I discontinued the syndication of my political drawings some 30 years ago .... however, it's surprising (and depressing) to me to see how many of those images remain relevant. So, as a signpost to the future, here's a bit of the past ...
The Border
(Dan Hubig©1984)
Outside of Supreme Court nominations nothing stirs up the dust like immigration policy. The facts are seldom considered relevant however, especially when one of the parties' presidential nominees has based his campaign on his irrational intention to build a gigantic wall basically from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean.
How about some facts?
1. The United States is home to about 11.3 million immigrants without legal documentation. That number is 3.5% of the population. That percentage has gone down over the last nine years.
2. Six states - California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois - account for 60% of the unauthorized immigrants in the U.S.. However, only Illinois has an unemployment rate that is substantially higher than the national average. In fact, five of the six states are either at the national average or better. So much for the terrible impact of immigration on jobs.
3. Fourteen states have seen their percentage of undocumented workers go down in the last seven years.
4. Unauthorized workers are 5.1% of the U.S. labor force.
5. Approximately 7% of all K-12 students have at least one unauthorized immigrant parent. If undocumented parents are returned to their native country, then around that percentage of U.S. school children would be expelled. That number would be approximately 13% of all school age children in California and Texas and 18% in Nevada.
© Dan Hubig, 2016
Dan Hubig is an illustrator and street photographer
who lives in San Francisco, California.
