Olivia Vest
Managing Editor
As President Trump continues shocking the public with rash decision making and policy reform, the effects of some of his first executive orders have been called into question.
Hundreds of arrests all over the country have taken place. These first effects of Trump’s guarantee to remove illegal immigrants from the United States fills the public with fear; warnings to immigrants circulate the internet, cautioning these people to stay home with covered windows.
Although the entire program is attributed to Trump’s campaign promise that he will remove undocumented criminals from the nation, numbers prove otherwise. According to one USA Today article, the Trump administration has moved further away from federal deportation policies as well as his own guarantees and has begun detaining more non-criminals than Obama’s administration, despite his first promises to keep the nation safe by removing the “bad hombres” from the country.
As of Thursday, Feb. 16, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained a little under 700 undocumented individuals. Of these, 74 percent were convicted criminals. Comparatively, 90 percent of people detained by ICE during Obama’s administration had been convicted of crimes.
Though these numbers don’t appear severely different, there is an important point to be made: Donald Trump’s administration stands to deport even those individuals beneficial to U.S. societies.
In order to grasp the effect these immigration raids could have on the United States, we must first understand that many sectors of the American workforce are comprised of many undocumented immigrants. Of these, agriculture stands as a good example.
In 2014, the U.S. Department of Agriculture stated that around half of workers employed in crop agriculture were undocumented. Studies from the Pew Research Center showed the same: over half of seasonal agriculture workers are immigrants. In various states like Nevada and Washington, around half of farming workers are immigrants. These numbers are similar for many locations around the United States.
In 2014 again, the USDA warned against a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, as our nation’s fruit/vegetable industry relies heavily on these individuals. According to an article by The Hill, Department of Labor numbers showed that 53 percent of total farm workers were undocumented; growers and individual unions placed this number at 70 percent.
The potential of a labor shortage is severe, and its results would be undeniably detrimental to U.S. society as it currently stands. Although I believe undocumented immigrants should be treated fairly and with compassion for reasons other than their benefit to American culture, the facts are valid: our country relies on undocumented workers.
Now is the time to act. We cannot allow a president with no legal background to make decisions that could not only alter the lives of millions of undocumented immigrants, but impact the lives of legal citizens as well. We must stand up for our neighbors and friends and call, write and email our representatives. Something must be done.
