Presidential Candidate Donald Trump Focuses on Immigration in Key Economic Speech
FAIR Take | September 2024
Last Thursday, former President Donald Trump gave a speech at the Economic Club of New York outlining his economic vision for a second term as president. Throughout the speech, Trump repeatedly emphasized how his vision required securing our borders and stopping illegal immigration.
In particular, Trump discussed how immigration impacts jobs and wages. He highlighted the economic struggle of average Americans, stating that millions of Americans are working second jobs, or being underpaid. He attributed that struggle to the massive influx of illegal aliens at our borders, placed the blame squarely at the feet of Kamala Harris, and called our open borders a “total economic catastrophe.”
Later in the speech, Trump argued that all of the jobs created in the past year have gone to illegal aliens. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in the last 12 months over 1.3 million native-born Americans have lost jobs. During that same period, more than 1.2 million new jobs went to foreign-born workers. Notably, many illegal aliens have received work permits under the Biden-Harris Administration, including aliens who have filed asylum applications and aliens who have been paroled into the United States through one of Biden-Harris Administration’s illegal parole programs.
Trump also discussed how illegal immigration impacts benefits programs. Most notably, Trump asserted that: Harris is in favor of mass amnesty for tens of millions of illegal aliens, which would bankrupt Social Security and Medicare; that a second Trump Administration would ban mortgages for illegal aliens, contrary to proposals coming out of California; and that he would ask Congress to pass a bill barring all taxpayer-funded public benefits for illegal aliens.
In a social media post regarding the speech, the Economic Club said it had also extended an invitation to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris to speak before its members. She has not accepted that invitation.
To educate our members, FAIR has created a video of the immigration-related portions of former President Trump’s speech, which can be seen below. To read more about Donald Trump’s immigration record, click here.
To read more about Kamala Harris’ immigration record, click here.