TRANSCRIPT
In this episode, we're looking at immigration.
“In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there.”
It was a shocking moment from the ABC News presidential debate between Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
But as harmless and amusing as it may have seemed, this bizarre false claim led to multiple bomb threats in the town of Springfield, Ohio, as well as bullying and harassment of their legal Haitian migrant community.
As the November 5 election draws near, the Trump campaign has seized upon tensions due to record levels of immigration into America to create a platform centred around a tough border and the prospect of mass deportations.
“And now America is known all throughout the world as occupied America, they call it occupied. We're being occupied by a criminal force. And we'll begin the largest deportation operation in the history of the United States. We will close the border. We will stop the invasion of illegals into our country. We will not be conquered, we will not be conquered. And I'm hereby calling for the death penalty for any migrant that kills an American citizen, or a law enforcement officer.”
Bruce Wolpe, a senior fellow at the United States Studies Centre in Sydney, says Trump has always been effective in harnessing fear around migrants.
“Immigration is as hot button an issue as it is in Australia. And people are very concerned about uncontrolled immigration, not going through legal channels. When you have a presidential candidate who's as charismatic and forceful as Trump, who can address the issue, he elevates it. It was an issue from his first campaign. 2016, down the escalator of Trump Tower, saying that immigrants are coming and raping. They're rapists coming into our country. This has been an issue that's been with him from the beginning.”
He's not wrong as Trump first came onto the scene back in the 2016 election race with one signature policy as the central pillar of his winning platform.
“Build that wall, build that wall, build that wall, build that wall, build that wall.”
Yes, the wall. Not even half of the 1000 miles of promised border wall between the US and Mexico were completed and Trump's hope that Mexico would pay for the construction fell through with taxpayers having to foot the bill, estimated to have cost over $10 billion US dollars.
Also, his very controversial family separation policy saw more than 5,500 children separated from their families during his term, including infants.
And now, as the U-S emerges from an inflation crisis and American families are struggling with high cost-of-living and unaffordable housing, Trump has found fertile new ground for his anti-immigration policies.
And it works - immigration remains a key issue that Trump consistently dominates on in the polls...
“It's probably something that I can say I'm very good at.”
...and it's an important issue too, with an October Times/Siena poll finding immigration ranks third in voter concerns behind the economy and abortion.
Mr Wolpe says Trump often ties immigration concerns to the economy but his rhetoric has time and again strayed into racist tropes.
“He's saying that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country. He's just said earlier this week that we have too many bad genes in the United States from immigrants. This is Nazi talk and he says it proudly and he expects to win with it.
And with President Biden having charged Vice President Kamala Harris with addressing the root causes of a growing immigration issue, Trump is happy to point the finger at the Democratic nominee.
“She let in 21 million illegal aliens from all over the world, from prisons and jails and mental institutions, and insane asylums and they're terrorists at record levels. At levels we've never seen before. When you look at the crime, look at the crime, look at the people that are coming in. Murderers. Crime rates all over the world are down. They're taking their people in jail and they're releasing them into our country. We can't have it.”
Ok so, that was a lot.
As you can probably guess, there are a number of lies and half-truths in there but let's try to separate fact from fiction and understand what the so-called immigration crisis in the US actually looks like.
So firstly, it is true that in 2023 the United States recorded a record high level of foreign-born residents at 47.8 million or 14.3 per cent of the population according to the U-S Census Bureau, making it the biggest year-on-year increase since back in the year 2000.
“And so they believe, yeah, she failed. Millions of people are coming. It's bad news, vote for Trump. And he's not burdened by the truth. He's just not.”
But, while this is a notable jump, this 14.3 per cent of the population born overseas is not even half the 30.7 per cent seen in Australia this year.
The idea that countries are sending folks from jails and mental health hospitals to the US is completely unfounded and claiming that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes in comparison to natural-born US citizens is simply....
“Fake, fake, disgusting news.”
A 2018 meta-analysis in the peer-reviewed Annual Review of Criminology failed to draw any connection between immigrants and crime and a 2024 study from the right-leaning Cato Institute found that, in Texas from 2013 to 2022, undocumented migrants were 26.2 per cent less likely than native-born Americans to be convicted of homicide with documented migrants 61.4 per cent less likely.
Also, the idea that the Biden administration let in 21 million undocumented migrants is false with the Pew Research Centre putting the total number of undocumented migrants as about half this amount as of 2022.
However, it is true that since Joe Biden took office, the U-S border patrol says they've had about eight million encounters with migrants attempting to enter the US illegally through the southern border and December 2023 had the highest number of encounters on record.
“Trust me, I'm like a smart person.”
But... this has been on the decline this year after President Biden issued an executive order making it much harder to enter and stay in the US without legal permission to seek asylum, which helped result in a 77 per cent decline in encounters from December to this August.
