When I was born neither of my parents was a US citizen, and only one had legal status to be in the country. My parents knew that being born in this country will mean having better opportunities such as getting a college education. This is the hope of every immigrant parent, that through their sacrifice and hard work their children will have a chance to a better life. But if Trump has his way, children born today to undocumented immigrants, like I was, would be denied US citizenship and potentially become people without a nation or place to call home. His administration has plans to carry on a mass deportation that will separate families, cause irreparable harm to children, and hurt our communities and our economy. We should not allow this to happen.
Xenophobia and nativism are not new to this nation. We have been here before, in 1898 the US tried to deny citizenship to Wong Kim Ark, born in the US to Chinese parents who at the time were barred from attaining citizenship. Chinese immigrants were brought to work but could not apply for naturalization. Their labor was wanted, but not their membership in this country. The case was taken to the US Supreme Court and despite the widespread Anti-Chinese racism at the time, ruled in favor of Wong Kim Ark, making it abundantly clear that anybody born in this country is a US citizen, regardless of the parents’ immigration status. This is what the 14th Amendment of the Constitutional guarantees. Period.
Trump is a runaway train and no one seems to be willing to pump the brakes. He has gone after students and professors because they oppose his policies, such Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The Trump’s administration has gone after Green Card holders like Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate who is married to a US citizen. His wife is expecting their first child, who Khalil might not get to be there for the birth. The administration is trying to deport him because he engaged in Constitutionally protected free speech, which is what peaceful student protest is. Khalil has not been charged with a crime, he is simply being targeted because Trump is too fragile to tolerate dissent.
Trump recently invoked the Alien Enemy’s Act of 1789 to deport Latino immigrant and asylum seekers, and is defying the courts who have made it clear he is abusing the law. The Act has only been used three times, all during a time of war. Once during WWII to put Japanese immigrants and US citizens into concentration camps. But law and morality don’t seem to be real concerns for this administration. Trump recently deported a sick US citizen child with brain cancer despite the child undergoing critical medical treatment. It is a lie when Republicans say that Trump is only going after criminals. We are getting reports that many, perhaps the majority, of undocumented immigrants that have been detained or deported have no criminal record.
The Republican Party doesn’t really want to get rid of all undocumented immigrants or drastically reduce the number of immigrants that come into this country. They know that immigrants are too important to our economy, and they have always been. For over 150 years since the US colonized the US Southwest it has relied on Mexican and Latino labor to fill important gaps in our labor force. But despite their contributions, Mexican and Latino immigrant workers haven not been seen as full human beings, that’s why they are called “bad hombres” and “illegal aliens.” Harsh immigration laws and enforcement will not do away with the US reliance on Latino immigrant labor. What these laws and policies will do instead is exacerbate the condition of illegality and of vulnerability, which facilitates the exploitation and abuse of immigrants. That’s what US employers want, workers that they can abuse because they have less rights than citizens.
Blaming immigrants is a distraction, it is a diversion tactic so that we don’t pay attention to what really is going on. Don’t fall for this cheap trick. Immigrants don’t control our economic policy or make decisions over tariffs or taxes or trade or how much we spend on the military and defense contractors. Deporting immigrants will not make us safer. Study after study show that immigrants commit less crime that US born citizens. Even Trump’s claim about drug smuggling is false; the great majority of those apprehended at the border for drug smuggling are US citizens. Communities will not get safer by creating fear and division.
The truth is that we need immigrants. The US would suffer a big population decline without the constant flow of immigrants. Our fertility rate has been steadily declining for the past decades and the US born population keeps getting older on average. When the population declines, we lose workers and taxpayers, and jobs. We need immigrants to keep working those construction, restaurant, hotel, landscaping jobs. Immigrants come at the prime of their lives, they are healthier and work for many years before they retire. We need immigrants so that they can expend their hard earn money buying products, paying rent or fixing their property, or starting small businesses. And we need the children of immigrants to go to school and become professionals and contribute to this society.
Immigrants are not the ones crashing the economy, Trump is with his trade war and the mass layouts of government workers and the defunding of education and programs that help our communities. And is all being done in order to pass another set of trillion dollar tax cuts for the rich who do not want to pay their fair share and what they owe to our society.
Agustin Palacios, PhD
La Raza Studies Professor
Contra Costa College