tell me this is fake news.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't/don't see the removal of "nation of immigrants" as prima facie racist or anything like that, but given the current political climate I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the people involved in that decision had underlying racist or xenophobic motivations. I do agree with taking "customers" out of the mission statement, though.

Here's the former INS's mission statement, which was comparatively more extreme:


For contrast, here are the "vision statement" and mission statement for the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada:


Pretty straightforward and to the point and I think the USCIS's statement could benefit from similar parsimony.

As an aside, whenever the topic of our border security comes up, it seems that the Republicans are too xenophobic about it and seem to want to lock the doors and throw away the key because everyone coming here is a terrorist/criminal, while the Democrats are too naive about it and seem to think that everyone wanting to come here has good intentions so we should let even more people in and any attempt to make our borders more secure is akin to racism. They then look at Canada as some sort of beacon of open-minded leftist values.

But, it's a lot tougher to emigrate to Canada and their immigration and citizenship requirements are more strict than the US's. Having lived in Canada for the better part of a year now, most of the Canadians I've talked to about this think that the US's border and immigration policies are absurdly lax. Yes, even in liberal Canada, they think that the Democrats' seemingly (and somewhat recent) knee-jerk resistance to border security is a bit deluded.

I think there's a sensible, reasonable middle ground that could be found, where border security and immigration services are tightened enough to ensure the US is more safe and people coming into the US share our values, but also where we're open and encouraging to people wanting to come and welcoming to those who make it in.

Unfortunately, I don't have faith that there are enough (or, honestly, any at all) elected officials in Washington who could come together and hash out a good compromise that would adequately satisfy the concerns of both sides.