A neighbor’s flag

In September, my family and I moved from Dublin to a town in Connecticut. It’s been a mostly positive experience here, though I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to the heat or the mosquitos. A friend from South Carolina thought this was amusing but, if her description of her home state is accurate, South Carolina is a dense, blisteringly hot fog where the small part of the air that isn’t water vapor is instead those irritating bloodsuckers. She may be exaggerating.

Our neighbors have been universally welcoming. Some of them have bumper stickers on their car (or door), and the occasional banner for a local political candidate. This is another change. Perhaps on game days (match days to the Irish) the odd person might hang their team colors from their windows, or put up a poster in their window. Otherwise, homes remain silent as to the loyalties of their occupants. Here, on the streets that surround our own, flags for various college and high school teams hang permanently from doorways, joining the ubiquitous stars and stripes.

One flag surprised me, at least in my reaction to it—a large Trump 2020 flag, hanging off a house a few streets over.

I won’t ascribe motives to the person who put up the flag. It’s certainly a brave thing to do in Connecticut and, for all I know, this person could be a prankster trying to get someone’s goat. Or they may be entirely sincere. I don’t know.

What I do know is that the flag, MAGA hats, and other signs and symbols of the Trump administration, remind me that I am not entirely welcome in this country.

I moved to the United States with my American wife and our two Irish-American children. Though my dealings with USCIS and the State Department were always polite and professional, processing times for immigrant visas rose sharply under the Trump administration. These processing times are also somewhat misleading—there were many other delays, additional processing times at different departments, etcetera. For example, there was a gap of five weeks between USCIS stating that the application was sent to the State Department, and the State Department recognizing it as received. All in all, it took 13 months from the submission of our application to receiving my visa.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association has characterized these delays as “crisis-level”, and they seem set to continue with the shuttering of 24 USCIS offices. Despite claiming to support legal immigration, the Trump administration seeks to dramatically reduce it. Famously, the administration rejected a 25 billion dollar funding deal for the wall, with protection for DACA recipients, because it did not include “massive cuts to legal immigration”.

The positions and actions of the administration here betray a deep distaste for immigrants, legal or otherwise. I don’t think that every Trump supporter feels this way, but I do know that they don’t care enough to severe their ties. And to wear a MAGA hat on your head, or to fly a Trump flag outside your home, is to proclaim at least your acquiescence to ostensibly racist policies.

I can only imagine how much less welcome those immigrants with darker skin than mine, or who are undocumented, must feel.