Washington, DC — The rally in Asheville, North Carolina yesterday was billed as time for former President Trump to discuss his economic proposals, but, as usual, he strayed into insults, fantasies, disinformation and various rants, particularly about immigrants and immigration. Many reporters highlighted his inability to stick to his economic policy message, seeing the topic of immigration, for example, as divorced from his economic plans. We beg to differ.
According to Douglas Rivlin, Senior. Director of Communications for America’s Voice:
Trump’s mass deportation plan is the policy that will have the greatest impact on the U.S. economy and the impact will be devastation. In trying to round up millions of undocumented immigrants – who on average have lived in the U.S. for more than a decade and are deeply rooted in U.S. families and communities – Trump and his team are promising to spike deficits, slash employment, juice inflation and impose huge costs on state and local governments in the form of mandating the police and national guard to round up, detain and deport millions of consumers, homeowners, teachers, first responders and employers.
Just think about North Carolina where agriculture, home building, poultry, elder care, rural health and hospitality industries rely on immigrant workers, many of whom are undocumented. You would be ripping away people who are powering the North Carolina economy and driving up the worker shortages already impacting the post-pandemic economy.
No doubt, the mass deportation policies risk ripping apart the fabric of American communities and multiplying the tragedy of Trump’s past family separation policies on a massive scale, but mass deportation will impact the majority of American citizens in their wallets.
Trump’s primary economic policy is his mass deportation policy—a reckless and dangerous plan that would devastate our economy and kill growth.
See Excerpts from Reporting on the Rally:
Associated Press, “Trump’s campaign called it an economic address. He made big promises but mostly veered off topic” noted, “Trump sought to connect his emphasis on the border and immigration policy to the economy. He repeated his dubious claim that the influx would strain Social Security and Medicare to the point of collapse. He bemoaned the taxpayer money being spent on housing migrants in some U.S. cities, including his native New York. But most of the time he spent on immigration was the same broadsides about immigrants and violent crime that have been a staple of Trump’s speeches since 2015.”
Charlotte Observer opinion, “Trump’s low bar in NC rally: sound sane. Did he meet it?”: “The speech was touted as Trump delivering ‘remarks on the economy.’ But it took Trump 10 minutes to even mention the economy, because he was busy ranting about Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign. The rest of the speech was spent veering back and forth between the economy and other issues, including immigration. When Trump did address the economy, he did not do so in a concrete way, and he did not provide details about how he will fulfill many of the promises he made about inflation and energy production.”
Key Resources:
- SSRN: Paper by Robert G. Lynch and Michael Ettlinger, “Literature Review on the Economic Consequences of the Deportation of Unauthorized Immigrants”
- America’s Voice: “Immigrants Contribute A Lot – Just Ask The Researchers”
- America’s Voice en Español weekly newspaper column by Maribel Hastings (translation): “The undocumented immigrants Trump wants to deport contribute millions of dollars to the economy”
- America’s Voice: “Trump and Vance are Two Peas in a Pod: Both Exploited Immigrants to Enrich Themselves”
