"Be afraid. Be very afraid" is so ingrained in popular culture that many viewers don't realize it was a line from the 1986 movie, The Fly. The line is a warning by Geena Davis' character, Veronica, in the film, but was also used as its tagline when it was being marketed. After all, who doesn’t like to be frightened at a movie? Fear sells movie tickets.
Being afraid sells…it sells very, very well.
Unfortunately, it isn’t just screenwriters and novelists who understand the power and lure of fear. So do preachers and politicians. They have used fear for decades and perhaps millennia, but in the social media age, fear has taken on a whole new level of pervasiveness in the American psyche. It has become the primary motivation for political action and movement within the Republican Party. Politicians will make their base afraid of their own shadow if it will get them out to vote…so,
Be afraid, be very afraid…
Of woke,
Of liberals,
Of Joe Biden,
Of Socialists,
Of Immigrants…oh, yes be afraid of immigrants!
Donald Trump is banking on fear of immigrants to propel him to the White House again where he can roadblock accountability for his crimes. No one is more afraid right now than Trump who faces real jail time if convicted. He is the master of fear-based methodology and is using it to whip up votes to keep him out of jail.
D.J. Trump believes he can scare enough gullible people into fearing immigrants to get them to vote for a convicted sexual abuser, convicted business fraud, a 91-count felony indicted criminal, and twice impeached former President to win the biggest prize of all…the Presidency. Fear knows no bounds of incredulity or non-reason when it comes to the issue of immigration.
The crowd that is the most susceptible to fear are the good Christian Nationalists who make up the core base of Trump’s coalition. Their list of fears runs deep and wide into the realm of theological nonsense, but the fear of immigrants is one of the chief ones.
Trump’s base, those good Christian folks, fear immigrants because they might not be like them. They might not be white, English-speaking, Christian, and law-abiding like they are, except when they lose elections when violence becomes okay to try and stop the peaceful transfer of power built into the Constitution.
But Trump tells these folks that immigrants, especially on the southern border, are rapists, criminals, drug addicts, drug smugglers, and child molesters, and are determined to take jobs away from the good white Christians. However, I’ve yet to hear from one American citizen who has a grievance from an immigrant taking their housekeeping job at the Motel 6 in town.
No matter, they believe anything Trump tells them despite the facts and evidence. So let me run through the facts about immigration since the politicians on the right want you to be very afraid of the “crisis” at the border and the impending doom that will come to “American civilization” from the hordes of migrants.
Here are the ten reasons we shouldn’t be afraid of immigrants and refugees, in fact, the United States NEEDS immigrants:
Immigrants Help Lower Inflation:
Immigrants work at higher rates than native-born Americans and make up more than a third of the workforce in some industries, especially construction, agriculture, hospitality, health care, and education. Without immigrants, there would be major labor shortages in many industries which would drive UP inflation. Immigrants move to where the jobs are. Their geographic mobility helps local economies respond to worker shortages, smoothing out bumps that could otherwise weaken the economy. This has been especially helpful in the post-COVID recovery.
Immigrants Support Social Security and Medicare Solvency
Immigrant workers help support the aging native-born population, increasing the number of workers as compared to retirees and bolstering the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. These programs would never survive without the influx of foreign-born workers. The current birth rate for native residents is 1.7 per woman. For a population to sustain itself, it needs a birth rate of 2.1. Immigrants can help to keep economic growth vibrant and for the population to reach replacement levels, we will need immigrants. Additionally, as the U.S. population ages, immigrants and their families are crucial to our economy. According to the Census Bureau, the 65-and-older population will nearly double by 2050, reducing the number of people in our workforce. On the other hand, 79% of immigrants in the U.S. are working age compared to 61% of their native-born counterparts.
