A new editorial by the Washington Post compares Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s anti-illegal immigration platform to eugenics, the belief that you can enhance the human race by controlling populations and manipulating sexual reproduction.
Citing the work of famed American sociologist Edward Alsworth Ross, a eugenicist and racist, the Post said that Trump “lacks Ross’s academic pedigree but matches his analytical acuity on immigration issues.”
“Like Ross, Mr. Trump is right in the sense that immigrants — and here we assume Mr. Trump is referring to the illegal variety, though he doesn’t bother much with fine distinctions — are in rough circumstances compared with native-born Americans,” the Post said.
Trump has rallied many GOP voters with fiery rhetoric on immigration, and is currently leading national and early primary state-level polls. He has said his opposition is toward immigrants entering the U.S. illegally across the Southern border.
“We have illegal immigrants that are treated better, by far, than our veterans,” Trump said Tuesday during a speech on national security in Los Angeles.
“I want people to come into our country legally,” he said at a rally in New York City on Sep. 3. “I want to have a big, fat, beautiful open door. I want people of great talent to come in for Silicon Valley. I want engineers. I want physists. I want people with great talent to come into the United States.”
“When people come in, they have to come in legally,” Trump said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in August.
