MAGA's racism

Pro-Trump rally by fine people (after the 1960s civil rights laws, they never rally for democrats)

By now, Trump and MAGA elites in power have an undeniable track record of bigotry and racism. MAGA’s newest authoritarian white supremacy move is going to have significant negative impacts on our economy and society. On May 21, a US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) memo weaponized the process of applying for a green card. The green card application process is called an adjustment of status request. In the past it was discretionary, but usually allowed if the green card applicant had no record of crimes or other problems in their past. MAGA’s new application process raises the bar so high that getting a green card is almost purely subjective.

Presumably, if an applicant, or the applicant’s prospective employer, can bribe Trump to meet the new “standard” for getting a green card. That probably won’t happen much for individual applicants because the jobs green card holders fill are mostly low wage. The employers will probably be the ones doing most of the bribing. Immigrants, including future green card holders, are disproportionately represented in agriculture, construction, hospitality, manufacturing, and transportation. Mass removal of workers in these sectors are projected to cut hundreds of thousands to over a million workers in each. Those are mostly jobs that American citizens will not take. Link, link

Economic and social impacts

Immigration is a key piece of Social Security’s long‑run solvency. Cutting legal immigration in half is estimated to worsen the program’s 75‑year actuarial deficit by ~25%. One estimate finds that reducing legal immigration levels by 50% would decrease GDP by 2% over twenty years, shrink long‑run growth by 12.5%, and cost millions of jobs. That will weaken tax bases for Social Security, Medicare, and state budgets. By contrast, issuing ~1 million authorized but unused green cards is projected to add about 1.08 trillion dollars to GDP over ten years. Those workers would contribute hundreds of billions in combined federal, state, and local revenue; denying those cards implies forgoing those gains. Link, link

In a world where green cards are mostly gone, many of those jobs will either be unfilled or shift toward more exploitation and under-the-table informality. Those low wage jobs would not be widely taken by US citizens at higher wages. A small subset of unfilled jobs would see wage increases, but nowhere near enough to absorb the full loss of legal permanent‑resident labor. Link, link

In its memo, USCIS refers to a green card or adjustment of status application as (1) a “matter of discretion and administrative grace”, and (2) an “extraordinary relief that permits applicants to dispense with the ordinary consular visa process”. Instead on applying in the US for a green card, applicants have to go back home and apply there. Since “extraordinary relief” isn’t defined, granting of a green card is purely subjective and discretionary. Green card holders are forced out of the US and given MAGA’s racist policy and track record, they probably won’t ever get back in. The memo supplies the legal‑bureaucratic scaffolding for a near‑shutoff of in‑country green cards if MAGA’s chain of command wants that outcome, which it does. Link, link

Bigotry & racism

Calling the policy “bigoted” is defensible in ordinary language. It’s just a part of MAGA’s overall pattern of excluding and devaluing specific racial, ethnic, and religious groups. That is how white supremacist MAGA uses state power over immigration as the enforcement mechanism. And, given the Trump/MAGA movement’s documented white‑nationalist rhetoric and the predictable racial impact of near‑total green‑card denials, this policy can reasonably be called a racist immigration policy. However, as we all now expect from MAGA propagandists, the new policy is phrased in race‑neutral legal language that deflects from the malice and true intent. Link, link, link

Q: Assuming that most rank & file MAGA voters are not racists or bigots, but they vote for Trump, white supremacist MAGA politicians, racists and bigots, what are they, innocent, deceived citizens or something else? Or, are Trump and MAGA elites neither bigoted nor racist?