With a new presidency underway, the continuous issue of racial profiling in America has become more prevalent than ever through mass deportations, halting the immigration process and using the media to pin the flaws of this country on one group of people.
Profiling has long been a problem that America has struggled with. It has fueled some of the darkest and most regrettable moments in the history of our country. Luckily, our society has begun to open its eyes to the effects of profiling, and open-mindedness has, in the last decade especially, been spreading throughout the American population and government.
Unfortunately, mainly due to the election, immigration has once again taken to the forefront of American government and policy making. President Donald Trump has not only called for mass deportations but also for the removal of beneficial services for legal immigrants here in America.
According to the White House’s official website, President Trump is “securing the border and putting Americans first” in various ways, with some methods being rather questionable.
He has “suspended the entry of aliens into the U.S.”, “ended automatic citizenship for children of illegal immigrants,” and “paused the operation of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.”
According to the Constitution of the United States, the first section of the 14th Amendment profoundly states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
While, yes, we do have some level of a border crisis, taking away constitutional rights and denying refugees entrance is not the way to address it.
With immigration being a somewhat controversial issue throughout many presidencies, it is easy to wonder where the aggression towards the topic came into play.
However, with terminology such as “migrant criminals”, “monsters”, “killers” and “gang members” being deemed interchangeable for all immigrants in some people’s eyes, there is no wonder that hate has taken a rise during Trump’s past election campaigns.
Immigration continued to be a hot-button topic in the 2024 election, and it has once again, just like it has in previous years, led to negative effects on innocent citizens.
According to the civil rights group, The Leadership Conference, hate crimes have risen during the election cycle for each of the past four elections. The article found that the 2022 and 2024 election cycles had two of the highest rates of hate crimes since 2014.
The root cause of this increase is the manipulative way in which topics like immigration are treated during an election. Immigration has become a topic of furious and thorough debate amongst political opponents, prompting them to pull upon statistics that are both out of context and used to shamelessly strike fear into voters.
Politicians portray immigrants as dangerous men and women who are murderers, drug dealers or con artists who are coming across to harm our country and its citizens. Yet, the vast majority of immigrants are crossing our border to find jobs or escape poor or dangerous situations.
Unfortunately, because of the racial profiling that is fueled by political discussions and advertisements, they are met with disdain, distrust and animosity.
Sometimes, it can get even worse than that. A percentage of ignorant individuals also can be counted on to profile against those who aren’t even immigrants to America, simply because they belong to a specific race or culture. This is also where the rise in hate crimes can come in, and this fear-mongering and voter manipulation can turn tragic and deadly for innocent people.
Let’s be clear, controlling our border is important to keeping our country and its citizens safe. However, the vast majority of immigrants don’t endanger our country in the slightest.
According to the American Immigration Council, welcoming immigrants into our country can even have the opposite effect. Since 1980 immigrant populations have more than doubled, from about 6% to almost 14%. How has the crime rate been affected by this increase in the past 40 years? It has decreased.
According to the American Immigration Council, “The total crime rate had dropped by 60.4 percent, to 2,335 crimes per 100,000 people. Specifically, the violent crime rate fell by 34.5 percent and the property crime rate fell by 63.3 percent.”
Yet politicians will still make it seem like this small group of people commit crimes at an exorbitant rate.
In actuality, during a study in 2019 done by the CATO Institute in Texas, it was found that undocumented immigrants were about 37% less likely to be convicted of a crime.
Unfortunately, this reality does not fit with the narrative that is often pushed by the Trump administration and is thus ignored.
Policies and stances that promote the idea of violent immigrants are used solely to manipulate voters and to instill fear in them.
Are there immigrants who do horrible things in America? Of course. However, they are the minority compared to the American citizens who do horrible things in America.
A recent example of this fear-mongering can be seen with the Laken Riley Act. The act came to light after Alabama Senator Katie Britt brought up the story of University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, who was murdered by an illegal Venezuelan immigrant while out on a run.
Riley’s story, being as tragic as it is, was warped from an unfortunate and despicable act of murder to a political message against immigrants as a whole. Trump and his followers in Congress utilized this event to not only push a political agenda but to generalize an entire group of people, all through the disguise of this young woman and her devastating murder.
While her story is an upsetting one, over half of women in the U.S. (53%) have been subject to sexual violence in America, according to Charlie Health.
The United States Sentencing Commission also says that while 93.6% of sexual offenders were male in 2021, 57.5% of them were White, whereas 11.8% were Hispanic. Furthermore, 95.4% of the offenders were also U.S. citizens.
In other words, sexual violence in America is a domestic, predominately male-related issue as a whole. The problem does not lie with immigrants, it lies with America’s lack of urgency toward rectifying the rather large issue. However, when it is easy to gain political power by using a scapegoat, that tends to be the ledge many throw themselves off of.
As citizens of the United States, it is important to recognize when someone in power is saying a false truth. It is cardinal that we hold those in power accountable because they do not always have our best interests in mind.
All in all, staying vigilant in a world where leaders choose to put groups of people down to bring themselves up is the greatest superpower one can have, and we encourage you to do just that.
