Immigrants line up at a remote U.S. Border Patrol processing center after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border on Dec. 7, 2023, in Lukeville, Ariz. (John Moore/Getty Images).

It’s like clockwork each election cycle.

Politicians reach for an old playbook, brandishing images from the southern border, claiming that undocumented migrants steal jobs and commit violent crimes at an alarming rate.

The intent is to sow fear and misinformation about immigrants for political advantage.

During Tuesday’s presidential debate, Donald Trump talked about immigration more than any other topic, most notably citing false claims that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in an Ohio city.

“They’re eating the dogs,” Trump said.

Messaging in 2024 is following the pattern, even supercharging it.

The Missouri General Assembly entered the fray this summer, forming the Special Interim Committee on Illegal Immigrant Crimes.

That committee recently concluded hearings around the state, including in Kansas City and St. Louis.

It got an earful, with many witnesses trying to explain immigration law and citing data that refutes common messaging that many critics of the committee find starkly anti-immigrant.

“Our immigrant community is not criminal,” Tomas Hernandez testified in Kansas City, with the help of a Spanish language translator. He migrated to the Kansas City area three years ago from El Salvador. “Rather, we are criminalized for the mere fact of being immigrants. For me, it would be terrible if this committee goes (down) this path.”

Undocumented immigrants make for fodder in political campaigns in a country that talks more about building walls or welcoming people to the American dream than it does about finding ways to do either.

Little in that political rhetoric puts statistics in context, acknowledges the need for foreign labor or discusses the dysfunctional and byzantine path to citizenship or legal entry standing in the way of people who want to play by the rules.

Testimony in St. Louis noted that violent crime is falling in Missouri and accused the committee of cherry-picking and exploiting crimes committed by immigrants, which are statistically less likely compared to crimes committed by native-born people.

“This is simply not good governance,” concluded a statement submitted by the Migrant and Immigrant Community Action Project. “Missourians should be united to solve problems, not create false narratives for political gain.”

The political battle over the immigration narrative is being amplified by plenty of cash. In the first six months of the year, politicians nationwide spent more than $247 million on advertising and social media mentioning immigrants.

The outlay was $40 million more than what was spent on any other topic.

It’s a lot of attention for the estimated 3.3% of the U.S. population who are undocumented immigrants.

Pew Research Center estimates that about one in 100 people in Missouri are undocumented. In Kansas, nearly three in 100 are undocumented. They are a critical source of labor for the economy — and the focus of an ongoing debate about how the country manages its borders.

“I can’t speak for everybody on this committee, but my focus is trying to determine the facts regarding the headlines relating to illegal immigration and crime,” said Missouri Rep. David Casteel, a Republican from Jefferson County. “So without specific data, how can we determine where the truth lies?”

Witnesses speak

Kansas City witnesses tried.

Kansas City Police Department officers said immigration is a federal issue. And they do not routinely ask the immigration status of people because doing so could undercut the trust officers need to solve crime and serve the entire community.

“Our officers work very hard to make sure that people feel safe to call us,” said Officer Octavio Villalobos, “regardless of accent or what they look like on the outside.”

KCPD Maj. Kari Thompson repeatedly told the group that Black men are a heavy focus for the department, both as perpetrators and victims of violent crime — not immigrants from Latin countries.

Pressed for data about crime related to citizens and noncitizens, Thompson promised to share those concerns with superiors.

Labor expert Judy Ancel told the panel that wage theft from local immigrants is their most common brush with crime. She recounted decades of U.S. trade and foreign policy, trying to encourage the committee to understand that, in her view, the country is complicit in the factors that drive migrants to seek asylum at the southern border.

Immigration attorneys speaking to the Missouri legislative committee also highlighted nearly 49,000 cases backlogged at the immigration court in downtown Kansas City.

Immigrants are being told to appear in 2027 or 2028. That causes many people seeking asylum to miss their one-year window to apply for authorization to work, said Michael Sharma-Crawford, a Kansas City immigration attorney.

“The process is daunting,” he said. “That’s the easiest word that I have and it’s probably not strong enough.”

Backlogs in the portion of the immigration system that governs work-related entry into the nation can keep industries, such as the ranchers Sharma-Crawford has represented in western Kansas, from getting enough workers.

Meanwhile, foreign-born children brought to the U.S. by their parents can also find themselves without legal status even as they’re assimilated into American culture, like one student he aided who wore a Nirvana T-shirt.

“You can’t get any more American than grunge rock,” Sharma-Crawford told the panel. “We now have an Americanized, educated immigrant population.”

Immigration basics

Immigration law is among the most complicated parts of the federal government, second only to the tax code.

Those who know the convoluted system best — immigration attorneys, advocates for immigrants and scholars — argue the stakes are huge. Immigration law and policy can determine whether someone is sent back to a nation where they fear for their lives, or whether families remain separated for decades.

