What happened to America’s bullshit detector?
“They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people” said Donald Trump.
The President’s racist rhetoric that falsely attributed Mexican immigrants to violent crime statistics was a cheap trick that excited his conservative base who wanted someone to blame for their predicament.
Public policies used to be based on facts, not anecdotes or emotions.
Immigrants are not responsible for most of crime.The American Immigration Law Foundation, found that in 2010, less educated native-born men age 18-39 had an incarceration rate of 10.7 percent—more than triple the 2.8 percent rate among foreign born Mexican men.
A study by the American Immigration Council found that from 1990 and 2013 the number of unauthorized immigrants more than tripled from 3.5 million to 11.2 million. FBI data indicates that the violent crime rate declined 48 percent and the property crime rate fell 41 percent.
Sanctuary cities promote public safety and confidence in local law enforcement. One of the laws Jeff Sessions is suing over is SB 54, which prevents jail officials from telling ICE when a prisoner is being released.
Sessions wants to deport all undocumented persons regardless if they have clean records and long-standing ties with the community. Simply being in the U.S. without a visa is not a criminal act. Trump’s policy of forcing local police to detain immigrants past their release date not only undermines trust in police, it violates the Fourth Amendment. This can also be costly for taxpayers when it causes lawsuits for unlawful detention.
Trump’s arbitrary targeting of non-criminals not only separates hard working families pushing them into poverty, it weakens the social and economic gains of a diverse workforce. A 2014 thinkprogress.com report states that by granting legal status and citizenship to undocumented immigrants the U.S. gross domestic product would grow by $1.4 trillion over a 10-year period, immigrants would help to create an additional 203,000 jobs per year, and add $184 billion in tax revenue.
The contradictions of the Republican Party’s immigration policy are stark. For all the rhetoric about Christian values, fiscal responsibility and limited government, they see no problem in threatening to withhold federal funds to sanctuary states (which by the way violates the separation of powers – only Congress can do that.) Trump sees no problem with flooding the courts with cases and overloaded detention centers while barely hiring enough judges to deal with the caseload.
From the so-called evangelical Christian view which supposedly follows the command of welcoming the stranger, the refugee. They seem to follow a new interpretation of Matthew 23:34-36 that goes, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was in prison and you visited me, and then you asked me if I was from Norway or a shithole.”
Stand up to Trump and his falsehoods, find your senator or local representative at http://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov and tell them Trump’s mass deportation agenda makes our communities less safe and is a waste of resources.
