Jul 8, 2018 6 min read

As with much of the Trump administration’s policies, his policy that separated families seeking to immigrate to the United States on our southern border created an explosive issue over a minor problem. Blowing things out of proportion may guarantee success on a reality show, but it doesn’t help government effectiveness.

Immigration is an issue that deserves attention, but the problem is not that we have hoards of “bad hombres” using kids as a screen to exploit loopholes in our immigration law (created by feckless Democrats) in order to sneak MS-13 gang members in to wreak havoc on our otherwise peaceful communities. The main immigration problem is that we have a lot of undocumented immigrants who are an important part of our economy, but also unfairly drive down the wages of the workers with whom they compete for jobs; not because they are immigrants, but because they are undocumented. Their tenuous legal status allows unscrupulous employers to exploit them to reduce their labor costs, which makes it difficult for good employers to compete (or pay their own workers higher wages). But that problem is not solved by enhanced border enforcement. It is solved by creating a path for legalization so there is not a pool of exploited workers, making it easier for immigrants to enter the country legally, and by raising the minimum wage (to prevent immigrants from working for less than a living wage because they are used to it).

Trump and his supporters claim they are not xenophobic; it’s not that they don’t like immigrants. They don’t like “illegal” immigrants. They should demonstrate that by creating a process that makes legal immigration a more viable option. But recent Republican immigration proposals have recommended dramatically reducing legal immigration, which will only make the problem of undocumented immigrants worse (and undermines their pretension that they are not anti-immigrant; actions speak louder than words).

The recently rescinded policy that led to immigrant children being separated from their parents was an example of Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s “constructive controversy with the purpose of enlightenment,” or in simpler terms, an effort to “own the libs” (incite liberal outrage that Trump knows will inspire his base). The “crisis” began in May, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions began to treat all undocumented border crossers as criminals, sending these immigrants to jail. And when parents are sent to jail, kids are not allowed to go with them. They then became “unaccompanied minors.”

The Obama administration did have to deal with a true crisis of unaccompanied minors along the southern border in 2014 (60,000 of them, up from 6,000 in 2011). At the time, Republicans accused the administration of causing the influx by providing an “invitational posture for illegal immigrants” because the administration had created DACA, which provided relief from deportation for some immigrant children (though it was only for children already in the U.S., so new immigrants would not be eligible). In response to this crisis, the Obama administration worked with Mexico to help them apprehend more immigrants crossing Mexico on their way to the U.S., and provided additional aid to help combat violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and the number of unaccompanied kids crossing the U.S. border declined.

The real crisis for Trump is that while illegal immigration (counted as apprehensions on the border) had declined in 2017, for which Trump claimed credit, it had returned to normal levels in 2018, which undermined Trump’s claim. While the reduction probably was due in part to Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, larger forces than Trump’s views drive immigration from Latin America. Gang and drug violence in “the Northern Triangle” (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) forced many people in those countries to flee, and not only to the U.S. Nearby countries (Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua) saw applications for asylum increase 712 percent from 2009-13. People who are happy where they are don’t leave their homes and take their children on a long and dangerous journey with an uncertain ending. Desperate people do.

The current crisis was created not by a new influx of unaccompanied minors, but by the Trump Administration changing the process for dealing with families caught crossing the border. The first time someone is caught attempting to cross the border illegally is a misdemeanor (like getting a speeding ticket in a national park, not usually an offense that leads to jail). Previous administrations released these immigrants into the U.S. (to stay with family or friends) and told them to return to court to get their case is decided. While Republicans refer to this program derisively referred as “catch and release” (which suggests an exercise in futility), more than 90 percent of these immigrants show up to court, and 85 percent who lose their case cooperate with their deportment. So it was generally working prior to the Trump administrations changes. And this was all happening in the context of an overall decline in immigration from Latin America.

Trump’s change in policy overwhelmed the holding facilities and courts to process the immigrants. A well-run government would have foreseen this and increased the number of judges hearing cases. Instead, Trump thinks the solution is to violate American norms of due process and deport them without a hearing. Trump’s willingness to violate sacred tenants of our system of government for political expedience is stunning.

Immigration is a controversial topic, and a topic Congress should address. But Trump’s effort to manufacture an immigration “crisis” because he thinks pretending to be “strong” on immigration will help politically has nothing to do with policy and is all about politics. He is willing to use children as leverage to get funding for his wall, because he knows that his promise that Mexicans would pay for it was always empty. The fact that Trump continues to hold political rallies with his base shows that he prefers campaigning to running the government. Running a democratic government is hard, but he should at least make an effort by doing things like engaging with Congress, even meeting with the Democrats to find common ground, rather than just tweeting divisive comments and holding rallies.

Kent James in an East Washington resident and has degrees in history and policy management from Carnegie Mellon University.