A Case Against Mass Deportation

Created in Dream by WOMBO

WE ARE ALL CONNECTED

As of this writing, 337,206,893 persons live within the legal boundaries of the United States of America and that number will continue to increase by roughly three every minute. We, in the United States of America are joined together, regardless of citizenship or legal status, by an interconnected socioeconomic system that causes us to rely on each other for our health, safety and prosperity. If we did not have these interconnections we would each need to construct our own roads, generate our own electricity, drill our own well, install our own septic tank, haul away our own garbage, pay for any damages caused by negligence or accident, rather than through insurance, and we would need to grow our own food, cure our own illness and deliver our own mail as well. We would be entirely on our own if we did not have these connections to others. To lose that piece of our social fabric would be a tragedy because collectively we all have a much better life. Rich, poor, citizen, non-citizen, documented, undocumented, we are all just humans doing our best to seek happiness and survive.

MONEY MOVES

There is an old saying “money makes the world go round” and that is quite literally true. Money is linear only when it is hoarded. Most money is actually circular since it is in constant circulation. I pay you; you pay them, they pay someone else, that person pays a bill, I get a paycheck, I pay my car payment, most of us pay taxes. Money is always moving and changing hands rapidly.

WORK, WORK, WORK

When we work, we say we “make” money. The truth is only the treasury and the Federal Reserve have the power to “make” money in the United States. When I work and earn a paycheck I am actually being “paid” money already circulating in our economy. For example, if I buy a lamp at Wilson’s Lamp Shop; they then use part of that money to buy a shipment of more lamps. The lamp wholesaler pays a driver to deliver these lamps to Wilson’s lamp shop and gives the driver a bi-weekly paycheck for their services. Some of that money paid to the driver actually came from me. After work the driver goes to the grocery store, spends a little money and a grocery store employee then gets a paycheck. The grocery worker uses part of that money to buy a lamp at Wilson’s lamp shop and the money has now gone full circle. It is all the same money going round and round and round and… When I hand over a dollar bill to a store, we hope they profit from it so they can stay in business and I can shop there again. Stores profits from all who enter their store and spend; rich, poor, citizen, non-citizen, documented and undocumented alike. Money does not ever discriminate.

SPEND, SPEND, SPEND

We all spend money and money never asks our immigration status or looks at our documentation. In this we are all equal in the economy. Most earn money from a job, some gain money from investments, and a few have been given money through a social program, an entitlement, a charity or as a gift but in the end, a dollar is just a dollar is just a dollar, no matter how it was acquired. We all spend money on food, fuel, medical care, entertainment, insurance, rent or mortgage, utilities, etc. It’s a big list of things we spend our money on.

Money, like our bloodstream that feeds the cells of our body circulates, is not at its best when it is stagnate or gets lost. When any part of the circulation of blood, or money, becomes disrupted, in any way big or small, we will experience problems. Think back to the recent pandemic. How many businesses in your neighborhood failed when the foot traffic in their doors suddenly collapsed overnight? This is because the money stagnated when people did not go to stores and spend. Money stopped circulating quite suddenly and the results were devastating to some industries.

THE 2025 PROJECT

Forward now to 2025. Donald J Trump, should he win the presidency, has a plan to deport fifteen to twenty million non-citizen persons of Hispanic origin residing lawfully or unlawfully inside our nation’s legal boundaries. Each of these fifteen to twenty million are currently spending money in our economy and no matter the source of that money they are part of the same financial bloodstream of currency that circulates and refreshes our economy and keeps it healthy. Fifteen to twenty million is, give or take, five-percent of our population. If we suddenly remove five percent of the population, we also suddenly remove that money being spent. Five percent less persons are now buying food, buying fuel, paying rent, paying utilities, seeking medical care, watching movies, visiting amusement parks etc. Businesses in some areas will see a decrease in dollars spent, restaurants will have less customers, landlords will lose tenants, utilities will be cut off, less fuel will be purchased. As this loss invades our economy there will be less orders for supplies, less need for trucking, less need for employees and so much more! It is quite a list of those who would be affected by the decrease in circulating dollars when five percent of our population is suddenly mass deported, just disappears and the loss trickles down through the economy for many years. The full ramifications of how this will ripple through our economy is not yet known. For certain there will be no positive effect.

