US Human Rights Abuse Against Refugees and Immigrants: Truth and Facts

III. Multiple domestic factors behind the entrenched immigration and refugee problem in the United States

◆ Deep-rooted racial discrimination in the United States is an important cause of its immigration problem. Racism is embedded in US immigration policies and its attitude toward immigrants. A country founded with Anglo-Saxon Protestants as the mainstay, the United States continues to view the culture of this population group as the core of its national identity. Immigrants who are not Anglo-Saxon Protestants are often regarded as the inferior race. With the influx of Hispanic and Asian immigrants, the United States is increasingly diverse in ethnicity and culture. In recent years, immigrants accounted for 40 percent of US population increase. With the white population seriously ageing, immigrants are expected to contribute even more to US population growth. The demographic change has left many white people worried about their own status. Hence, they are giving stronger support to conservative political stances, regardless of their party affiliation. A poll indicated that 56 percent of American voters believed the United States remained a racist society, and 70 percent of black respondents believed that more than half of white Americans believe in white supremacy.

◆ Political polarization in the United States is worsening its immigration problem. In recent decades, the immigration issue has become more entangled with economic, racial and ideological issues as well as cultural values. The Democratic Party and the Republican Party have kept attacking each other, and a compromise is hard to reach. Democrats accuse Republicans of embracing nativism and white supremacy and inciting xenophobia and racial discrimination to win votes from the white population. Republicans accuse Democrats of accepting immigrants to gain more votes from ethnic minorities and more seats in the Congress. The partisan divide has prevented any significant immigration reform bill from passing Congress since the comprehensive Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Both Democrats and Republicans had put forth their own immigration reform proposals, but they all hit a dead end very soon.

◆ Since the midterm election cycle began in 2022, both parties have used the refugee and immigrant issue as a political leverage. The administration pandered to voters and relaxed immigration control to some extent. With the "American Dream" rekindled, illegal immigrants flooded in across the borders. Some Republican governors transported refugees and illegal immigrants with buses and chartered planes from theirs to blue states and cities in an attempt to embarrass the federal government. In September 2022, Florida's Republican Governor flew 50 refugees from Texas to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Republican Governor of Texas bused over 100 Latin American refugees and immigrants right to the Vice President's doorstep. These immigrants were promised well-paid jobs before being transferred, only to find that still no proper settlement is available at their destination.

◆ Conservative politicians and media in the United States are hyping up the immigrant threat and stoking anti-immigration sentiment. The far-right forces and conservative media have been disseminating a so-called "great replacement" theory, claiming that white Americans are being deliberately replaced by immigrants and ethnic minorities. This extreme idea has led to multiple terrorist attacks targeting immigrants and ethnic minorities in the country, the worst of which is the shooting incident in a shopping mall in El Paso. Since 2018, white supremacists have committed the most killings among violent extremist groups in the United States. In recent years, the Republicans have been playing up the immigrant threat in election campaigns, and drawn the attention from the conservatives to the immigration issue. They have rolled out many extreme anti-immigration measures, grossly violating the human rights of immigrants. For its part, the Democratic administration dare not to relax expulsion or detention of immigrants in fear of conservative opposition and in order to gain support from white voters, resulting in massive humanitarian disasters continuing in the United States. US conservative politicians and media have also been depicting immigrants as grabbing jobs from low-skilled American workers, lowering wages, squeezing welfare resources, and increasing local government expenditure on education, healthcare and relief. They scapegoat immigrants for US domestic problems, yet ignore their long-term, generally positive effect on the US economy, such as supplying a large workforce, filling up low-level jobs that Americans won't take, and mitigating the impact of population ageing.