But there’s an additional nuance here worth appreciating. While Trump (and many GOP candidates imitating him) have used immigration to launch many race-baiting appeals designed to energize the hard-core Trumpist base — from the claim that Dems coddle MS-13 to the vow to make Mexico pay for the wall — this issue is a bit different. Immigration advocates believe the attack on immigrants claiming benefits is directed not just at the base, but also at softer supporters of Trump or even Republicans who are turning away from him, such as GOP-leaning college educated or suburban whites who might recoil at the more obvious race-based messaging.
“While ‘immigrants take jobs’ works with the angry, resentful base, a more potent line of attack with the better educated, more successful — and more reluctant — Republican is the ‘immigrants use welfare’ distortion that this policy fight sets up,” Frank Sharry, the executive director of America’s Voice, tells us. “These less rabid Republicans have jobs, homes, and security. They are more likely to resent the idea — inaccurate as it is — that their tax dollars are paying to support immigrants.”
In fact, as a recent
Cato Institute study found, “immigrants are less likely to consume welfare benefits and, when they do, they generally consume a lower dollar value of benefits than native-born Americans.”
That’s not to mention that nearly all Americans benefit at one time or another from programs that would fit under the expansive definition of “welfare” Republicans would like to propagate. For instance, if you’re not getting health insurance from the government in the form of Medicare or Medicaid, or getting subsidies through the ACA, the government is paying part of your health insurance premiums by making them tax-deductible. That’s far and away the
largest tax expenditure on the books, over triple the size of the mortgage interest deduction, another government program you may benefit from.
