The anxiety was thick.'People are scared,' Romeo Hebron said. 'We're not sure what's going to happen.'The setting was the Filipino Migrant Center, which Hebron directs in my hometown of Long Beach, California. The event: last week's Immigration Know Your Rights seminar at the center's downtown headquarters.'People are feeling a little agitated,' explained a volunteer who declined to give her name.The gathering was inspired by Donald Trump's recent election to the US Presidency on the promise of deporting millions of immigrants in the country illegally. Followed closely by some seemingly sound advice from the Philippine ambassador.'My advice to Filipinos,' Ambassador Jose Manuel Romauldez said, 'is if they really don't have a pathway to being here legally, they better go home first because if they get deported, they won't be able to come back...'Which just bolstered the panic. That is slithering, smoldering, and spreading. Cleary aided by the coverage back home.'A country that was born from waves of migration...now treats its migrants like they are infectious diseases...,' bellowed one particularly agitated columnist in this newspaper under the ominous headline How the Philippines and the World Can Survive Trump. 'If they cannot even treat their own citizens right, how can they...care about citizens of other countries?'Let me note in passing the writer's arbitrary deletion of the word 'illegal' and insertion of 'their own citizens' to make a nonsensical point unrelated to reality. And let me also tell you how all this looks to a foreigner living in the Philippines.First, as a legal permanent resident, I must obey the law. I cannot, for instance, own property except through the aegis of my Filipino wife. I must maintain public composure and deportment at all times. I must never take part in protests deemed critical of the government. And I must exercise caution in any public utterances or writings pertaining to, well, just about anything.Not doing so could risk deportation.I'm not complaining, mind you. Virtually every country in the world bears the right and responsibility of maintaining its national integrity however it deems fit. The only exception, apparently, is the United States of America.'Trump and the MAGA Republicans have openly declared war on immigration,' the angry columnist concludes.Believe me, I'm not unsympathetic to the pain of undocumented migrants. Nor am I opposed to immigration. Not only was my mother an immigrant, but also my wife, countless friends, and many in-laws. And now, I guess, I'm an immigrant myself.But here's the thing: we all did it legally. By which I mean, endured the considerable pains and patience required to achieve legal status. Why is that considered impossible for millions of others? And why is there a double standard for the US and all other nations?It is precisely these inequities that led to Donald Trump's decisive electoral victory. And it is why — as he prepares to finally enforce immigration laws ignored for decades — millions of Americans cheer him on.I am not unmindful of the disruption this could cause. And, as I've said, not unsympathetic to the fears it has evoked. I also believe, however, that those disruptions have been exaggerated.Thomas Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently named as Trump's new border czar, told Fox News the emphasis would be on alleviating threats to public safety and national security. 'It's not going to be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,' he told 60 Minutes. 'It's not going to be building concentration camps.'The President-elect himself said as much in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal. 'We have a lot of good people in this country,' Trump said when asked about long-time undocumented migrants whose spouses and children are US citizens. 'There are some human questions that get in the way of being perfect, and we have to have heart.'I pray and expect that he meant what he said.* * *David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist and author with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book is A Tooth in My Popsicle and Other Ebullient Essays on Becoming Filipino.
