I wish more people would defend undocumented immigrants. They’re being demonized in almost every ad from Trump’s campaign and pro-Trump PACs with distortions, exaggerations and flat out lies.
Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich testifies before the Joint Economic Committee January 16, 2014 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
This is most galling when it comes from people who are here legally but could just as easily have been undocumented under different circumstances. Like, for example, Art del Cueto, the cartoonish vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, a childhood arrival from Mexico who has been a U. S. citizen almost but not his whole life.
In ad after ad, we hear complaints about how the so-called “illegals” are draining this country of resources, depriving “real” Americans.
And the Democrats at times seem timid to hit back against those specific lies, as if afraid of how Republicans would respond to that. As if Republicans could be even more dishonest in their lies about undocumented immigrants and Vice President Kamala Harris as the supposed “border czar.”
Robert Reich, who was Secretary of Labor for the first term of the presidency of President Bill Clinton (D, 1993 — 2001), has done the most concise summary of the economic cost — and the immorality — of the mass deportation that Republicans say they want.
