By Dylan Corbett
This year, immigration is one of the chief concerns of voters across the political divide, more so than even during the last presidential election, with more than 60% of registered voters expressing that the issue will be very important when they visit the polls.
Whoever is elected, the new administration will be in a position to make consequential decisions on issues such as the management of migration at the border, which will have significant impacts on communities like El Paso.
Either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will be able to shape important decisions on the availability of federal funding to support the processing and reception of arriving migrants, which has been critical to El Paso’s successful ability to manage higher numbers of migrants in recent years.
Central to Republican candidate Trump’s platform is a proposal for mass deportations. The social and economic consequences of such a program would be devastating, given the inevitable social and economic impacts. Mass deportations would tear apart a country in which about 70% of immigrant households with undocumented members also include legal residents or U.S. citizens and where 4.4 million U.S. citizen children live with an undocumented parent.
In Texas alone, mass deportation would jeopardize the state’s economic vitality by eliminating the spending power of a population which is in the tens of billions of dollars, and which also contributes nearly $5 billion in taxes every year to state and local coffers.
In order to carry out such a program, Trump has signaled that he will adopt the Lone Star State’s approach of deploying the National Guard at the border and utilizing local police departments as immigration enforcers, which is what the Texas will do if the federal courts permit SB4, a law passed during the last legislative session, to go into effect.
During the Trump administration, El Paso witnessed first-hand the effects of a harsh enforcement approach. Among other things, the administration implemented a policy of family separation for many migrant families arriving at the border. Before the devastating policy was applied borderwide, it was tested in El Paso.
Even more compelling than how the family separation policy was developed and implemented locally is the story of how the local El Paso community fought back against the inhumane policy. It is a story that includes meaningful acts of resistance by local judges, high school students, community activists and faith leaders.
It is a story artfully told in a new book by Sarah Towle, entitled “Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands.”
At 5 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 16, the Hope Border Institute will host a community conversation with the book’s author, which will also feature a preview of “Running to Stand Still,” a new film that tells the story of El Paso’s compassionate response to the arrival of migrants to the border. El Paso Matters founder and CEO Robert Moore will moderate the event, which will take place Downtown at the El Paso Community Foundation Room, 333 N. Oregon.
Whatever the outcome of the upcoming elections, community conversations like these will be critical, not only in order to understand the real impacts of state and federal immigration policy on our borderlands community, but also to deepen and advance a local vision capable of shaping a more humane and sensible response to the reality of migration at the border, whoever is elected president.
Dylan Corbett is the executive director of the Hope Border Institute, a faith-based social justice organization in El Paso.
The post Opinion: Immigration, the elections and our border community appeared first on El Paso Matters.
Read: Read More