Anyone who pays attention to the media knows that Donald Trump doesn’t like immigrants, unless they come from nice white European countries like the Czech Republic or Slovenia.
It is a constant and consistent theme at Trump speeches and rallies. At the Republican National Convention Trump blew his attempt at a unifying acceptance speech with the following comment: “Our cities are flooded with illegal aliens. Americans are being squeezed out of the labor force and their jobs are taken. ... The jobs that are created, 107 percent of those jobs are being taken by aliens.”
I will pass over and leave unmentioned the strangeness of the 107% figure as well as the well-known earlier Trump demagogic assertion that immigrants are vermin who drain the blood of our country.
However, Trump’s statement about immigrants taking “our” jobs is false. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employment for the native-born population has increased by more than 7.2 million jobs under Biden. ... Employment for foreign-born workers increased about 5 million.” The BLS adds that this figure “includes more than undocumented immigrants; it also includes legally admitted immigrants, refugees, and temporary residents such as students and temporary workers.”
While jobs are important, what really awakened the crowd was Trump’s portrayal of immigrants as a horde of crazed criminals. “They’re coming from everywhere,” he told the GOP Convention audience. “They’re coming at levels never seen before. It is an invasion, indeed. And this administration does absolutely nothing to stop them. They’re coming from prisons, they’re coming from jails ... mental institutions and insane asylums.”
“This is fantasy. Immigration experts know of no such effort by other countries,” wrote the Washington Post fact-checker.
In fact, the truth is that “crime rates and immigration have moved in opposite directions in recent years.” Violent crime has declined in the United States as the number of immigrants has increased. The foreign-born population in our country rose from about 5% in 1970 to just under 14% in 2022. Meanwhile the annual murder rate has declined nationally during the Biden presidency.
When Fox News reports murder, rape, or other crimes by immigrants, they engage in sheer demagoguery. “The individual crimes committed by migrants that Trump and his allies highlight simply do not add up to a bigger trend,” Lopez tells us.
The Times also noted that immigrants have lower incarceration rates and that undocumented immigrants have fewer felony arrests than native-born Americans as well as legal immigrants. This is sensible since many illegal immigrants risking their lives fleeing violence in their home countries hardly want to attract police attention in the U.S.
Yes, we should rationally control immigration. The large numbers of desperate people entering America USA are creating a burden in many of our larger cities. They drain public resources that might otherwise be used, for example, to create more housing. And yes, we know that drugs are brought into America, but most of them enter in the luggage of those crossing at legal points of entry, and not by those illegally crossing the Rio Grande seeking asylum.
As climate change forces more people to head north to escape deteriorating political and economic conditions in their home countries, the number of asylum seekers crossing dangerous rivers and jungles to enter the United States will increase.
Neither higher walls nor fear mongering rhetoric by Trump and the MAGAites will solve our immigration problems. Solutions to our real and serious border problems can only be found when we stop demonizing those seeking help in “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” land which was stolen by the “free and the brave” from native-born people earlier.
Democratic and Republican cooperation in Congress could create long-term solutions. This is impossible as long as Trump continues to use immigrants as political pawns, as he did when he killed the bipartisan border plan in February.
Given this Republican unwillingness to solve this problem, we have another good reason to vote Democratic – for only a Democratic Congress, working with a Democratic President, will be able to resolve this issue.
Remember in November!
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