The Hypocrisy of Trump’s Immigration Agenda is Getting Harder to Ignore

President Donald Trump has some pretty strong opinions about black and brown immigrants.

He’s described Mexicans as “criminals, drug dealers, rapists.” He’s said Haitians in the United States “all have AIDS.” He’s banned visitors from seven Muslim countries to keep out “bad and dangerous people.” And he’s called undocumented immigrants from countries in Latin America “animals.”

Despite the racist undertones, Trump has framed his anti-immigrant agenda as an effort to put “America First.” He’s accused immigrants of taking jobs away from Americans, lowering wages, and costing the US government billions of dollars. So he justifies cutting legal immigration and pushing for a border wall as a way to relieve American taxpayers and workers from the burden he says immigrants pose to the country.

This myth keeps getting harder for him to justify. Trump’s own businesses, and his presidency, have made it clear that low-skilled immigrants are a crucial part of the US economy and even the federal government.

In the past few days, four women from Central America have come forward to say that they’ve been working illegally at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. One employee from Guatemala, Victorina Morales, told the New York Times that she washes the president’s clothes and cleans his private suite every time he visits the club. (The Trump Organization says it has not knowingly hired unauthorized immigrants).

The fact that Trump’s businesses rely on undocumented workers while the president himself rails against them highlights his hypocrisy on immigration. Here are two more examples.

Trump wants to deport immigrants who work for the federal government

The president is trying to cancel the work authorization granted to thousands of immigrants from Central America who clean federal buildings, including Trump’s presidential hospital suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

In January, the Trump administration announced that about 260,000 Salvadoran immigrants with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) would no longer be able to live and work legally in the United States after July 2019. He also announced an end to similar protections for immigrants from Haiti, Sudan, and Nicaragua.

By Alexia Fernández Campbell for VOX
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