Trump Deportation Order Risk: Immigrants Driven Underground, Not Out
The Interpreter By
MAX FISHER and
AMANDA TAUB
FEB. 23, 2017
New deportation rules proposed by the Trump administration risk creating an American underclass with parallels to others around
the world: slum residents in India, guest workers in oil-rich Persian Gulf states and internal migrant workers in China.
Even if slum residents are cleared out, this does not fix the problem
that put them in slums in the first place: Cities need cheap labor but often don’t provide cheap housing.
Under what is known as the kafala system, a gulf state employer can unilaterally dictate the legal
and immigration status of unskilled foreign migrants who work jobs like construction and housekeeping, putting those workers at the whims of employers.
But while this temporarily reduces pressure on migrants and on the state, it leaves the underlying problem in place — and tends to prompt a populist backlash
that leads to policies like Mr. Trump’s deportation rules.
Though millions reside in the United States, often bolstering local economies, being in the wrong place at the wrong time could lead to deportation.
India’s slums demonstrate another issue: Residents, cut off from basic services and the justice system, need something to take their place.