How Trump's (and Obama's) Immigration Crackdowns Screw Over "Real" Americans: Podcast
Law-abiding residents and business owners are among the biggest casualties in the war on illegal immigrants.
As a candidate, President Donald Trump ran on a platform that called for the deportation of 11 million immigrants. In this, he was merely supercharging policies that had been put in place by his predecessors Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, all of whom targeted illegals among us in various ways and to varying degrees.
In a powerful, richly reported piece in the latest issue of Reason, Shikha Dalmia traveled to Arizona to investigate how Trump's war on illegal immigration is causing all sorts of collateral damage in the lives of American citizens and businessmen. There is, she argues, no way to surgically remove millions of people—most of whom are law-abiding and productive members of society—without causing incredible pain to those of us who have every legal right to go about our lives without interference from immigration and border agents.
The war on immigration has taken a great toll on unauthorized aliens, its targets. But it is also badly affecting Americans themselves, its intended beneficiaries. Those who think they can escape the crossfire because they are authorized, naturalized, or native-born, with American ancestors going back generations, are simply fooling themselves.
In the newest Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie talks with Dalmia about the unexamined toll of immigration crackdowns on legal residents. From illegal imprisonment to politically motivated audits to invasive internal checkpoints, we all suffer when immigration policies and realities are way out of whack.
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