The Casilio Campaign’s “Migrant Forum”

This is the text of a letter I wrote to the Casilio campaign and other listed candidates / electeds who are hosting what is being called a “Migrant Crisis Forum” tonight.

Will pitchforks and torches be provided, or should your anti-immigrant posse bring their own? 

I am truly disappointed that I am unable to join your “migrant crisis forum” this evening. I would very much have appreciated the opportunity to tell all of the participants, to your faces, how ashamed and disgusted I am by your use of some of the most vulnerable people in our community as pieces in a political game of checkers. Your flyer for this event invites people to have their “voices heard” because Democrats have “blindly welcomed this crisis without any input from residents.” I wasn’t aware that asylum-seeking refugees, whose cases are being managed by a coalition of local resettlement agencies, needed to subject themselves and their housing and safety to your right-wing base.  

I say “ashamed” because western New York already has a reputation for being especially racist and xenophobic. Stoking hatred and politicizing Immigration is an easy play for craven politicians who wish to attain power through fear. 

Here we have an invitation to a “migrant crisis forum” hosted by people with Italian surnames like “Casilio” and “Todaro” and Polish ones like “Zachowicz” and “Jasinski”, with Kracker and Ortt bringing up the Teutonic rear. Mr. Zachowicz’s campaign even hosted a recent “Party in Polonia” without a hint of irony. 

How soon we forget. It was a short century or so ago that white Anglo-Saxon protestants were aghast over the influx of what they considered to be uncouth Catholic immigrants from places like Italy, Ireland, and Poland. These immigrants were derided as degenerate, disease-carrying ne’er-do-wells whose presence in the country was a negative development in all respects. 

Now, people fleeing some of the worst violence and political oppression in the world from places like Venezuela, Cuba, and sub-Saharan Africa trek thousands of miles, with just a few belongings, making a perilous journey to come to America to find peace and asylum and a chance at the same prosperity that people like the Casilio family enjoy today. Venezuela is a post-Stalinist socialist failed state. It must have taken a lot for you all to opt for “hate immigrants” over “hate communism” but hey ho, it’s a new, edgier Republican Party than the one I remember. 

The tell here is that you don’t refer to these people as refugees or asylum seekers – you rely instead on “migrants” and you know full well that a large swath of your supporters considers these legal refugees as “illegals”. You know they’re not illegal, but you’re not going to correct anyone if they say it. You know that given some help and a work permit,  they’d be overwhelmingly good for this region and a net asset, but for some reason you’re not really looking for solutions to a problem – you’re looking for scapegoats. After all, it’s an election year and you have literally nothing else. 

When you stoke fear and hatred against refugees, as you have, and as you are, and as you will continue to do (because of politics), you embarrass yourselves. You shame your families. You bring disgrace to your own ancestors who endured exactly the same kind of hatred, scorn, and defamation a century ago. 

There’s a difference, though. The difference is that your ancestors weren’t fleeing persecution when they left Poland or Italy. They were just seeking a better economic situation. They came to a country where everyone was from somewhere else and the force of old-world prejudices was blunted. They came here for opportunity and freedom. Yet you would deny this to people who are no different from the Casilios and Todaros and Jasinskis and Zachowiczes of yesterday.  Here you all stand, ready to pull the ladder of opportunity up behind you. Here you all are, taking a lazy focus-group-approved, push-poll fueled move to stoke fear, hatred, and division against people who left behind everything they had – and everyone they knew – to start fresh in a free country. Here you all are, making sure that the absolute worst people in our community have someone new to hate and to fear. As refugees from Burma, Sudan, and Somalia enrich our little region with their culture and labor, you insult them and anyone else whose path to this country came about due to war and oppression. 

So, that is why I am ashamed. As for disgusted, all of this is disgusting. When my parents came to this country from an Eastern European dictatorship, my father was drafted only 3 years after his arrival, receiving expedited citizenship and he served this country during the Vietnam War. They encountered no problems in the melting pot of Queens, New York, but when stationed in the South Carolina of 1969, they were treated to exactly the kind of vile, hateful rhetoric and behavior that you all now gleefully heap on people from Congo and Ghana and Venezuela. 

Someday, I hope and pray that your children or grandchildren will ask you about the history of each of your families and the unique and rich history they all brought to this country, and the difficulties they faced and sacrifices they made to succeed in the New World. And I hope you know and learn of those stories. And then I hope someday that you are confronted with the legacy of your lies, fear, ignorance, and hatred. Maybe someone you love will come under the care of a Venezuelan nurse who came here in 2022, or a Congolese physician. You should look that person in the eye and tell them the truth about how you talked about them when they were penniless, alone, afraid, and vulnerable.

Our region likes to tell people that we are a city of good neighbors. That we are kind and welcoming. That we are friendly and that we celebrate our diversity. Your cheap and lazy “migrant crisis” rhetoric really puts the lie to all of that. 

Shame on all of you.