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Much of the rhetoric from Donald Trump and his supporters is framed to engender in Americans a sense of fear of immigrants. He has been at this from the beginning when in 2015 he said, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Little has changed in his statement from then until now as he speaks of immigrants as criminals and folks with mental problems that are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Any crime by an undocumented person in the U.S. is given great coverage and is suggested to be an indication of an immigrant crime wave. To listen to Trump and the right-wing media of this country we would be seeing visions of thousands upon thousands of undocumented immigrants wandering our streets with machetes and clubs out to steal our stuff and murder us. This narrative is simply not true.
The data suggest some quite different. According to material from NPR we find that immigrants are less likely to be involved in criminal activity than white citizens. NPR said, “The study … suggests that there’s a real fear of getting in trouble and being deported within immigrant communities. Far from engaging in criminal activities, immigrants mostly don’t want to rock the boat.” (NPR, March 8, 2024, All Things Considered, Jasminne Garsd)
So, what kind of problem are we dealing with. Trump and his allies call it a crisis. Crisis would suggest that it is a problem of highest magnitude, one that threatens our very existence.
It is not that.
We have an immigration problem, but not an immigration crisis.
The fact is that we need immigrants to bolster our work force. Unemployment is very low, and employers have trouble finding workers. What is interesting is that the undocumented immigrant work force has stayed static at around 8,300,000 from 2007 to 2022. Undocumented immigrants are not taking American jobs.
Here is the issue. The immigration problem is not the crisis Trump makes it out to be, but it is a problem worthy of serious attention.
Presidents do what they can, but it an issue only Congress can solve.
There are a number of simple solutions which won’t work and will simply cause other problems.
The best a Harris administration can do for now is demand sufficient funding to have enough people to deal with the masses of people crossing the border. We are a rich country and can handle these desperate people. This is a problem that can only be solved by bipartisan efforts, but Trump and his allies don’t want to solve it, they want to use it as a political issue.
Don’t let them.
Jim Beard
Albemarle