Trump Deportation Order Risk: Immigrants Driven Underground, Not Out<br />The Interpreter By<br />MAX FISHER and<br />AMANDA TAUB<br />FEB. 23, 2017<br />New deportation rules proposed by the Trump administration risk creating an American underclass with parallels to others around<br />the world: slum residents in India, guest workers in oil-rich Persian Gulf states and internal migrant workers in China.<br />Even if slum residents are cleared out, this does not fix the problem<br />that put them in slums in the first place: Cities need cheap labor but often don’t provide cheap housing.<br />Under what is known as the kafala system, a gulf state employer can unilaterally dictate the legal<br />and immigration status of unskilled foreign migrants who work jobs like construction and housekeeping, putting those workers at the whims of employers.<br />But while this temporarily reduces pressure on migrants and on the state, it leaves the underlying problem in place — and tends to prompt a populist backlash<br />that leads to policies like Mr. Trump’s deportation rules.<br />Though millions reside in the United States, often bolstering local economies, being in the wrong place at the wrong time could lead to deportation.<br />India’s slums demonstrate another issue: Residents, cut off from basic services and the justice system, need something to take their place.
