The issue of immigration has become
central to the 2016 presidential election.
Republican candidate Donald Trump has chosen to focus on the supposed
threat of immigrants to the American way of life as a major campaign
theme. From his first campaign speech, he took aim at immigrants Mexico
is supposedly "sending" to the United States, whom he characterized as
killers, drug dealers, and rapists. He also has singled out Muslims as
posing a terrorist threat. When called on these claims, Trump has not
backed down, but has instead repeated them again and again.
Trump also proposes "
solutions"
to the supposed immigrant and Muslim threat to the United States. He
has called for the mass deportation of the approximately 10 to 11
million undocumented immigrants now living in the United States. He
proposes to build a wall along the 1,900 mile U.S.-Mexican border, and
says he will "make Mexico pay for it." How? He proposes to seize the
money that undocumented immigrants earn working in the United States and
send back to their impoverished families and communities in Mexico. He
will also, so he says, end birthright citizenship, even though it is
written into the 14
th Amendment of the Constitution and thus
cannot be changed by a presidential decree or even a vote in Congress.
He has said he would bar Muslims from visiting this country.
Various Republican politicians running for office down ticket also
have adopted these bigoted and extremist positions, many of which have
found their way into the Republican Party Platform for 2016. Efforts
to pass legislation in favor of a more rational and humane immigration
policy have been
blocked by Congress,
mostly by Republican representatives and senators. With the help of
Republican appointees to the Supreme Court, twenty-six GOP
attorneys-general have blocked
President Obama's efforts to provide relief for undocumented immigrants via executive orders.
These political misleaders legitimize bigoted speech and actions
among the public, with the danger that this will lead to a rise in hate
crimes against immigrants, Latinos, and Muslims. This has happened many
times before in the history of this country.
Trump has flooded the country with a veritable tsunami of
misinformation about the relationship of immigration to crime,
terrorism, poverty, and unemployment. Most of his false information
seems to come from a network of far-right
nativist organizations founded by
John Tanton and funded by right-wing businesses and foundations.
These include: Numbers USA, which likes to claim that the environment
is threatened by immigration; the Center for Immigration Studies, which
puts out massive amounts of dubious "research," all with an
anti-immigrant slant; and the Federation for American Immigration Reform
(FAIR), which calls for a reduction of both undocumented and documented
immigration. Credence is lent to these
dubious organizations
by the corporate-controlled press, which often quotes them uncritically
without mentioning that many people knowledgeable about the immigration
situation regard some of them as hate groups. This misinformation in
the media programs voters to be receptive to Trump's anti-immigrant
message.
In 2008, the pamphlet "Immigration: Myths and Facts" was issued to
counter these lies. A second edition was published in 2013. Given the
level of anti-immigrant propaganda that is coming out of the Trump
campaign, we have updated this important information source.
You can download it here and distribute it to all your workmates, friends, relatives, and neighbors. You can also contact
politicalaction@cpusa.org if you are interested in obtaining printed copies to distribute.
Download in English:
"Immigration Myth vs. Fact"
La
nueva edición de nuestro panfleto: “La Inmigración: Mitos y Realidades” está lista para
repartirse y utilizarse en la lucha.
El tema
de la inmigración se ha convertido en un punto céntrico en las elecciones
presidenciales de 2016. El candidato del Partido Republicano, Donald Trump,
enfoca su campaña en la amenaza que los inmigrantes supuestamente representan
para la vida diaria de los habitantes de los Estados Unidos. Desde su primer
discurso en la campaña, utilizó como su blanco los inmigrantes que, según él,
México “envía” a los Estados Unidos, a
quienes tacha como asesinos, narcotraficantes y violadores. También ha lanzado
un ataque general a los musulmanes que, según él, representan una amenaza
terrorista. Cuando otros desmientan
estas calumnias, las repita en lugar de retirarlas.
Trump
también propone “soluciones” a la supuesta amenaza que los inmigrantes y
musulmanes, según él, representan para los Estados Unidos. Propone construir una muralla a lo largo de
la frontera entre los Estados Unidos y México (una distancia de 3,058
kilometras), y dice que obligará a México pagar el costo de este proyecto. ¿Y cómo piensa lograrlo? Pues, según dice, se apoderará a las remesas
que los inmigrantes indocumentados aquí ganan trabajando con salarios bajísimos
y envían a sus familias aún más pobres en México. También dice que va a acabar con la práctica
de considerar a quienquiera nazca en suelo estadounidense como ciudadano de
este país, a pesar de que ese derecho está inscrito en la decimocuarta enmienda
de la constitución, y por lo tanto no puede modificarse por decreto
presidencial ni por una ley aprobada en el Congreso. Amenaza con prevenir que los musulmanes
visiten a este país.
Varios
candidatos republicanos que se han postulado para elección a puestos más allá
de la presidencia han adoptado estas actitudes extremistas e intolerantes
también. Todos los intentos de aprobar
políticas migratorias más razonables y humanistas en los últimos años han fracasado en el Congreso, en
gran medida por la actitud obstruccionista de los congresistas
republicanos. Una demanda sometida por
26 fiscales estatales, todos republicanos, a las cortes federales ha bloqueado
un intento de parte del presidente Obama de aliviar la situación de los
indocumentados mediante una orden ejecutiva; al nivel de la Corte Suprema,
fueron los jueces nombradas por presidentes republicanos quienes más daño
causaron.
