Why immigrants, like fellow Kenyans are afraid is because they allowed themselves to become illegal.
Among the people celebrating the election of Donald J Trump as the president of these United States of Amazement is the lone young Kenyan Scholar in Leander Texas! I stopped by his house on Tuesday the night of the elections to see whether he was serious about voting for Donald J. Trump! A Kenyan would have the guts to vote for Trump? I thought he was just joking!
His wonderful Kenyan wife, a tall beautiful Maasai lady welcomed me with a typical Kenyan welcome: A cup of real Kenyan Chai, muchere with beaf stew made with Roiko mchuzi mix, and questions about the Jamhuri. After a few hours, the “mzee” showed up from work and we had the loud and joyous Kikuyu, Maasai, luhya, Luo, miji Kenda noise. “ I thought you are joking when you said you will swing around here from Kenya on the way to the Sunshine State!” He reflected in disbelief. “I thought you are nuts to support Donald J. Trump!” I responded inquisitively! “She has not told you?” He asked looking at his wife who was standing at the open kitchen wondering what to make of these two Kikuyus in her house. “This house is all Trump!”
The idea that a Kenyan can be conservative and vote for Donald J. Trump is a quagmire! As we waited for the election results to trickle in, he gave me a piece of conservative philosophy. According to him, if United States is founded on Judeo-Christian principles, then it is no brainer that Trump was going to win. His historical philosophy argued that among those who founded the republic were the puritans. He focused my mind towards the idea that most of the celebrations in the United States reflected a Judeo-Christian tradition: That the biblical tradition is not a comma in United States History, but the words in a statement. Liberalism was the comma and what the Democratic Party and their nominee Hilary Rodham Clinton was advocating is a drift to paganism.
But the issue I wanted him to address was the idea that the republican party in supporting Donald J. Trump were moving away from the philosophy of America as a nation of immigrants to a segregate isolationist and racist country. He argued that those who see Donald J. Trump as an anti immigrant bigot were the racists. His argument is that he arrived in America legally. He kept his legality by obeying immigration rules. This obedience made him live in the United States without fear of deportation. “I am no different from all other Kenyans. We arrive in the United States legally. The problem with our people, and many other immigrants is that they chose to become illegal. They refuse to obey the laws of the land.”
He argues that Donald J. Trump is not against immigrants. He pointed to the fact that Mrs. Trump is an immigrant herself. “Donald J. Trump is fighting to keep the Sanity of Law and order. What is the purpose of laws if they are broken and not enforced?” His position is that the reason why immigrants, like his fellow Kenyans are afraid is because they allowed themselves to become illegal. Thus, they are afraid that Donald J. Trump will deport them. “This is what the democrats and the media are not telling the world. The United States is a nation of laws and if it will show an example to the world on how to keep sanity within government, then it must enforce the law.” He said emphatically.
I wanted to know whether they were afraid of being deported or discriminated against as Kenyans. “We live among majority of white people! We are here legally, and the law protects us as much as it protects our neighbors”. His position is that the Democratic Party has historically used this propaganda about republican racism to keep the minority groups addicted to their party. “Donald J. Trump is not going to deport Kenyans from the United States. Donald J. Trump is going to restore the respect of law and order. Why did Kenya deport illegal Somalis? Is Kenya a racist country?”
I did not have an answer to that question. However, by the time the results from Florida came by, I knew Donald Trump would take my Sunshine State. And given my neighbors sign supporting Donald J. Trump, I knew I would go back to some happy White Anglo Saxon Protestants. That is why they call me a Black Neck protestant Christian apologist!
Kenyans should take heart. By the time Donald J. Trump is done building the wall, repealing Obama care, bringing back Jobs to Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, Americans will go to the polls and vote for someone else. The next president will find Kenyans still driving around in the United States of Amazements! Though deep undercover.
So it is written, so it is!
Teddy Njoroge Kamau (Ph.D)
CEO, Bibilia Broadcasting Network, Kenya (BBN-TV). HTBluff Associates.
Diaspora Messenger senior writer.
First things first; no human being is “illegal”. One can be here illegally but to describe them as “illegal” is not only simplistic but equally dehumanizing; the victim becomes a non-person by that description. The circumstances that lead to one falling out of status and the harrowing experience that the person has to live with every single moment has already been alluded to in this forum. Secondly, the Trump that is being described by the interviewee in the article is not the candidate we all watched and listened to; it is a sanitized version of his character. Liberals do have shortcomings but they not only stand for the downtrodden; they make practical efforts to improve the economy, even in the face of the other party’s obstructionist tendency. Conservatives who once championed “compassionate conservatism” during dubya’s campaigns, destroy the economy each time they are in power and Liberals come in to fix it because the former are largely driven by self-serving motives, not the desire to develop the country. The respondent seems to live in a parallel universe fashioned by conservative alt-right media which includes “info wars” which played a big part in putting Trump in the White House. Nevertheless, it is refreshing to read about a fellow Kenyan American who has a different opinion, unpopular or twisted as it may sound.