Donald Trump has recently given a speech at a rally in Youngstown, Ohio where he dehumanized undocumented immigrants once again. Trump stated in his speech that
"...they'll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15, and others, and they slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die. And these are the animals that we've been protecting for so long."
The crowd applauded after Trump made his remarks because he has been pushing his xenophobic agenda for months now. His inaccurate depictions of undocumented immigrants cause the public to fear a group of people that will most likely not harm them in any way. In fact, The Sentencing Project and the Cato Institute found that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than US-born citizens.
Trump ignores that fact because it benefits him to have his supporters believe that undocumented immigrants are a threat. He uses his speeches to fear-monger and give racists a reason to feel justified in their actions because his main goal as President has always been to attack minorities and make sure that the United States continues supporting white supremacy.
The President also stated in his speech that he has been "liberating our cities" by deporting undocumented immigrants. Trump fails to realize that undocumented immigrants play an important role in the U.S. economy and that his decision to deport as many of them as possible is not liberating anyone. The Social Security Administration reported that undocumented immigrants contribute a net of $13 billion in payroll taxes annually and that this has helped strengthen the Social Security system.
The Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy stated that the Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA)
"would increase state and local tax revenue by $805 million each year. On top of that, these initiatives would grow the U.S. economy by $230 billion over 10 years."
This would then create thousands of new jobs and also increase wages for all workers in the United States.
Trump also said in his speech that he was going about the deportations in a non-politically correct manner and that he was "doing it rough." Many people believe that being politically correct is the same thing as being weak and sensitive when it actually means that one is being nondiscriminatory.
It is concerning that President Trump has not been politically correct when deporting undocumented immigrants because it would mean that he has been targeting both criminal and non-criminal undocumented immigrants.
He has attempted to hide his racism and xenophobia by claiming that he is only trying to protect the American people from undocumented immigrants with criminal convictions, but from January to May there has been an increase of immigration arrests of non-criminal undocumented immigrants. The number of arrests in 2016 over the same period was 4,200 and it has risen to more than 10,800 in 2017.
Americans are meant to look to the President for guidance and leadership, but the only place that Trump has been guiding us to is a state of further intolerance.
