The Three Tales of Trump

Donald Trump has invented three tales to criminalize, criticize and reject the immigrants in the United States.

But the tales are full of lies. The problem is that after repeating them so many times, many Americans believed them.

Let’s destroy, one by one, the three tales and lies of Trump.

1) First tale: Undocumented immigrants are criminals. This is the principal story of Trump. When he started his presidential campaign in June of 2015, Trump accused Mexican immigrants of “bringing drugs … bringing crime, [and being] rapists.” And his first speech before Congress, again, described immigrants as “gang members, drug dealers and criminals.” All of that is false.

Ninety-seven percent of the undocumented are good people. Where is that figure taken from? From a study from the Migration Policy Institute that asserts that less than 3 percent of the undocumented have committed a felony. In fact, Americans commit twice as many felonies (6 percent) as the undocumented.

Another figure: the more undocumented immigrants, the less the crime. The undocumented population tripled from 3.5 million in 1990 to 11.2 million in 2013. Well, in this same period violent crimes in the United States dropped 48 percent, according to the FBI.

Trump insists in presenting immigrants as “bad hombres.” But it is a lie. Don’t believe it.

2) Second tale: Immigrants cost the United States a lot. Trump says this but it is also wrong. It is a simple matter of addition and subtraction.

Yes, effectively, immigrants receive some social services and free public education for their children until high school. That costs a lot, but immigrants also provide a lot.

Immigrants pay taxes and create jobs. Furthermore, the great irony is that the undocumented contribute to Social Security and Medicare that they will never use because they are not legally in the country.

At the end of the day immigrants contribute more than $2 billion a year to the United States economy, according to the National Academy of Sciences ($54 billion in almost two decades).*

Trump blames immigrants for being a burden on the country. It is not true. They contribute more than they take.

3) Third story: Immigrants take away jobs from Americans. Trump has wanted to blame immigrants for the economic problems facing American workers. But he is wrong.

Immigrants almost never compete for the same jobs that Americans want or have. They almost always do the jobs that nobody wants to do in the agriculture and in the service sector.

I challenge any American to take the hard job that undocumented people do in the fields of Florida or California, or in the restaurants of New York and Chicago, or in the hotels in any part of the country. In addition, their pay is often the lowest and they have very few labor protections.

Immigrants complement the work of the Americans; they are not a direct competition for them. No, immigrants are not stealing jobs away from Americans. On the contrary, they are helping them.

For years the idea has floated that we should call for a day without immigrants. It never materialized, but the United States would be paralyzed.

Donald Trump, you must admit, is a person who lies a lot. He lied for years saying that Barrack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Later he returned to lying by asserting that as many as three million undocumented voters had voted in the last election (and that’s why he lost the popular vote). And recently, without proof or evidence, he wrote on Twitter that President Obama had ordered spying on him during the presidential campaign.

All of it is false. And so are his tales about immigrants.

No Mr. Trump, immigrants are not criminals, they are neither an economic burden on the United States, nor do they take jobs from Americans. Those are pure fairy tales. Let’s see who believes them.

*Editor’s note: The accuracy of this statement could not be verified.