Donald Trump needs to do some homework on his deportation plan | Opinion

The right-wing zealots are jumping on the bandwagon to implement Donald Trump’s promise to deport 11 million immigrants without really examining the costs of the proposed plan. The current immigration system is broken, but most people have no clue about the costs and consequences of the massive deportation plan.

According to the Visual Capitalist, deporting one million illegal immigrants per year would cost more than one trillion dollars over the next 10 years. These reduction in the workforce would reduce the annual Gross Domestic Product by 4.2% to 6.8%. In real dollars, the average household would lose $9000 per year.

An article in Forbes Magazine reported that the deportation of one million undocumented immigrants would cause 88,000 American job losses. The economy would lose trillions of dollars in immigrant income taxes, social security and economic contributions. Contrary to a widely held falsehood, illegal immigrants cannot draw social security, food stamps, or Medicare even though they contribute billions of dollars to these programs.

According to a report in Newsweek, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented workers paid $96.7 billion in taxes in 2022, equivalent to $9000 per person.

Undocumented immigrants have few options for medical care other than emergency room costs. Most illegals do not have medical insurance because they do not want a paper trail that would expose them to deportation.

The influence of illegal immigrants depends on what economic sectors are being examined with agricultural and construction jobs being most affected. According to one report, over 42% of farm workers are illegals as are 23% of construction workers.

Deportation of that many illegal immigrants would result in dramatic increases in food costs that would be felt by Americans immediately. The Peterson Institute estimates that food prices would jump by 10%.

Some crops like beans and grain crops can harvested by machinery, but delicate fruits and vegetables including sweet cherries, asparagus, apples, tomatoes, and peppers must be harvested by hand.

To add fuel to the already overheated issue of immigration, Trump consistently trots out the myth immigrants commit crimes ate a much higher rate than Americans overall. Every few days, someone finds a case of crime committed by an illegal immigrant and then argues about the dangers of these immigrants. A wide variety of studies have found that people born in the United States commit all crimes including murders and rapes at a much higher rate than immigrants. Census data over the last one hundred years have found that the crime rate of immigrants is less than half of that of native born citizens.

A 2021 study by the Justice Department found that US born citizens were ten times more likely to be incarcerated for committing weapons-related offenses, five times more likely for violent offenses, twice as likely for property crimes and twice as likely for drug offenses.

Trump is always willing to play whatever cards he needs to foster an “Us vs Them” mentality to destabilize and discombobulate the American people, even when his claims are easily refuted.

One perfect example was the Central Park Five. In April 1989, a white female jogger, Trisha Meili, was assaulted and raped in Manhattan. Five black teenage boys were identified as the perpetrators of the crime. Trump took out a full-page ad calling for the death penalty for the five young men. The actual criminal, Mattias Reyes, was arrested in 1991and sentenced to life imprisonment.

A 14-year-long investigation exonerated all five of the wrongly accused men who won a $41 million civil suit and an apology from the city. Even after the men were cleared of all wrongdoing, Trump doubled down on his support for the death penalty for those young men.

Sadly, Trump’s divide and conquer strategy has produced dramatic increases in hate-based crimes including those based on race, religion, LGBTQ, and even political ideologies

No one disputes the fact that illegal immigration is a serious problem that demands a concerted bipartisan effort to overhaul the current system. But let’s not forget a warning by pundit H.L. Mencken: For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

Roger Guffey is a retired teacher in Lexington.