For J.D. Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, immigrants with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or “parole” status are “illegals” who would also be removed from the country under the mass deportation plan Donald Trump wants to implement if he is elected to a second term on November 5.
On top of falsely accusing Haitian immigrants of eating the pets of Springfield, Ohio residents, Vance categorizes them as “illegals,” although they are covered by those programs.
After a speech in Raleigh, North Carolina, Vance also denied the fact that since undocumented immigrants work in critical industries like agriculture and construction, mass deportation would harm the economy.
“If you talk to farmers, farmers are as upset about the open borders as almost anybody else. So I think farmers, and certainly I reject the idea that the only way to have a productive farm economy is to allow 25 million legal aliens into this country, it doesn’t make enough sense,” said Vance.
What doesn’t make sense is his response because he does not recognize that farmers support immigration reform, which allows them to alleviate the worker shortage, lessen production costs, and reduce the price of food. Or that those undocumented people already work in the fields, and U.S.-born people do not want those jobs, which was proven by the United Farm Workers Union (UFW) “Take Our Jobs” campaign. Or that the system of temporary farm worker visas needs an urgent transformation.
He also does not recognize the devastating effect that the deportation of 5% of the U.S. workforce — the percentage of workers who are undocumented — would have on the country’s economy. That is some 22% of all farm workers, 15% of construction workers, and 8% of workers in the manufacturing industry.
On May 12, 2008, a mass raid occurred at Agriprocessors, a meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, during the George W. Bush presidency. Some 400 workers were detained.
Almost 300 were accused of aggravated identity theft to force them to plead guilty to lesser crimes and facilitate their deportation. Many of those who were deported took their U.S. citizen children with them.
America’s Voice visited Postville in 2009, one year after the raid. The town—which had come to life thanks to the presence and work of immigrants—was still dealing with the aftereffects on a humanitarian and economic level.
Agriprocessors, the primary source for jobs in Postville, lost a third of its workforce and declared bankruptcy. The company was being investigated at the federal level for various labor violations.
Businesses lost customers and closed. A resident told us that, within a year of the raid, “a restaurant and Guatemalan bakery had closed, along with a Mexican clothing store and restaurant.”
In 2018, under the Trump presidency, there was another raid in Tennessee at a protein processing plant, where 100 workers were detained. ICE was sued for utilizing racial profiling, among other things, because they only focused on Latino workers. As in Postville, there was chaos, U.S. citizen children stranded in the schools, separated families, and an impacted economy.
In 2019, another raid was carried out in Mississippi, in which 680 workers were detained, repeating the same pattern of citizen children separated from their undocumented parents, family economies destroyed, and — as a consequence — the community and state’s economy because the deported families had been consumers, who stopped purchasing items and paying taxes.
An analysis from the Center for Migration Studies in August of this year concludes, “The events in Jackson show how mass detention and deportation would have reverberating effects on American communities with minimal gains. Replicating such an event across multiple cities across the country may cater to certain viewpoints, but there are economic and humanitarian considerations that should accompany those points.”
The study adds that these prior experiences with mass deportations should put a stop to the attempt to realize it at a grand scale. “The costs would be exorbitant. It would leave large swaths of American communities decimated. The local and national economies would take serious hits. Families and loved ones would be separated. Already backlogged immigration courts would be further overwhelmed as a matter of due process. Immigration must be addressed, and the rule of law is to be respected. But solutions must equally be practical.”
If only there were a way to unite the supply and demand for workers in a regular and orderly way, where both sides benefit, in a process free of drama and, in the most extreme cases, death. There is. It’s called legislative immigration reform. But politicking, demagoguery, extremism, and racism are keeping it from becoming a reality.
