The immigrant: one of the most contentious figures in American politics, one of our most valuable resources as a country and one of the main stars of the 2024 election. Generation after generation, people have looked to immigrants as a scapegoat.
This election cycle, former President Donald Trump has run his campaign off a hate train of anti-immigrant sentiment. From accusing Haitians in Ohio of eating cats and dogs, saying that immigrants are building an army to attack the United States, and claiming that the people crossing the border are from “insane asylums,” Trump has truly gone off the deep end.
Where does this extremist sentiment come from? Why has Trump decided to run off such a ridiculous campaign–and why do people believe him? How have these ideas influenced this election cycle?
These questions run throughout my head time and time again. In a country so diverse, and so celebratory of other people’s cultures with holidays such as St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, and Lunar New Year, why does this rhetoric prevail generation through generation?
Elaine Frantz, a history professor at Kent State University, discussed with me the history of this hate throughout America.
“Anti-immigrant sentiment goes all the way back to the beginning of and before the beginning of our nation,” Frantz said. “There’s something sort of primal, right, about you have insiders, you make your community, you set up your community in a way that has its own logic to it. And then somebody else comes from outside that can disturb that, that sort of sense of equilibrium that you’ve built.”
Even in colonial America, people were extremely wary of outsiders.
“As America grew and became more interconnected, it became less about specific communities, and it became more about the nation as a whole,” Dr. Frantz said. “We’re not going to necessarily focus on our specific town. We’re going to focus on keeping people from other countries coming into our nation. But as early as the Alien and Sedition Acts, which would be 1798, you have national laws which are keeping out immigrants. There’s nothing new about anti-immigrant sentiment.”
In the 2016 election, Trump focused heavily on immigration in his campaign. While in the White House, these policies were disastrous for the American economy. America’s average annual labor force growth, a key indicator of national economic growth, was reduced by 59% over the four years Trump was in power. His policies were so detrimental for the economy that in 2022 Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell gave a speech and said that Trump’s anti-immigration policies continued to contribute to the lower supply of workers in the United States.
Though other factors such as the Covid-19 Pandemic and the United States’ aging population also contributed to this, we cannot downplay the effects Trump’s immigration policies had on the economy. Labor force growth began slowing under Trump’s economic policies three years before Covid-19 even began.
In a country with an aging population, immigrants are vital in order to keep our economy flourishing. Immigrants have been a crucial driving of labor expansion in the United States for generations. Trump’s policies had a sharp impact on the number of workers available to help support our economy.
Economists Giovanni Peri and Reem Zaiour found in a 2022 study that Trump-era immigration policies and the Covid-19 Pandemic led to a loss of 2 million working-age immigrants for the American workforce.
According to the CATO Institute, Trump did reduce legal immigration by 63%, but his policies had little effect on illegal immigration.
“The problem with violence against immigrants is that immigrants are always coming because of economic forces,” Dr. Frantz said. “Immigrants are always coming because there are jobs that want to hire them and they know it, right? And so for that reason, anti-immigrant violence or anti-immigrant legislation is always going to be evaded because people have such a powerful incentive to move towards economic opportunity. And because people have jobs to offer in this country, they need those workers and will always evade those laws themselves in order to get these workers to come in.”
American companies need immigrants. Recently, many companies have been pleading for increased admittance of immigrants because of a labor shortage and to fill the jobs Americans don’t want.
At SHS, our high number of immigrant and immigrant families can provide insight into the multitude of reasons people come to the United States.
In a small student survey which was taken by 123 students at SHS, of the people who responded almost 18% of respondents said they immigrated to the U.S. or came here temporarily due to family circumstances.
Junior Shiyuan Wang immigrated to the United States recently due to her dad’s job.
“I came to the United States on the 22nd of June 2024 from Singapore,” Wang said. “My dad’s work hours were very bad in Singapore because all of his colleagues were American– it was bad for his sleep so we came here.”
Wang’s family, like many others, came here for work and better opportunities. In 2021, 41.8% of immigrants came to the United States for work related reasons. Another 32.2% of immigrants came here for school or education.
“Americans don’t want to blame themselves for their issues, so they blame it on us,” Wang said.
Trump’s stance on immigration is completely laughable, and he doesn’t even care to fix the issues in any capacity.
Earlier this year, a bipartisan border bill was introduced into the Senate by both Republicans and Democrats. This bill would raise the standards for migrants seeking asylum and give the Department of Homeland Security emergency authority to deny asylum if the number of border crossings gets too high. This sounds like everything Trump would support, right?
Wrong.
Trump came out against this bill. He called up the Republicans in the House of Representatives and told them to vote against it.
Why?
He wanted to run on immigration as a key issue for this election.
Trump does not care about the state of the border. He does not care about the outcomes of his own ridiculous policies. And he sure doesn’t care about the American people and our economic future.
Some may argue we do need tighter borders because dangerous people are coming over, but this is completely false. Studies have found that there is no connection between immigration and crime. Certain instances of violence does not mean all immigrants coming here are violent criminals.
Obviously, the United States has every right to control its border. We cannot let every single person in, but we need to think about this issue objectively. Immigrants are our economy. Without them, the United States would not be a sliver of the power we are today.
This November, think about your own community. Think about the hundreds of immigrant families in the Solon area. Trump’s heinous comments will only grow stronger if he’s elected into the White House. Four years of hate, lies and bigotry in our highest office of government will completely stunt America’s future.
It’s time to kick out degeneracy. Keep Trump off your ballot this November.
