President Donald Trump has no apparent intention to stop with his anti-immigrant rhetoric anytime soon. As he continues to push for his long sought U.S./Mexico border wall, he’s set his sights on a new target — the reported cost of immigrant births in the United States.
“Shock report: US paying more for illegal immigrant births than Trump’s wall” https://t.co/FX3ljN7kPS
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018
Monday, he peddled an article outlining supposed concerns about the cost, in particular, to the United States of births to undocumented immigrant mothers. Allegedly, such births “cost” at least $2.4 billion, which Trump’s article notes is more than the U.S. Senate has currently approved to cover the president’s border wall project.
Ironically enough, though, the cost remains far below the overall sum of money Trump has sought for the monument to racism. While yes, somewhere around there is what has actually begun to manifest in the system for the project, it’s not what the president has yelled about. He has sought as much as $5 billion and more, well above the claimed cost of births to undocumented immigrant mothers.
In other words, Trump would need to walk back how supposedly expensive and necessary the wall is in the first place for the argument he pushed to even begin to earn standing.
Besides, why is it so bad to pay for some of the costs associated with the births of individuals likely to be American citizens? American citizenship is a birthright, by law.
That’s not the only issue, though.
The report he pushed complains about the portion of American births to immigrant mothers altogether, both those who are documented and those who aren’t. It’s not sneaky or secretive — plainly and simply, it complains about the fact that a significant portion of children born in the United States have mothers from other countries — as if we (mostly) all didn’t have such a birth at some point in our history to allow our presence in the country.
The Center for Immigration Studies, which is behind the “analysis,” suggested that the large number of supposedly destitute immigrant kids could pose problems for the fabric of American society thanks to problems with assimilation.
In other words, it’s perhaps a couple nuggets of truth wrapped up in rounds and rounds of outright racism.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
