Donald Trump's, JD Vance's and Marc Molinaro's Demonization of Haitian Immigrants
My Congressman, Marc Molinaro, has made the demonization of undocumented immigrants one of his main focuses in his battle to win re-election against his Democratic opponent, Josh Riley, in New York's 19th Congressional District. This has become standard fare for the Republican Party.
There are over 11 million undocumented immigrants in our country. You are bound to have some extremely violent criminals in any population of that size. Whenever an undocumented immigrant is responsible for a particularly heinous rape or murder, you can count on Republicans to scream, “LOOK AT THAT. THESE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE HORRIBLE, AND IF IT WEREN’T FOR OUR DEMOCRATIC OPPONENTS, THEIR VICTIMS WOULD STILL BE ALIVE.”
This group demonization is particularly unwarranted since immigrants do not commit violent crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans. In fact, a Cato Institute study of homicides in Texas found that “illegal immigrants were 26 percent less likely than native-born Americans to be convicted of homicide.” This makes intuitive sense because undocumented immigrants WANT to keep a low profile. They try not to attract the attention of the police because they know that they are likely to be deported if they are caught committing crimes.
Marc Molinaro has gone far beyond the normal Republican attacks against undocumented immigrants in his attempts to smear Josh Riley. Molinaro retweeted an image of a Facebook post claiming that Haitian immigrants were butchering and eating dogs and cats as well as ducks and geese in Springfield Ohio. A second image attached to Molinaro's tweet shows a Black man walking down the street carrying two geese.
@JoshRileyue fought for open borders and dismantled our border security.
This crisis - the fentanyl flooding our streets, the rampant crime, and now this - is his to own. pic.twitter.com/n418uJj7TC— Marc Molinaro #NY19 (@marcmolinaro) September 9, 2024
