September 22, 2024
Matt Yglesias had a Twitter comment that got me thinking. He noted that most people are opposed to Donald Trump’s re-election. But he also pointed to polls showing that an overwhelming majority of the public supports mass deportation, the leading plank in his platform. He then conjectured that most people would not actually like the policy in practice.
I think Matt is right about this, but the implication here is that the vast majority of people support a policy they do not understand at all. That seems likely to be true, but it is worth asking how most people can have no idea of the meaning of the main policy plank of one of two major party presidential candidates. Rather than just laughing at the public’s ignorance, we might try asking how your typical person, with a full-time job, and possibly raising kids and other responsibilities, would have a clear idea of what mass deportation means?
It’s probably safe to assume that they have not been reading up on the nation’s immigrant population. They don’t have a clear idea of who they are, what they do, or even how many of them there are.
Donald Trump tells us that they are all drug dealers, murderers, and rapists, released from the prisons of Venezuela and other countries on the condition they come to America. He also says there are 20 million of them.
Many people probably don’t realize that the overwhelming majority of the people Trump wants to deport are doing difficult and often dangerous jobs that most native-born citizens would not want. Very few of them had criminal records in their home countries and they are in fact less likely to commit crimes here.
Also, most estimates put the number of unauthorized immigrants in the range of 10-12 million, although Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance, said they might look to deport people here legally as well, so it’s possible they could get to their 20 million number. This is made more likely given the fact that the Republican justices on the Supreme Court have shown a great willingness to defer to Trump even when it goes against past precedent or the wording of the Constitution.
Anyhow, the process of rounding up 10-20 million people would likely be incredibly expensive and violent. People who risked their lives going through dangerous jungles to come here are not likely to turn themselves in to be deported. Also, many have friends and relatives who are legally here and often citizens. They have the 2nd Amendment right to own and carry guns.
If we did succeed in rounding up this massive number of people, most of whom are workers, it would lead to a big jump in food prices and the cost of building new housing, since a large share of these people work in farms and food processing plants and in the construction industry. This means mass deportation would virtually guarantee higher prices at the grocery store and higher housing costs in the future, pushing up inflation, the other leading issue in this election. Most people likely do not understand this fact.
I have no idea what a genuine effort at mass deportation of this magnitude would look like, and I suspect few others do either. But since we may see a mass deportation if Donald Trump gets elected, it might be worth some major stories on the national news and in the New York Times, Washington Post and other major news outlets. That way people would at least have some sense of the meaning of the most important plank in Donald Trump’s platform.
And the great thing from the standpoint of the media is that they can run a version of this story again and again. Needless to say, if NBC, ABC, and others run a piece once, most people will still not have a clear idea of what mass deportation means. This means that if they run slightly modified versions the next day and the day after, and the week after. It would still be news for much of their audience. This way they can both inform the public and get many many news stories out of one body of research. That seems like a clear winner both in terms of newsroom economics and informing the public if they see this as their responsibility.
Comments