By Brittany McAlister
Trinity Times Correspondent
As voters cast their ballots in the Nov. 5, 2024, general election, many of them are considering the state of U.S. immigration when they decide which candidate to select.
The immigration system has been bitterly debated since the turn of the 21st century, used as a wedge issue in the 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020 and now the 2024 presidential elections, yet no meaningful reforms have been agreed to in all that time.
That’s part of what has led to a global migrant crisis facing the world today, with millions of people fleeing conflict, poverty, and persecution in search of safety and better opportunities.
Countries around the globe are struggling to cope with the influx of migrants.
Former President Donald Trump has made immigration the centerpiece of his election campaign, promising mass deportations if he is elected, making false claims that Haitian immigrants are eating the pets of American citizens and frequently telling audiences at his rallies that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Trinity Washington University President Patricia McGuire acknowledges U.S. cities have struggled to accommodate the influx of immigrants seeking asylum or entering the country illegally but told Trinity Times that is a result of bad immigration policies, exacerbated by political polarization.
“Thousands of people from Central and South America are gathered at the border hoping to gain entry to the United States,” McGuire said. “They are fleeing violence and oppression in their own countries. Sadly, the United States has not created a modern immigration policy or procedures to deal humanely with the large surge of refugees at the border, and instead, the states are resorting to ugly and brutal tactics to prevent desperate immigrants from getting into this country. It’s a disgrace all the way around – the U.S. is big enough and rich enough to find humane ways to solve this crisis, but political polarization has prevented any positive movement on immigration policy for many years.”
During Trinity’s Oct. 25 symposium “Democracy on the Ballot,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-California, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives and a 1962 Trinity graduate, said it was vital that the U.S. end its political stalemate on immigration reform.
Speaker Pelosi told the symposium audience that the U.S. – a country of immigrants – has had a long history of immigrant demonization, from Germans, the Irish and Italians, to Jews fleeing the European dangers of the Nazis.
“So, there’s always been a kind of a resistance,” she said, “but nothing like what we are seeing today. It’s just so sad.”
Pelosi cited Republican President Ronald Reagan when he pushed immigration reform in the 1980s, telling his fellow Americans that the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of hope around the world, because it’s a message that says the country welcomes immigrants.
“Because our door was open, America became pre-eminent in the world, said Ronald Reagan,” she told the audience. “And if we ever close that door, we will cease to be pre-eminent in the world. Ronald Reagan said that. I speak about that to my colleagues (in Congress), they don’t applaud for Ronald Reagan. You don’t applaud for Ronald Reagan, Republicans, you don’t applaud?”
In the two decades of the 21st century, both Democratic and Republican administrations have promised, and failed, to reform the U.S. immigration laws, and asylum became the most used form of entry for migrants.
During Trump’s 2017-2021 term as president, his administration took a systematic approach in dismantling the asylum system, and migrants arrived at the southern border in record numbers in the early years of President Joe Biden’s administration.
In early 2024 it looked like a bipartisan border measure would be passed, until Trump asked his allies in Congress to kill the deal.
Vice President Kamala Harris has vowed to continue Biden’s executive orders that restrict how people apply for asylum at the southern border if she is elected president, and then set out to work with Congress to explore real immigration reform.
However, in the current political climate, immigration reform will prove to be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Both political parties in the U.S. have used the immigration issue to stir up their base during election cycles, instead of developing a system that works for the country and the immigrants, said Joshua Wright, associate professor of Global Affairs at Trinity.
“So, if their base is opposed to immigration, they’re not going to support (reform bills),” Wright said. “If their base favors immigration, they will support it because that’s what their base wants, and obviously, you got to do what your base wants if you want to get votes to stay in office.”
The result, he said, is that nothing gets accomplished because lawmakers in each party fear they will lose their next election if they reach a compromise.
“The problem may be larger than ever in terms of the volume of people at the border, but as a general moral and political problem, it is the same as always,” McGuire said. “The question is whether a wealthy nation likethe U.S., with plenty of open land, should extend itself to help people who want to leave their oppressive home nations to live in freedom here.”
Europeans began to colonize in North American in the 15th century and it was British colonists who broke away from England to establish the United States of American.
