President Trump and Migration at 3

Abstract

<jats:p>Candidate Trump made reducing unauthorized migration a central theme of his campaign in 2015 and 2016 (Martin, 2017a). Soon after taking office, Trump issued executive orders that instructed the Department of Homeland Security to build a wall on the Mexico-US border, increase deportations, and reduce refugee admissions (Martin, 2017b). Immigration systems are like supertankers, hard to turn around quickly, but President Trump has in three years developed a restrictionist migration policy aimed at reducing unauthorized migration and asylum seeking. Even though Trump’s businesses employ low-skilled guest workers, there have been no major changes to the H-2A and H-2B guest worker programs. </jats:p>

The Fragility of the Labour Corridors to Costa Rica and the United States: Precarious Migrant Workers in Central America

“…In the case of the United States, restrictions started in the mid-1980s with the passing of several legal reforms: the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in1986 that imposed controls on irregular migration and sanctioned employers who hired unauthorised labour; and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) in 1996 that imposed penalties on undocumented immigrants who commit crimes or who stay unlawfully in the United States, and allowed for the deportation of undocumented immigrants who committed a misdemeanour or a felony. They continued during the 2000s and more recently the Trump Administration (2017-2021) adopted a clear anti-immigration stance (Pierce and Selee, 2017;Martin, 2020). In a similar fashion, in Costa Rica controls started in the 2000s (Morales-Gamboa, 2008) but did not succeed in discouraging unauthorised workers from entering the country.…”

Canadian’s attitudes toward immigration in the COVID-19 era

“…In the United States, the 2016 presidential election and subsequent actions taken by the Trump administration, including barring entry from certain Muslim countries and gutting immigration policy have placed a spotlight on immigration in public and political debates that continued to reverberate during the 2020 presidential campaign. Although President Biden has rolled back some of former President Trump's immigration legislation (i.e., Martin 2020), an underlying fear of immigration remains among large portions of the American population and across party lines (Daniller 2019). Likewise, the UK's Brexit 2016 referendum was partially aided by a hardening anti-immigrant stance, with the leave campaign offering an unnuanced and largely negative perspective on the issue.…”