On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum excluding the country’s undocumented community from being counted by the distribution of representatives of Congress after the 2020 census. At this point, we shouldn’t be surprised. The effort to strip undocumented immigrants of their right to be counted in the census is a natural progression from Trump’s inherent nativism. The move, which is likely to be challenged in court, is part of a pattern, the latest in a long line of aggravations aimed at making life in the United States not only inhospitable but nearly impossible for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country.
The administration separated families on the border, allowed inhumane conditions within private immigration detention centers, persecuted sanctuary cities that protect the undocumented, and relentlessly persecuted hundreds of thousands of young men and women protected from deportation by the DACA program. . Trump had previously tried to include a question on citizenship in the current census. Failure. Emboldened, the president now seeks to discourage participation in the process and, if all else fails, erase the consequences of his results.
In addition to being morally abhorrent, it is also a terrible policy.
Think of the economy. Because the pandemic has been surprisingly exposed, undocumented immigrants are an essential part of American life. Without the same immigrants that Trump now wants to eliminate from the country’s political restructuring, the American economy as we know it would cease to exist. Contrary to the president’s rhetoric on immigration, the vast majority of undocumented immigrants are hard-working, honest, tax-paying and de facto Americans. They contribute more than $ 11 billion in taxes each year to the economy.
Then think of the political sphere. Trump’s assault on the undocumented has obvious political underpinnings. Its objective is to reduce the weight of the community by erasing its effect on the map of the country’s Congress. This may seem like a cunning policy in the short term, but it could backfire in the long term, both for Trump and the Republican Party, which already defends conservative strongholds where immigrants, legal and undocumented, carry considerable weight. In California, a state where Trump has aimed at every step through his invective anti-immigrant, Republicans are still paying the price for Governor Pete Wilson’s attack on immigrants a quarter century ago.
Finally, Trump’s note should end the president’s cynical attempt to reach out to the Hispanic immigrant community. Just a couple of weeks ago, Trump set out to trick Hispanics into believing that he had changed his ways. To do so, the President scheduled a full week of blatant pimping. It included an appreciative visit by the President of Mexico, a meeting with some of the country’s Latino business leaders (the scene of the now infamous Goya affair) and the signing of an executive order allegedly in support of “Hispanic prosperity.”
“The Hispanic American community is a treasure,” said Trump. It is now clear that the president’s new appreciation for the country’s Hispanic immigrants does not extend to the undocumented.
It never has been and never will be. Trump has had three years to demonstrate that he can address the country’s immigration dilemma in a humane and thoughtful way. He has done the opposite. Now, the undocumented community deserves to be counted not only because it has a constitutional mandate (as the courts will prove), but because the members of that community are, in every way except a piece of paper, Americans. And they make the country great.
