Immigration and 2016 Presidential Election 538 Discussion

[NOVA Green]

A very interesting piece on this subject that actually discusses the reality of the situation, and just the rhetoric, which in the case of at least one Major Party candidate, appears to be significantly lacking in data and real understanding of the situation.

This thread is NOT intended to be a place for various partisan hacks to reiterate countless talking points, without any real supporting data (We already have way to much of that on this forum), but the reality that is immigration to America over the past three decades and potential implications in the 2016 Presidential General Election.

Discuss.


http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-consequences-a-look-behind-the-claims-on-immigration/

[Southern Delegate matthew27]

What is weird is the fact that America isn't even that populated as its population density is lower then 181 countries. No, this is about racism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_population_density

[Kevin]

TBH from my own own observation Donald Trump's speech last night seemed to be calling for things the Government is already doing.

Ex. deportations of criminal aliens and deportations in general are up( by alot) during Obama's 2 terms compared to any previous admin.

Likewise alot of the rules Trump called for to be tightened already were so in the aftermath of 9/11. Ex. visa overstays, abuse of student visas etc, more scrutiny of aliens from countries that have terrorist problems etc.

[NOVA Green]

What is weird is the fact that America isn't even that populated as its population density is lower then 181 countries. No, this is about racism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_population_density

ok--- Granted that historically that the US has historically attracted immigrants as a result of the "push-pull" dynamics whereby land-poor (the "push" European immigrants and political refugees from various countries in Europe left their home countries over the past few centuries where the "pull" were job opportunities in the cities, factories, and rural areas of the US where their was a major demand for labor.

One could certainly make the argument that there is a variation of that in the US since the Braceros program, and many workers in the agricultural sector in particular have gravitated towards more rural parts of the US.

Now, the reality is that the vast majority of immigration (Both legal and illegal) tends to concentrate towards larger population centers where there is a demand for workers in the form of tech workers in Seattle, Portland, Silicon Valley, etc.... and "illegal immigration" are predominately those that came to the US AFTER President Reagan passed a comprehensive immigration reform policy, with the vast majority of those having lived in the country for 15+ years, with family members that are nationalized citizens, that are helping to fill a major gap with labor shortages in certain economic sectors, that native born workers choose not to work in because of extremely low wages, and/or employers will not hire because of criminal background checks and/or lack of experience and qualifications.

So not quite sure what you mean by population density, but it is interesting to note that one of the regions of the country that swung hardest between '08 and '12 for Obama was in West Texas, which has a large and rapidly growing Latino population.

[Xing]

It's still fascinating to me that there are more immigrants coming from Asia than Latin America. I remember when it was thought that Asian Americans should be "natural Republicans", and yet they've voted increasingly Democratic in recent elections. What's interesting is that there is an enormous gap between various nationalities. Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans tend to be much more Democratic than Korean Americans, Filipino Americans and Vietnamese Americans.

[NOVA Green]

TBH from my own own observation Donald Trump's speech last night seemed to be calling for things the Government is already doing.

Ex. deportations of criminal aliens and deportations in general are up( by alot) during Obama's 2 terms compared to any previous admin.

Likewise alot of the rules Trump called for to be tightened already were so in the aftermath of 9/11. Ex. visa overstays, abuse of student visas etc, more scrutiny of aliens with countries that have terrorist problems etc.

In terms of his policy statements, he appeared to be offering continuity of the Obama Administration policies focusing on deportation of "criminals".

Obama's deportation policies are already extremely unpopular among Mexican-Americans in particular, since you have a situation (Like in Texas where I recently lived for 3-4 years) where even a minor traffic offense could cause your spouse to be deported because that is a "criminal offense". Reality is that you have American citizens with family members that are out of status for (10-15+ years)  that make a minor non-violent mistake (traffic violations, first time DUI, PCS-Marijuana) that are now completely separated from their family members that routinely lets "native born" out on a catch-and-release and buttload of legal fees and fines, but does not separate families.

Meanwhile, we have a perverse situation, where US citizens of Mexican-American background, are moving to Mexico, because their spouse was out of status and deported.

This actually happened to one of my employees in Houston, Texas. His wife and three children (Born in the USA) were deported back in 2010, and although he was born in Houston Texas of a proud Tejano family of many years, he left his home country to go back to the country where his mother and father were born to work as a cab driver.

His brother was an employee and recommended him for a job, as a skilled employee with a decade of experience in the industry.

He took the bus all the way to Houston from Monterey, Mexico for a job interview with me, and lived apart from his wife for three years working under my management to save up the money for the legal paperwork so that he could be reunited with his family together (Juntos) in the USA.

