Letters

The Republican campaign has produced and spread many big lies about immigration. They claim with no evidence that noncitizens register to vote, and Democrats bring them to commit fraud. To Donald Trump, the Southern border is open to criminals, rapists, drugs, arms and terrorists. Foreign jails send their convicts to the United States, spreading the “wrong genes” in our society.

Republicans don’t believe in national census data showing that immigrants are consistently less likely to be incarcerated than those born in America. They dismiss data from the Texas Department of Public Safety showing that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.

Nick LaLota, Republican candidate for reelection to Congress, believes that the decline in crime rates in recent years, when immigration increased, was due to underreporting. Anti-immigration propaganda makes Americans feel more insecure than what crime statistics justify.

The most outrageous big lie is the “invasion” of Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. Mr. Trump “heard” that Haiti’s illegal immigrants in Springfield create havoc with the local community services, are responsible for the housing crisis, and frighten Americans by eating their cats and dogs. He repeats unsupported rumors to the millions who regularly listen to him.

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue has slammed these false claims, and Republican Governor Mike DeWine maintains that Haitian immigrants have helped boost the state’s economy as workers. The governor has written that most immigrants are legally in his state, want to work and are more than welcome by employers.

J.D. Vance still insists on the same lie: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people [because of immigration], then that’s what I’m going to do.”

Immigrants and foreigners have been used as scapegoats for all kinds of suffering since medieval times. We thought that, today, scientific studies and simply common sense could be used to fight scapegoating as a political tool. We were wrong.

The scarcity of affordable housing is the latest pain inflicted by immigrants on American families — even when few recent arrivals are able to buy a home or may apply for bank mortgages. Immigrant workers, on the contrary, make up a sizable proportion of the labor force in the building industry.

Massive deportation, a key proposal of the Republican candidates, would actually increase the cost of housing for American families.

Jorge Balan

Westhampton