Trump ratchets up anti-immigrant rhetoric, says he will go to Springfield

WASHINGTON: Best known as the fictional setting for The Simpsons cartoon series even though there are 67 real American towns with the same name, Springfield, Ohio, is bracing for a proposed Donald Trump visit even as he is ratcheting up his campaign against recent immigrants, saying Democrats are enlisting them to vote in the upcoming Presidential elections.

So fearful of his visit is the town -- already a tinderbox of bomb threats after he spread the canard about immigrants there eating pet dogs and cats -- that even its Republican mayor Rob Rue is pleading with him not to come. Ohio's Republican governor Mike DeWine has also debunked the story amid growing disquiet in the GOP establishment over Trump and his running mate JD Vance taking extreme positions endangering the Republican majority in Congress, which also goes to polls on November 5.

But with his opponent Kamala Harris edging ahead in most polls, Trump is in no mood to retool his campaign now centering on the purported immigrant invasion of America which he argues will skew the results of the November elections. On Saturday, the former President posted a manipulated video on social media showing Kamala Harris welcoming immigrants streaming across the border and asking them to vote for her.

The MAGA supremo has not announced a date for his Springfield visit (he has also said he will go to Aurora, Colorado, where he has falsely said Venezuelan gangs have taken over the city). But ahead of his proposed visit, his surrogate Vivek Ramaswamy held a town hall there on Friday, blaming the Biden-Harris dispensation for the migrant crisis while skirting the MAGA canard that Haitian immigrants are eating local dogs and cats.

Despite very little evidence and very few instances of illegal immigrants voting in the Presidential elections, Trump has doubled down on the conspiracy and urged Republican lawmakers to tie a legislation (SAVE act) aimed at barring non-citizens from voting to funding the government, a move that could result in a government shutdown. "Democrats are registering Illegal Voters by the TENS OF THOUSANDS, as we speak - They will be voting in the 2024 Presidential Election, and they shouldn’t be allowed to. Only American Citizens should be voting in our Most Important Election in History, or any Election!" Trump posted on social media this week.

It is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in US elections. Those who violate the law face prison time and deportation. In fact, a commission appointed by Trump after he lost the popular vote in 2016 to investigate the issue disbanded without identifying a single case of a noncitizen casting a vote, even though U.S. immigration authorities said they indicted 19 foreign nationals for illegal voting. Violators included citizens from Japan, Germany, and Italy.

Many poll analysts and think-tanks have said non-citizen voting is not an big issue and does not alter election results. Trump's grandstanding is ostensibly aimed at casting doubts on the authenticity of the 2024 elections, where the Presidential outcome aside (which is decided by the electoral college), he is again expected to suffer an embarrassing loss in terms of popular vote. He lost by nearly three million votes in 2016 and by seven million in 2020.

About one in ten US voters (totaling around 24 million) is a foreign-born immigrant who has become a naturalized citizen and is therefore eligible to vote. Some MAGA radicals have argued that only US-born citizens should be eligible to vote.

Incidentally, The Simpsons series features a fictional Indian immigrant named Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. He is a naturalized US citizen who runs a cornerstore in Springfield, and he also has a PhD in computer science.