Unfortunately, there were a round of layoffs early this year, and he chose to go back to Mexico to be with his wife and children, even though they are all American citizens with the exception of his wife, whose status is still in limbo because of Obama deportation policies.

I suspect part of the reason for the relatively lackluster Clinton support among Latino voters has less to do with support for Trump, but rather the nickname that I heard from many of my Mexican-American coworkers in Houston, Texas that Obama is the "deporter in chief".

So long story short, I'm not convinced that even if Trump tries to shift towards the Obama program that it is going to get him any net gain. Best case scenario for Mr. Trump, would be that younger and 3rd generation Mexican-Americans that heavily supported Bernie in the primaries vote Green or Libertarian come November.

[NOVA Green]

It's still fascinating to me that there are more immigrants coming from Asia than Latin America. I remember when it was thought that Asian Americans should be "natural Republicans", and yet they've voted increasingly Democratic in recent elections. What's interesting is that there is an enormous gap between various nationalities. Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans tend to be much more Democratic than Korean Americans, Filipino Americans and Vietnamese Americans.

That's a very interesting fact that flies in the face of much of the media narrative and conventional American wisdom and perception of the face of actual immigration to America.

I'm a bit of a geek, so I watched virtually all of the Republican Presidential debated from November to the end, and Trump actually did make some extremely forceful debate arguments regarding H1B1 that heavily targeted workers gaining temporary work and residency status supporting certain sectors (Tech, Medical, etc...) .

Many of these workers come from places like India, China, etc...

This topic appears to almost completely have dropped off the radar in the past 6 months with an increased focus on existing individuals and communities that are more often associated with certain economic sectors, where there is a large Latino workforce of whom many are working at or barely above the minimum wage.

Will this shift in focus improve Trump's performance among Asian-American voters, or???

[Mehmentum]

It's still fascinating to me that there are more immigrants coming from Asia than Latin America. I remember when it was thought that Asian Americans should be "natural Republicans", and yet they've voted increasingly Democratic in recent elections. What's interesting is that there is an enormous gap between various nationalities. Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans tend to be much more Democratic than Korean Americans, Filipino Americans and Vietnamese Americans.

That's a very interesting fact that flies in the face of much of the media narrative and conventional American wisdom and perception of the face of actual immigration to America.

I'm a bit of a geek, so I watched virtually all of the Republican Presidential debated from November to the end, and Trump actually did make some extremely forceful debate arguments regarding H1B1 that heavily targeted workers gaining temporary work and residency status supporting certain sectors (Tech, Medical, etc...) .

Many of these workers come from places like India, China, etc...

This topic appears to almost completely have dropped off the radar in the past 6 months with an increased focus on existing individuals and communities that are more often associated with certain economic sectors, where there is a large Latino workforce of whom many are working at or barely above the minimum wage.

Will this shift in focus improve Trump's performance among Asian-American voters, or???

The thing with Asian Americans is that they are very highly educated.  50% of Asian Americans have a Bachelor's degree or higher, compared to 32% of the general population.   Considering Trump's problems with College Educated voters in general, this bodes poorly for his performance with Asians.

[Xing]

Will this shift in focus improve Trump's performance among Asian-American voters, or???

I think the damage has been done, and his tone toward immigrants in general will not help him among Asian voters. The way he talks about China can't help either, although Asian immigrants from countries other than China often don't have the most favorable opinion of China. Also, as Mehmentum said, Asian voters are, on average, well educated, and that also makes them less likely to support Trump.

[rob in cal]

  The numbers on people leaving the US was interesting. An example of "self-deportation" in action.

[Erich Maria Remarque]

Will this shift in focus improve Trump's performance among Asian-American voters, or???

I think the damage has been done, and his tone toward immigrants in general will not help him among Asian voters. The way he talks about China can't help either, although Asian immigrants from countries other than China often don't have the most favorable opinion of China. Also, as Mehmentum said, Asian voters are, on average, well educated, and that also makes them less likely to support Trump.

But according to polls, he's doing better than Romney with minorities.

[hopper]

Will this shift in focus improve Trump's performance among Asian-American voters, or???

I think the damage has been done, and his tone toward immigrants in general will not help him among Asian voters. The way he talks about China can't help either, although Asian immigrants from countries other than China often don't have the most favorable opinion of China. Also, as Mehmentum said, Asian voters are, on average, well educated, and that also makes them less likely to support Trump.

But according to polls, he's doing better than Romney with minorities.

He is equaling the % of the minority vote that Romney got.

[NOVA Green]

Will this shift in focus improve Trump's performance among Asian-American voters, or???

