Immigration Man" is a song written by Graham Nash and
recorded by David Crosby and Graham Nash, released as
a single in March 1972. It was the lead
single for the duo's debut album, Graham Nash David Crosby. It peaked at
No. 36 on the Billboard Hot 100, and is their only Top 40 hit as
a duo.
Nash wrote
"Immigration Man" about an unfortunate moment he had with a U.S. Customs official
when he tried to enter the country. The customs official held him up
interminably, and soon people started coming up to Nash for his autograph.
When that happened, Nash was allowed to go through, but he remained angry with
the treatment he received.
"I'm not
against local colour," Nash explained in discussing the song, "but
why should you fight me just because you speak differently than I do?"
Nash also explained why he chose a picture of the earth from space for the
cover of the sheet music for "Immigration Man." "When
you look at a photograph of the earth you don't see any borders. That
realisation is where our hope as a planet lies." Nash himself became
a naturalized U.S. citizen in
1978.
Record World said that "there's a message in this lyric, but the overall
sound will be more important" and that the "harmonies stand out”
If you would like
to hear the song again, here it is:
Immigration
Man (Remastered Version)
Throughout our
nation’s history, we have had an uneasy relationships with immigrants.
I have written numerous
stories about immigrants, but this is the one that was inspired by Graham Nash:
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2011/11/immigration-man.html
Even before he was
elected, Trump promised the largest deportation plan in our nation’s history.
Apart from the fact that a large number of people employed in agriculture,
hospitality, and construction industries are not legal immigrants, Trump plan
would be horribly expensive.
Former
President Donald Trump has vowed, if he's elected, to conduct a large-scale
deportation operation that some immigration and military experts agree is
theoretically possible but also problematic, and could cost tens -- even
hundreds -- of billions a year.
In FY 2023, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
officers conducted 170,590 administrative arrests, representing a 19.5%
increase over the previous year, and more than any year of the Trump
presidency.
Should he win a second term, Trump has promised to
exponentially increase this work and suggested deporting all of the estimated
11 million people living in this country without legal immigration status.
His team, at various points, has suggested starting with
"criminals," though they have provided few specifics about who would
be prioritized.
A new report from the American Immigration Council, an immigration
rights research and policy firm, estimates that to deport even one million
undocumented immigrants a year would cost over $88 billion dollars annually,
for a total of $967.9 billion over more than ten years.
The report acknowledges there are
significant cost variables depending on how such an operation would be
conducted and says its estimate does not take into account the loss of tax
revenue from workers nor the bigger economic loss if people self-deport and
American businesses lose labor.
A one-time effort to
deport even more people in one year annually could cost around $315 billion,
the report estimates, including about $167 billion to detain immigrants en masse.
The two largest costs, according to the group, would be
hiring additional personal to carry out deportation raids and constructing and
staffing mass detention centers. "There would be no way to accomplish this
mission without mass detention as an interim step," the report reads.
Trump campaign official agree one of the biggest
logistical hurdles in any mass deportation effort would be constructing and
staffing new detention centers as an interim solution.
Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, has
repeatedly said that should Trump win the White House, his team plans to
construct facilities to hold between 50,000 – 70,000 people. By comparison, the
entire U.S. prison and jail population in 2022, comprising every person held in
local, county, state, and federal . The American Immigration Council report
estimates that to deport one million immigrants a year would require the United
States to "build and maintain 24 times more ICE detention capacity than
currently exists."
There are currently an estimated 1.1
million undocumented immigrants in the country who have received "final
orders of removal." Those individuals, in theory, could be removed
immediately by ICE agents, but because of limited resources ICE agents have
instead focused lately on those people who have recently arrived or who have
dangerous crimes
"I think it is possible that they
could execute on this. The human resources would be the hardest for them to
overcome. They would have to pull ICE agents from the border if they want to go
into cities," Katie Tobin, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace who served as President Joe Biden's top migration adviser
in the National Security Council, told ABC News.
ICE agents currently help Customs and
Border Patrol agents on the border, carrying out expedited deportations of new
arrivals who have recently crossed into the country illegally and provide
logistical support to the Department of Homeland Security.
A new mandate to round up and deport
individuals who have been living in the country for some time could mark a
significant change for the law enforcement agency.
The American Immigration Council
report estimates that to carry out even one million deportations a year, ICE
would need to hire around 30,000 new officers, "instantly making it the
largest law enforcement agency in the federal government," the report
reads.
Trump
campaign: Deportation cost less than migrant costs
The Trump campaign has argued the cost
of deportation "pales in comparison" to other costs associated
housing and providing social services to recent migrants. "Kamala's border
invasion is unsustainable and is already tearing apart the fabric of our
society. Mass deportations of illegal immigrant criminals, and restoring an
orderly immigration system, are the only way to solve this crisis,"
Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for Trump's campaign, told ABC News
in a statement.
