So You Don’t Like Hillary

I’ve sometimes had people assume that I’m voting for Hillary because of Donald Trump’s comments about sexual assault, or because of his “offensive” and “brash” manner, and not because of issues. I worry too many feel that Trump’s shortcomings center on his willingness to make off-the-cuff remarks and his failure to play by commonly established political rules and guidelines, rather than on issues. I worry that a widespread dislike of Hillary has led some to decided they may as well take a chance on a brash businessman, and others to choose a third party candidate, irregardless of issues. What issues? Let’s talk about an issue Trump boldly began his campaign with: Hispanic immigration.

I live just north of a heavily Hispanic housing complex. Each weekday morning, a stream of Hispanic mothers and children pass our house, walking to the elementary school my daughter attends. Every day my daughter eats with Hispanic children, plays with Hispanic children, and studies with Hispanic children. Some of the mothers only speak Spanish; their children switch back and forth between Spanish and English effortlessly as they run across the playground.

This is the age-old story of America.

When I think about the presidential election before us, I think about these children. Some of these families are documented, but others are very likely not.

I have a friend who works with underprivileged children, many of them Hispanic. She tells me that many of these children are deeply worried about their families’ futures. In some cases, their parents are making plans to leave, getting things lined up so that they can flee the country if it comes to that. Take a moment to absorb that. These are families that came to the United States to build new lives and create a better future for their children. If that’s not the American Dream, I don’t know what is. And yet.

My daughter first became aware of Donald Trump sometime last January or February. I showed her some of his campaign ads and explained the issues he was running on. She was enraged. More than that—she was scared. She started talking about children in her class, expressing fears that they might be deported. “Hernando can’t even read Mexican!” she exclaimed, her brow furrowed. “He still knows some of the words, but he’s forgetting a lot of them!” Her fear that her friends may be deported quickly became the central feature of this election, and has remained so.

She has even suggested that we could hide her friends in our home. 

Undocumented immigrants do not breed crime. Immigrants, documented or not, have a lower crime rate than native-born Americans. In fact, some scholars believe the increase of immigration over the past few years may be partially responsible for the nationwide decline in crime since the mid-1990s. Immigrants don’t take jobs, either—they create them. Immigrants (documented or not) pay taxes like everyone else, and are also less likely to use government services. Immigrants drive economic growth. Immigrants may become only more important as the Baby Boomers age, augmenting the population of young workers that forms the basis of our social security system. We need immigrants. They are vital to our economic growth.

Donald Trump has consistently argued that undocumented immigrants must leave the country and then apply to enter before being given a chance to become documented. It’s not that simple. Undocumented immigrants have jobs, homes, communities. Two-thirds of undocumented immigrants have been living in the U.S. for at least ten years. If you had to leave your life, today, travel to another country, then wait several months (at best) for the paperwork to come through for you to come back, would you still have your job when you got back? Your home? And what about your children? Would you take them out of school for several months and bring them with you? Or would find someone for them to live with while you were gone—crossing your fingers in hopes that you really would make it back? All of this assumes that such a plan would actually allow for your return, rather than stranding you thousands of miles from your life and your community. No, it’s not simple at all.

I think about all of this when I stand in line behind a Hispanic woman and her children at the local grocery store, when I sit at the park while my children run across the playground equipment playing tag with Hispanic children, when I talk to Hispanic mothers at school events or while volunteering. These are children. These are people. These are families. Anyone who responds by saying that they should have just come legally to begin with (and I don’t want to leave the impression that all Hispanic immigrants are undocumented) needs to spend some time learning about current immigration law. The system is broken. For too many families, obtaining the proper documents before entering the country is not a possibility. If you are not either a skilled laborer (college or technical training) or the relative of a U.S. citizen, you are out of luck. It was not this way when my ancestors immigrated.

And then there is the issue of refugees. I want you to try to imagine, for a moment, what it must be like to be a refugee. Unlike other immigrants, refugees leave their homes and countries not because they choose to—to build better lives or create a better future for their children—but because they have to, generally to flee war. I have a relative who came to the U.S. as a refugee several decades ago. We’re talking fled in the middle of the night, smuggled out, refugee camp, the whole caboodle. Her mother died in that refugee camp. Imagine what it would be like to flee your home and everything you’d ever known, to leave everything you couldn’t carry, afraid for your life. Imagine traveling hundreds or thousands of miles, often on foot, looking for somewhere safe, wondering when you can stop moving, whether you’ll find somewhere you can put down roots and start again.

The United States has a long (though not uncomplicated) history of welcoming refugees. I have Jewish friends whose ancestors fled the pogroms in Russia over a century ago. Many others came as well. In 1924, influenced by the same tide of nativism that birthed the Ku Klux Klan of that decade, the United States shut its doors, severely limiting immigration. During the 1930s, we turned away thousands of Jewish refugees, sending many of them to their deaths. Anne Frank was one of them. As WWII drew to a close, we revised our immigration laws to account for the millions of people left adrift at the war’s end. We accepted hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, and then millions more refugees of all races and ethnicities over the following decades. Many of the refugees who came to the U.S. were set adrift by the shifting grounds of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War.

You don’t like Hillary? Fine. Don’t vote for Hillary for Hillary. Vote for Hillary for the Hispanic children who attend school with my daughter. Vote for Hillary for refugees from Syria and elsewhere, both young and old. If you feel that both major party candidates are equally bad, and that the election’s results don’t really matter, please take a moment to consider our nation’s hard-working undocumented immigrants and the refugee populations around the world. Only one candidate has pledged to deport millions of honest men, women, and children. Only one candidate has pledged to close our doors to families fleeing war. Let’s not elect that candidate.