Served with sides of racism and xenophobia about immigration

If we all could get past the sheer lunacy of Trump’s assertion that Haitian immigrants eat the dogs and cats of people of Springfield, Ohio, or destroy the local economy, this could be a propitious moment for both parties to inject some rational, fact-based thinking 0n the debate over immigration. It won’t be easy.

Indeed, I haven’t read any clear proposal on this issue from Harris or the Democrats. Supposedly a bipartisan fix to the immigration problem was worming its way through Congress, but Trump ordered the plan aborted because a workable immigration reform plan would deprive him of his favorite political war cry.

Republicans instead have eagerly tapped the all-American well of race-baiting and xenophobia, and claim that some immigrants, particularly of the dark-skinned variety, may have a sinister taste for Poodle Fricassee or Stir-Fry Kitty.

During his 2015 announcement of his presidential aspirations, and his bombastic descent on a gilded escalator of Trump Tower, Trump launched his war on immigrants and accused those coming through the southern U.S. border of “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

After his election, Trump’s contempt for immigrants from “shithole countries” like Haiti, El Salvador and African counties only spun out of control, as he wished that the U.S. would attract more nice white people from, say, Norway.

His most recent blast came during his one debate with Kamala Harris, when he accused recently arrived Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio of eating the locals’ dog, cats and other pets. Harris laughed and one of the debate moderators interrupted to say there had been no proof or evidence of such thing. The governor of Ohio and the mayor of Springfield also have said it’s all nonsense that unfairly targets the local Haitian population. But despite the disclaimers there have been bomb threats and demonstrations by White nationalists in this otherwise unremarkable town.

JD Vance did issue a lame non-apology to the effect that sometimes it’s necessary to “create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people.” Which sounded like saying “it’s OK to piss in the pool of civic discourse if that is what it takes to get your point across.”

Along with blatant racist taunts, Trump also waves the generally bogus argument that immigrants take away jobs of American workers and hobble local economies. But in fact employers in Springfield, a languid Rust Belt Midwestern town whose economy has revived during the past few years, have welcomed the eager, legal Haitian arrivals to fill newly vacant jobs.

Trump, also had been peddling the nonsense that most if not all the Haitians in Springfield were in the country illegally. They were in fact duly admitted under a special two-year asylum program created by the Biden administration. So Vance rushed in to say that that maybe so, but he didn’t think the program was legal. Ergo, Haitians in Springfield are illegal.

One finds the same demand/supply equation concerning jobs throughout the agricultural, construction and meat packing sectors in the U.S. where jobs exist that native workers are not rushing to fill.

About three years ago, our ranch man Félix decamped without notice to the Texas town of Tyler, near Dallas, and stayed there for a year, along with his brothers Juan, Sergio and Juan’s son, also called Juan. They worked for a company that builds so-called metal “pole buildings,” and Félix’s gig was to install corrugated steel roofing panels—for up to seventy hours a week, $19 an hour, with no health or any other kind of insurance, or vacation or sick days off, in the unforgiving Texas summers and winters.

During the pandemic, Félix contracted Covid which went untreated or even diagnosed, because he was afraid he’d lose his job if he asked to see a doctor. As a result Covid left him with partial loss of his sense of smell.

I can readily identify at least another 15 local guys who have left and returned after working without documents in the U.S., in Tyler, Kerrville, San Antonio and Austin, in landscaping or construction, sectors that from all reports are dominated by a merry-go-round of illegal workers. Some return after a several months, others stay for two or three years. Another guy, also named Juan, has been hot-tar roofing in Kerrville, west of San Antonio, for more than three years.

The balance sheet of this revolving door of workers is not hard to compute.

Mexicans earn wages that are inconceivable here, particularly for unskilled labor, and they dutifully send the money home, often to build homes for their families. Drive around Sosnavar, a town close to us, and stumps of rusting rebar in many houses signal unfinished construction projects awaiting additional remittances from the States. The one year in Tyler generated enough dollars and pesos for Félix to build an indoor bathroom in his house

For Félix’s employer, the virtually endless supply of docile workers is very good deal that keeps his company profitable and presumably also benefits the economy of Tyler and the state of Texas. Félix once revealed that Federal income and Social Security taxes were deducted from his paycheck. I doubt that the portion of Félix’s earnings withheld by his employer ever made it to Uncle Sam. Félix and his brothers also had to pay rent for the trailer where they lived.

In a recent interview in The Atlantic magazine, the white-haired Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, hardly a radical bomb-thrower or closet Communist, said that Trump’s plan to expel millions of undocumented workers, and impose wide tariffs on imported goods would inflict serious damage on the still-recovering U.S. economy.

“I think it would be devastating to simply remove that many undocumented workers from the economy,” Yellen said, predicting that it would revive inflation.

There are facets of the immigration problem, most notably how to turn the unregulated flow of immigrants entering the country into a more orderly stream that benefits the U.S. and the individuals seeking better lives for themselves and their families.

But surely a first step is to stop the current wave of name-calling and demonization of immigrants as monsters who eat dogs, cats and “poison the blood of our country,” as Trump has claimed, as he tries to trigger the worst instincts and fears of many Americans.

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