Immigration took the forefront of the last presidential debate. One candidate’s plan was the most drastic one for overhauling immigration in our country’s history. Donald Trump’s plan for immigration was unlike any other policy the United States has ever seen. President Trump’s plan for illegal immigrants included mass deportations of people living in the United States, and a travel ban for seven middle eastern countries. There was immediate outrage over Trump’s plan, as those opposed to Trump’s ideas began protesting during and after this the announcement. The United States has always been the land of golden opportunities for immigrants, and even though there are risks involved with allowing foreigners into the country, people should not be left out and should be allowed to look for opportunities in our country to improve their life. 

Donald Trump’s original immigration policies created controversies that split public opinion in half. Trump’s immigration policy included bans placed on Muslim immigrants from 7 middle eastern countries: “Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen” (“Trump’s). A ban was placed on these countries due to their connections to terrorist organizations. A fully enforced ban on a whole country or its people is not an effective way to enforce limited immigration. Only a handful of the entire country’s population may have any connection to a terrorist group. The belief that all these countries citizens have terrorist connections is misguided; not all people from these countries are members of ISIS. There are already members of terror groups who live everyday as U.S. citizens, and most of them are not of Middle Eastern descent. 

Another part of President Trump’s plan includes building a wall along the U.S. and Mexican border. President Trump wishes the wall will stop all illegal immigrants from crossing into the United States, create jobs, and that Mexico will fund the project that creates a physical border between the two countries.  This wall is the first plan of its time, to build a 30-foot wall to keep immigrants from entering the country illegally. Trump’s reasoning for building the border along Mexico is that Mexican immigrants make up most of the undocumented immigrants in the United States. However, this is not entirely accurate, as D’Vera Cohn states, “the number of unauthorized immigrants from to Mexico in the U.S. peaked in 2007 at 6.9 million and has declined since then, to 5.8 million in 2014.” The percentage of illegal immigrants from Mexico has been in decline for nine years. In 2014 “Mexico accounted for 52% of unauthorized immigrants… but that is down from 57% in 2007” (Cohn). At the same time, there has been a rise in undocumented immigrants from other countries. Second to Mexico for number of unauthorized immigrants was Central America. Central America is responsible for “1.7 million, or 15% of the unauthorized immigrant population” (Cohn). These numbers are up slightly from 2009. Mexico is still the home country of most illegal immigrants who currently reside in the United States. However, the drastic punishment does not fit the crime. Mexico’s rate of illegal immigration to the U.S. is dropping while other countries have seen a rise in recent years. Yet, President Trump’s biggest plan involves building a wall, estimated to cost between 12 and 15 billion dollars. That is a large amount of funding to allocate towards fixing only half of the United States immigration problems. Donald Trump may be right that Mexicans make up a huge part of the illegal immigration population, but the data shows Mexican illegal immigration is slowing down. Due to this decrease, and the rise in immigrants from other countries, Trump’s plan to build a wall on the U.S.; Mexico border is expensive and does not begin to slow illegal immigration. 

Trump’s desire for a wall stems from his belief that illegal immigrants commit violent crimes, a claim that is untrue. President Trump believes that illegal immigrants commit all crimes, violent and non-violent at a higher rate than that of legal immigrants and U.S. born citizens. Trump used fear-mongering tactics to spread this belief that illegal immigrants commit violent crimes. Both legal and illegal immigrants are less likely to commit crime than born citizens. In “2000 immigrant incarceration rates are one-fifth those of the native born” (Nowrasteh). When comparing incarceration rates of illegal immigrants to native born citizens, the illegal immigrants have lower rates. One comparison was made between poorly educated young men, who are more likely to commit crimes. Young, less educated men, ages 18 to 39, from three Central American countries have an incarceration rate lower than that of native born citizens. The incarceration rate of these men from Mexico was 2.8 percent, and the rate for Guatemala and El Salvador was 1.7 percent. The incarceration rate for native born men was 10.7 percent (Nowrasteh). Researchers from William and Mary studied 159 cities and concluded that “violent crime is not a deleterious consequence of increased immigration” (Nowrasteh). Following another study the researchers concluded that “it appears that anti-immigrant sentiments that view immigrants as crime prone are not only inaccurate at the micro-level, they are also inaccurate at the macro-level…increased immigration may actually be beneficial in terms of lessening some crimes” (Nowrasteh). Studies and research show that illegal immigrants are not committing crimes at higher rates. In fact, immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than those of native born citizens. The belief that illegal immigrants enter a country and then go on a rampage of violent offenses is wrong. In reality, most illegal immigrants are looking for opportunities to improve their life and are trying to get away from horrible situations in their home countries. The opportunity to improve their life is a motivator for illegal immigrants and keeps them from committing any crimes. If they were caught after committing a crime, they would be deported to their home country and return to the life they were just trying to escape. Illegal immigrants are not responsible for a mass uptick in crime rate. They would be risking getting caught and sent back to their homeland before they could become citizens. 

