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Saying that it's all about immigration vs xenophobia, and nothing else, is gross oversimplification.
For starters, immigrants may take up jobs that native-born citizens also need, but there's also the issue of outsourcing. Corporations will exploit low-wage labor, and will leave areas where workers will not accept such low salaries. Look at what outsourcing has done to places like Detroit; the jobs leave, the money leaves, and infrastructure and quality of life crumbles. Yet the United States is still a lucrative market to sell goods in, so these corporations, such as car manufacturers, still sell foreign-manufactured cars in the very places they left. They make more money because they pay the foreign workers less, while the common man and woman suffer.
This is no good for us, so Trump's solution is implementing a 35% tariff on American corporations who think they can outsource and get off easy by selling these foreign-made goods. At the same time, Trump plans to reduce the business tax to 15%, giving these corporations an even better reason to come back (as well as more money to give workers good salaries). You can already see it with various companies abandoning plans to build factories in Mexico, and investing in plants in Michigan.
Ironically, Obama said this was impossible. He asked Trump what kind of magic wand he had to bring those jobs back. Well, looks like Trump's a wizard.
Actually, walls remain a very practical means of controlling movement of people. For instance, look at the results of Hungary's border wall.
And if you question whether illegal aliens bring violent crime (which, in turn, a barrier to migration would indirectly stop), look no further than Israel's border fence.
It's mostly because it was a campaign promise.
I'm guessing public opinion is about 50-50 right now. |
I never said illegal immigrants weren't a problem - you could say the idea of legal immigrants too may not be the greatest for our local workforce. But our entire country was founded on immigration. My point was actually people are just using them as a scape goat more than they should be. If we dealt with immigration, I really don't think that would magically fix all of our problems.
The thing about importation tariffs though... That's one thing I can agree with, because that's a thing going after businesses not people. Corporations leap from country to country to avoid the taxation that they'd have to deal with in being a local business while exploiting cheaper, less regulated labor in foreign land, which they then turn around and sell back to us. When a business is not actually based on our soil it can be detrimental to our economy - just look at Walmart. Their entire business model was that they were the store that sells things to us cheaper than everyone else but the money they earn doesn't actually help the country's cycle besides the paychecks of the people they employ. Meanwhile they make use of cheap foreign labor and import it back to their stocks here, which they sell at cheaper rates than everyone else which really damages local competitive - especially for small businesses which just simply can't compete. Of course more people will want cheaper groceries from Walmart vs some place like Target.
Also... Comparing our immigrants to those of another country's isn't really the most valid of arguments. Israel is Israel. The entire middle-east is in the shitter right now, it's all complete chaos and many people are basically just running away from corrupt governments or the fighting between moderates and radicals vs other radicals. Of course there's more crime in Israel, their whole world over there in that part of the world is going to shit. Among the people fleeing these different lands, there are terrorists tagging behind them with two main goals: Kill the people fleeing, and kill the places they're fleeing to. This is exactly what's fueling xenophobia in all the countries they're fleeing to because as more immigrants get accepted, they potentially bring with them more terrorist attacks because of those zealots that are following them, and naturally the people living in those countries resent that. But at the same time, denying them all is basically a death sentence to them.
Mexican immigrants ARE BY NO MEANS like the immigrants over there - they don't come over to our borders with bombs strapped to their ass. Most of them are just looking for the opportunity to start a new, more stable life or they're running away from all the druglords and corrupt police forces - both of whom present MUCH less of a threat to us.