The American presidential election will take place this Tuesday, November 5 and candidate Donald Trump is already preparing his arguments to undermine the legitimacy of the results in the event of defeat. To do this, the ex-president and some of his Republican Party supporters are pointing to supposed votes from “illegal” immigrants and non-citizens who, according to them, could tip the scales in favor of Kamala Harris.
Drawing on the far-right racist theory of the “great replacement,” this type of argument implies that Democrats are using immigration policies to replace white Americans – and in this case, white voters. – by minorities. These arguments find particular resonance on the social network X (formerly Twitter), where owner Elon Musk was the first to relay them. Vox magazine set out to decipher three lies relayed by Elon Musk regarding the immigrant vote in the United States.
“Democrats naturalize undocumented immigrants to tilt the election”
According to Elon Musk, Democrats are speeding up naturalization applications to rig the election in favor of Kamala Harris. On September 29, 2024, he stated in a post on: «If only one in twenty illegal immigrants became citizens each year, which Democrats are accelerating as quickly as possible, that would represent about 2 million new legal voters in four years. The voting margin in the swing states («swing states» in English, editor’s note) is often less than 20,000 votes. This means that if the “Democratic” party succeeds, there will be no more states pivots!»
However, contrary to what the boss of American and legal resident for three years or be a member of the military.
Also, if the United States has been approving the right to citizenship more quickly for several years, it is because there was already a delay which has intensified since the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, the United States naturalized 878,500 people in 2023 and now process requests in approximately 4.9 months, a pace comparable to the speed with which the government approved requests in 2013.
“The government is flying migrants to swing states for the election”
In the same tweet, Elon Musk states that “the Biden/Harris administration has flown “asylum seekers” with a fast track to citizenship directly to swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and Arizona” . Here, the pattern of a “parole” program approved by the Biden administration for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, amid instability in their countries of origin.
Under this program, people can temporarily enter the United States for two years, but pay for their own travel to fly into the country. Nothing proves that these people arrive by plane specifically to pivotal states. Also, as a spokesperson for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) told Vox, the United States Department of Homeland Security does not choose the airports in which these people land and he does not control or choose where they settle.
Above all, people eligible for this program do not have access to citizenship and therefore would not be able to vote in the next elections. Additionally, most naturalized citizens have settled in states that are not swing states—with California, Texas, Florida, New York, and New Jersey topping the list. according to USCIS.
“Non-citizens are allowed to vote and help Democrats win federal elections”
On September 28, Republican Senator Mike Lee wrote on X: “Thousands of non-citizen voter files are being discovered in state after state and Democrats are trying to stop those states from removing non-citizens from their voter files.” It is this allegation that Elon Musk takes up in his tweet the next day.
In reality, it is illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections and it is very rare for non-citizens to vote illegally. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit organization that focuses on voting rights, election officials responsible for counting nearly 23.5 million votes in 2016 identified only 30 possible cases of non-citizen votes to verify.
In the United States, there is already significant skepticism regarding election security, in part due to Donald Trump’s questioning of the results of the 2020 election. Thus, a August ABC/Ipsos poll reveals that nearly 25% of Trump supporters are not ready to accept the results of the November 5 election. Recent allegations from Republicans and figures like Elon Musk could exacerbate this phenomenon, especially if they play into existing anti-immigrant prejudices.
Source: www.slate.fr
