President Donald Trump has come under fire for remarks he made about undocumented immigrants performing farm labor, after claiming they do the challenging work “naturally.”
Trump has repeatedly flip-flopped on his position on undocumented immigrants working on farms, moving from demanding “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,” to declaring accommodations must be made for them—in large part because the farmers cannot operate without them. Trump has called some undocumented farm workers “almost impossible to replace.”
Speaking to CNBC on Tuesday (video below), the President claimed that currently there is a program where these undocumented immigrants can get a “pass” to return to the U.S. legally after they receive “schooling.”
“We’re doing things that are that are very difficult to do and very complex, but it works really well,” Trump claimed. “We’re sending them back, and then they’re schooling, they’re learning, they’re coming in, they’re coming in legally. We have a lot of that going on, but we’re taking care of our farmers.”
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“We can’t let our farmers not have anybody, you know, these are these people, they’re—you can’t replace them very easily.”
He then went on to claim that “people that live in the inner city are not doing that work. They’re just not doing that work, and they’ve tried, we’ve tried, everybody tried , they don’t do it.”
“These people do it naturally, naturally,” he said of the undocumented.
He went on to describe a recent conversation he said he had with a farmer, where he asked, “What happens if they get a bad back?”
“He said, ‘They don’t get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back, they die.’”
“I said, ‘That’s interesting, isn’t it?’”
Critics blasted the president, with some describing his remarks as racist.
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“This was literally one of the arguments that slave owners in the U.S. used to justify slavery,” noted attorney Joseph M. Azam.
Economist Sky Marchini said that Trump is “inventing entirely new forms of racism every day.”
“Apparently, inner-city folks are lazy, but undocumented immigrants have indestructible spines. Amazing what a little economic exploitation can do for your posture,” wrote “recovering media guy” Marc Leunissen.
“‘Everyone has tried to get Black people to do menial labor in America but they’re too lazy so we’ve got to make the Mexicans do it, says THE F—— PRESIDENT,” wrote organizer and New York Times bestselling author Shannon Watts.
“‘They do it naturally?’ Where have I heard that phrase before? Oh, yeah! American History 501: The History of the South,” observed healthcare administration instructor Anthony M. Hopper.
“This is the same type of racist lie that says that black people don’t experience as much pain as white people, causing medical racism and leading to severely different outcomes for black patients,” wrote Cybersecurity expert Jackie Singh. “It’s stereotyping and racism, pure and simple.”
“This is so ridiculously racist and cruel. Yes, immigrants take jobs that American citizens will not. No, they are not ‘naturally’ suited to it – they’re forced to by our broken immigration and labor system. They deserve legal pathways and protections,” wrote Claudia Hernandez, a communicator for racial and economic justice.
Watch the video below or at this link.