Alright, so, Trump is not exactly a reliable narrator here but the concerns that he taps into including job insecurity are real problems and Mr Wolpe of the US Studies Centre says undocumented migrants are often seen as an easy scapegoat.
“Economists and most people say no, they're not taking our jobs away, and that in fact they're taking jobs that otherwise wouldn't do, and therefore that would make the price of delivering services higher and so forth. But the argument does resonate with a lot of people who are really worried about their income, really worried about the cost of housing and what they can do with it. And so an anti-immigration argument just feeds into that sentiment.”
And Donald Trump says he has the answer with an incredibly aggressive stance promising a mass deportation of all undocumented migrants if he gets elected, a proposal criticised by both human rights organisations and economists.
The free-market American Action Forum predicts the US labour force would shrink by 6.4 per cent after the deportations and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy says the government would lose nearly 100 billion US dollars of yearly tax revenue based off 2022 estimates.
He also intends to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented parents as well as deport and revoke visas of foreign pro-Palestinian students, and impose what has been called "ideological screening."
“So, what does Harris have to do? She has to show she's credible. You need new laws on immigration, there is a crisis on the border.”
With the vast majority of voters saying they favour stronger border security measures, Vice President Kamala Harris has tried to meet this expectation.
In the crucial battleground state of Arizona, which lies on the southern border, Harris has been making her case to voters.
“Those who cross our borders unlawfully will be apprehended and removed and barred from re-entering for five years. We will pursue more severe criminal charges against repeat violators. And if someone does not make an asylum request at a legal point of entry and instead crosses our border unlawfully, they will be barred from receiving asylum.”
Donald Trump told the ABC News debate that Kamala Harris can't be trusted on the issue as she had a chance to address it with President Biden over the past four years and they failed.
“I just have one question: why didn't she do it?”
But Vice President Harris argues the Democrats have been trying to introduce tough new immigration laws that Trump has deliberately blocked.
“The United States Congress, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, came up with a border security bill which I supported. And that bill would have put 1,500 more border agents on the border to help those folks who are working there right now. That bill would have put more resources to allow us to prosecute transnational criminal organisations for trafficking in guns, drugs and human beings. But you know what happened to that bill? Donald Trump got on the phone, called up some folks in Congress, and said kill the bill. And you know why? Because he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”
This bill which was effectively sunk by Republicans in January saw Kamala Harris pivot to a tough stance on the border after once supporting a loosening of enforcement laws.
The bill also made no mention of new pathways for undocumented migrants to achieve citizenship or permanency, something that deeply concerns immigrant rights advocates.
Activist Erika Andiola, who has been inspired by her own experiences as an undocumented Mexican immigrant, told independent news program Democracy Now that the Democrats have chosen to ignore those like her family.
“It's just disheartening and disappointing to see that immigration has become about security, about criminality, when - in reality - immigration is so much more than that. And Democrats used to talk about it. They used to talk about how they were going to - back in the Obama administration - that they were going to pass an immigration bill that would provide a path to citizenship for people, that would fix the immigration system so there were paths for people to be able to migrate without having to go to the border and make this dangerous journey. And now, it's become about criminality, those Republican talking points that now truly have become Democrat talking points. It's just disappointing to me but it's also dangerous because it really causes people to continue to think about immigrants as a danger to this country.”
Kamala Harris says she does still care about reforming the system for the wellbeing of migrants but it’s important to strike a balance.
She told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute she believes there's a way to address security concerns without getting to the extremes of Trump's proposals.
“Understand we can do both, create an earned pathway to citizenship and ensure our border is secure. We can do both and we must do both. And while we fight to move our nation forward to a brighter future, Donald Trump and his extremist allies will keep trying to pull us backward. We all remember what they did to tear families apart, and now they have pledged to carry out the largest deportation, a mass deportation, in American history. Imagine what that would look like and what that would be. How is that going to happen? Massive raids, massive detention camps. What are they talking about?”
What are they talking about?- indeed.
It's a question the Trump campaign still hasn't been able to answer with the logistics of the operation still incredibly vague.
Ok so, ultimately, despite the legitimate questions about the logistics, Donald Trump's immigration policy can be summarised by saying he wants to deport as many undocumented migrants as possible, restrict new entries and make it easier to send migrants packing if they step out of line.
And Kamala Harris? Well, she's currently adamant that she wants to reduce the arrivals of undocumented migrants by limiting their ability to claim asylum and supports the expansion of border enforcement services.
But, she does claim to care about the wellbeing of undocumented migrants currently residing in the US too and has pledged to find a path between the two priorities.
So, will the voters prefer a president with strong and decisive anti-immigration policies or a leader who attempts to strike a balance between the concerns of voters and her stated values of respect for immigrants?
We'll find out very soon.
You can listen to our previous episode investigating how the media have been covering Donald Trump and Kamala Harris this election and stay tuned to the SBS News app, Spotify, or Apple podcasts as we give you the tools to understand key issues in the upcoming election.
