Ignorance is a Part of the War on Immigration

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I asserted in this space yesterday that Trump's war on immigrants is fueled by fascism and racism, but there is another factor at play in this rapidly evolving social horror story - and that is simple ignorance.    The MAGA architects and enforcers of this human relocation program decline to take into account the positive contributions that immigrants make to to American society, culture, and the economy.   Trump's minions are bitterly opposed to the poorest among us receiving any benefits from the government, a feeling that is easily manipulated into to a false assumption that it is the immigrant population who is consuming our national wealth without putting anything back into the economy.

But that is, in fact, false.  In many ways the immigrant population does more to prop-up and sustain the economy than the legions of unemployed who were actually born in this country.  Immigrants will take the sub-minimum wage crap jobs at which unemployed whites routinely thumb their noses.  The brown people being chased through the crop fields by masked ICE agents are paying into social security (though it is unlikely they will ever be able to draw the benefits of those payments), they are paying income taxes on their low wages,  and they are buying goods in the local economy on which they pay sales taxes.  The immigrants are paying gasoline taxes to keep our roads in good repair, and fees to the DMV, and rent, and utilities, as well as the other day-to-day expenses faced by most of us who were born here.

Immigrants are not getting a free ride.   The only free ride in store for most of the undocumented workers in this country will be the expensive one that the government gives them as they are flown to some third country known for either its inhospitable conditions or its cruelty - or both. Meanwhile, Joe Bob will continue to sit in front of his television, chug his beer, and curse the false premise that he can't find work because some brown person took the job he should have had.

That's the pablum the Trump administration and Fox News are feeding us, and we are expected to swallow it without question.

If Trump or his field marshals would like to learn more about how our economy works or who is paying the bills in this country, the US Census Bureau has reams of relevant data on its computers, and those people work for him, so it should be easy to access - if anyone in the Trump administration has an interest in facts, that is.

Immigrants didn't steal Joe Bob's job, he just didn't want to work in the hot sun for crap wages.  Immigrants aren't a threat to Grandma's social security, in fact they are helping to sustain the system by paying into it, and immigrants aren't eating cats and dogs, that's just a lie that was promoted by devious and dishonest politicians to fuel hatred against immigrants.

Yes, ignorance is a major factor in America's war on immigration, and its prevalence makes us look weak and dishonest to much of the world community.

There is nothing MAGA about that.