YOUR DOCUMENTS PLEASE

There is a myth the undocumented are a drain on our economy. This is simply not true. The undocumented must eat, find a place to live, clothe themselves, stay warm, go to school, seek medical treatment and pay for all the same things as a citizen or documented non-citizen. All of these things require the expending of money at businesses, of all types, far and wide. These businesses profit from this spending with no discrimination of documentation. The undocumented equally participate in the circulating of dollar bills in our communities, even if their entire income is from refugee assistance; SNAP or some other social program or benefit. I can tell you from personal knowledge, having worked in the system, most persons receiving public benefits are white U.S. citizens, not undocumented immigrants. In fact, many social programs are closed to immigrants, documented or undocumented. Check the facts on this. Medicaid, SNAP, TANF…all quite restrictive for non-citizens. If an undocumented person has an emergent medical need, Medicaid pays only for the portion of emergent medical care that saves that person’s life and provides no follow up care or care for any underlying chronic conditions. Social Security and Medicare are entitlement programs and both require years of contribution to access.

There will be an overwhelming cost to the taxpayer for this mass deportation. Internment camps, personnel to round up those millions to be deported, guards to protect these camps, food to feed the millions of internees in transition, transport using approximately ninety-thousand planes or one-hundred and three-hundred and fifty-thousand buses*. And, there will be many lawsuits.

OOPS!

Donald Trump stated recently, “You put one wrong person onto a bus or onto an airplane, and your radical left lunatics will try and make it sound like the worst thing that’s ever happened…”

Well, yes, there are worse things that can happen to a person, however being mistakenly rounded up and removed from one’s own country then dropped willy-nilly into a potentially war torn or violent foreign country can still be very bad. Even if it is a mostly peaceful country, the result is still bad. There is no upside to this. When this person finds their way back to their rightful country, the USA, they will have every right to sue the taxpayers for damages caused by this “worst thing”. Potentially thousands or millions of dollars for each lawsuit on top of the expense of the court cases.

YOU’RE GETTING COLDER

Since its founding, the United States of America was always intended to be a “warm” and welcoming nation, not one with a cold heart toward the foreigner. It is why this notion is spelled out in a poem on our eastern shores on a gifted statue that proclaims our liberty for all.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

We must think this potential mass deportation through logically and economically. Mass deportation is morally wrong. It is economically wrong. It mimics other societies who tried this tactic, such as Hitler’s Germany, but found it led to failure of the nation, economic collapse and societal troubles, including many untimely deaths.

KEEP THE FAITH

For those who follow the Christian and Jewish faith it is against the principles laid down in your scripture. The Christian and Jewish God, the one who does not change, gave the Hebrew people instructions on how to divide up the land they were given. God said: You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the sojourners who reside among you and have had children among you. They shall be to you as native-born children of Israel. With you they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. In whatever tribe the sojourner resides, there you shall assign him his inheritance, declares the Lord God. Ez. 47:22–23

Why? Because the Christian and Jewish God also says,

Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. De. 10:19

Right now, the United States of America is marching down the path of a movement which believes they are making this nation more “God-like” but really just involves hate and discrimination. To continue this path of mass deportation is to travel an uncharted road we dare not travel. The cost to our moral conscience, our economy and our nation’s peace and safety will be far too great. History has proven this to be true through the example of other countries who have tried similar. If we maintain this path, history will take note of our failure to do what was good and right. This is true no matter which faith one follows or even if one is atheist or agnostic.

• This was calculated using averages. The average between fifteen-million and twenty-million is seventeen and a half million. The various versions of the 737, and it’s similar counterparts from Airbus, carry an average of 194 passengers per trip. Seventeen and a half million divided by 194 equals 90,206 planes necessary to move seventeen and a half million persons. The typical bus carries an average of fifty persons so roughly four times as many buses would be necessary. Hitler moved about half the number Trump intends to move and he found passenger rail cars or trucks would not handle the volume. This is why the holocaust Jews were delivered to internment camps in cattle cars packed standing upright for the entire journey instead. It was barbaric treatment.
• The time and expense necessary to deport seventeen and half million persons is beyond what the U.S. budget will bear. The validity of Trump’s assertion he will deport this many persons is tantamount to his promise to build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it. It is pure delusional fantasy.