Immigration and the 2018 midterm elections
What’s the problem?
The debate on immigration has followed America as throughout its history. Once again, the debate steps into the limelight of the nation’s elections.
What’s currently going on?
The Trump Administration has been trying to crack down on immigration laws, though with mixed outcomes.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Trump’s travel ban in June, blocking travelers from the majority-Muslim countries of Syria, Iran, Libya, Yemen and Somalia.
Trump has also attempted to end DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and pull federal funding from sanctuary cities. Although he has been unsuccessful in ending the program, DACA was still affected. As of August 2018, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is accepting DACA renewals, but not any new applicants.
In 2017, Trump estimated it would cost $8 to $12 billion to build a wall along the Mexico-U.S. border. Other estimates place it up to $40 billion.
Since he began his campaign, Trump has been proposing building a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border. In March, Congress had passed a $1.3 trillion spending bill that granted about $1.6 billion for repairing and adding fencing to the border rather than Trump’s original proposal of using $25 billion to build a wall.
The administration is also been cutting back on the amount of refugees admissions into America and recently tried to send back nearly 300,000 immigrants with Temporary Protected Status from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan.
In May 2018, the Trump administration introduced the “zero-tolerance” policy, a policy that meant if someone was caught having crossed the border illegally, even if that person was seeking asylum and was later legally granted it, they could have a federal criminal conviction on their record. The policy also meant the separation of children from their families as their parents were being prosecuted. Nearly 2,000 children had been separated from their families due to the policy by June 2018.
Federal judge Dana Sabraw ordered for the families to be reunited, leading Trump to sign an executive order ending the separation of families under the “zero-tolerance” policy. As of October 2018, about 350 children still have not been reunited with their families despite the July deadline Sabraw set.
The Right
According to a Morning Consult/Politico survey, 73 percent of Republicans support protections against deportation for Dreamers to remain in the country, and 48 percent of them agree there should be a path to citizenship for them. However, only 18 percent of the Republican voters said passing a bill to protect Dreamers from deportation should be a top priority for Congress.
The majority of Republicans, according to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, believed granting legal status to immigrants who crossed the border illegally would encourage more to come to America illegally, strain government services, and take jobs from U.S. citizens.
The Left
From the perspective of the Left, they believe immigrants strengthen the U.S. Like the Republicans, Democrats believe there should be a reform in immigration laws.
