The Repercussions of Mass Deportation

The Repercussions of Mass Deportation

It’s not that hard to predict.

I keep seeing headlines and videos of people talking about the mass deportations going on now that Trump is in office, undoubtedly this is him trying to keep his promises to a section of his constituency that thinks that this is going to fix all of their problems.

The logic of this “fix” though doesn’t make any sense to me. Do these Americans really want to harvest fields from sun up to sun down out in the sun for less than minimum wage? Do they really think their neighbors or anyone they know even would want to do this? This must be the case right since these immigrants are “taking American jobs”.

With the way inflation is and the insane cost of housing who else would really want to do this job other than someone who is already conditioned to hard physical labor and comes from a country where they’d get paid only a fraction of the already low wage they can get in the U.S. doing it.

I had a friend on Facebook who posted a meme about women who had been raped and murdered by undocumented immigrants, and I ended up writing him an essay because all I saw were likes and agreements in the comments, and I can’t let that pure echo chamber continue to exist.

I pointed out that multiple studies, Cato Institute (2020), Light & Miller (2018), National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), Rumbaut & Ewing (2007), and Criminology (2018) have all shown that undocumented immigrants are actually less likely to commit murder, rape, child molestation, etc. Meanwhile, this meme that is being shared around makes it seem like they are some sort of “superpredator”.

Another detail I pointed out to him is that the only reason there are people migrating from Central and South America up into the U.S. is that they believe U.S. propaganda that it is the proverbial “land of milk and honey”, which many get there and realize just how awful it actually is, but others go there for seasonal work because they can bring those dollars back to their home countries, or send them back, and they stretch a lot further in their home countries.

This works for them, especially seasonal workers because the U.S. does pay a higher wage, but if they cram a large amount of people into one house or apartment they can avoid the insane housing costs, and if they go back to their home countries if they get sick they can avoid losing all of their wages to the healthcare system.

Of course, they commit less crime, they are there because they know they can make a lot more money there than their home countries, why would you want to mess that up?