1. Myth: Immigrants come here to get free services.
Fact: U.S.-imposed sanctions, interventions and neo-liberal economic practices make it impossible for them to survive at home.
The U.S. government has imposed economic sanctions on 30% of the countries of the world, including 60% of poor countries. Sanctions prevent foreign trade, often causing the economies of these countries to spiral into a deep economic and humanitarian crises. They imposes hunger and desperation, and leave working people little choice but to flee.
Cuba, for example, has suffered a criminal U.S.-imposed blockade for 62 years. President Donald Trump enacted more than 200 additional sanctions against Cuba and wrongly placed the country on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, further increasing the economic hardship there. This prevents Cuba from purchasing basic necessities like food, medicine and fuel. From 2022 to 2023, an estimated 10% of Cuba’s population — more than a million people — have left the country.
Economic sanctions unleashed by the U.S. on Venezuela have targeted the state-owned oil company PDVSA and the state-owned mining company Minerve. The U.S. placed an embargo on oil exports and on Venezuela’s public banking system, which black-listed the country from accessing international financial institutions. Since 2014, over 7.7 million Venezuelans have left the country.
Mexicans are the largest immigrant group in the U.S. The 1994 neo-liberal North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico allowed U.S. companies to buy up huge tracts of land, obliterating 1.3 million farm jobs there. The agreement permitted U.S. plants to relocate in Mexico and to super-exploit Mexican workers by denying them labor rights and health protection while paying them very little. The displacement and environmental destruction caused by NAFTA forced many Mexicans to flee their hometowns and come here.
NAFTA created a devastating crisis for the American workers as well. It allowed U.S. manufacturing companies to move their plants to Mexico for its cheap labor while withdrawing a part of production in the U.S., which left hundreds of thousands of people here without jobs. Meanwhile, companies that remained in the U.S. used their plants in Mexico to threaten workers here with plant closings if they didn’t accept low wages, or if they organized a union to improve working conditions
2. Myth: Undocumented workers entering the U. S. are criminals and a threat to all of us.
Fact: Undocumented people commit fewer crimes than citizens.
There is no data to back up the claim that undocumented immigrants endanger workers in the United States. The American Immigration Council recently published a fact sheet debunking the myth. It points out that from 1980 to 2022, the immigrant share of the U.S. population more than doubled, while the total crime rate dropped by 60.4%. The Council found that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the U.S.-born, and that welcoming them into U.S. communities can even increase public safety. The government reports that immigrants are not a threat to national security.
3. Myth: Undocumented workers don’t want to go through the usual process of legally becoming U.S. citizens.
Fact: Even though immigrant workers pay taxes, work hard and contribute to their communities, there is no clear legal pathway to citizenship.
The immigration system in the United States is highly restrictive, convoluted, difficult to navigate and has long been in need of updating. It provides no clear path to legalization and it makes it almost impossible for undocumented workers to meet the eligibility criteria. Expenses in immigration fees mount can up to thousands of dollars. Even those who are protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration policy struggle to meet the eligibility criteria despite living most of their lives here and paying taxes.
The immigration system that processes legal entries and asylum is underfunded while the U.S. government invests billions of dollars in border security. The Department of Homeland Security consistently exposes its own hypocrisy by selectively easing immigration restrictions and allocating funding to resettle refugees from countries where the United States has vested geopolitical interests, such as Ukraine.
The pathway to legalization will become even more challenging under another Trump administration. Thomas Homan, the new administration’s “border czar,” has already pledged to “run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”
4. Myth: Immigrants take away the social services that should be going to the native-born.
Fact: Undocumented workers paid $100 billion in U.S. taxes in the last decade, but are ineligible for the most basic government social services.
While the immigrant population in this country makes up a large portion of the labor force in critical industries such as agriculture, construction, healthcare and technology, undocumented workers are ineligible for public benefits like welfare, food stamps or Medicaid. Even immigrants going through the legal process of becoming citizens often have to wait long periods before accessing many services.
Meanwhile, migrant workers, regardless of immigration status, contribute greatly to the economy in the United States as they pay income taxes at the local, state and federal levels. While undocumented workers do not have a Social Security number nor are they eligible to claim the benefits of Social Security, they have contributed over $100 billion in the past decade. Those without a SSN file their taxes with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), which allows them to comply with tax laws without legal work authorization.
Source: Congressional Budget Office and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
5. Myth: Immigrants are taking our jobs.
Fact: U.S. Corporations are the ones that exploit workers regardless of their immigration status. They move factories abroad, replace workers with machines, steal $50 billion yearly from workers wages and invest a lot of money in union busting making it hard for workers to fight back.
Studies have found that there is no direct correlation between increased immigration and the loss of jobs by U.S. citizens. Good jobs disappear from so many communities not because migrants have arrived, but because corporate executives close factories and other workplaces, or replace workers with computers and machines. Many jobs that used to pay a living wage can no longer sustain a family because of union busting. Corporations commit these workplace violations, including theft of workers wages, with some $50 billion dollars stolen from the wages of U.S. workers every year by their employers. At the same time, the government has pulled back on agencies that enforce labor standards and protect workers’ rights to unions and collective bargaining, to safe working conditions and to a minimum wage and overtime.
6. Myth: Working people will live a better life once we mass deport immigrants.
Fact: All workers will have a better life by saying no to mass deportations and uniting against the capitalists.
Mass deportations will not raise living standards for U.S. workers because immigrants did not cause the deterioration in living standards. Corporate and government practices did.
Immigrants aren’t responsible for the 50% increase in child poverty over the past few years. This was caused by the Biden administration which, under corporate pressure, cut relief programs that were granted during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the child tax credit, putting millions of families in crisis.
Immigrants aren’t responsible for inflation. Rising corporate profits account for more than 40% of the rise in the prices between the end of 2019 and mid-2022, compared with profits normally accounting for about 11-12% of prices.
The real reason why working people, born here or abroad, experience so much hardship is that the wealth we create goes to a tiny handful of ultra-rich people and the corporations they own, and the government that represents them.
Politicians scapegoat undocumented workers to sow division in the working class and to distract U.S.-born workers from realizing it is the bosses who reap benefit from exploiting all workers. They want to distract us from the realization that U.S.-born working class have far more in common with the undocumented population than we ever will with this tiny clique of billionaires.
In fact, falsely believing that immigrants are the cause for the problems of the U.S.-born actually harms those born here. For example, Trump’s plans to spend billions of dollars to deport 13 million undocumented immigrants will hurt workers here because it will take billions of tax dollars to implement, money that could be used for social services.
Another reason it hurts workers here is that a successful attack on a section of the workforce weakens the entire working class. If the new Trump administration can get away with unleashing a reign of terror against immigrants, why would it stop there? Any number of groups could be labeled “the enemy within” and be subject to the same treatment. Union organizers, people opposing war and genocide, communities standing up against police violence — anyone who gets in the way of Trump and his billionaire partners could be next.
If we want that to change, we have to stand together and fight for the total reorganization of the economy in a way that guarantees that everyone in society will have their basic needs met.
The resources exist to solve the problems humanity faces. Instead of a tiny clique of billionaires running and deciding everything for us, the diverse working class, which produces everything of value, should be the real driver of the country’s economy. One way this could start is by seizing the 100 largest corporations in America from their billionaire owners and turning them into public property – owned by the multinational working class that created this vast wealth in the first place.
