Donald Trump and his allies on the populist right believe they have a compelling argument for why the GOP is the true blue-collar party: Immigration is killing the American worker, and only Trump will put a stop to it. “Kamala Harris’s border invasion is also crushing the jobs and wages of African American workers and Hispanic American workers and also union members,” Trump declared at a recent rally. At other times, he has referred to immigration as “all-out economic warfare” on the working class. It’s a message that the former president repeats in one form or another at just about every one of his public appearances.
The argument carries a certain commonsense logic: Immigration means more workers competing for jobs, which translates to lower wages and employment rates for the native-born. During Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate, Republican Senator J. D. Vance said that his boss’s proposal to round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants would “be really good for our workers, who just want to earn a fair wage for doing a good day’s work….”
Roge Karma, The Atlantic, October 3, 2024
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