Ted Lieu: I have served in the Air Force and in Congress. People still tell me to 'go back' to China

Source: Washington Post

I have served in the Air Force and in Congress. People still tell me to ‘go back’ to China.

By Ted Lieu
July 16 at 5:20 PM

Ted Lieu, a Democrat, is a U.S. representative from California.

I served on active duty in the U.S. Air Force and currently serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. Yet I still experience people telling me to “go back” to China or North Korea or Japan. Like many immigrants, I have learned to brush off this racist insult. I never thought the president of the United States would tell members of Congress to “go back” to another country.

President Trump has often crossed the line of what constitutes decent behavior. But this time feels different, because he is now attacking legal immigration and U.S. citizenship. His statements on Sunday and since then imply that immigrants are somehow less loyal to our country, less American, and that we should “go back” or “leave” if we disagree with him.

Twenty years ago, I wrote an op-ed in The Post about what it was like to wear my Air Force uniform while people questioned my loyalty to the United States, all because of the color of my skin. I was in my Air Force blues when a woman asked if I was in the Chinese air force.

The suspicion that immigrants are not to be trusted or are unpatriotic is not just wrong; it is un-American. And dangerous. Yet it has marred America’s past, including with the 19th-century “Yellow Peril” hysteria, the internment during World War II of more than 110,000 people who happened to be of Japanese descent and accusations against Jewish Americans of harboring dual loyalties.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-have-served-in-the-air-force-and-in-congress-people-still-tell-me-to-go-back-to-china/2019/07/16/64f5f0ce-a7f8-11e9-a3a6-ab670962db05_story.html