Washington, DC — With five days remaining before election day, below are five things to keep in mind about Donald Trump and immigration:
- Don’t let Trump and allies whitewash his real first term record of immigration and border chaos, cruelty, and failure. As David Bier writes in The Washington Post, “Listen to just about any of former president Donald Trump’s rallies, and you’ll hear claims that President Joe Biden’s border policies have made the country less safe. At a recent town hall, Trump said Biden is releasing murderers, ‘drug dealers, drug addicts, everybody’ into the country. But new data reveal that Trump was the one whose immigration policies damaged the country’s security. In fact, he released more convicted criminals into the United States than his successor.” (Also read deep dive from America’s Voice, “Don’t Let Donald Trump Whitewash His REAL First Term Immigration Record – “A Cruel and Chaotic Failure”)
- Don’t underestimate the devastating economic consequences of mass deportation. In The Guardian, “Trump’s mass deportation plan would be ‘economic disaster’ for US,” Edward Hemlore writes, “In a country that relies on a mobile, low-cost workforce, the loss of migrant workers would trigger productivity losses and a new round of inflationary pricing pressure … Baby boomers are retiring, and with fewer immigrants, the workforce will struggle to sustain economic output: US employers will need to hire 240,000 people a month for the next five years just to replace those who are stepping out, according to one recent study … Of the undocumented migrants, between 8 and 9 million are in the workforce doing essential jobs that Americans disproportionately don’t want to do or work in sectors where there aren’t enough workers.” The economic ramifications of Trump’s mass deportation have been well cataloged by leading voices here, here, here, and by America’s Voice.
- Don’t underestimate the humanitarian and moral costs of Trump’s indiscriminate mass deportation plan. As Will Bunch writes in The Philadelphia Inquirer, “The notion of rounding up thousands if not millions of human beings and shipping them to overcrowded makeshift detention camps was seen as the kind of thing that America went to war to defeat, not something that could happen here … We should be talking about mass deportation — not just the headline, but the reality of what it would mean to have this deportation army causing chaos in our cities — every single night.” (Also read “Trump’s proposal for mass deportation of immigrants is a moral abomination” by Moira Donegan in The Guardian).
- Don’t forget that Trump also wants to dismantle legal immigration. According to a new Michelle Hackman piece in The Wall Street Journal, “On the campaign trail, Donald Trump routinely promises he will end illegal immigration. Behind the scenes, his closest advisers and allies are also drawing up plans that would restrict many forms of legal immigration, some of which could affect the ability of businesses to hire foreign workers. Outside advisers including Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda when he was in the White House, and such groups as the America First Policy Institute have been preparing executive orders, regulations and memos for a future homeland security secretary to sign that would narrow legal ways to migrate.”
- Don’t be desensitized to the reality that Trump is running the most rabidly anti-immigration campaign in modern U.S. history. As America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cardenas explains in a new column for EFE Verde (available in English and Spanish from the Spain-based international newswire), “As election day approaches, our nation faces a dire threat: the normalization of xenophobic rhetoric and its frightful consequences on our communities. This isn’t just about politics; it’s a moral and human crisis that puts Latino families, and indeed all Americans, in harm’s way … This election isn’t just another political event; it’s a battle for the future of our nation. Allowing anti-immigrant rhetoric and discriminatory policies to prevail will have dire consequences. We will see more violence, more hate crimes, and a further erosion of civil liberties. If we do nothing, we become complicit.”
Resources and Background
- America’s Voice: “Sharp and Consequential Contrasts on Immigrants, Latinos, and All Americans in Dual Closing Arguments.”
- America’s Voice: “Trump’s Vilification of Immigrants is the Centerpiece of His Closing Message and Threats to American Democracy.”
- America’s Voice: “10 Things We Know With Confidence About Immigration & 2024 Elections”