I think the damage has been done, and his tone toward immigrants in general will not help him among Asian voters. The way he talks about China can't help either, although Asian immigrants from countries other than China often don't have the most favorable opinion of China. Also, as Mehmentum said, Asian voters are, on average, well educated, and that also makes them less likely to support Trump.

But according to polls, he's doing better than Romney with minorities.

He is equaling the % of the minority vote that Romney got.

Source?

According to national polls he appears to potentially doing significantly worse than Romney with Black Voters, as well as Latinos, and Asian-Americans rarely appear in national or statewide polls, there isn't any evidence to support Trump over-performing Romney among these Americans.

[hopper]

Will this shift in focus improve Trump's performance among Asian-American voters, or???

I think the damage has been done, and his tone toward immigrants in general will not help him among Asian voters. The way he talks about China can't help either, although Asian immigrants from countries other than China often don't have the most favorable opinion of China. Also, as Mehmentum said, Asian voters are, on average, well educated, and that also makes them less likely to support Trump.

Yeah I think basically his immigration speech(although I didn't see it) didn't come off as favorable to immigrant groups. So therefore the election is pretty much over.

I don't think education levels make any difference how Asians Vote in Federal Elections its where they live like in San Francisco, NOVA, NYC, and Bergen County,NJ (which is across the river from NYC) that makes the Asian Vote so Dem. Of course on the state level the Asian Vote(mostly for Governor)its a bit different.

[hopper]

TBH from my own own observation Donald Trump's speech last night seemed to be calling for things the Government is already doing.

Ex. deportations of criminal aliens and deportations in general are up( by alot) during Obama's 2 terms compared to any previous admin.

Likewise alot of the rules Trump called for to be tightened already were so in the aftermath of 9/11. Ex. visa overstays, abuse of student visas etc, more scrutiny of aliens with countries that have terrorist problems etc.

In terms of his policy statements, he appeared to be offering continuity of the Obama Administration policies focusing on deportation of "criminals".

Obama's deportation policies are already extremely unpopular among Mexican-Americans in particular, since you have a situation (Like in Texas where I recently lived for 3-4 years) where even a minor traffic offense could cause your spouse to be deported because that is a "criminal offense". Reality is that you have American citizens with family members that are out of status for (10-15+ years)  that make a minor non-violent mistake (traffic violations, first time DUI, PCS-Marijuana) that are now completely separated from their family members that routinely lets "native born" out on a catch-and-release and buttload of legal fees and fines, but does not separate families.

Meanwhile, we have a perverse situation, where US citizens of Mexican-American background, are moving to Mexico, because their spouse was out of status and deported.

This actually happened to one of my employees in Houston, Texas. His wife and three children (Born in the USA) were deported back in 2010, and although he was born in Houston Texas of a proud Tejano family of many years, he left his home country to go back to the country where his mother and father were born to work as a cab driver.

His brother was an employee and recommended him for a job, as a skilled employee with a decade of experience in the industry.

He took the bus all the way to Houston from Monterey, Mexico for a job interview with me, and lived apart from his wife for three years working under my management to save up the money for the legal paperwork so that he could be reunited with his family together (Juntos) in the USA.

Unfortunately, there were a round of layoffs early this year, and he chose to go back to Mexico to be with his wife and children, even though they are all American citizens with the exception of his wife, whose status is still in limbo because of Obama deportation policies.

I suspect part of the reason for the relatively lackluster Clinton support among Latino voters has less to do with support for Trump, but rather the nickname that I heard from many of my Mexican-American coworkers in Houston, Texas that Obama is the "deporter in chief".

So long story short, I'm not convinced that even if Trump tries to shift towards the Obama program that it is going to get him any net gain. Best case scenario for Mr. Trump, would be that younger and 3rd generation Mexican-Americans that heavily supported Bernie in the primaries vote Green or Libertarian come November.

I don't think you should be deported for a minor traffic offense now if you committ a murder yeah than you should be deported.

[NOVA Green]

Will this shift in focus improve Trump's performance among Asian-American voters, or???

I think the damage has been done, and his tone toward immigrants in general will not help him among Asian voters. The way he talks about China can't help either, although Asian immigrants from countries other than China often don't have the most favorable opinion of China. Also, as Mehmentum said, Asian voters are, on average, well educated, and that also makes them less likely to support Trump.

Not sure if anyone has pulled Republican Primary precinct numbers from heavily Asian-American communities in places like Seattle, San Francisco/ Cupertino/ South Bay/ or Vietnamese precincts in SoCal (Garden Grove/Westminster), or even parts of Fairfax, VA and Metro-Houston Texas (Sugarland???).

