U. S. Immigration: When Fear Replaces Reason: The Invisible Workers Who Keep the Country Running
The thought of facts by Hubert Marlin Elingui Jr.
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Editorial
U. S. Immigration: When Fear Replaces Reason: The Invisible Workers Who Keep the Country Running
The thought of facts by Hubert Marlin Elingui Jr.
Flashmag! Issue 169 February 2026
Dawn barely breaks over the California fields. In the morning mist, dozens of silhouettes already bend over rows of lettuce stretching to the horizon. Their hands fly from plant to plant with surgical precision. In a few hours, they will have picked thousands of heads that will line supermarket shelves across the country. We talk about these workers a lot. In political rallies, televised debates, electoral programs. They’ ve become a catch-all term: immigrants. A threat, we’ re told. An economic burden. A danger to security. Yet when you leave the terrain of rhetoric for that of facts, a completely different reality emerges. And it’ s disturbing.
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When Ideology Disguises Itself as Economics
Economists have been repeating it for decades: immigration is broadly beneficial to the American economy. It stimulates growth, rejuvenates an aging population, fills labor shortages, contributes to public finances. Without it, entire sectors would collapse: agriculture, construction, restaurants, personal services. The numbers are there, documented, verified, republished. And yet they weigh nothing against the dominant discourse.