Donald Trump and Kamala Harris represent starkly different policy visions, and immigration might well be where the candidates stand furthest apart.
Since The Atlanta Journal-Constitution put out a call for questions on everything immigration-related, many of you wrote in with queries about the candidates’ platforms, and what they could mean for the future of the country.
Former President Trump made a restrictive approach to immigration a guiding principle of his time in the White House, when he made moves to curb both legal and illegal immigration, including through a controversial policy to systemically separate parents from their children at the southern border. He has signaled a desire to reach new enforcement heights during a second stint in office.
The legal challenges that reliably hobbled his anti-immigration agenda as president could be fewer in the future, given the 6-3 conservative tilt on the Supreme Court, and Trump’s ability to appoint a significant number of judges to both circuit and lower courts. On the campaign trail, he continues to engage in incendiary rhetoric, including statements about how immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Kamala Harris, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, has joined other Democrats in talking tougher about immigration and the need for enforcement at the border. On the campaign trail, she has indicated she would attempt to revive a bipartisan bill to boost border security (more on that below), and touts her experience prosecuting members of transnational cartels as California attorney general.
She calls for reforming the immigration system and creating an “earned pathway to citizenship” for undocumented immigrants. Her political opponents call Harris a failed “border czar,” but President Joe Biden never put his vice president in charge of overseeing border security. Instead, she was asked to address the root causes of migratory flows to the U.S. from Central America.
It seems the Democrats are in favor of the large number of undocumented immigrants crossing the border and the Republicans not so much. What is in it for the Democrats and their supporters for allowing millions per year to cross our border? Who benefits from this, it can’t be we are going to save the whole world? We seriously can’t afford all the world’s poor or mistreated moving into the U.S. — from Bob George
I am going to push back on this. Has the Democratic Party been traditionally more friendly to immigrant rights? Yes. But an interesting facet of this political moment in 2024 is that Democrats have joined Republicans in calling for tighter restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border to clamp down on illegal immigration. That’s a shift that has rankled immigrant rights advocates. And despite the GOP ticket doubling down on extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric (see the Haitian pet-eating conspiracy), it was Republican opposition that tanked the bipartisan border bill earlier this year.
Speaking of conspiracies, there is a popular belief among Republicans known as the “great replacement theory,” which holds that liberals have a plan to bring nonwhite immigrants into the U.S. and other Western nations to replace white voters and achieve a political agenda. That theory is false, and some experts worry it could lead to violence. But it also takes for granted that immigrants are Democratic voters in the making, which is not the case. Based on my own reporting among immigrant communities, I can say that there is significant ideological diversity in those groups, and that many immigrant voters are up-for-grabs for both parties.
What would the estimated economic impact be to the massive deportation plan Trump has? I’ve always read that immigration is essential to economic growth — something that has been a huge weight on economies like Japan, Italy and others. We would have never gotten trees cleaned up from severe storms this past month without Hispanic guys with chain saws! — from Tom
Trump has pledged to create a mass deportation plan of historic proportions, with the aim of tracking down unauthorized immigrants across the country and removing them by the millions each year.
The ripple effects of that policy would be consequential, in part because the targeted population is deeply embedded in the communities they now call home. According to a report published earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, about 80% of the country’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants have been living here since before 2010.
In addition to upturning immigrants’ lives — as well as those of their spouses and children, many of whom are U.S. citizens — mass deportations would also disrupt the economy, experts say. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, removing undocumented immigrants would shrink the size of the U.S. economy by 5.7%.
As summarized by a recent report from the Brookings Institute, a renowned think tank, undocumented immigrants work jobs that U.S. workers tend to shun, they create demand for goods and services, and they contribute to the long-term fiscal health of the country by paying taxes. Taking away these workers from the economy would result in poorer economic outcomes for all, the report finds.
And for the government, the cost of detaining, transporting, processing, holding and ultimately deporting millions of people would carry a hefty price tag: Each deportation costs about $13,000, according to Brookings.
Which representatives/senators had signed onto the bipartisan border bill that President Donald Trump killed and what were the major points in that bill? — from Crystal
The border bill would have provided $20 billion in federal funding for border security, allowing Border Patrol to hire thousands of new agents and asylum officers, and expand detention capacity. It was negotiated in a bipartisan process. Included in the bill was a new emergency authority to effectively close the border and quickly expel migrants if the number of crossings reach a certain threshold for several days in a row. It would also have expedited the asylum application process, and made it more difficult for people to stay in the country for lengthy periods of time while their asylum claims are adjudicated.
The bill never made it to a vote in the House. In the Senate, it failed in an early procedural vote. Georgia’s Democratic U.S. Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff voted in favor of the bill. All but one Republican (Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) voted against it, joining four Democrats (Alex Padilla and Laphonza Butler of California, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey) and independents Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
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