Trump’s immigration policy based on race

Published 1:30 am Sunday, December 21, 2025

After graduating from Snohomish High School and then the UW I joined the Peace Corps in 1966 as a volunteer in Ethiopia. This was at a time when diversity, equality and inclusion were celebrated as some of the core values of a democracy and which also defined the Peace Corps.

Many of us loved traveling around that amazing continent, but one country, South Africa, would not allow Peace Corps volunteers to even enter. Other Americans could visit, but we could not. Until 1989 the apartheid government which included many Afrikaners enforced vile racist laws even more onerous than those imposed in America’s segregated South. Our passports had the local Peace Corps address so we were marked as people who believed that no race was superior to another or that it was wrong to oppress others simply based on their race, ethnicity or beliefs.

In the Peace Corps world view different races could be friends and colleagues and even marry. All of these open-minded convictions were anathema to South African’s apartheid government.

This year Trump and his supporters unbelievably made a new and outrageous rule that only “white” South Africans are allowed to immigrate here. As usual, he is perpetuating a debunked lie and this one is that nearly all white Afrikaners are now impoverished and constantly being threatened by black South Africans. There have been acts of violence, but that cannot possibly be justification for demonizing millions of people.

Finally, how can any thinking person with compassion and a conscience not call out this shameful Trump rule for what it is: blatant, ugly racism.

Candace Jarrett

Snohomish