President Trump’s use of fear mongering helped him to push his illegal immigration agenda. Donald Trump fear mongered the American public into believing much of what he has said about illegal immigrants and their actions in our country. Trump has made the same claim countless times, and that claim is that all illegal immigrants are violent criminals who are looking to kill and rob American citizens. However, the facts prove that this claim is wrong. The crime rates are lower for immigrants than they are native citizens. How does Trump get the American people to believe and then eventually vote for his plans? He uses emotions felt after tragedies to get the voting population to vote for his ideas. Following the San Bernardino Massacre, which was executed by two self- radicalized Muslims, Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States (The). President Trump used the aftermath of a mass tragedy to push his immigration plan. The two San Bernardino killers were both self-radicalized Muslims, and one of them was a U.S. citizens (The). This attacks and others like it will continue to happen, even with President Trump’s new plans. Trump’s plans only prevent people like these from entering the country, but there are already these types of people in the country. Donald Trump was not the only person on his staff who used fear mongering techniques. Trump’s campaign manager also fear mongered. Kellyanne Conway tweeted a link to an article “about a Muslim man in Pakistan who killed his sister” (Reyes). The man killed his sister who married a Christian woman. The reason for the tweet from President Trump campaign manager, was to further prove that all Muslims are killers and should be kept out of the country at all cost. However, this was only one Muslim man in a country of 196 million Muslims. This story should have been about one man who committed murder, but Trump and his team turned it into a way to convince Americans to keep Muslims out of the country. In order to push his immigration plan President Trump and his members used fear mongering in the result of tragedy and loss to convince Americans to turn against immigrants. 

Trump not only uses tragedy to help his cause, he also uses the victims of these tragedies to push his ideas. As a result of an executive order signed by Trump in February, The Department of Homeland Security has created VOICE, which is the “Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office” (Kopan, Tal. “What). VOICE will work with “victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants” (Kopan, Tal. “What). There were three specific people mentioned by President Trump, who had lost a family member to a violent crime committed by an illegal immigrant. The immediate response to this was that these “measures are designed to skew public opinion unfavorably toward immigrants” (Kopan, Tal. “What). Trump used the tragedy suffered by these victims to further push his agenda. Bernie Sanders, who ran against Trump, was vocal in his criticism of President Trump. Senator Sanders believed that Trump “is stirring up fear and hatred against immigrants and trying to divide out country (Kopan, Tal. “What). Alfonso Aguilar is the President of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, and was once a Trump supporter, came out and condemned VOICE, “a small minority, and you’re absolutely right, smaller than those in the general population, engage in criminal activity. So it is blown out of proportion… I think if they do the research (they’d) realize that the majority of undocumented immigrants are really not involved in criminal activity” (Kopan, Tal. “What). Trump used tragedies and victims or tragedies to gain support for his plans on illegal immigration. Even though all the research and data backup that undocumented immigrants commit violent at lower rates than native citizens, Trump’s use of fear-mongering has convinced U.S. citizens that these people are greater threats than they really are. 

