As Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s anti-immigrant rhetoric reaches an all-time low, I’d like to tell you about some of the families I’ve gotten to know over the past two years as volunteers helping newly arrived refugees. . (Names have been changed to protect their identities, but the story has not changed.)
Abdul, a recent immigrant from Syria via a refugee camp in Lebanon, works as a dishwasher at a food cooperative. He rides a donated bicycle there. His wife, Leila, walks to a local coffee shop five days a week to chop vegetables and make sandwiches. Even with modest government support, raising four children on minimum wage is nearly impossible, so the couple is looking for part-time work. They desperately want a car to expand the geographical area in which they can work, but of course it’s a vicious cycle. Without a car, you’ll have a hard time finding another job, and without a second job, you won’t be able to afford a car.
Marie is a mother of three from Cameroon who works as a home health aide in the mornings and takes classes in the afternoons. Amina is a Sudanese single mother of four who is studying English avidly when she’s not knitting hats and shawls to sell at local craft fairs to supplement her income. Mohammed was an accountant and his wife a teacher in Aleppo, Syria, but their home was destroyed during the civil war. He and his sons currently work 10-hour shifts at a warehouse that sells junk food to convenience stores. His wife is taking online English classes with the hope of one day training and getting her license as a certified nursing assistant. When I asked Mohammed and his sons if they were learning a lot of English from their colleagues, they laughed. “No, but we are learning Spanish quickly.”
Amina is a Sudanese single mother of four who is studying English avidly when she’s not knitting hats and shawls to sell at local craft fairs to supplement her income.
These are just a handful of documented immigrants living in fear of hate crimes and deportation thanks to Trump and Vance’s vicious lies.
I want you to look at the facts. Contrary to the politically convenient conventional wisdom that immigrants take jobs and depress wages for American-born workers, economic data show that the economic impact of immigration is at worst neutral and at best beneficial. It suggests that.
For example, when Fidel Castro temporarily lifted his country’s immigration ban in 1980, 125,000 Cubans, most without a high school education, moved to Miami. Within months, immigrants expanded the U.S. workforce by about 25 times the amount it would normally grow. However, when economist David Card compared Miami to comparable cities that did not experience a similar influx of immigrants, he found that “boatlifts do virtually nothing to the wages and employment prospects of Miami’s low-skilled workers.” It had no impact on my university degree.”
Many studies conducted in the United States and other countries have shown that not only does a large influx of immigrants have no effect on wages or employment rates, but that these immigrants are not just workers, but consumers who purchase goods and services. This indicates that there is a tendency to create new jobs because of the . Therefore, even if immigrant workers accept lower wages, the impact will be offset by their willingness to spend that income on local businesses.
And immigrants often become small business owners themselves who employ others. One study found that immigrants to the United States are 80% more likely to start a business than native-born people. And The Atlantic says: “When communities lose immigrant workers, what they get is not higher-wage locals; they get fewer childcare services, fewer meals prepared, and fewer homes built.”
Sofia Roca, an immigrant from Colombia, packs her bags in Aurora, Colorado, as she prepares to leave to seek work in another state (March 29, 2024). (Thomas Pipert/Associated Press)
I was trying to say that the blame that Trump and Vance are so vocal about is not on immigrants, but on our broken immigration system. That’s true, but perhaps the bigger problem is that there is a lack of affordable housing in this country.
When they arrived in the United States, the refugees I knew were crammed into dingy Howard Johnson motels in industrial areas far from public transportation, six or eight people to a room without a microwave. I was wondering if he had been crammed with it in exchange for one hell of a thing. Another.
In this respect, they have something in common with low-income Native Americans. Urban rents have increased by an average of 25% since the pandemic began. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center:
The United States has underbuilt millions of homes over the past 15 years. In fact, the decade immediately following the Great Recession saw less housing construction than any other decade since the 1960s. According to various estimates, there is a housing shortage of 1.5 million to 5.5 million homes in the United States.
But is immigration exacerbating the shortage? There is little data to suggest that they are.
The refugee families of five to eight people I know all live in dilapidated houses with one or two bedrooms and one barely functioning bathroom, often surrounded by other family members. I live with And for many, not knowing where they will live continues a vicious cycle of not being able to find housing or finding work.
Affordable housing and decent-wage jobs are the life rafts that immigrants and native workers alike desperately need.
And the effects of the housing shortage are not and will not be limited to foreign-born immigrants. There are already an estimated 3 million domestic climate migrants, and that number is expected to rise to 13 million.
What unites Abdul, Leila, Marie, Amina and Mohammed is their resourcefulness, willingness to work hard and above all their desire to provide a better life for their children. They realize that helping each other and being interdependent is the only way to take the next small step in this quest.
Native-born Americans, who are mistakenly adversaries, need a similar understanding. More than that, they need to do things that immigrants cannot do. They need to vote – not for candidates who promise mass deportations and ethnic cleansing, but for candidates who are committed to housing and supporting small businesses. Affordable housing and decent-wage jobs are the life rafts that immigrants and native workers alike desperately need. Low-income, unskilled American workers must realize that their survival lies not in sinking the heads of others struggling to survive, but in the truism that a rising tide lifts all boats. must be recognized.
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