“The U.S. is a ‘nation of immigrants’ – all of us, except those who are Native Americans, are here because someone in our families in the past decided to immigrate to this nation,” McGuire said. “The immigration of millions of European people in the 19th and 20th centuries also provoked resistance, violence, and hostility. There’s a tendency of modern politicians and political reporters to assume this is all very new, but it’s not. The U.S. has struggled with these issues throughout its existence.”
According to a report by the United Nations, there are a multitude of factors driving the migrant crisis, including conflict, poverty, and climate change.
In regions such as the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, ongoing conflicts have forced millions of people to flee their homes in search of safety. The Syrian civil war, for example, has created one of the largest refugee populations in the world, with more than six million Syrians displaced internally and millions more seeking refuge in neighboring countries and Europe.
Poverty is another major factor driving migration, particularly in countries in Latin America and Africa where economic opportunities are scarce.
Many migrants are willing to risk their lives to cross borders in search of better economic prospects for themselves and their families.
Climate change is also exacerbating the migrant crisis, as rising sea levels, droughts, and extreme weather events are displacing millions of people from their homes and forcing them to migrate in search of more sustainable living conditions.
“People are suffering and dying, sometimes at the hands of agents of the state, more often by the deprivation they suffer on their journeys or the violence they encounter along the way,” McGuire said, adding that Catholic teaching is very clear that there is a moral imperative to welcome refugees.
“The situation at the border is the very essence of a ‘humanitarian crisis’ where people need help and relief,” she said, “but are receiving too little help and almost no relief from their suffering.”
U.S. cities, such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles have seen an influx of immigrants in the past few years, many of whom have been transported there by the governors of Florida and Texas after they cross the southern border.
“It puts a heavy financial strain on them,” said Sita Ramamurti, Trinity’s dean of its College of Arts and Sciences.
“These states and cities are still recovering from the unexpected economic downturn caused by the pandemic, and now they must set aside billions of dollars to meet the immediate needs of the migrants – providing shelter, feeding them, schooling them, and caring for their safety and health, in addition to handling similar challenges faced by their own citizens in the state and cities,” Ramamurti said. “Instead of leaving it to the border states,the federal government should step up and create an enforceable border deal to address the growing humanitarian issue at the border.”
While it’s true that governments do need to offer refugees, asylum seekers and new immigrants a degree of financial support upon entry into their countries, what is often lost in the debate is that immigration is good for a nation’s economic future, said Trinity student Doris Avila-Marquez, a health services major with a minor in psychology.
Among other benefits, immigration is enabling the U.S. to see continued economic growth despite an aging U.S.-born population and shrinking number of prime-age working adults, it expands U.S. Gross Domestic Product and has led to better – not worse – wages and work opportunities for U.S.-born workers, according to a 2024 report from the Economic Policy Institute.
“Together, immigrant workers and business owners generated $4.6 trillion of economic output in the United States in 2022,” the Economic Policy Institute report said. “The contribution of immigrants to GDP is about the same as the immigrant share of the population.”
Avila-Marquez said immigration is motivating her to vote in the 2024 election.
“Powerful countries like the U.S. could also address root causes (of immigration) and help other poorercountries, it could decrease the number of people migrating if ‘strain of resources’ is something the U.S. wants to avoid,” she said. “Lawmakers could also develop regional frameworks to effectively manage migration flows and address common challenges.”
Though acknowledging the dim prospects of bipartisan action on immigration reform in Congress, McGuire stressed that the American public could prevail on their elected officials to take real action.
“Congress needs to enact humane, fair and just immigration legislation,” she said. “For Congress to do this, the citizens of the United States need to elect members of Congress who actually want to solve problems and make good laws, not just posture for the cameras or stoke divisions and fear among their constituents.”
McGuire said citizens of the border states can play a very important role by calling on their governors and state legislatures to have a humane response to the migrant crisis and reject actions like putting up morerazor-wire, adding barriers to rivers, and other such tactics that do not solve the problem, but build resentment and encourage more violence.
“Immigrants and refugees are seeking a better life, greater economic security, reunification with relatives already here, an end to violence, improved schools for their children, better healthcare, a chance to pursue work and professional lives that will be satisfying,” McGuire said. “Every person has their own reason, but all see life in the U.S. as desirable with great opportunity for advancement. The ‘American Dream’ remains a powerful force despite all of the obstacles to immigration.”