Several liberal figures called on conservatives and President-elect Donald Trump supporters to give thanks to illegal immigrants on Thanksgiving, suggesting they acknowledge a large portion of migrants were the ones who harvested and packed their entrées enjoyed on Thursday.
“Everyone at the dinner table today, especially MAGA, please give thanks to the undocumented immigrants that picked and packed the food you’re enjoying,” said former Obama Housing & Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro.
“They deserve our grace. Happy Thanksgiving,” the former San Antonio mayor added.
Castro’s post was lambasted by respondents, who rhetorically asked which crops were being picked by the migrants flooding New York City and Chicago, while others suggested the characterizations were “racist” assumptions about farmworkers.
Others replied by saying this Thanksgiving they are “thankful for Tom Homan” – Trump’s incoming border czar.
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Meanwhile, on MSNBC, Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., was asked about migrant farmworkers who may not have legal status in the U.S.
Host Jonathan Capehart reported Thanksgiving costs were down 5% over 2023 and that nearly half of farmworkers are noncitizens.
“There’s no indication that Donald Trump would exempt agricultural workers from his calls for mass deportation when he takes office,” Capehart told Garcia.
“Donald Trump ran a whole campaign centered around denigrating and sometimes outright lying about immigrants… Immigrant labor is a key part of the American economy, and that includes immigrants who pick so much of the food that all of us will eat tomorrow and on Thanksgiving.”
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Garcia said he “completely agrees” with the pundit, adding that team Trump’s rhetoric has been “frankly un-American and shameful and would harm the economy.”
Garcia added that many food service workers also lack legal status and that it would be wrong to ignore their contributions this Thanksgiving.
“So the idea that we’re going to have mass-deport all of these workers that we depend on that our families depend on is absolutely crazy. It’s inhumane, it is un-American,” he said, adding mass deportations of those workers would badly hurt the economy.
“I think it’s really quite shameful what’s actually happening right now. I hope Americans push back on it, and especially this Thanksgiving, are thinking about all these people that are just asking to be here just so they can work and provide for their families and quite frankly, provide for the country.”
Actor and occasional Trump critic John Fugelsang posted on X that when the Wampanoag Native Americans fed the pilgrims who landed in present-day Massachusetts, “they had no idea they’d just invented a social safety net for undocumented immigrants.”
In that vein, a meme circulated on X depicting a pilgrim accepting a roasted turkey from a Native American with the caption, “Thanksgiving: Celebrating the day Americans fed undocumented immigrants from Europe.”
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