By Earl Bousquet

To many everywhere, the world changed again on January 20, when Donald Trump again assumed the US presidency, this time with a theme sounding more like ‘Vengeance is mine!’ driving his undertaking to ‘Make America Great Again!’.

Canada and Greenland, Panama and Colombia have all felt the early heat of Trump 2.0, but the main brunt of the concerns of LAC region today has to do with the unleashing of a promised war on immigrants, in a land built by immigrants, by a president married to an immigrant.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro insisted its citizens being deported should not be treated like criminals but with decency and in that vein refused to allow a US military aircraft carrying handcuffed expelled migrants to their homeland.

But after threatening to respond to Trump’s 25% tariff increase threat by slapping equal 25% sanctions on US goods entering Colombia and getting Washington to accept his terms, the US media and international outlets reported President Trump’s claim, in his Truth Social online media outlet, that President Petro had “backed down” or “caved in”.

The declaration of a State of Emergency on the US border and sending armed soldiers and police, immigration and related federal forces to raid, detain, incarcerate and expel ‘illegal immigrants’ should surprise no one and, by now, every nation south of the Rio Grande will have expected (and hopefully catered for, or considered the challenges of) deported citizens soon to land on their airports.

But it’s not all only been about how both parties and the majority of American voters are anti-immigrant and the two major parties simply continue trying to outdo each other on that playfield with other peoples’ lives.

American ‘exceptionalism’ is still engrained in the minds of too-many US voters, who refuse to accept that ridding America of immigrants and their government engaging in economic terrorism around the globe will not only hurt their pockets but also harm their security.

This is an age when, only this week, there’ve been striking global coincidences highlighting how much things have changed.

President Trump was inaugurated on the same day Martin Luther King Day and his paraded signature decrees will mainly affect those Americans King also had a dream for, which is already a living nightmare and will only get worse over six decades after his ‘I have a Dream Speech’ bred hope for millions across the USA before he was assassinated. 

A week later (January 27), the world observed the 80th Anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi holocaust camp in Poland by Allied Forces led by a Soviet (Russian) battalion on the same day that 500,000 Palestinians in Gaza started their Long March to the rubble of their homes in Northern Gaza.

The contrast couldn’t have been greater -and exclusive and exclusionary celebration honoring the death of 1.1 million Jews at the hands of Nazi Germany vis-à-vis 2 million displaced Gazans preferring to return to rebuild and resume their lives instead of staying away and seeking refuge elsewhere.

However, neither Biden, nor Trump understand the importance of Palestinians wanting to rebuild from the rubble, finding their missing ones and paying homage to their dead ‘martyrs’.

Biden suggested the last-minute peace plan agreed to on his final watch allowed them to “return” to their non-existent “homes”, while Trump wants to see 1.5 million sent to refugee camps in Egypt and Jordan, to make way to “clean-up” the “demolition site” Gaza became under bombs supplied to Israel by the USA, UK, Germany and others.  

Caribbean Community (CARICOM) citizens are also on tenterhooks about President Trump’s insistence on stripping automatic US citizenship from children of immigrants born in the USA, irrespective of their parents’ official status.

Many states argue that would violate the US Constitution and are challenging the president’s decree in the courts, but Trump’s dogged determination is well-known and he’s already implementing his 200 signed Executive Orders in ways that show he’ll stop at nothing to achieve his goals and deliver on his promises.

Trump has fired and hired as pleased, sending protected minorities home from the Federal Service while appointing handpicked political lumberjacks to fulfil his promises of making The American Dream the most sought-after it could ever be.

But the American Dream is already turning into a nightmare for millions of Americans at home and abroad, including the millions who’ve overstayed their time everywhere else.

It’s not (and never been) about which party is in office in Washington, which president or what gender the party leaders and presidential candidates, but always (and forever) about which president and party does best to fulfil the invisible American Dream for the (comparably) very few who’ve lived it and the vast majority the world over who’ve never awoken from it.

Meanwhile, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) is calling a summit to discuss the US President’s deportation challenges and how to address them.

The solutions will not be easy, but LAC member-states will, once again, have to swim or sink together, while navigating rough waters and also seeking to turn challenges into opportunities.

The similarities of the two parties dominating American politics have never been seen and felt so-far and so-fast, but nothing happening was not expected and after overcoming the early shock-treatment of Trump 2.0 it’s only left to CELAC and CARICOM member-states to summon their rich collective experiences in Uncle Sam’s shadow to marshal the necessary responses in these new times.

But with a predictably unpredictable president sitting in the Oval Office at the White House in a nation where the white majority feels increasingly threatened by the fast-growing non-white minority, the LAC region will naturally have to up its ante and start encouraging citizens to appreciate that while climate, temperatures and times have changed, there’s still no place like home.

LAC people therefore have to be encouraged to face their challenges at home instead of migrating to other nations where more and more people are less-and-less willing to see immigrants accessing and/or sharing benefits they want more of as life and times get worse.

This is the time to revisit the wisdom of existing programs that encourage LAC people to want to serve as ‘hewers of wood and carriers of water’ in rich nations with lands of fabled milk and honey, for salaries neither Europeans nor American workers and their unions will accept.

Governments must embark on new policies and projects that encourage citizens to stay home and help their nations meet the global challenges affecting them and their families instead of falling for slick advertisements and giddying propaganda spins that make them willingly becoming modern slaves elsewhere.

Food and energy security needs must be addressed positively at home and support must continue for innovative and rewarding approaches to rebuilding and redirecting economies away from traditional to new and better relations with fellow developing nations now taking their seats at the global table.

It’s now, or never!