term \u201cungrateful refugee\u201d goes against one of Carlson\u2019s (and his fans\u2019) own loudest beliefs: the call for a quick assimilation. Though these nativists don\u2019t actually care what goes on in the hearts and minds of migrants and refugees, they want them to posture weakness, thankfulness, subjection, and then a full and visible transformation\u2014quick, theatrical Americanness for the benefit of the native-born. \u201cYou\u2019ve had five, 10 years here,\u201d they think. \u201cLearn our ways already.\u201d And therein lies the problem with Carlson\u2019s argument: Real Americans dissent.<\/p>\n

If a person is to assimilate and become American, they have to be allowed to participate in the American democratic process. They have to be able to think freely, to make arguments, to arrive at different conclusions than their neighbors, teachers, and, cable news personalities do. To be told they must agree with some segment of the native-born is undemocratic and absurd. Is Carlson suggesting that giving asylum to Omar was a bad decision because she has different ideas than he does? Putting aside the value of her life, does the fact that, like Carlson himself, Omar has political ideas and critiques of her country disqualify her to be his peer? Does he expect that her private gratitude should lead her to give up her agency, her freedom of thought? Should a churchgoing American be assigned to do her thinking for her? Carlson sees Omar as \u201ca living fire alarm, a warning to the rest of us\u201d about what can happen when you let in immigrants like her. How does he plan to decide who is homegrown enough to police the political engagement of newer citizens?<\/p>\n

But Carlson doesn\u2019t care about the intellectual hollowness of his argument because his concern isn\u2019t genuine. He doesn\u2019t think that participating in democracy is harmful to America or to the people who welcomed her family. He\u2019s afraid only for himself.<\/p>\n

The same can be said of Donald Trump. This morning, Trump tweeted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo interesting to see \u2018Progressive\u2019 Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe \u2026 now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does Trump actually believe that the intelligence and capability of this American-raised and educated woman come into question because of the failings of the Somalian government she escaped? Does he think that everyone born in America has a hand in its success and everyone who was born in a ravaged country is similarly responsible for its ruin? Am I, a woman who escaped the Islamic Republic at 8, responsible for its atrocities?<\/p>\n

No. This isn\u2019t about America\u2019s welfare or Omar\u2019s qualifications. Quite the opposite: Trump and Carlson see Omar\u2019s potential and are desperate to clip her wings\u2014and the wings of every immigrant who may come into her gifts on American soil.<\/p>\n

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