Gaslighting: When the victim of a crime or act of violence is blamed or made to feel responsible for the action that hurt them
To use it in a sentence: “Trump is gaslighting immigrants, although we live in a nation of immigrants”
Undocumented immigration is a phantom problem that is being horribly mischaracterized by Trump. His obvious falsehoods are then amplified by the right wing media, which is to say both corporate and partisan media. Who are these people who harvest our crops, care for the poor and elderly, anchor the construction and hospitality industries? They pay tens of billions in taxes from which they draw no benefits. Who would do that?
GOP efforts to demonize illegal immigrants are looking in the wrong direction. Fully 75% of illegal migrants who overstay their visa arrive by airplanes. The near totality are not fording the Rio Grande. The fly-in lawbreakers come from all over the world and so are not identifiable by the color of their skin.
It would be an economic catastrophe if the undocumented were removed from the place in the workforce they hold. In particular they typically have low wage jobs in low margin, competitive industries. Productivity would plummet if these workers were chased from the labor pool. Vegetables will rot on the vine for a lack of hands to harvest them. You won’t be getting a trained home health care aid for grandma because they’re not enough of them. Your buildings will remain unbuilt and unstaffed and the beds in the luxury hotel rooms will remain unmade. Your neighbor’s lawn will go unlandscaped.
Taking in refugees who are fleeing desperate conditions is our thing, it’s one of the core ideas America is built upon. The Statue still stands for liberty: “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses wanting to be free. The wretched refuse of your teaming shores. Send these, the homeless the tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” America’s most popular French woman has not lost hope.
The true reason, of course, is that anti-immigrant rhetoric allows Trump to look and act tough, although it has no affect — nada — on border crossings, already at record lows. He thinks demonizing brown people is good for him and that it boosts his support in the Wacko-American community. It illuminates nothing, treats nothing, solves nothing. It only reinforces the hatreds that consume Trump and his MAGA movement.
The policies adopted by the Biden Administration solved much of the problem. So much, in fact, that Trump blocked reasonable solutions. He was concerned that the issue might be taken out of the 2024 campaign. So important was the issue to his campaigning he forced a comprehensive, bi-partisan immigration bill to be scuttled. He did not want a solution but to be able to use it to manipulate his supporters.
In May 2025, U.S. Border Patrol encountered 8,725 individuals attempting to cross the southwest border illegally between ports of entry, a 93% decrease compared to May 2024. Since June 2024, unlawful border crossings dropped by more than 55%, reaching the lowest levels in over four years. In June 2025, Border Patrol apprehended just over 6,000 illegal immigrants, which is a record low and a significant drop from previous years. Border Patrol apprehensions in December 2024 were reportedly down 81% from December 2023.
Is this a crisis for which drastic action is required?
The point of the demonization of undocumented migrants as a political issue is to reinforce the fear and loathing Trump’s supporters have for black and brown people. Dark skinned people and most anyone who dares to speak Spanish in public aren’t real American, say an American White minority. Of course, our nation was created at its origins by English-speakers but now there are more Americans with German heritage.
Oh, but we don’t have any room, all filled up, we’d like to help but we just can’t, they say casting about for more excuses to exclude non-White Americans.
Really? The US ranks in 186 position out of 233 countries and dependencies in population density. With a population density of 38 people per square kilometer it is significantly lower than other advanced industrial democracies.
So no, it’s not because they are a drain on US economy, or that it violates American culture and traditions or that there’s no room.
It is not the migrants themselves are illegal but the border that is. It is the legacy of a war in which America took from Mexico much of its territory. It is the only American border that is the legacy of conquest. The states that were formerly Mexican contain many of the American cities with names derived from Spanish: Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas, Santa Fe. This is true of any American city that starts w San or Santa or Las or Los. The problem of trampling across the border was caused less by the people doing the trampling than by the border itself, which has been known to get up and move. The tens of millions who wandered north and south to find a better life are just the same as the Europeans who migrated (often with made up names and dubious paperwork) from east to west. They were not after government benefits or charity handouts but work, an honest day’s wages for their labor.
Spanish-speaking Americans ARE Americans, this is their country, they helped build it, even if they were paid under the table by capitalists and owners of industry who knew they needed the help and looked the other way.
It is not a question of amnesty but of bringing that entire shadow economy out into the open. We need to adjust to present realities, not be guided by the delusions of the misled and misdirected.
American prosperity has more to do with opening borders than closing them. The region including Canada, Mexico, and the United States is one of the world’s largest free trade zones, with a population of more than 510 million people. This is an economy of $30.997 trillion in nominal GDP – nearly 30 percent of the global economy, and the largest of any trade bloc in the world. This is in the interest of each of the countries and their people.
And so, if Trump’s goal now is to find goods not covered by the trade agreement and put heavy taxes on them it is futile and irrelevant, and most definitely not in the interests of American companies or citizens.
We are the world’s preeminent democracy and largest economy. Free trade is in our interests. Trump imagines this is the world if the 1950s when the US was the only belligerent not reduced to rubble by the war. Helping them rebuild was not charity, it gave us excellent trading partners so Americans could sell them Fords and Chevrolets and get their hands on Bentleys, Rolls Royces, Mercedes and BMWs. The brilliance of the Marshall Plan was that we loaned money to our friends on favorable terms, which they then used to buy from the only stores that were open, ours. This fueled post-war expansion like nothing else.
Trade that is as open as possible (but for a few rogue nations) would make most everyone better off. Trade should not be blocked because a few thousand brave and frightened souls wade across a river every year seeking a better life. Welcome. Find a job and a house and a school. If you have paid your taxes, are gainfully employed and have not broken any laws — Trump himself could only claim two of these three — then apply to move from the underground economy to the legal one.
Over time and with smart leadership Mexico will create ever more manufacturing jobs and train workers to hold them. The fentanyl going into the US (like pot and cocaine before) is in response to US demand. Sure, interrupt the supply of dangerous poisons people use to kill themselves. But how much worse is the problem in the other direction? The flood of American weapons the US sends across the border keeps the drug cartels armed and powerful.
Now Trump is looking for someone to beat up on, an act of violence that is an attempt to show his toughness but instead will demonstrate his ignorance and sheer stupidity. Mutual economic growth is the answer, not armed force. Those undocumented immigrants are really fleeing violence and blackmail, just like your grandfather and his father. There remain plenty of American dreams left to dream and plenty of wide open spaces for them to make their lives.