“A lot of immigration law is just sometimes outright contradictory because it’s been glommed together over decades,” said David Thronson, a professor at Michigan State University College of Law. “It just doesn’t have any coherence to it, the way something like tax law does.”

The policies and laws are intended to uphold the reunification of families, aid the economy by admitting immigrants with needed skills, provide humanitarian protections and promote national diversity.

The foreign-born population in 2022 was 14.3% of the nation’s residents, according to Pew Research Center. The historic high was 14.8% in 1890.

For decades, studies have concluded that immigrants are net job creators. They tend to start businesses more often than native-born people. And immigrants are about one in every six people in the workforce.

The U.S.-born population also is more likely to commit crimes, violent or otherwise.

But politicians tend to blame worries about the U.S. economy, lost jobs and costs related to housing, education and health care on new arrivals.

In 2024, the criticisms come from both Democrats and Republicans. Former President Donald Trump launched his first campaign by framing immigrants as invaders and calling for mass deportation, which most experts say isn’t feasible given legal concerns and resources. He has continued to call for mass deportation in 2024.

But Lucas Kunce, a Democrat challenging Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, has also released ads touting his experience training with agents at the U.S. southern border.

In one ad, Kunce vows: “I’ll secure that border, no matter who the president is.”

Changing rhetoric

Invoking immigrants during political campaigns is not new. But there has been a shift in tone in recent decades.

Thronson begins lessons on immigration and elections by asking students to watch a 1980 GOP presidential primary debate between Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.  Bush replied to an audience question about undocumented children attending public schools in Houston for free.

“I’d like to see something done about the illegal alien problem that would be so sensitive and so understanding about labor needs and human needs that that problem wouldn’t come up,” he said.

Bush added that the lack of legal pathways for migrants marked a fundamental problem. He didn’t want young children denied an education. (By 1982, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Texas case, Plyler v. Doe, guaranteed those students the right to attend.)

Reagan proposed what is blasphemy in the 21st century GOP — allowing legal entry and reentry, work visas and to “open the border both ways.”

More than four decades later, an immigration system nimble enough to be responsive to U.S. labor needs still doesn’t exist, Thronson said.

“Both (Reagan and Bush) are significantly further to the left of anybody today, even the left,” he said.

In recent decades, gerrymandering has made congressional and state legislative districts more solidly for one party or the other, Thronson said, and that rewards extreme views during primaries.

One result is the use of immigration as a wedge issue, despite the fact that polling shows broad public agreement that the current system isn’t working.

The last significant change to immigration law came in 1996. It included several measures making it easier to deport people and taking away eligibility for some benefits.

The changes imposed three- and 10-year bans on undocumented immigrants if they leave the country to try and reenter legally.

“So people don’t leave,” Thronson said. “And now we have millions of people in this country who are eligible for visas. They have long-standing marriages to U.S. citizens and families … but they can’t get the visa for which they’re eligible.”

In June, the Biden administration introduced a program allowing a pathway for undocumented people married to U.S. citizens, if they met certain conditions.

In late August, Texas and Idaho filed suit to stop Biden’s plan. Missouri and Kansas are among the 14 states whose Republican attorneys general also joined the lawsuit, which a federal judge put on hold while the issue goes through the courts.

Playing for votes

Campaigns are targeting immigration messages at particular groups.

Black voters are sometimes being encouraged to see a Kamala Harris presidency as a threat. Harris, as vice president, was given the job of exploring the root causes driving many people from Central American countries to the U.S.

Trump has spoken of immigrants coming to take “Black jobs.” Metal signs with racially offensive messaging have appeared at bus stops in Denver and Chicago, goading Black riders to take seats at the back of the bus while “Kamala’s migrants sit in the front.”

The U.S. Border Patrol documented a record 250,000 encounters with migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in December 2023, before seeing the numbers begin to drop.

In August, for the first time, the largest civil rights organization working on behalf of Latinos issued a border policy paper based on the views of Latino voters.

The report was a first for the D.C. group, UnidosUS, which is led by Kansas City, Kansas-born and raised Janet Murguia.

Overwhelmingly, Latino voters voiced support for an immigration system and border policies that would be “firm, fair and free of cruelty,” said Cristobal Ramón, senior adviser on immigration with UnidosUS. But he said that, like most Americans, economic issues rank higher with Latino voters.

“Pocketbook issues are always the leading issues for Latinos and Americans writ large,” he said. “Inflation hits everybody.”

The polling showed that Latino voters are not lining up behind hard-line approaches at the border, like separating families, especially children.

But they join other voters in wanting solutions.

“The Latino electorate has had this position for a very long time,” Ramón said. “What’s shifted is just simply that political parties, the candidates, have been starting to pay attention a little bit to where the public is, and have been shifting their positions around that.”

This article first appeared on Beacon: Missouri and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.