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Undocumented farmworker community targeted as the enemy by Trump supporters
With the 2024 election campaigns in full swing, anti-immigrant rhetoric is growing increasingly ugly, with elected officials referring to immigrants as criminals, mentally ill, and "garbage."
FILE PHOTO: Grain farmers harvest corn in Marion, Texas, U.S., July 17, 2020. / REUTERS/Adrees Latif
During elections, countries always use a boogeyman to rally their support. From time immemorial, leaders have leveraged the fear of an enemy to keep their support base in tow, said the panel at the August 2, 2024 briefing by Ethnic Media Services.
With the 2024 election campaigns in full swing, anti-immigrant rhetoric is growing increasingly ugly, with elected officials referring to immigrants as criminals, mentally ill, and "garbage."
“Power in politics needs to invent a physically and morally repugnant enemy who wants to take what’s yours because the feeling of emergency creates unity and the need of a savior,” said Manuel Ortiz Escámez, sociologist, audiovisual journalist and co-founder of Redwood City-based press Peninsula 360.
“Migrants have always been the ideal enemy of some U.S. political campaigns … and the data shows that it works,” he said. He pointed at Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington who contended that democracy, liberty, equality and individualism are a fragile basis for national unity. An enemy on the other hand rallies the masses.
“The enemy for Huntington was anyone who is not white, someone who did not come from British descent, and someone who is not Protestant. So who are the enemies for Huntington, they are Muslim, Asians, and Latinas,” said Escámez.
Support for Donald Trump in his successful 2016 presidential campaign was primarily driven by anti-migrant and racist rhetoric.
Real-world consequences of political hate speech
Hate speeches have real-world consequences. They usually help in fueling racial and ethnic tensions and spread fear, pain, and anger in migrant communities including among those whose job it is to ensure there is food on Americans' tables day in and day out.
“How can it not faze me? And how can it not faze my community when there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of people holding up “Mass deportation now” signs as we turn on the television and watch national news?’,” said Gustavo Gasca Gomez, immigration outreach specialist and Stop the Hate coordinator at the Fresno-based Education and Leadership Foundation.
“We are breaking what we built over so many years, the idea that it's not okay to be directly racist,” said Escámez. “Huntington was at least masked. In Donald Trump’s era it is okay to be racist. We could be entering a fascist period where the first to suffer will be the migrants. Little by little the enemy will be anyone who questions the power. That's very dangerous,” he said.
Anxiety and fear in the farmworker community are affecting their health. They are scared to get the help needed, according to the sociologist.
“They’re most concerned about public charge, about being deported if they access benefits like health care that they or their children — who are often U.S. citizens — qualify for,” Gomez said.
Under the public charge rule, migrants to the United States classified as Likely or Liable to become a Public Charge may be denied visas or permission to enter the country due to their disabilities or lack of economic resources.
To fit in, kids who are tormented at school and threatened with deportation are turning into bullies themselves.
“It’s been interesting because these days some of these kids who used to suffer bullying are now supporting Donald Trump. And I ask why? And they said, It's because they want to belong,” said Gomez.
To Gomez, it was demeaning. “I'm still human, and I am still committed to this country. We didn’t come here to cause harm.The entire county, the US depends on the labor of individuals like my parents, like my family working in the fields, working in the packing houses, in the warehouses,” said Gomez.
“Not only is it hot, but it's dirty and tedious. And it makes your mind numb in many ways,” said Gomez who himself has labored on the farm after high school. As a DACA recipient, he now has an office job.
“As an undocumented individual I am deeply affected and impacted by what is being said by the Republican Presidential nominee and by other politicians,” said Gomez.
“We are not the enemy. No human being is illegal.”
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