Trump's Anti-Immigrant Agenda: Dangerously Illegal, Immoral & Inhumane

Immigrants? They're Asylum Seekers, Actually.

As the US gears up for another election, the vilification of immigrants is back on the menu for the GOP. Once again, the Republican party is using migrants as a scapegoat for the country's problems, with a particular focus on the Southern border.

What is happening at the border is migration, and it is a pattern of migration that we have seen over the last decade: a rise in asylum seekers, on top of a pattern of migration we have seen for 50 years... of people coming to the United States seeking a better life by sneaking across the border. Neither of those is an invasion. - Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, American Immigration Council Fellow

Immigration policy has long been a tool for political point-scoring, with little progress made in Congress. Executive actions have largely dictated the direction of travel, and President Biden has already issued more edicts on immigration than Trump did during his entire stint in office. However, Biden has also pandered to the right, blaming Republicans for a lack of immigration reform while boasting of his ability to "shut down the border."

This political football has real consequences, with migrants often paying the price for this bipartisan failure.

Trump's Anti-Immigrant Agenda: A Recap

Agenda47: A Death Sentence for Migrants and Their Children

Trump's Agenda47 is a xenophobic manifesto. It includes proposals to:

• End automatic citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, contravening the 14th Amendment. This fringe theory is not supported by constitutional lawyers.
• "Seal the border," an impossible and historically futile goal.
• Carry out mass deportations, despite legal and logistical challenges.
• Curb "birth tourism" with no evidence to support the claim that it is a growing issue.
• Address a supposed "migrant crime epidemic," despite research showing immigrants commit fewer crimes.

It's Not an "Invasion," It's a Humanitarian Crisis

The so-called "migrant invasion" is a manufactured crisis. While there has been an increase in migration due to the destabilization of several South American countries, this is not a new phenomenon. The Biden administration has implemented policies that have reduced the number of asylum seekers and focused on regional cooperation. Despite this, Republicans continue to stoke fears of an "invasion," ignoring the human stories behind migration and the failures of their own administrations to address the root causes.

This is shameful, dangerous, and downright un-American.