Beginning in 2016, Donald Trump and the Republicans started attacking immigrants. Trump has said such racist statements as, “when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…they’re rapists,” and that “immigrants are poisoning the blood of the nation.” The Republicans and Trump scapegoat immigrants for the many problems we face, and now the hostility is escalating. They are lying, and we refuse to be fooled.
Is There a Migrant Crime Wave?
One of the main claims that the Trump campaign has emphasized is that there is an epidemic of crimes committed by migrants against citizens. This is a total fiction. The threat of crime and violence is certainly a real concern that many communities are facing. But the threat of crime has nothing to do with undocumented migrants. For example, a study by the CATO Institute of crime rates in Texas between 2013 and 2022 found that undocumented immigrants were 26 percent less likely than native born citizens to be convicted of homicide and about half as likely to be convicted of any violent crime. On top of this, while the proportion of immigrants has more than doubled from 1980 to 2022, the total crime rate has declined by over 60%.
Are Immigrants Getting a Free Ride from Taxpayers?
The idea that immigrants don’t pay taxes is totally false. Undocumented immigrants pay an estimated $96.7 billion a year in federal, state and local taxes. This comes out to around $8,889 per undocumented immigrant every year. In 40 out of 50 states, undocumented immigrants pay more taxes than the top 1% of income earners in these states. Undocumented immigrants pay into fund programs like Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance even though they will never be able to access those benefits.
Like everyone else, whenever immigrants go to the grocery store or fill up the gas tank, they pay sales tax. Whenever they pay rent for an apartment, they pay the landlord’s property tax.
Immigrants pay income and payroll taxes through automatic withholding from their paychecks or by filing income tax returns using Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs).
Are Immigrants Taking Our Jobs?
Donald Trump has doubled down on the old claim that “immigrants are taking our jobs,” particularly what he refers to as “Black jobs” or “Hispanic jobs.” In fact, study after study finds that there is no relationship between the unemployment rate and the number of immigrant workers. For example, in 1980, some 125,000 Cubans immigrated to Miami as part of the Mariel Boatlift, leading to a rapid growth of 7% of the workforce. Despite this rapid influx of Cuban migrants, it had no significant impacts on either the unemployment rates or wages for workers. This is true on a regional scale or a national scale.
Source: CATO Institute
If there is anyone who is “taking our jobs,” it is the companies that automate our jobs, that force us to do more work with less staff, that outsource our jobs to countries with weaker labor and environmental protections.
“We Need to Take Care Of Our Own”
Many people might say, “we need to take care of our own.” At the core, all working people, whether immigrant or native born, whether they happen to live in the same part of the world as us or not, are part of our class. They are not our enemies or competitors. When we accept the divisions imposed on us, such as between immigrants and citizens, we surrender our power. When we break through these divisions and stand together, we build our power to fight back against the attacks to come.
The Democrats are no champions of immigrants either. When Trump was president, the U.S. actually removed fewer immigrants per year than were deported during the Obama administration. And now under Biden, the U.S. is on track to arrest about 2.3 million migrants at the southern border this year alone, the largest number ever of arrests at the border.
The Democrats may not be coercing migrants onto buses and planes to be shipped off to faraway places with no plans for assistance. But at the same time, the Democrats continue to arrest and deport migrants in record numbers at the southern border. Both are crimes against these people fleeing desperate situations. Both parties try to keep the working class divided.
