Anti Immigrant Anger is there is USA, and rightly so. The immigrants, especially the illegal immigrants have resorted to wage cuts and in the current scenario of deckling Job availability in US, there appears to be no room for immigrants except in low paying sectors where natives are not willing to work
Before making any opinion on whether Trump would be able to rise on this anti immigrant sentiment, have a look on following data-
Presently about 4% of the USA population is of foreign born immigrants; both legal and illegal;
- Since touching peak of 12 million in 2007, number of undocumented immigrants has progressively been coming down. This is both due to strict enforcement of rules in US; improved border controls; low wage rate for undocumented workers as well as growing job opportunities in their home country as well;
- The policy of pushing illegal immigrants entering through Mexico borders in remote areas has deterred many potential illegal immigrants;
- The illegal immigrants in many cases are using fake social security numbers and are paying taxes as well. Against the common perception of these immigrants not getting any public benefits, their children do receive certain benefits such as public schooling and emergency medical care. The children to such illegal immigrants born in US also qualify for welfare benefits.
- A little lesser than 1 million or say about 8% of the illegal immigrants qualify as “removable criminal aliens” as per statistics shared by Department of Homeland Security;
- Removing all 11 million of illegal immigrants would be costing the exchequer an estimated amount of $600 billion;
- Besides, the industry employing such people would also get hit of $1 trillion hit to the economy
- Most USA Natives believe that undocumented immigrants are “as honest and hardworking” and support their case to grant them legalization status and to bring them “out of the shadows.”
- Donald Trump came down heavily on illegal immigrants in Arizona. While he was successful in bring down number of illegal immigrants by 40%, correspondingly GDP rate also came down by 2% as did the unemployment rate, which went up by 2.5%
The decline in number of illegal immigrants helped natives get better salaries, but as the worker shortage in crucial areas was created, overall impact was not healthy