The 10 Big Lies of The Immigration Debate
SAN DIEGO -- The worst thing about the immigration debate is not the divisiveness. It's the dishonesty.
After more than 36 years of covering this rhetorical shoving match, I can tell you this much: The whole bloody thing is replete with lies. I've compiled a list of the top ten untruths.
Incidentally, the biggest whopper of them all -- No. 1 on the list -- was recently in the news as the result of a new and awful initiative by the Trump administration.
We'll get there. First, here's the rest of the list.
No. 10: "The United States can seal the U.S.-Mexico border". No, it really can't. The U.S. government can "secure" the border, and it should do so. But the idea that we can totally "seal" a 1,950-mile-long border that crosses rivers, mountains, private property and Native American reservations is a fallacy rooted in a mixture of ignorance and arrogance.
No. 9: "If you deport undocumented immigrants, they stay gone." For many years, I've heard border patrol officers including the leaders of their union try to make the point about a porous U.S.-Mexico border by claiming that they would arrest the same person two or three times in a single shift. Now, restrictionists argue that the deported don't return.
No. 8: "No one objects to high-tech workers". In December 2024, a MAGA civil war broke out over H-1B visas, which U.S. companies use to hire highly-skilled foreign workers. The globalist tech bros attacked American workers as incompetent, lazy and entitled. The "America First" brigade hurled racist insults at high-tech workers from India.
No. 7: "Immigrants are defiant, and they refuse to assimilate." People see a Spanish-language billboard, and they act as if immigrants asked for it. Consistent with the pattern set by German and Italian immigrants in previous centuries, Latino immigrant grandparents speak to their grandchildren in Spanish and the grandchildren respond in English.
No. 6: "Undocumented immigrants steal jobs from U.S. workers." Now that the Trump administration claims to have deported more than 600,000 and pressured more than twice that many to "self-deport," employers are feeling squeezed. Immigrants do jobs that Americans won't do at any wage. We already knew that. It's how we got here.
No. 5: "Democrats are pro-immigrant, Republicans are anti-immigrant." Three former Democratic presidents (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden) militarized the border and deported record numbers of people. The last president who pushed immigration reform -- which included legalizing the undocumented -- was George W. Bush, a Republican.
No. 4: "If people come the right way and follow rules, they'll be fine." Among the shameful shenanigans pulled by the Trump administration was the canceling of asylum claims, immigration hearings and even citizenship swearing-in ceremonies for those who tried to come to the United States "the right way" and "follow the rules."
No. 3: "Immigration enforcement is about the rule of law." Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are under so much pressure to meet a daily quota of 3,000 arrests that they break the law to enforce the law. They scrapped due process, engaged in racial profiling, abandoned their own standard of "reasonable suspicion" before a search, and brutalized U.S. citizens. There is no rule of law, only the law of the jungle.
No. 2: "Resistance to immigration is not about race or ethnicity." Do you see a lot of white immigrants being rounded up? Me neither. For instance, in cities like New York and Boston, there are an estimated 10,000 to 100,000 Irish immigrants living illegally. President Donald Trump's immigration raids don't extend to those neighborhoods. And, in May, white Afrikaner "refugees" were welcomed into the United States with open arms.
And now for the gold medal winner.
No. 1: "The only problem is illegal immigrants. Legal immigrants are welcome." Even legal immigrants and U.S. citizens are not safe from deportation under the Trump administration. According to The New York Times, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services plans to ramp up efforts to strip naturalized U.S. citizens of their citizenship -- including but not limited to those who "unlawfully obtained U.S. citizenship."
Like any country, the United States has the right to determine who can enter and who can't. But it has to do it the right way, by treating people humanely and following the rules. If they do all that, U.S. officials won't have to lie and cheat. Such behavior harms the whole immigration process.
Let's at least be honest about that.
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To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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