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| Angelika/Mike Schilli |
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12/2016
Angelika To blame foreigners, asylum seekers and immigrants in the election campaign is a well-known strategy, because these population groups are always easy to scapegoat for everything that is going wrong. Trump has particularly targeted people who live and work illegally in the US, 11 million people. It's true that this problem needs to be solved sensibly at some point. Bush tried to do so and would probably have succeeded if 9/11 had not occurred during his term. Obama focused on Obamacare and left the issue of illegal immigrants untouched.
Trump then in his campaign promised that he would not only build a wall between Mexico and the U.S., but also plans to deport all eleven million illegal immigrants. The implementation of the wall is a questionable undertaking because the whole thing is costly and time-consuming. It is likely that the already existing fence at many points of the border will be expanded. Eleven million immigrants without papers to deport, that's logistically impossible. There are not enough people at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency ("Homeland Security") to track them down, nor enough detention centers for deportation. Not to mention the costs and consequences for the economy.
In California, where estimates suggest that almost one-quarter of all eleven million illegal immigrants live without documentation, and in other states with similarly high numbers, entire industries heavily depend on them. Practically no restaurant or construction site exists without the presence of illegally-entered labor forces. Moreover, children born to undocumented immigrants in the US are actually American citizens and cannot be deported with their parents. The police chief of Los Angeles, Charlie Beck, as well as the mayors of Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco have already announced that they would not cooperate with a large-scale deportation effort.
In cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, police officers do not inquire about immigration status. In Los Angeles, there is a special arrangement number 40 to deal with illegal immigrants. It requires that police officers cannot simply arrest people because they are illegally in the country, and they will only report certain types of crimes to immigration authorities. The main reason for this is that police need to ensure that even illegal immigrants trust them and do not refuse to report crimes out of fear of deportation. Los Angeles, which has a large population of undocumented immigrants, could become chaotic if Trump's promised deportations became reality. By the way, it is wrong to believe that no undocumented immigrants were deported under Obama. Obama deported a total of 2.5 million illegal immigrants and focused on those who had committed crimes.
Trump has not only targeted illegal immigrants, but also has his sights set on certain work visas. He believes that these visas take jobs away from American workers. Trump frequently mentions the H-1B visa for highly skilled foreign workers, which Michael held for many years. Under this visa, employers must prove that there is no qualified American worker for the job, and companies are legally required to pay local wages. This is common practice at companies like Google, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, etc. However, it seems that there are occasional black sheep abusing the system by hiring and exploiting candidates from countries with significantly lower wages.
It is true that companies in Silicon Valley are desperately looking for people and it is getting more complicated for the software industry without a constant flow of new H1B visas. It would be completely impossible to fill even a portion of the open positions. The number of H1B visas issued per year is currently limited to 85,000, but according to employer studies, this is not enough by any means. American tech companies have been pleading for years to increase this number, but it seems unlikely that this will happen under Trump.
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