Trump and Immigration

I want to start this post by stating that my wife received her green card in August 2014, and she plans to apply for citizenship in August 2017. That said, in the last 3 years, we have become friends with a lot of illegal immigrants here in Myrtle Beach. Although we want to put an overly simple graphic in our mind of a Mexican man that mows your lawn, immigrants are far more diverse in nationality and skill set than the overly simplistic picture.

The problem is that Donald Trump is running for president with the promise to throw every illegal immigrant out of the country. Of course, my illegal immigrant friends are extremely nervous, but the general thinking is that Donald Trump will never get elected.

Here’s what I do know from personal observation. Illegal immigrants are hard working. I don’t know any unemployed immigrants. They have to work. In fact, that’s the reason they are here. They all have homes and some are surprisingly nice. I am amazed at how many have gone into debt and every few years, they have a new car or truck, that’s a lot nicer than mine. And immigrants consume. They buy beer, cigarettes, go to the movies, and do all the things that the rest of us do.

The problem which no one seems to understand is that if we throw all of these people out of the country, it will tank the real estate market. From the crash of 2008, these bubbles and our economy are quite fragile, and the shock of losing over 12M apartment and home renters will make it crash for sure. But it goes on from there. All of those vehicles that they are paying monthly, what will happen to all of them? There is a whole sub economy that supplies credit to the illegal immigrant community, that will crash too. And what about Walmart? They are already closing stores, and what if a lot of their customers are deported?

This is the first glaring problem with Donald Trump’s plan, but there’s more. How does one go about telling the difference between an American and an immigrant? There is no national identification card. But on top of that, who will enforce these policies? We will need a national police whose sole purpose will be to ask random people that fall into a stereotype for their documents. The country will essentially become a police state. Freedom goes out the window for the average citizen. It will really stink.

And what about the false positive? If we are going to throw people out of the country at such a massive scale, it seems likely that some will be thrown out erroneously. And then what? We let them back in, but how can we possibly repay them for the deconstruction we wreaked on their lives?

When I talk to my conservative and Trump enthusiast friends about the practicalities of his plans, they have consistently stated, “Well, he will never do that.” Not sure how to take that if he is a man where there is no connection between what he says and what he will do.