- Argument‹3 of 3
Donald Trump exploited US fear over unregulated immigration
Building a border wall between the US and Mexico was a central campaign promise in Donald Trump's 2016 election manifesto. Many people voted for him because this appealed to their anxieties.
The argument
On this account, the central mechanism of Trump's 2016 campaign was not policy detail but the naming of a threat. He argued that the illegal immigration of Mexicans into the United States increases crime and drug importation, and he blamed the Mexican government directly, saying it was sending drug traffickers, criminals, ruffians and rapists into America. That framing did two things at once. It gave a diffuse and hard-to-picture anxiety a single identifiable source, and it located the blame outside the country. From that diagnosis followed a remedy simple enough to chant. Trump promised to build a wall along the US-Mexico border during his 2016 presidential campaign, a physical barrier designed to prevent people from crossing illegally, and he suggested that the Mexican government should be forced to pay for it because of the problems their country brings into the United States. The proposal worked as argument and as symbol. As argument, it offered a physical answer to a physical problem. As symbol, it promised that the flow could be stopped rather than merely managed, and that the cost of stopping it would fall on someone else. Voters who supported the wall believed that the United States was being overrun by illegal immigration. Many of them also believed that people who come to live and work in the country without official documentation are exploiting the freedoms and privileges of America — enjoying the benefits of a system they have not entered lawfully. For those voters, the candidate who named that grievance and promised a concrete barrier against it was speaking to something they already felt. On this reading, Trump's success in 2016 lay in exploiting an existing fear over unregulated immigration rather than in creating it.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Americans are not scared about unregulated immigration because it does not reduce job opportunities for native born Americans or leads to increased unemployment. Many immigrants are typically come relatively poor, and take on menial labour tasks that native American citizens are unwilling to do. This fills key gaps in the country's economy and their contributions would be difficult to replace if there was mass deportation. In the long run, evidence suggests that immigration actually raises national income and output, and contributes to maintaining a dynamic and growing society. Immigrants also increase America's national birth rate, helping to offset the ageing population. This reduces any decline in the labor force and counteracts slow economic growth.