Immigrants Do NOT Take American Jobs or Hurt Wages
Fully 36 percent of workers in the farming, fishing, and forestry fields are immigrants without a college degree, as are 36 percent of building and grounds cleaning and maintenance workers, 27 percent of hotel workers, and 21 percent of home health care industry workers. These are typically not jobs sought by US-born residents. Research also demonstrates that immigrant workers do not hurt the wages of native-born workers, and, on the contrary, complement them. Employment-based immigrants are critical to the U.S. economy as they meet the temporary and permanent needs of U.S. employers in diverse industries.
Immigrants Contribute Major Tax Dollars to the Federal Budget
Immigrants in the U.S. contributed more than $330.7 billion in federal income taxes in 2019, and over 492 billion dollars in total taxes (including state, municipal, and sales taxes). The Tax Foundation estimates that American and immigrant taxpayers paid $1.6 trillion in individual income taxes in 2019.
Immigrants Contribute More in Taxes Than They Receive in Benefits
Guess who gets more benefits from the Government? Native-born Americans pay 69 cents in taxes for every dollar of benefit they receive. Immigrants (legal or otherwise) pay $1.38 for every dollar of benefit. Immigrants, most of whom are reluctant to use welfare and other safety net programs, are a net plus to the budget.
Immigrants Commit Less Crime Than U.S.-Born Citizens
Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. This has been proven time and again. Immigrants are 30 percent less likely to be incarcerated than are U.S.-born individuals who are white, the study finds. “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 Abramitzky, author of the 2022 book, Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success.
Immigrants Start Businesses at a Higher Rate
Immigrants start small businesses more than native-born Americans. Immigrants to the U.S. are more likely to start businesses than native-born Americans are, according to a study that takes a wide-ranging look at registered businesses across the country. The MIT economist study finds that, per capita, immigrants are about 80 percent more likely to start a firm, compared to U.S.-born citizens. Those firms also have about 1 percent more employees than those founded by U.S. natives, on average. “The findings suggest that immigrants act more as ‘job creators’ than ‘job takers’ and that non-U.S. born founders play outsized roles in U.S. high-growth entrepreneurship,” the authors write in the paper. Immigrants are innovators, job creators, and consumers with an enormous spending power that drives our economy and creates employment opportunities for all Americans.
Mass Deportation Would Hurt the U.S. Economy…Dramatically
Trump is promising to begin massive deportations of immigrants on day one of his Presidency. Beyond the staggering moral costs and far-reaching trauma of separating millions of American families, the deportation of 11 million people would impoverish many American families and create enormous social costs. Mass deportation would force a nearly $8 trillion hit to the economy over the next 14 years and jeopardize our housing market. Further, it would take 20 years, and cost U.S. taxpayers between $400 to $600 billion.
Providing a Pathway to Citizenship Would Boost GDP
Providing a pathway to citizenship for the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. would increase their wages and spending power and, over 10 years, boost U.S. GDP by $1.2 trillion. If the U.S. provided a pathway to permanent residency and citizenship, it would increase Americans’ income by $791 billion and generate $184 billion in additional state and local and federal tax revenue from currently undocumented immigrants, and add more than 200,000 jobs to the U.S. economy per year.
Admitting Refugees Would Boost the Economy
Many of those seeking entry at the southern border are refugees. Refugees are important contributors to the U.S. economy, and investing one dollar in helping refugees get settled, can yield almost twice as much in economic benefits in just 5 years. More than 70% of refugees are of working age, a higher percentage than the U.S.-born population, and in 2015, refugees contributed $20.9 billion in taxes and had a spending power of $56.3 billion. Refugees have higher rates of entrepreneurship than native-born Americans.
All this evidence doesn’t imply that there isn’t a crisis at the border. The crisis is that we don’t have a coherent, compassionate, reason-based immigration policy that is long-ranging in scope and purpose. Resources do indeed need to be allocated to help immigrants and refugees process into the US in a systematic and orderly way along a pathway to citizenship. But they are not overrunning our country and they are not “tainting our blood.” The only thing we must fear about immigration is the lack of policy and boneheaded decisions made by politicians using fear of immigrants to garner votes. THAT is the crisis.
To paraphrase Joe Friday; just the facts folks, just the facts!