One of the biggest lies told by many opponents of immigration is that they only stand against “illegal” immigration, while they fully support “legal” immigration. This line has been said repeatedly by defenders of President Donald Trump — I have frequently been scolded by readers who are unhappy with my characterization of him as “anti-immigrant.”
But this framing is fundamentally misleading because many Americans will assume that a given immigrant isn’t in the country legally based on racial and economic stereotypes, as suggested by a recent survey from Washington University.
And the Trump administration, like so many other opponents of immigration, has repeatedly made it clear that it hopes to reduce legal immigration to the United States. For example, the administration confirmed Tuesday that it is considering closing down 21 international offices of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which, as PBS NewsHour reporter Yamiche Alcindor explained, “could slow the processing of family visa applications.”
View the complete March 12 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.