Beaverton, Oregon has one of the largest concentrations of Asian-Americans, as well as a significant Latino population, and Trump significantly under-performed in the Oregon Republican Primaries in Washington County, essentially running unopposed after Kasich and Cruz had dropped out of the race.

Granted not sure how many Asian-American and Latino-American Republicans are left in Oregon, so could be more of a huge rejection from Anglo-American Middle-Class suburban voters.

[hopper]

Will this shift in focus improve Trump's performance among Asian-American voters, or???

I think the damage has been done, and his tone toward immigrants in general will not help him among Asian voters. The way he talks about China can't help either, although Asian immigrants from countries other than China often don't have the most favorable opinion of China. Also, as Mehmentum said, Asian voters are, on average, well educated, and that also makes them less likely to support Trump.

But according to polls, he's doing better than Romney with minorities.

He is equaling the % of the minority vote that Romney got.

Source?

According to national polls he appears to potentially doing significantly worse than Romney with Black Voters, as well as Latinos, and Asian-Americans rarely appear in national or statewide polls, there isn't any evidence to support Trump over-performing Romney among these Americans.

If its head to head vs Hillary Trump equals Romney's minority vote percentages from 2012 per Pew Research. If Johnson and Stein are included Trump doesn't equal minority vote percentage from 2012 per Pew Research.

[hopper]

What is weird is the fact that America isn't even that populated as its population density is lower then 181 countries. No, this is about racism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_population_density

ok--- Granted that historically that the US has historically attracted immigrants as a result of the "push-pull" dynamics whereby land-poor (the "push" European immigrants and political refugees from various countries in Europe left their home countries over the past few centuries where the "pull" were job opportunities in the cities, factories, and rural areas of the US where their was a major demand for labor.

One could certainly make the argument that there is a variation of that in the US since the Braceros program, and many workers in the agricultural sector in particular have gravitated towards more rural parts of the US.

Now, the reality is that the vast majority of immigration (Both legal and illegal) tends to concentrate towards larger population centers where there is a demand for workers in the form of tech workers in Seattle, Portland, Silicon Valley, etc.... and "illegal immigration" are predominately those that came to the US AFTER President Reagan passed a comprehensive immigration reform policy, with the vast majority of those having lived in the country for 15+ years, with family members that are nationalized citizens, that are helping to fill a major gap with labor shortages in certain economic sectors, that native born workers choose not to work in because of extremely low wages, and/or employers will not hire because of criminal background checks and/or lack of experience and qualifications.

So not quite sure what you mean by population density, but it is interesting to note that one of the regions of the country that swung hardest between '08 and '12 for Obama was in West Texas, which has a large and rapidly growing Latino population.

I think it was from 1995-2007 that were responsible for more than half the rise of illegal immigration since 8 million illegal immigrants arrived into the US during that time period. I think the 4 million number of illegal immigrants stayed stable from 1986-1994.

[hopper]

What is weird is the fact that America isn't even that populated as its population density is lower then 181 countries. No, this is about racism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_population_density

Racism? Nah we are a pretty grateful country if we let 11 million illegal immigrants into the country and let them work and let their children use our countries schools if their children are here illegally.

At the same time, Presidents of both parties over the past 45 years have failed us on illegal immigration. Illegal Immigrants should have deported right away instead they came here and built their life here and they aren't going to leave. So Presidents from both parties for the past 15 years have failed us(yeah Obama and Bush W.) on the only possible solution and thats an "immigration reform package". They have talked, talked, and talked about it and no action....

[NOVA Green]

TBH from my own own observation Donald Trump's speech last night seemed to be calling for things the Government is already doing.

Ex. deportations of criminal aliens and deportations in general are up( by alot) during Obama's 2 terms compared to any previous admin.

Likewise alot of the rules Trump called for to be tightened already were so in the aftermath of 9/11. Ex. visa overstays, abuse of student visas etc, more scrutiny of aliens with countries that have terrorist problems etc.

In terms of his policy statements, he appeared to be offering continuity of the Obama Administration policies focusing on deportation of "criminals".

Obama's deportation policies are already extremely unpopular among Mexican-Americans in particular, since you have a situation (Like in Texas where I recently lived for 3-4 years) where even a minor traffic offense could cause your spouse to be deported because that is a "criminal offense". Reality is that you have American citizens with family members that are out of status for (10-15+ years)  that make a minor non-violent mistake (traffic violations, first time DUI, PCS-Marijuana) that are now completely separated from their family members that routinely lets "native born" out on a catch-and-release and buttload of legal fees and fines, but does not separate families.

Meanwhile, we have a perverse situation, where US citizens of Mexican-American background, are moving to Mexico, because their spouse was out of status and deported.

