Dear Sir,

I am compelled by recent Letters to the Editor equating Donald Trump’s stance on immigration with those favoured by recent protesters to voice this contradiction.

• International workers and businesses pay the lion’s share of taxes in Bermuda; the Bermuda Government would become insolvent overnight without them

• The illegal immigrants whom Trump intends to deport (I imagine he will negotiate for less once he has secured the presidency) do not pay the lion’s share of taxes in the United States

Bermuda cannot survive without international workers and businesses; the United States can survive without illegal immigrants. Bermuda is an Atlantic rock; like Singapore and Hong Kong, our saving grace is our willingness to take less than other governments. Let us not delude ourselves into thinking we give more, especially as recent protests have put our renowned hospitality in risk of abeyance.

Let us not further delude ourselves by equating our immigration situation with that of the United States, or our opponents of immigration with Trump. Both governments hold more debt than ever before in their histories. The United States can afford to lose its immigrants.

If one regards the Pew Research Centre’s 2015 data From Ireland to Germany to Italy to Mexico: How America’s Source of Immigrants Has Changed in the States, 1850-2013, and thence any government crime and poverty statistics, one would need to be more persuasive than Trump himself to convince me that these immigrants, especially the illegal millions, are a net positive for the US. (To those ostensibly concerned with wage inflation — those who are inevitably somehow equally concerned with “unfair” minimum wages and unemployment — I direct you to look up “cognitive dissonance”.)

Bermuda, on the other hand, cannot afford to lose its immigrants and international businesses; I am that aware the majority of Royal Gazette readers are cognisant of this, so I shall not waste their time repeating page 400 of the 2015-16 revenue estimates.

One may call Trump xenophobic. I seek only to correct the false belief that this somehow equates him to our recent protesters.

The US can afford to be xenophobic; Bermuda cannot. Trump is defending a nest of “golden geese”; the protesters would seemingly invite our golden geese to fly to Ireland.

If any equation is to be made, it must surely be between the progressives of both countries willing to sell their national economies for future votes.

BLIND PEW