Trump’s Immigration Overhaul Is Cruel and Self-Defeating
If the president-elect has his way, the number of undocumented may rise and the economy will suffer.
Stay.
Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trump’s inauguration arrives in just a few weeks, and with it the promise that the new president will quickly try to make good on one of his most troubling and damaging priorities: the mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants.
If successful, this plan would undermine the administration’s economic, budget-cutting and bureaucracy-reduction goals, while devastating families. The president-elect has incessantly described the undocumented as polluters of the nation’s blood, as criminals, animals, invaders and worse. Yet undocumented immigrants have long tenure here and are linchpins in essential occupations and industries — raising the question of how mass deportation became the centerpiece of the incoming administration’s agenda.