Monday, February 20, 2017

Wishful thinking on Trump's mass deportation program

Some Republican big growers in California have apparently talked themselves into thinking the Trump mass deportation of undocumented workers won't affect them much.

In his report, Rory Carroll (Latino laborers fear deportation, but officials tell California farmers not to fret Guardian 02/20/2017) quotes two lines from the Lennon-McCartney song "Strawberry Fields Forever":

Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see.


It's true that the State of California under Gov. Jerry Brown has made it clear that it won't willingly cooperate with a mass deportation program. And California growers have gone through various cycles in which xenophobia against Latino immigrants attracts more attention and support from politicians. But California agriculture depends on undocumented immigrant labor. So the growers in the past have always been able to count on wink-and-a-nod laxity in enforcement, even while they can hold the threat of deportation or illegal firings over their workers' heads.

Some of them apparently think things will go on as in past cycles of xenophobic hostility. Others are more apprehensive about not being able to hire enough workers, probably the more realistic perspective at the moment. But Carroll observes, "Both versions, for now, are accurate – a dissonance stemming from ambiguity over current government policies and the fact that no one has any clue what will happen next."

“It’s a lot of hype from the advocacy groups and the media,” said Rob Roy, head of the Ventura County Agricultural Association. “I deal with over 100 farms and not had one farmer come to me with any complaint about immigration issues or raids.”

Ice enacted similar raids under Barack Obama, who deported a record 2.5m people with little media outcry, Roy said. “But with Trump, suddenly the moral fibre of our country is coming apart. I don’t think Ice is going to start running into fields and taking away farm workers. I don’t believe that.”

This also struck me:

“It’s a lot of hype from the advocacy groups and the media,” said Rob Roy, head of the Ventura County Agricultural Association. “I deal with over 100 farms and not had one farmer come to me with any complaint about immigration issues or raids.”

Ice enacted similar raids under Barack Obama, who deported a record 2.5m people with little media outcry, Roy said. “But with Trump, suddenly the moral fibre of our country is coming apart. I don’t think Ice is going to start running into fields and taking away farm workers. I don’t believe that.”
That link is to an earlier Guardian article, also by Rory Carroll, that provides some useful reality-based discussion of the US immigration situation, How Breitbart and the conservative right opened a new front in the war over fake news 12/15/2016, where he writes:

Breitbart faults the Guardian for using the oft-cited statistic that the Obama administration deported a record 2.5 million people, saying this is misleading or inaccurate because authorities have “inflated” the number by including a category of border crossers which used to be counted as “returned” rather than formally deported.

It is true that authorities are now prosecuting and often jailing more border crossers before formally deporting them, whereas in previous eras most were swiftly returned to Mexico with little formality. If you include returnees as well as deportees, the Clinton and Bush administrations sent back far more people than the Obama administration.

But the fact remains that Obama has formally deported more than his predecessors. This table from the Department of Homeland Security’s annual yearbook of immigration statistics shows the record going back to 1892.

One reason formal deportations have risen is deterrence. The strategy is to punish illicit border crossing with months or even years in jail. Another reason is demographic shifts. The number of Mexicans trying to cross has plunged while the numbers from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have surged. They latter cannot simply be dumped back across the Rio Grande.
The Obama Administration didn't undertake the kind of systematic mass deportation of current undocumented residents that Trump promised on the campaign trail and is clearly trying to implement in practice. That doesn't mean that Obama's deportation policy was a good one. But it is important to make distinctions, both to understand what's going on and to counter the stock propaganda justification of "well, Obama did it, too!"

The December 15 article includes this chart based on Homeland Security data:


But Obama's immigration policy was a prime example of the toxic brand of "bipartisanship" he practiced. He justified his aggressive detention and deportation program to Democrats by packaging it as an attempt to get comprehensive immigration reform by convincing Republicans he was serious about border enforcement. Not only did it not achieve the alleged goal of getting enough Republicans to support comprehensive immigration reform to get it passed. It also reinforced the Republican framing of the immigration issue as one of law-enforcement in which harsher is better than humane.

How could a Democrat frame the immigration issue differently? Like Jerry Brown did in his State of the State address this year:

A few moments ago, I swore into office our new attorney general. Like so many others, he is the son of immigrants who saw California as a place where, through grit and determination, they could realize their dreams. And they are not alone, millions of Californians have come here from Mexico and a hundred other countries, making our state what it is today: vibrant, even turbulent, and a beacon of hope to the rest of the world.

We don't have a Statue of Liberty with its inscription: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." But we do have the Golden Gate and a spirit of adventure and openness that has welcomed - since the Gold Rush of 1848 - one wave of immigration after another.

For myself, I feel privileged to stand before you as your governor, as did my father almost sixty years ago. His mother, Ida, the youngest of eight children, was born in very modest circumstances, not very far from where we are gathered today. Her father arrived in California in 1852, having left from the Port of Hamburg, aboard a ship named "Perseverance."

It is that spirit of perseverance and courage which built our state from the beginning. And it is that spirit which will get us through the great uncertainty and the difficulties ahead.

... in California, immigrants are an integral part of who we are and what we've become. They have helped create the wealth and dynamism of this state from the very beginning.

I recognize that under the Constitution, federal law is supreme and that Washington determines immigration policy. But as a state we can and have had a role to play. California has enacted several protective measures for the undocumented: the Trust Act, lawful driver's licenses, basic employment rights and non-discriminatory access to higher education.

We may be called upon to defend those laws and defend them we will. And let me be clear: we will defend everybody - every man, woman and child - who has come here for a better life and has contributed to the well-being of our state.

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