President Trump’s plan to build the wall is smart economically as it saves money for each immigrant it keeps out. As previously mentioned, President Trump’s wall is estimated to cost between 12 and 15 billion dollars. The wall will, however, eventually pay for itself. Illegal immigrants cost taxpayers “$75000 per person over their lifetimes” (Dinan). Every immigrant kept out of the United States would be saving American citizens money. Over time the wall would pay for itself in tax payers money saved. “Stopping just 200000 border-jumpers over the next decade would save some $15 billion” (Dinan). The wall does not even have to stop all illegal immigrants from entering the United States. Steven Camaroata, the author of the report from the Center for immigration, stated, “if a wall stopped half of those expected to successfully enter illegally without going through a port of entry at the southern border over the next 10 years, it would save taxpayers nearly $64 billion-several times the wall’s cost” (Dinan). The wall would be a good investment if it kept out illegal immigrants while saving taxpayers’ money. Rather than paying for the cost of capturing and holding illegal immigrants a wall would save money, and keep money in the pockets of actual United States citizens. President Trump’s plan to build a wall would beneficial for the U.S. and its citizens. However, letting these immigrants become U.S. citizens would be beneficial and would potentially offset the money saved by deporting them. Allowing these people to become United States citizens would let them build their family in the U.S.; meaning they will work for to support their families, they would spend their money on the U.S. economy. Rather than saving our money by keeping immigrants out, they should be allowed into the country. The money that would be generated by having thousands of eager workers and their families coming to the United States would be far greater than any money saved by keeping them out.

A new executive order signed by President Trump makes some good changes to his immigration plan. The largest change to Trump’s plan is to give immigration officers more power to remove undocumented immigrants. The orders main goal is to remove immigrants who have been convicted or charged with any criminal offense. This allows immigration officers to pull anyone off the streets who may be a threat to public safety. Making violent offenders the number one goal of deporting is a good start. Not all immigrants are violent but the ones who are deserved to at least be removed from the street. Even though these new plans help find and remove undocumented immigrants, there are many flaws with this plan. The first problem is that for all the reasons to be stopped by an immigration officer there is no order of significance, meaning that almost anyone could be stopped and detained.  Trump’s order allows “for anyone to be detained for removal proceedings, even if they have only been suspected of committing a crime” (Kopan, Tal. “Trump’s). Because there is no order of significance, “a violent criminal is on the same level as a parent of U.S. citizen children who work and contributes to their community” (Kopan, Tal. “Trump’s). The second problem with the new system is that any removal of an undocumented immigrant is up to “the judgement of an immigration officer” (Kopan, Tal. “Trump’s). Leaving the removal of individuals up to the judgement of immigration officers is a poor decision and will eventually lead to problems. If an officer makes a wrong judgement innocent people will be detained, and there will be “instances of racial profiling” and an increase in racial profiling may lead to “Fourth Amendment, unreasonable search and seizure concerns” (Kopan, Tal. “Trump’s). Leaving the decision to detain an immigrant or not is also going to cause the immigration officer more stress, making it harder for them to do their job. The president’s plan to round up illegal immigrants is going to back fire and lead to lawsuits from legal citizens who detained by immigration officers who didn’t have the best judgement. If a scenario like this were to happen the outrage from those in favor of immigration would be huge.  Instances like these haven’t happened yet, but there are already protest taking place. Legal immigrant workers began boycotting business in several cities “including Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, Houston, Chicago, and New York” (Agerholm). Protest over President Trump’s immigration plans began when he was still on the campaign trail, and have continued while he is office. Not only will protest continue as long as these policies are in effect they will become larger and have the potential to become violent. President Trump believed he was improving his plan, however, these new policies will lead to outcomes he couldn’t have possibly thought of, including lawsuits, and larger protest. 

President Trump’s immigration policies are unique and unlike any other plan for immigration ever conceived, as he wants to institute a ban of multiple countries, build a 30-foot tall wall along the entire U.S.; Mexico border, and round up all illegals and deport them. The United States has always been a cultural melting pot of diversity and people from all over the world, and Trump’s plan would change the demographic of the United States. Trump’s reasoning is wrong. Immigrants are not committing violent crimes at higher rates than native citizens, and they are coming less from Mexico and other countries. Immigrants do not create the problems that President Trump has spoken about. Most of them are looking for opportunities to improve their lives and their families; they are not looking to be negative members of society. Removing and keeping certain people out of the U.S. is not the right thing to do, because the U.S. is the land of opportunity, and these opportunities should not be numbered for people. 
