Following the presidential candidate debate between Trump and Harris, in which Trump ranted about immigration in nearly every single question he was asked, it’s worth acknowledging some facts. For the past four years, all we’ve heard is that dangerous illegal immigrants are pouring across our border at an unprecedented rate that is somehow directly Biden’s fault—despite his day-one proposal that became the US Citizenship Act, which was criticized at the time in a Republican staff report as an act that would “incentivize illegal immigration and promote an unending flood of foreign nationals into the United States.” Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, I guess.
This is not to say that there isn’t ample cause to criticize the Biden administration’s approach to border security; but while it’s true that illegal crossings reached an all-time high during his presidency, there has been surprisingly little acknowledgment that this is a reaction to the brutal policies of Trump’s presidency. It’s also true that Congress attempted to pass a bipartisan bill, the Border Act of 2024, earlier this year, and that Trump’s criticism ultimately killed Republican support for it. It’s easy to agree with what Harris said of Trump regarding this issue in particular: “He’d prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”
So what is the problem, exactly? Although Republicans’ hyperbolic and disproven claims about immigrants continue to persist, there’s surprisingly little discussion about the established benefits immigration provides to a country whose population growth is in decline—at a rate of 1.7 children per 2 adults, as per 2020 census data.
Why would we want the population to increase? In short, the economy. Economists agree that population growth decline results in a worker shortage as the currently employed population retires. We’ve been experiencing a version of this since the pandemic, and it hurts small businesses the most. As of December 2023, 23% of small businesses reported that they’ve reduced business hours due to worker shortages. And this hurts consumers: 51% of small businesses have had to raise prices, which in turn makes them less competitive with larger counterparts. In addition, a larger gray population relies on a robust younger generation of workers to pay into social security and Medicare.
And yet the Republican Party not only fails to support but is actively fighting family-supporting policies like paid family leave, gender wage inequities, minimum wage increases, and universal health care, compounded by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which has put the lives of pregnant people across the country at risk. One example of this is the Build Back Better Act of the mid-Biden administration, which became the Inflation Reduction Act without a federal paid leave policy that was originally included.
There’s no question which administration would support population-boosting policies: Harris plans to expand the child tax credit, lower grocery costs by cracking down on mergers and monopolies, and continue to lower health care costs; she cast the tie-
breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which cut those costs by an average of $800 a year per person. She’s also vocalized support for national paid family leave.
By contrast, Trump’s economic plans center on increasing the tariffs he imposed on certain Chinese goods during his first administration (and which Biden kept in place to boost the US’s clean energy industry, which Trump opposes) to tariffs of 10% to 60% on all nondomestic goods, which economists collectively agree would defer costs to consumers, just as business owners charge customers sales tax instead of paying it themselves. Trump’s proposed broad wave of increased tariffs across all imported products would not only negate the tax cuts he is proposing but also increase the typical family’s cost of living by about 4 percent.
But even with family-supporting policies, there’s still the whole element of choice—you know, the thing 21 states have gotten rid of since Trump’s Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Even overlooking the clear civil rights violation of these laws, they’re also clearly not the solution to a declining population: They increase the chance of both the pregnant person and the fetus dying; and in some cases, they have extended to cover in vitro fertilization, preventing people who want to get pregnant from accessing the care that would increase their chances.
Regardless of birth rates, immigration has always been a key factor in healthy population growth. This would require admitting, however, that immigrants coming here and taking our jobs is, actually, the point.
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