Instead of Building Walls, Build an Economy That Works for All

The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will take up a case that challenges President Barack Obama’s executive actions that deferred the deportation of 5 million undocumented immigrants.

News coverage of this development naturally was dominated by the two words that are sure to make any news story go viral: “procedural battle.”

Okay, perhaps such a phrase doesn’t rise to the level of virality as the groundbreaking revelation that Kim Kardashian washes her hair twice a week. But that’s exactly what’s wrong with this system — with so much at stake for so many families, it is a shame that people aren’t paying more attention.

While it can be easy to get lost in the alphabet soup of “SCOTUS,” “DACA” and “DAPA,” debates over the technical merits of the President’s executive actions should not detract from what’s truly at stake here — that families are being separated by outdated, arcane and draconian immigration laws.

So far during this presidential campaign, the immigration debate has been front and center. And, with the Supreme Court taking on this case, we’ll be assured that it will continue.

The anti-immigrant message focuses again on fear – fear that there aren’t enough jobs or enough money to go around, and it resonates, not because it is true, but because we know the majority of people in this country are struggling. They call it the 99% movement because, unless you’re among the filthy rich 1%, you are probably struggling.

The Job Gap Economic Prosperity Series research by the Alliance for a Just Society shows people quite simply aren’t making ends meet. And so, by cranking up the fear of scarcity, people are more likely to perceive others as a threat to their own economic security. When people are drowning in debt and can’t find a decent-paying job, they see immigrants as competition in an already-tight workforce.

The reality is that immigration strengthens our workforce.

“This case is profoundly impactful not just for the Latino community, but for the entire nation,” said Janet Murguía, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza. “The expansion of DACA and the creation of DAPA could potentially help more than 4.4 million eligible immigrants, create nearly 30,000 new jobs and grow our GDP by $230 billion by 2025.”

And so the conversation we really need to be having is not about how to keep immigrants out of the country, but how we can shape our economy so that it works for everyone. The answer to the scarcity mentality is not to build walls, but to build the economy and equitably share our resources.

We do that by increasing an embarrassingly low minimum wage, making higher education affordable and accessible, providing health care to everyone who needs it, and stop giving tax breaks to large corporations that drain local economies of good-paying jobs and replaces them with bad jobs.

But tearing apart families, living in the politics of hate, and rejecting those yearning to breathe free is not our way.