Bernie Says Immigration Threatens The Social Safety Net. Research Shows Otherwise [View all]

[TomCADem]

Here is an article that notes how Bernie has made Trump-like arguments to attack immigration. While Bernie has tried to tack very recently on his official platform, he still continues to use Trump-like arguments to scapegoat immigrants that are just as wrong coming from him as they are coming from Trump:

https://psmag.com/news/bernie-says-immigration-threatens-the-social-safety-net-research-shows-otherwise

Since the beginning of April, President Donald Trump has centered on a new message as he attempts to raise alarm about immigration on the country's southern border: "Our country is FULL!" he tweeted on Sunday, repeating claims he made to Border Patrol agents in in Calexico, California, that Friday. Though Trump's new messaging is likely more of an emotional appeal than a demographic argument, reporters quickly fact-checked the president's claim: the New York Times ran a data-heavy article explaining how, in many parts of the country, shrinking towns and industries actually need more people. (Trump's claim "runs counter to the consensus among demographers and economists. ... They see ample evidence of a country that is not remotely 'full,'" the Times reported.)

The question of whether the country is indeed full aside, Trump's underlying assumption that the country could become "full" is a claim some of his most vociferous opponents on the left seem to also believe. On the same day Trump tweeted, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders explained in an Iowa town hall why he's against open borders: Too many poor people would come to the United States, Sanders explained, and the country could not afford to pay for policies like universal health care or free college.

"If you open the borders, my God, there's a lot of poverty in this world, and you're going to have people from all over the world," Sanders said. "And I don't think that's something that we can do at this point. Can't do it."

The tension between increased immigration and the reforms Sanders advocates for is one that has troubled social democracies for generations. In countries that invest heavily in the social safety net, some leaders have warned that increased immigration could threaten existing social programs by essentially bankrupting the government. During elections in Sweden (one of the Scandinavian social democracies Sanders admires) in 2014, Jimmie Åkesson, a leader of the anti-immigrant far-right Swedish Democrats tweeted: "The election is a choice between mass immigration and welfare. You choose." During the French election in 2016, the fiery leftist candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon claimed that immigrants "steal the bread from French workers." (In Europe, the emergence of anti-immigrant leftist leaders has led some to brand them "Left Nationalists.&quot