This actually happened to one of my employees in Houston, Texas. His wife and three children (Born in the USA) were deported back in 2010, and although he was born in Houston Texas of a proud Tejano family of many years, he left his home country to go back to the country where his mother and father were born to work as a cab driver.

His brother was an employee and recommended him for a job, as a skilled employee with a decade of experience in the industry.

He took the bus all the way to Houston from Monterey, Mexico for a job interview with me, and lived apart from his wife for three years working under my management to save up the money for the legal paperwork so that he could be reunited with his family together (Juntos) in the USA.

Unfortunately, there were a round of layoffs early this year, and he chose to go back to Mexico to be with his wife and children, even though they are all American citizens with the exception of his wife, whose status is still in limbo because of Obama deportation policies.

I suspect part of the reason for the relatively lackluster Clinton support among Latino voters has less to do with support for Trump, but rather the nickname that I heard from many of my Mexican-American coworkers in Houston, Texas that Obama is the "deporter in chief".

So long story short, I'm not convinced that even if Trump tries to shift towards the Obama program that it is going to get him any net gain. Best case scenario for Mr. Trump, would be that younger and 3rd generation Mexican-Americans that heavily supported Bernie in the primaries vote Green or Libertarian come November.

I don't think you should be deported for a minor traffic offense now if you committ a murder yeah than you should be deported.

Thank You Sir... all too often on this forum Red/Blue/Orange/Green avatars get so caught up within both internal party primaries, and GE campaigns that we lose focus on the real issues, and end up mimicking the talking points of respective candidates that we happen to support for a particular election.

I absolutely agree with deportation of violent criminals, but the reality is that the overwhelming majority of violent crimes in America are committed by American Citizens, and not at the hands of illegal immigrants", contrary to the recent talking points of a certain Presidential Candidate.

Make no mistake, Obama's mass deportation policies are extremely unpopular with Mexican-Americans in particular, because there are so many individuals that came over shortly after the Reagan Amnesty, or didn't have the money to file for residency/work papers, even though they were part of an entire generation, where Reagan (and George W.) did quite well with Mexican-American voters (Excepting California for George W. because of a backlash among Latino voters against Prop 187 (Even though the initiative initially passed because of strong support among many Latino voters).

This is an extremely complicated subject, and deserves legitimate debate about how to move forward in a sensible and humane fashion and not demonization of individuals from an entire country of origin (Mexico), of whom the vast majority have been living in the country to many years, intermarried with American Citizens, frequently working in jobs where there is little incentive for American citizens to take, because of either local labor shortages, or minimum wages that can't pay the rent in many of our larger metro areas, or are working in the informal sector as part-time workers in the landscaping, food service, and custodial sectors subject to rampant exploitation from their employers....

As I stated before, Clinton's polling numbers would likely be much higher among Latino-Americans (Especially those of Mexican-American heritage) if there wasn't a perception that she will continue the policies of the "Deporter in Chief".

Now, interestingly enough Republicans in theory should benefit from from the new wave of illegal immigration from South of the Border, heavily Central American refugees, where American evangelicals have been conducting missionary work for decades, and there is a major gap between American Latinos that identify with Evangelical Churches versus Catholics.

[NOVA Green]

  The numbers on people leaving the US was interesting. An example of "self-deportation" in action.

It's actually a bit tragic that US Citizens, born in America, are immigrating to a foreign country that they never grew up in, solely because their spouse was out of status and deported after 15 years of living in America.

Arturo made the choice to be with his wife, after he was laid off from his job because of a workforce reduction situation, and after several years of him being apart from his children (Although I always approved PTO even with short notification) went to live with their mother in Mejico, although he is a 100% 2nd Generation American Citizen, and his children as well, but this is the reality of Democratic and Republican Party hypocrisy when it comes to US Citizens, US families, and an enormous population of Mexican Nationals that slipped through the cracks of the "Reagan Amnesty", while at the same time employers from the agricultural centers of California to the construction industry of Houston and beyond have exploited this for private sector profit, and most recently scapegoating entire populations of Americans as "Rapists and Thieves".

America should be ashamed....

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

It's still fascinating to me that there are more immigrants coming from Asia than Latin America. I remember when it was thought that Asian Americans should be "natural Republicans", and yet they've voted increasingly Democratic in recent elections. What's interesting is that there is an enormous gap between various nationalities. Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans tend to be much more Democratic than Korean Americans, Filipino Americans and Vietnamese Americans.

Korean-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans, and (to a degree) Filipino-Americans are. I believe, grateful to the GOP for it's staunch anti-Communist stance over the years.  It is the same reason Cuban-Americans are more Republican than other Hispanics.