Trump has
promised to mobilize and federalize National Guard units to help with the
deportation effort, which would likely be a first for the military.
Under U.S. law,
military units are barred from engaging in domestic law enforcement, although
Trump has proposed invoking the Insurrection Act, a sweeping law, that could
give him broader powers to direct National Guard units as he sees fit.
(Courts have
recently ruled that the Insurrection Act cannot be used to deport people
to other countries )
"We don't
like uniform military in our domestic affairs at all," William Banks,
professor at Syracuse University and Founding Director of the Institute on
National Security and Counter Terrorism, told ABC News in a phone interview.
"The default is always have the civilians do it. The cops, the state
police, the city police, the sheriffs," he went on.
Using the
military for domestic law enforcement would be a fundamental shift, one which
Banks argues too few Americans have considered or grappled with.
"It would
turn out whole society upside down … all these arguments about him being an
autocrat or dictator, it is not a stretch," he said. For example,
uniformed military officers are not trained in law enforcement and if they were
asked to conduct civilian arrests there could be significant civil liberties
conflicts and violations.
In order to,
target and deport immigrants whose have not received "final orders of
removal" but whose cases are still pending, Trump has discussed using
another rare legal maneuver to himself broad authority to target and detain
immigrants without a hearing, specifically invoking the Alien Enemies Act of
1798, a wartime law last used during World War II to detain Japanese Americans.
Trump would also
need other nations to accept deported individuals and allow deportation flights
to land back on their soil.
Katie Tobin, a
scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who served as
President Joe Biden's top migration adviser on the National Security Council,
told ABC News, “Last time the Trump administration did not hesitate to threaten
punitive action to countries that didn’t cooperate with them on immigration,
but there are some practical issues there in terms of just how many flights a
country like Guatemala or Colombia can accept per week.”
There would
likely be less tangible and more indirect costs of a mass deportation effort as
well. Inevitably there would be ripple effects throughout the economy. In 2022
alone, undocumented immigrant households paid $46.8 billion in federal taxes
and $29.3 billion in state and local taxes, according to the report, and
"undocumented immigrants also contributed $22.6 billion to Social Security
and $5.7 billion to Medicare."
The
human toll
Experts also predict that if a future
Trump administration were to follow through with some large, initial and highly
visible deportation operation, a significant number of individuals and families
would likely choose to self-deport in order to avoid family separations or
having to spend time in a military-style detention center.
The authors of
the American Immigration Council report argue that the effect of a mass
deportation program, as described by Trump and his advisers, would "almost
certainly threaten the well-being" of even those immigrants with lawful
status in the United States and "even, potentially, naturalized U.S.
citizens and their communities."
"They would
live under the shadow of weaponized enforcement as the U.S. went after their
neighbors, and, as social scientists found under the Trump administration,
would be prone to worry they and their children might be next," the report
says.
In recent
interviews and conversations with reporters, Trump's running mate Ohio Sen. JD
Vance has dodged the question of whether a future Trump administration would
separate families during a new deportation effort or in detention centers along
the border.
"If a guy commits gun violence
and is taken to prison, that's family separation, which, of course, is tragic
for the children, but you've got to prosecute criminals, and you have to
enforce the law," Vance told reporters in September when visiting the
border.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-mass-deportation-program-cost/story?id=115318034
ICE has been increasingly brazen about
its attempts to deport people.
BREAKING NEWS:
President Trump ordered at
least 2,000 National Guard troops on Saturday to be deployed in Los Angeles
County to help quell two days of protests against recent raids on workplaces
looking for undocumented immigrants.
(It is illegal to use
military forces for domestic law enforcement)
Any
demonstration that got in the way of immigration officials would be considered
a “form of rebellion,” Mr. Trump said. His order was an extraordinary
escalation that puts Los Angeles squarely at the center of tensions over his
administration’s immigration crackdown. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said it
was “purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions.”
The
protests on Saturday in downtown Los Angeles and the city of Paramount, about
16 miles south of Los Angeles, were the second consecutive day of
demonstrations. In some cases, law enforcement officers used rubber bullets and
flash bang grenades against the protesters.
The raids appear to be part
of a new phase of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, with
officials saying they will increasingly focus on workplaces. U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement officers arrested 121 immigrants across Los Angeles on Friday,
according to a Department of Homeland Security official who spoke on the
condition of anonymity.
The
police had said earlier in the day that demonstrations in the city were
peaceful. Some of the protests in other areas on Saturday were in Paramount, a
city about 16 miles south of downtown Los Angeles that has a large Latino
population, were more confrontational.
Demonstrators
in some cases clashed with law enforcement officers. Some hurled rocks at
police officers, who responded with flash-bang grenades and rubber bullets. The
Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said protesters exhibited “violent behavior” and
that “intervention became necessary.”
If you need any more reason to protest
our immigration policies, consider these pictures:
The first picture was taken in Selman, Alabama in 1965:
The next picture was taken in Los Angeles this week:
