HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT IMMIGRANTS AND THE 2024 ELECTION
With a week and a half to go, America’s Voice has put out a scene-setter document for political and immigration journalists with “10 Things We Know With Confidence About Immigration & 2024 Elections.” A longer, more detailed version with additional links and information, written by America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas, was posted on the AV “Combating Nativist Narratives” Substack (please like/share/subscribe!). Without predicting outcomes, AV is framing how immigration is showing up in the campaign, noting that “Trump is running the most vicious anti-immigrant presidential campaign of any major party nominee in modern U.S. history, using xenophobia and racism as the vehicle to seek absolute, fascistic power and not stopping at people who lack legal status or even citizenship.” Notably, John Kelly, a former general and longest-serving chief of staff under Trump, has confirmed that fascism is indeed on the ballot. Republicans are backing anti-immigrant strategy with nearly a billion dollars in negative ads tracked by AV, but in previous election cycles the strategy has not worked well and may backfire because voters remain strongly supportive of a balanced approach to immigration that stresses an orderly border, but also includes legal immigration (which Republicans oppose) and legal status for long-term, deeply rooted immigrants (which Republicans also oppose). As Cárdenas notes, the fundamental reality underlying the immigration issue is that “No matter the outcome of the election, we know immigration is essential to the future vitality, competitiveness, and potential of America.” Read more here.
DON’T BE FOOLED – TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION RECORD WAS A MESS
As Trump makes vile, anti-immigrant lies the centerpiece of his closing argument – calling America the world’s ‘garbage dump’ – the relentless focus on xenophobic messages at his rallies and in his interviews also includes another sort of garbage. In addition to the falsehoods about immigrants, Trump has been intent to make up an alternate version of his real first-term record when it comes to immigration and the border when in reality his record was one of cruelty, chaos, and failure. For example, while Trump has repeatedly claimed the border was “secure” during his term, border encounters under Trump actually jumped. Throughout 2019 under Trump, border encounters were the highest in more than a decade, spiking to about triple the totals of when he took office. And in December 2020 – in Trump’s final full month as president – border encounters were at the highest level for a December in more than two decades and had been rising for months. And that expensive, U.S. taxpayer-funded border wall of his? It was breached thousands of times by smugglers. “As he makes his closing argument all about immigration,” said Cárdenas, “don’t forget to recognize that his attempts to whitewash his own history are part of the litany of falsehoods.” Read more here.
VANCE REITERATES PLEDGE TO MAKE MORE LEGAL IMMIGRANTS DEPORTABLE
During campaign events in Arizona this week, GOP Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance again made clear that a Trump second term would seek to make as many people as possible eligible for deportation – including those here with legal status. “What Donald Trump has proposed doing is we’re going to stop doing mass parole. We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status,” Vance said. Without directly naming the popular and successful DACA program, he also said his ticket will seek to deport “people who violated the law coming into this country. We’ve got to be willing to deport them.” It’s another reminder about the stakes of this election, responded Vanessa Cárdenas. “As one party is proposing to end TPS and DACA, deport people by the millions and separate even deeply rooted immigrants, the other is pledging to keep families together and advance American interests. Vice President Harris, if elected, should plan to aggressively use TPS as a statutorily protected process of addressing our country’s foreign policy and domestic policy goals, especially in the absence of Congress finally doing its job and modernizing our immigration system through legislation.” Read more here.
WHAT SIDE OF HISTORY WILL VOTERS BE ON?
In her weekly column, America’s Voice consultant Maribel Hastings writes that while Trump has refused to discuss the details of how he would carry out his destruction mass deportation vision, he has threatened to use a controversial 1798 law last invoked by Franklin D. Roosevelt to detain some 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans in American internment camps during World War II. “It is estimated that two-thirds were U.S. citizens. They were scarred by their own country, losing family, jobs, businesses, and homes,” Hastings writes. “How Trump intends to apply this law to conduct mass deportations has not been explained.” What we do know is that, in addition to sowing panic and destroying families, mass deportation would take a sledgehammer to the immense contributions that immigrants make to the U.S. workforce and economy, as America’s Voice has highlighted in the new “Reclaiming Our Story” campaign. The billions they also contribute to programs that benefit Americans, like Social Security and Medicare? Gone. “We know that Trump and his followers are motivated by racism and xenophobia, even though immigration benefits the country. We know what side they are on,” Hastings continues. “On what side of history will the voters be?” Her column was also published in several outlets, including La Opinión, El Tiempo Latino, and HispanicLA. Read her column in English here and Spanish here.
TRUMP WANTS TO IMPLEMENT FAMILY SEPARATION FROM COAST TO COAST
The Trump administration’s family separation policy that resulted in the separation of 5,500 wailing and traumatized children from their parents remains one of the ugliest chapters in modern U.S. history. More than six years after a judge ordered Trump to begin the reunification of these kids, many remain traumatized and fearful that a potential second Trump term will resurrect this human rights disaster. Last week, the Harris-Walz campaign provided a platform for some of these children to publicly share their harrowing experiences, hosting a press event featuring three formerly separated kids. Billy was nine when U.S. officials separated him from his father, initially telling him that they would be apart for the day because his dad had to go to court. While they were finally reunited after 40 days, Billy said “we still fear. We — I go to therapists, but I still have the fear of Trump being reelected, and that same thing happening to me or other kids ever again.” More than 1,000 kids are still separated to this day. As The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer famously wrote in his 2018 piece, the cruelty is the point. And they want more of it. Trump and Project 2025 seek to carry out a mass deportation effort that would rip apart American families from coast to coast. In 2024, we have the power to continue this effort and to stop the resurrection and expansion of this unspeakable chapter in our history. Read more here.
IMMIGRANTS KEEP THE LIGHTS ON
When immigrants succeed, states like Nevada succeed. Immigrants make up a quarter of the state’s workforce and contribute more than a billion dollars in local and state taxes every single year. From housekeepers and line cooks, to medical professionals, to home builders – immigrants keep the lights on. Click here to watch and share the latest video from our “Reclaiming Our Story” series recognizing the essential contributions of immigrants.
YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS THIS
Earlier this week, America’s Voice joined Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, RuralOrganizing.org, and Western States Center for a virtual press briefing to discuss in detail the threats and the dangerous implications from far-right actors as we head into the homestretch of the election. Anti-democratic forces are organizing across the country behind the lie that there is a conspiracy by liberal elites to manipulate immigrants to cast fraudulent votes to steal the election. This Big Lie 2.0 is being amplified to lay the foundation for disrupting or disputing the results of the upcoming election and undermining American democracy. It’s a threat we must take seriously and one that won’t magically go away after November 5th, the experts said. “For the last year, there has been a massive coordinated effort on the American right to blast the Big Lie 2.0 in 360-degree surround sound to a segment of Americans to create the pretext to undermine the results of the election they do not like,” said America’s Voice Senior Research Director Zachary Mueller, who moderated the call. “It is a deadly lie that is being told at the highest levels of politics on the right consistently and persistently to undermine confidence in American democracy and to create the conditions to make it harder for US citizens to vote.” Read more here.
