Stephen Miller's Ancestors: Immigrants, Like Most of America
The Independent, like many outlets, rightly points out the irony of Stephen Miller's anti-immigrant stance given his own family history as refugees. His great-grandfather, Nison Miller, fled state-sponsored pogroms in Belarus in 1903, arriving in the U.S. without wealth or English. This historical inconvenient truth neatly debunks Miller's current rhetoric. (Source: The Independent, NYT 2018).
Yet, the media narrative often stops there. It rarely connects Miller's rhetoric to the long, sordid history of U.S. immigration laws designed to keep certain groups out while welcoming others based on shifting political and economic whims – often at the expense of non-white or non-Christian populations since the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The real question isn't just Miller's hypocrisy, but
why such selective outrage over immigration persists, always seeming to target the most vulnerable today, while conveniently forgetting yesterday’s 'undesirables' who are now celebrated as pillars of society. It's almost as if the 'threat' of foreigners is a narrative tool more than a genuine concern.