When last we noticed Ken Cuccinelli, career xenophobe and professional homophobe, he was occupying one of the Right-Wing Nutball seats on those CNN mega-panels. Turns out that, in addition to being a career xenophobe and a professional homophobe and onetime Rightwing Nutball for hire, the Cooch is a lousy poet as well. From NPR, via CNN, possibly as an act of atonement for CNN's ever having cut this guy a paycheck.

"Would you also agree that Emma Lazarus's words etched on the Statue of Liberty, 'Give me your tired, give me your poor,' are also a part of the American ethos?" NPR's Rachel Martin asked Cuccinelli on "Morning Edition" in an interview published Tuesday."They certainly are: 'Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge,'" he replied. "That plaque was put on the Statue of Liberty at almost the same time as the first public charge was passed -- very interesting timing."

Emma Lazarus: welfare queen.



This clown is now the acting (of course) director of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, in which capacity he was tasked this weekend with presenting the administration*'s latest assault on immigrants who are too inconveniently poor and too inconveniently brown for this administration's liking. From The New York Times:



The new regulation is aimed at hundreds of thousands of immigrants who enter the country legally every year and then apply to become permanent residents. Starting in October, the government’s decision will be based on an aggressive wealth test to determine whether those immigrants have the means to support themselves. Poor immigrants will be denied permanent legal status, also known as a green card, if they are deemed likely to use government benefit programs such as food stamps and subsidized housing. Wealthier immigrants, who are designated as less likely to require public assistance, will be able to obtain a green card.

Cuccinelli brings his particular take on the American ethos to proceedings. China News Service Getty Images

Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the acting director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, who announced the new regulation at the White House, said it would allow the government to insist that immigrants who come to the country were self-sufficient and would not be a drain on society.



“The benefit to taxpayers is a long-term benefit of seeking to ensure that our immigration system is bringing people to join us as American citizens, as legal permanent residents first, who can stand on their own two feet, who will not be reliant on the welfare system, especially in the age of the modern welfare state which is so expansive and expensive,” Mr. Cuccinelli said.

Under the new rule, the financial well-being of immigrants who are in the United States legally on temporary visas will be more heavily scrutinized when they seek a green card. Immigration officials will consider an immigrant’s age, health, family status, assets, resources, financial status and education. But the officials will be given broad leeway to determine whether an immigrant is likely to be a user of public benefits, to deny them a green card and to order them deported.

I wonder how that "broad leeway" will be implemented by the current government*. No, actually, I don't.



The rule has been the top priority of Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda.



It's here where I tell my family's story again. My grandmother was a shepherd on a farm in north Kerry. She left and became what was then called a "domestic" in Boston before moving to Worcester. There, she met my grandfather, a shopkeeper's kid who had fled from Kilflynn Crossing because his parents were aiming him toward the priesthood. He had a cousin who worked for the Worcester Fire Department and the cousin told my grandfather he could swing it so that my grandfather could "get on" the police force. My grandfather and grandmother married, had five kids, including my father, and were able to get through hard times and the Depression on a steady paycheck from the Worcester P. D. Neither one of them had "assets" or any "financial status" to speak of. My grandmother had little schooling; she learned, she would tell me later, from the hedge teachers. Of course, they both were white and, the resistance of the dwindling nativist faction aside, that made all the difference.



It’s about whiteness. NICHOLAS KAMM Getty Images

Imagine how the history of the United States would have been different had Stephen Miller's bigotry been writing the rules all along. No Famine Irish in the 1840s, for sure. No Europeans fleeing the revolutions of 1848. No Italians on the run from that country's regularly scheduled convulsions. No Jews escaping from pogroms. (Of course, this was not a settled matter until after the American government's disgraceful duck-and-cover during World War II.) And, before the inevitable argument gets made, there was as much resistance to giving immigrants like my grandfather government jobs as there is now to giving new immigrants a bit of help with rent and healthcare.



These are legal immigrants being knuckled now, a development any thinking person could see coming as soon as Stephen Miller gained even a slight sliver of actual power. None of them are "breaking the law" just by being here. All of them are "paying taxes" on just about everything they buy. Most of them are working for a living. This latest crackdown isn't about where they are. It's about where they're from.



Whiteness. It's all about whiteness. Failure to admit that simple fact is going to make it harder to repair the damage when this administration* finally slimes out of power, assuming we can build a consensus to do so, which I am beginning to doubt rather strongly. I'm beginning to become concerned that, in many important ways, our future involves facing an Always Trump movement.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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