Tuesday, February 28, 2017

They were living the dream.

February 27, 2017
By the Editorial Board

“I have a question (click here) in my mind,” Sunayana Dumala said after her husband, an Indian engineer, was shot dead last week in a Kansas bar. “Do we belong?”

There is no satisfying response to her concern, which is widely shared. The gunman reportedly yelled “get out of my country” before killing Ms. Dumala’s husband, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, as he was having a glass of whiskey after work with a friend, who was wounded.

President Trump and his administration have not only tried to keep many immigrants and foreign visitors out of the country, they have done so by casting them as criminals, potential terrorists and trespassers, out to steal the jobs and threaten the lives of Americans.

Ms. Dumala and millions of other members of minorities are integral to the United States, which is almost entirely made up of immigrants and their descendants. But this history might not comfort marginalized groups who hear the administration’s words and see what is happening in this country and wonder if it is safe to stay here, or come here....

25 February 2017
By Rajini Vaidyanathan

Sunayana Dumala last saw her husband when he left for work on Wednesday morning

The widow of an Indian man (click here) killed in a suspected race crime in the US has said her husband "loved America" and came to the country "full of dreams".
Sunayana Dumala, who flew to India after the shooting to be with her husband's family, told the BBC she was "devastated" by his death.
Srinivas Kuchibhotla was shot dead in a bar in Olathe, Kansas. His friend Alok Madasani and an American were injured.
Adam Purinton, 51, has been charged with premeditated first-degree murder.
Ms Dumala said that she had grown anxious about racial hatred after the election of Donald Trump, but she said her husband was "dedicated" to their life in the US and to his job as an engineer.
"Just last week we drove to Iowa to see our friends and their new baby," she said. "When we came back, he was working in the car while I was driving. That's how much he loved working... He personally wanted to do so much for this country."...

The Trump Administration cannot continue to exist within their own dreamscape.

...The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, initially dismissed as “absurd” any link between it and Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, but on Monday called the anti-Semitic attacks and the Kansas shooting “equally disturbing.” Each act of hate is easily explained away as the work of a disturbed person. Yet, had these attacks been perpetrated by a Muslim or an undocumented immigrant, the president would surely have claimed that he was right all along....