In this over-heated election season, here’s something you won’t hear often:
In general, immigrants are no threat to Americans. In general, they are less threatening than native-born citizens. In general, immigrants make an overwhelmingly positive contribution to our culture and economy.
I’ll use the words “in general” often in this piece. That’s because we are talking about millions of human beings.
Opponents of immigration surely will find examples of sinners and criminals within those millions.
But, in general, do recent immigrants to the United States create the kind of devastation Donald Trump and his MAGA disciples claim?
When I’ve taken the time to get to know some of those people (they are everywhere if you live in Texas), they turn out, in general, to be people driven to provide better, prosperous lives for their families.
In general, they are not felons, drug pushers, murderers, rapists or pet eaters.
That’s irrefutably true, but Trump has demonized immigrants so harshly, consistently and falsely, it has created a storm of unexamined hatred. So has our Sen. Ted Cruz, who speaks in a TV ad of “killers, rapists and predators crossing again and again … .”
It has tarnished the image of our country as the place where Liberty’s torch welcomes the tired, the poor, those yearning to breathe free.
Reality clashes with the notion that these people are vicious and evil. That they want to take your job. That they want to rape your sister, kill your mama and eat your damn dog.
Many people believe this churning anti-immigrant hate machine, and it’s not just fringe extremists.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump, Republican nominee, said at the debate last week. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Every cult-like political movement in history has created such targets of hate. For the pre-war Nazis, it was European Jews. For the KKK in the 1920s, and for George Wallace in the 1960s, it was Blacks.
In general, do the 12 million to 20 million recent immigrants to the United States create the kind of devastation Trump claims?
An exhaustive study by Northwestern University concludes in recent years “immigrants are 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated than U.S. born citizens … .”
“From Henry Cabot Lodge in the late 19th century to Donald Trump, anti-immigration politicians have repeatedly tried to link immigrants to crime, but our research confirms that this is a myth and not based on fact,” says a recent Stanford University study.
According to Pew Research, the United States is home to one-fifth of the world’s international migrants, the largest migrant population in the world.
Among recent immigrants to the United States, 42 percent came for work, 32 percent came for education and 32 percent came to reunite families, according to USAFacts.org.
“Immigrants contribute to the U.S. economy in many ways. They work at high rates and make up more than a third of the workforce in some industries.” — The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The George W. Bush Institute not long ago issued a report on immigration that said, in part, “Immigration fuels the economy. When immigrants enter the labor force, they increase the productive capacity of the economy and raise GDP … . It’s a phenomenon dubbed the ‘immigration surplus.’”
What America needs to do is reject all the flaming rhetoric and thoughtfully rewrite its outdated immigration laws.
For now, in general, your pets are safe.
