A NYT opinion (not paywalled) based mostly on an interview with two illegal immigrants, Aldair Mata and Jose, who support djt exemplifies that description of the human mind faced with complex politics:
Jose has been whipped into quiet panic this winter by President Trump’s threats of mass deportations. He’s still turning up for his shifts at a wood-finishing factory — he can’t afford not to — but most of his co-workers have stopped coming. His wife is afraid to go to her factory job, and they’re keeping the 11-year-old home from school. Jose was nervous in the restaurant, curling his posture inward and eying the street outside.
One more detail about these friends: They are both fans of Donald Trump. Mr. Mata voted for Trump, and though Jose can’t vote, he tells me that Mr. Trump “has courage.”
But Jose doesn’t hold Mr. Trump responsible. Neither does Mr. Mata. They both blame “the Venezuelans,” which is shorthand for the more than 50,000 migrants (about 30,000 of them Venezuelan) who’ve poured into Chicago since 2022. Most of them came by bus from the Mexican border, dispatched by Republican officials eager to teach the sanctimonious sanctuary cities a lesson. Jose complains that “nothing matters” to the migrants, that some of them commit crimes and receive coveted work permits despite being “lazy.”
“If they hadn’t come,” he said darkly, “none of this would have happened.”
The migrant buses were not just a meanspirited stunt. They worked magnificently well — better, I suspect, than the plan’s architects could have hoped. Wave upon wave of disoriented, often traumatized migrants were unceremoniously deposited in the city, costing Chicago a fortune (nearly $640 million since 2022), infuriating Black and Latino residents who already felt neglected and sowing community resentment that ultimately moved votes.
Many people in Chicago name the buses as the single outstanding factor inspiring record numbers of the city’s Latinos — including those who sneaked across the border themselves or who count undocumented immigrants as their nearest and dearest — to vote for Mr. Trump.
I’ve written before about America’s disingenuous mismanagement of its refugee system. The scale of that failure is demonstrated by this confounding fact: Chicago has thrived and grown strong on illegal immigration. It was legal immigration that destabilized the city.
If Mr. Trump deports 11 million people, as per his threats, he’ll make history with an unforced error of stupendous scale.
The more migrants came, the more scandalized Mr. Mata became. Venezuelan women approached him at the supermarket, he says, offering to pay for his groceries on prepaid cards they’d been given if he’d pay them half the price in cash. Mr. Mata understood this as evidence of outsize, unnecessary public largess.
He also came to think that — just as Mr. Trump says — the new arrivals were driving up crime. This perception is contradicted by statistics indicating that crime has fallen in Chicago. But Mr. Mata heard stories of late-night train robberies, of Venezuelan women who danced with men at the Mexican bars and then stole their money and phones, of street fights erupting in gunfire.
These anecdotes may or may not be true, but a large majority of Chicago’s migrants haven’t committed any crimes. They are keen to work and are being absorbed into the economy like every preceding wave of immigrants. True, they got plenty of help settling down: hotel rooms, meals, health care, cellphones and, most significantly, work permits — in stark contrast to many Mexican immigrants who still lack legal status even after quietly working, paying taxes and obeying the law for decades.
They believe Mr. Trump is right to deport people — so long as it’s the right people.
“A lot of innocent people are going to end up in Mexico for other people’s fault,” Mr. Mata conceded. “That’s what hurts me. People who pay taxes, who work. Very good people.”
Mata: Voted for djt but fears that “a lot of innocent people
are going to end up in Mexico for other people’s fault.”
Who was at fault, not djt voters, but the Dems,
other illegal immigrants, both, or neither?
What a tragic mess. The Dems did not come up with a rational immigration policy. Biden and the Dems blew it. That failure was catastrophic. Current evidence indicates that illegal immigration was a major, necessary factor in kickstarting the current US transition from corrupt democracy to kleptocratic (even more corrupt) authoritarianism.
One can see the reasoning behind deep resentment emotion triggered in RIIs (resident illegal immigrants) when lots more new illegal immigrants were bussed in and treated well. One can also see the effect that false beliefs in MAGA lies have on instilling false RII perceptions of reality and flawed reasoning, i.e., the new illegals are all criminals. RIIs fear what djt is threatening to do to their lives and families, but nonetheless support him.
As Andre Vasquez, a Chicago alderman explained: “If you feel as a citizen that neither party is serving your benefit — well, Republicans may not line up with you ideologically, but there are people in dire straits, in pain, disenfranchisement. They’ll take a gamble on a carnival ride.”
Well, now we're on a carnival ride.
Oopsie doodle, carnival ride gone wrong
