Why Trump versus Hillary is what US Democrats should wish for

If there is a wall most mentioned on the search engines, even more than China's Great Wall, it is Donald Trump's "dream wall against immigrants'', on the US border with Mexico. His "draft code against immigrants'' ensuring "jobs first to local Americans else face cut in green cards", is no less draconian.

The GOP frontrunner is raising his anti-immigration rant to rally more support base to expand his camp strength, but the echo of opposition is no less. In fact, the pitch, opposing it both in the US mainstream media to those among the immigrants, mostly Asians and Hispanics, and the social classes he rubbed the wrong way - blacks, Muslims, gays, women and disabled - is getting shriller, loud and aggressive.

In a latest post on its website, the Washington Post editorial team, which had met Trump on March 28, reaffirmed the risk America faces in electing Trump. The editorial post read: "We met with Donald Trump. Electing him will still be a radical risk".

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In all probability it will be razed before being raised, hope many Americans. As one top Indian-American philanthropist Frank F Islam sums up the seething anger among immigrants: "We won't let him even lay the first brick of that wall…we need bridge builders, not wall builders." 

Interestingly, President Barack Obama in November 2014 had complimented the immigrants of US as "those who believe in the American Dream and who have given the largest democracy an advantage over others by making it entrepreneurial." But another dreamer of the White House thinks otherwise. One is intrigued at Trump's stand even as he himself has thrived on cheap immigrant labour and has flaunted his business empire.

He is a shrewd businessman, no doubt, as he had built a real estate empire worth under US$ 5 billion. He himself has understood and followed well the "Immigranomics'', which has actually built America in the last 30 years where labour first chased capitalism only to become inseparable. He has sponsored visas to his employees hired for his companies.

His Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach in Florida, considered as one of the best private clubs in the world, filled hundreds of posts with foreign guest workers from Romania and east Europe. The US labour department confirms that only 17 US residents have got the jobs so far and nearly 500 visas have been given to foreigners.

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Now seeing an opportunity in political arena, the businessman tries to get "politically correct" and manipulates the "phobia of the middle class white Americans." India-born author and now Danish citizen Tabish Khair's new book Xenophobia has portrayed the current American "turbulence in political space" most apt in simple words. We live in a capitalist world where both capital and labour are supposed to circulate freely. This is good as far as capital goes for many people in affluent countries. But when labour follows capital into these countries in search of jobs or better lives, it becomes a problem - and an easy way to get votes by some politicians.

In the case of Trump, it is an opportunity well-timed. Trump vote camp is of people who have suffered jobs, lost wages and dreams and have lived mostly on social benefits, which started to shrink as US battled recession along with the world. He is now getting real with his political motive in stoking his crowds by promising to bring back jobs that have been snatched by "illegal immigrants" or "outsourced'' by corporations.

Doing so, he is not even worried what it costs to his image - now branded as a "menace, misogynist, bigot and xenophobe'' by his own Republicans. He cares for none.

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But he must care for the economic loss that the US would have to incur before making these public rants. Today, every seventh American is being treated by an Indian. And, in next five to ten years, it will be every fifth American going to an Indian doctor as the number of Indian medical students will increase. Can he afford to check this "healthy immigration?"

More, the near 4.5 million overseas students, who later get accommodated in the American job market, much to the discomfort and frustration of native middle class unemployed white Americans, contribute about US$ 30 billion annually in fees and other costs.

India and China account for nearly 51 per cent of the overseas student numbers and about 73 per cent students, mostly undergraduate receive funds outside of the US from personal and family sources. Even while taking the jobs as H1B visa holders, an issue which is currently raising heat in Trump camp, India alone pays about US$ 1 million annually in social security tax.

His off the cuff racism appeals to many of those white Americans who grew up with a sense of entitlement and can now only face their social failures, real or imagined, by resenting new immigrants. The fact that these immigrants are coloured makes them - and their relative successes - more glaring in the eyes of these white Americans, who also do not have a real understanding of global capitalism while they want to keep enjoying its fruits.

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I wish he would have spared some time to read US official documents and published reports. According to the national survey of college graduates, immigrants represent 29 per cent of scientists.

They also represent 50 per cent of PhDs working in math and computer science occupations and 57 per cent of PhDs working in engineering occupations. This is from where America has been built over decades following the Second World War. More than 40 per cent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or a child of immigrants. These companies employ more than ten million people worldwide and generate annual revenue of $4.2 trillion.

And as a businessman, he should have understood the price of cheap labour in immigrants as of the large Hispanic community mostly employed in construction and service industry today.

Most of the domestic maids, janitors, housekeeping staff in hospitality hail from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, where successive civil wars triggered large immigrations and much was precipitated by US own politics in Latin America.

The ignorance of Trump before going public with "his wall against immigrants'' has given Democrats the right handle as the presidential poll race enters the decisive stage. Hillary Clinton's camp wants Trump as the opponent for a simple reason - the businessman's low IQ in politics will do good business for Democrats this time.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)