Public Comment

The Immigration Issue & The Politics of Deceit

Harry Brill
Sunday May 19, 2019 - 08:14:00 AM

It is certainly a challenging problem for progressives on how to address the gap between themselves and conservatives. The difficulty is not just due to the immense ideological differences. Progressives have to confront the considerable deception employed by many conservatives. 

Apparently, conservatives have persuaded a substantial number of Americans that illegal immigration is bad for Americans. According to the polls, not only Republicans accept this rhetoric. So do a majority of Independent and Democratic Party voters In fact, about two-thirds of the public believe that the U.S. military should defend the southern border from the "invasion" of immigrants. Not only Caucasians, but a majority of Blacks and non-white Hispanics share the same perspective. Generally speaking, a CBS poll found that 72 percent of those who watched President Trump's State of the Union address agrees with his ideas on immigration. 

President Trumps interest in building a wall on the southern border of the U.S. is not only wrong. It is a deceptive effort to convince working people that he wants to protect their interests, which includes doing what he can to save their jobs from being stolen.  

Yet according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, at least 60 Percent of the country's farm workers are undocumented. The Trump administration has not made any serious effort to crack down on the Agricultural industry's employment of illegal immigrants. In California, there are about 2 1/2 million undocumented immigrants. They too work on the farms and also in construction and manufacturing.  

But hasn't the Trump administration engaged in raids of enterprises that employ undocumented workers? Yes. but the intent is not to discourage their use. The purpose of these raids is to discourage their efforts to engage in labor action. Also, these raids convey the impression that the government is seriously attempting to curtail the employment of undocumented workers. 

In reality, for many years, while Trump urged that a wall be built to discourage illegal immigration, he employed undocumented workers at his Golf Course. He was forced to fire them because of the bad publicity his hypocrisy earned him. 

What elected officials in both the Democratic and Republican parties have failed to acknowledge is the important role government has played in encouraging illegal immigration. For example, soon after the North American Trade Agreement was adopted, the federal government subsidized American corn growers so they could sell corn in Mexico at an artificially low price. As a result, Mexican corn growers could not compete and went out of business. So not as a matter of choice but to survive, they attempted to cross the border to find jobs. Also, the massive attempt by people from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to migrate to the U.S. is in large part a result of their dictatorial regimes that were installed or supported by the United States. Yet the Trump administration claims that their decision to flee from many of these countries has been entirely voluntary. 

Because of the conservative dominance of the media, the public is mainly showered by deceptive perceptions of reality. It is immensely important that progressives continue to find opportunities to reach out to the public. The bottom line is that the public wants the truth and deserves nothing less.