Trumpist Republicans
are using the surge of illegal immigration at the southern border of
the US, as well as a surge of migrants seeking legal asylum, to threaten
a government shutdown and no added funds for Ukraine.
They’re using five lies to make their case.
1. They claim Biden doesn’t want to stem illegal immigration and has created an “open border”.
Rubbish. Since he took office, Biden has consistently asked for additional funding for border control.
Republicans
have just as consistently refused. They’re voting to cut Customs and
Border Protection funding in spending bills and blocking passage of Biden’s $106bn national security supplemental that includes border funding.
Is the fever of Trumpism starting to break?Robert Reich
Read more2. They blame the drug crisis on illegal immigration.
Last
Wednesday, at the southern border in Texas, the Republican House
speaker, Mike Johnson, claimed that “America is at a breaking point with
record levels of illegal immigration. We have lethal drugs that are
pouring into our country at record levels.”
Rubbish.
While large amounts of fentanyl and other deadly drugs have been
flowing into the United States from Mexico, 90% arrives through official
ports of entry, not via immigrants illegally crossing the border. In fact, research by the Cato Institute found that more than 86% of the people convicted of trafficking fentanyl across the border in 2021 were US citizens.
3. They claim that undocumented immigrants are terrorists.
Johnson
also charged that “312 suspects on the terrorist watch list that have
been apprehended – we have no idea how many terrorists have come into
the country and set up terrorism cells across the nation.”
Baloney. America’s southern border has not been an entry point for terrorists. For almost a half century,
no American has been killed or injured in a terrorist attack in the
United States that involved someone who crossed the border illegally.
ohnson’s number comes from government data showing that from October 2020 to November 2023, 312 migrants – out of more than 6.2 million who crossed the southern border during these years – matched names on the terrorist watch list.
It’s
unclear how many were actual matches and whether the FBI considered
them national security threats (the watch list includes family relations
of terrorist suspects, many of whom are not considered to be involved
in terrorist activity).
4. They say undocumented immigrants are stealing American jobs.
Nonsense. Evidence shows immigrants are not taking jobs that American workers want.
And
the surge across the border is not increasing unemployment. Far from
it: unemployment has been below 4% for roughly two years, far lower than
the long-term average rate of 5.71%. It’s now at 3.7%.
5. They claim undocumented immigrants are responsible for more crime in the US.
More baloney. In fact, a 2020 study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, cited by the Department of Justice, showed that undocumented immigrants have “substantially” lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants.
Similarly, a recently published study in the American Economic Journal
– analyzing official data from 2008 to 2017 on immigration, homicide
and victimization surveys – found “null effects” on crime from
immigration.
Trump is now moving into full-throttled neofascism, using the actual rhetoric of Hitler to attack immigrants
Notwithstanding the recent surge in illegal immigration, the US homicide rate has fallen nearly 13% since 2022 – the largest decrease on record. Local law enforcement agencies are also reporting drops in violent crime.
Who’s really behind these lies?
Since he entered politics, Donald Trump has fanned nativist fears and bigotry.
He’s
now moving into full-throttled neofascism, using the actual rhetoric of
Hitler to attack immigrants – charging that undocumented immigrants are
“poisoning the blood of our country” and saying they’re “like a
military invasion. Drugs, criminals, gang members and terrorists are
pouring into our country at record levels. We’ve never seen anything
like it. They’re taking over our cities.”
He
promises to use the US military to round up undocumented immigrants and
put them into “camps”. That demagoguery is being echoed by Trump lackeys
to generate fear and put Biden on the defensive.
Does
the US need to address the border situation? Yes – which Biden is
trying to do. But we need to do so in a way that treats migrants as
humans, not political pawns.
Trump and his
enablers want Americans to forget that almost all of us are the
descendants of immigrants who fled persecution, or were brought to the
US under duress, or simply sought better lives for themselves and their
descendants.
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