Published In The Great North Arrow, July 1, 2025: Never Mind Humanitarian - It’s Not Even Good Business

Never Mind Humanitarian - It’s Not Even Good Business

- jim Young

“There is nothing more uncommon than common sense.” - Frank Lloyd Wright

Donald Trump was very upfront about his plans to deport all undocumented immigrants from the U.S. when he was campaigning for his second term of presidency. He tried to soften the blow by claiming he would concentrate on rounding up undocumented immigrants that had violent criminal records first, such as the rapists and murderers.

Who’s going to contest the deportation of an illegal immigrant who commits violent crimes? It seems like a noble enough cause.

The problem is of course, Donald Trump lies. The whole world knows he lies. Even most of his supporters, if they are being honest, know Trump lies. Trump doesn't care.

Just 3 days after being inaugurated, the round up began, including many deportations of undocumented immigrants who had no previous convictions.

Was anyone surprised that Donald Trump broke his word? No one raised an eyebrow at that because everyone knows Donald Trump lies.

To date, over 207,000 undocumented immigrants have been deported. That number is almost half of the undocumented 435,000 immigrants with criminal records that were estimated to be in the United States. Except that over 75% of all immigrants booked into ICE facilities as of the end of the 2025 fiscal year had no criminal conviction and less than 10% were convicted of serious crimes like murder, assault, robbery or rape.

So don’t let the overall numbers fool you. Trump has done little so far to protect you from all those thousands of immigrant rapists and murderers, not to mention those that are also eating “our cats and dogs”. 

Maybe there weren’t as many undocumented immigrants that were rapists and murderers as Trump led you to believe. Or maybe it’s harder than he thought. Either way - the deportations will continue en masse one way or another because Trump doesn’t want to lose face.

Even when Trump is telling the truth, he’s lying. Prior to the election Trump often told his people that 13,000 undocumented immigrant murderers were not in ICE custody. But he neglected to tell you that these were people who had committed murder in the past 40 or 50 years. That they were not in ICE custody only meant most were in prison, already deported or deceased - not running free in the streets.

Knowing he might have a difficult time fulfilling his quota of violent undocumented immigrants, Trump also changed the rules midstream. After taking office, Trump’s policies took legal status away from hundreds of thousands of immigrants who had come to the U.S. legally and with sponsorship. Overnight these legal immigrants became undocumented, increasing the pool for Trump to draw from to help him meet his goal of deporting 1 million immigrants a year.

That aside, many Trump supporters will argue that by definition, an illegal immigrant is a criminal. But they are not looking at the big picture and are just shooting themselves in the foot.

One of the justifications often given for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants is to protect the jobs of U.S. citizens.

So who’s hiring the illegal immigrants and why? There would be no illegal immigrants working in the U.S. if no one was hiring them so let’s not excuse those businesses that are employing undocumented immigrants. Surely they must accept some responsibility in all this. Obviously there has been a need that undocumented immigrants have been fulfilling. If one side was breaking the law, why wasn’t the other side equally at fault?

There are 8.3 million undocumented immigrants that are currently in the workforce in the U.S. The large majority of these people perform manual labour and services with low wages and difficult working conditions - jobs that many U.S. citizens won’t do. At least not for the wages that employers are offering them.

If those positions suddenly become available to U.S. citizens, their employers will likely have to increase the wages and benefits to entice U.S. citizens to accept them. If the wages and benefits go up, so too will the costs to produce the goods and ultimately, the selling price of the products. That increase will be borne by the consumer.

But there’s another problem here. There are only 6.8 million unemployed citizens in the U.S. Do the math. Who’s going to take on those jobs?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to concentrate on deporting just the violent, criminal undocumented immigrants? If Trump’s intent really is for the good of the country wouldn’t a better alternative be to work towards removing the obstacles that have in the past, prevented these undocumented immigrants from becoming full U.S. citizens? Isn’t that what the entire history of the United States is based on?

For the most part, the vast majority of undocumented immigrants in the U.S.  are law-abiding tax-payers that have been fulfilling a need by doing these jobs for the last 10 to 20 years anyway.

Isn’t that what a smart business man would do?

Or would Trump rather just cut off his nose to spite his face? Isn’t that what businessmen who go bankrupt do?

And if Trump is really interested in ridding the United States of criminals wouldn’t he be well advised to concentrate his efforts in sectors where crime is more more prevalent? In recent years, studies show that immigrants are 60 percent less likely to commit a crime than U.S. born citizens. If Trump is as good a businessman as he claims to be, why wouldn’t he concentrate his efforts there?

Oh yeah, I forgot. Kettle, Pot, Black and all that. Trump might be a little reluctant on getting too tough on U.S. born rapists and felons.

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