Donald Trump’s imprisonment of innocent immigrants is based on his lies that the are threats to Americans because it’s the only thing that continues to attract voters for him. Certainly his chaotic up-and- down tariffs didn’t. Even some Republicans are breaking rank about them. Nor did his false rhetoric on healthcare. So Trump will continue his rants that immigrants are rapists, murders, sex-traffickers and are destroying our economy because it’s working for him.
The truth is that the incidence of crime among immigrants is substantially below that of native-born Americans. And they’re good for our economy. They prevent labor shortages, slow wage inflation, increase economic growth, and create jobs. Sadly, Trump stoked and exploited your fears to get your votes. Tragically, you bought it, sending thousands of innocent immigrants to the most brutal prison in the Western Hemisphere.
Hostile immigration policies and false rhetoric from Trump’s first administration stifled immigration, which had already been falling since 1995. In March of 2020, Trump stopped hundreds of thousands of migrants from entering from Mexico by falsely claiming that “tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border.” Before the pandemic, aggressive enforcement brought immigration from Mexico to a halt.
The first Trump administration issued over 400 executive actions to reduce immigration. Those actions, combined with his denigration of immigrants, resulted in the lowest inflow of immigrants from Mexico (around 200,000) on record since 1960. In the previous decade, about 1 million immigrants a year came to the U.S. Under Trump’s presidency, that number dropped to around 250,000. By the end of 2021, the net immigration to the U.S. hit its lowest level in decades.
The result was zero growth in working-age immigrants, down from an average of 660,000 in the preceding years. Labor shortages were still worsening when the economy began to recover from the pandemic in 2021. As the need for jobs rose, employers found it harder to fill them due to the scarcity of immigrants. Sectors that employ the most foreign workers had significantly higher rates of job vacancies in 2021.
By the end of 2021, there were about 2 million fewer working-age immigrants in the U.S. to fill those vacancies. About a million of them would have been college-educated and could have taken high-skilled jobs that stimulate innovation, boost productivity and grow the economy. High-skilled jobs also have a multiplier effect, generating up to 2.5 additional jobs in their local economies for each employed high-skilled worker. Immigrants are also three times more likely than U.S-born workers to start their own businesses. Two million fewer immigrants translate into fewer new businesses and more than 200,000 fewer jobs.
Immigrants play a significant role in sustaining economic dynamism. Highly skilled and entrepreneurial immigrants in science and technology start new businesses and create new jobs at high rates. Between 2010-2019, for example, foreign-born workers accounted for up to one quarter of employment growth and three-quarters of new businesses across 248 U.S. metro areas.
Immigrants have responded more positively to labor demand than low-skilled native-born Americans, which helps ease labor shortages. Studies show that U.S. cities with higher populations of Mexican-born immigrants suffered 50 percent smaller labor shocks than other metro areas
More Trump BS: While it’s true that immigrants increase some federal spending, most immigrants are net contributors to the national balance sheet because they pay more in taxes than they claim in benefits: which is necessary to keep Medicare and Social Security solvent.
Cutting immigration has tangible health consequences for seniors. Immigrants supply a large share of the growing demand for healthcare workers for the elderly. One in five nurses and one in four health aides is an immigrant. Think of where we would have been without them when COVID 19 overran our hospitals
Contrary to another Trump claim — immigrants don’t steal American jobs. In fact, they create more jobs than they take.
Given the many benefits of accepting more immigrants, one still wonders why Democrats don’t challenge Republican rhetoric on immigration more aggressively. Framing a compelling pro-immigration policy and clear and convincing messaging about its benefits could enable Democrats to seize the issue from Republicans and convince voters that more immigration, not less, is in their best interest.
Perhaps seeing and hearing Trump being debunked on his false claims would help, so I offer these videos to entertain and inform you. https://chaospolicy.com/?s=immigration, https://chaospolicy.com/trumps-press-conference-on-immigration-policies-part-2/, and https://chaospolicy.com/trumps-press-conference-part-3/
