advertisement
In an attempt to showcase his support for legal immigration, United States President Donald Trump presided over a ceremony at the White House where five people were naturalised as US citizens on Tuesday, 25 August.
Calling out the ceremony, former US Presidential candidate and Democratic Party leader Hillary Clinton said that Trump has spent his “entire political career demonizing immigrants.” She added that the ceremony was like watch a “fox bless a henhouse.”
Clinton was not the only one. People from various walks of life took to Twitter to point that Trump separated hundreds of immigrant children from their families.
Calling the ceremony an “unprecedented abuse of power”, people on Twitter also wondered how Republicans would have reacted had Obama held such an event.
Dressed in a saree, Indian software engineer Sudha Sundari Narayanan was one of the five at the unusual ceremony. The others were from Bolivia, Lebanon, Ghana, and Sudan.
This citizenship ceremony at the White House coincided with the second day of the Republican National Convention.
In a presidential election where South Asian American identity is becoming increasingly highlighted, this may be argued to be a key move by the Trump administration in a bid for re-election.
“It’s not so easy. You’ve been through a lot,” to get the citizenship, a “priceless possession in the world,” he added.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)