The republicans know the truth: America needs its immigrants who start companies, pay lots of taxes, harvest and process the food we buy at the supermarkets, and create jobs. But the republicans are filthy RACIST LIARS, particularly the southern fake-Christian states like Texas. They tell their racist ignorant base that immigrants are dangerous to the country. Like all racist right-wing politicians around the world have always done, they go after the easiest of targets: The immigrants.
Read this opinion in USA TODAY, then excerpts below from an AP story about Trump's threat to deport millions of immigrants who are not white, blond, anglo-saxon protestants.
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Opinion
Trump's lies about undocumented immigrants hide the truth: They pay their share of taxes
Marla Bautista, USA TODAY
Fri, August 9, 2024
No matter the political nonsense you hear spouted about immigration, legal and otherwise, here's the truth: America needs more immigrants, documented and otherwise.
If you aren’t already mad after reading the preceding sentence, hold my beer. Immigrants coming into America boost our economy. And undocumented immigrants in the United States play an astonishing role in strengthening the nation through their substantial tax contributions.
Yes, they pay taxes, lots of taxes, to the tune of nearly $100 billion dollars in 2022.
These payments fund essential public services and immigrants' own paths to legal status. Misinformation about undocumented immigrants in America is harmful and leads to stereotypes and policies that not only hurt immigrants but Americans and businesses, too.
Numbers prove both Trump and Texas Gov. Greg "Faggot" wrong
Former President Donald Trump greets Texas Gov. Greg "Fagott" at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July 2024.
In 2015, when Donald Trump began his campaign for the presidency, he often touted claims that undocumented immigrants were “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists” to appeal to what would become his MAGA base. It wasn’t the first or last time that Trump and other Republicans attacked undocumented immigrants.
False claims that undocumented immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than citizens or are a danger to public health help to fuel border security measures that endanger migrants' lives far more than ours.
And here's a truth that Abbott didn't acknowledge: According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, in Texas in 2022, undocumented immigrants paid $4.9 billion in state and local taxes.
That was more than the combined taxes collected in Texas for alcohol, cigarette/tobacco, hotel occupancy and utility.
Undocumented immigrants pay taxes on goods and services, on homes that they own or rent and on the income they earn. That money helps to pay for essential services such as education and health care.
Lies about immigrants hurt our nation
Misinformation that immigrants do not pay taxes or that they drain public resources is not only untrue but also detrimental to societal cohesion.
These misconceptions fuel unjust policies and distract from the real issues, ultimately hurting all of us by undermining the economic and social contributions of immigrant communities.
America has been home to immigrants, legal and undocumented, since its inception. Recognizing and valuing their contributions is the right thing to do.
So, too, is fostering a more inclusive and fair immigration system that benefits everyone.
Marla Bautista is a military fellow columnist at USA TODAY Opinion.
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Trump is putting mass deportations at the heart of his campaign. Some Republicans are worried
Lauren B. Peña, an activist from Texas, said that hearing Trump’s calls for mass deportations, as well as terms like “illegals” and “invasion” thrown around at the convention, made her feel uncomfortable. Like some Republicans in Congress who have advanced balanced approaches to immigration, she hopes Trump is just blustering.
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But Trump and his advisers have other plans. He is putting immigration at the heart of his campaign to retake the White House and pushing the Republican Party towards a bellicose strategy that hearkens back to the 1950s when former President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched a deportation policy known by a racial slur — “Operation Wetback.”
Trump, when pressed for specifics on his plan in an interview with Time Magazine this year, suggested he would use the National Guard, and possibly even the military, to target between 15 million and 20 million people — though the government estimated in 2022 there were 11 million migrants living in the U.S. ...
His plans have raised the stakes of this year’s election beyond fortifying the southern border, a longtime conservative priority, to the question of whether America should make a fundamental change in its approach to immigration.
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Trump won 35% of Hispanic voters in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, and support for stronger border enforcement measures has grown among Hispanic voters. But an AP analysis of two consecutive polls conducted in June by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that about half of Hispanic Americans have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Trump.
.....
Peña said she also feels concern when her fellow Republicans discuss ideas like barring children who don’t have permanent legal status from public schooling.
“Being Hispanic, it’s a difficult topic,” she said. “I feel like we need to give these people a chance.”
Still, GOP lawmakers have largely embraced Trump's plans. “It's needed,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said at a July interview at the conservative Hudson Institute.
Some, however, have shown tacit skepticism by suggesting more modest goals.
Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, pointed to over 1 million people who have already received a final order of removal from an immigration judge and said, “There’s a difference between those that are in the process right now and those that are finished with the process."
Lankford, who negotiated a bipartisan border package that Trump helped defeat earlier this year, added that it would be a “huge” task both logistically and financially just to target that group.
....
Indeed, Trump entered office in 2016 with similar promises of mass deportation but only succeeded in deporting about 1.5 million people.
This time, though, there’s a plan.
Trump has worked closely with Stephen Miller, a former top aide who is expected to take a senior role in the White House if Trump wins. Miller describes a Trump administration that will work with “utter determination” to accomplish two goals: “Seal the border. Deport all the illegals.”
To accomplish that, Trump would revive travel bans from countries deemed undesirable, such as majority-Muslim countries. He would launch a sweeping operation by deputizing the National Guard to round up immigrants, hold them in massive camps and put them on deportation flights before they could make legal appeals.
Beyond that, Trump has also pledged to end birthright citizenship — a 125-year-old right in the U.S. And several of his top advisers have laid out a sweeping policy vision through the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 that would choke off other forms of legal migration.
The Trump administration, under those plans, could also grind to a halt temporary programs for over 1 million migrants, including recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Ukrainians and Afghans who fled recent conflicts as well as others who receive temporary protection due to unrest in their home country.
The policies would have far-reaching disruptions in major industries like housing and agriculture, including in key battleground states.
“If the 75,000-plus immigrants who perform the hardest of work in Wisconsin’s dairy and agriculture were gone tomorrow, the state economy would tank,” said Jorge Franco, the CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin.
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[Another Hispanic conservative said] “There is a group of congresspeople that will make sure that the new administration understands ... there’s another aspect: the business community,” she said. “The developers in construction … and the farmers, what are they going to say? They need hands.”
Meanwhile, Democrats feel that Trump's threats are now motivating Latino voters.
“The mass deportation put a lot of people on high alert,” said María Teresa Kumar, the CEO of Voto Latino, a leading voter registration organization that is backing Democrat Kamala Harris.
Like many other groups aligned with Harris, Voto Latino has seen an outpouring of interest since she rose to the top of the Democratic ticket. Kumar said the organization has registered nearly 36,000 voters in the weeks since Biden left the race — almost matching its tally from the first six months of the year.
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