Yang says immigrants are being scapegoated

Businessman and Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang on Wednesday said immigrants are being used as scapegoats for economic issues facing the U.S. 

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“I’m the son of immigrants myself,” Yang said at the Democratic primary debate in Detroit. “My father immigrated here as a graduate student and generated over 60 U.S. patents for GE and IBM. I think that’s a pretty good deal for the United States. That’s the immigration story we need to be telling. We can’t always be focusing on some of the distress stories.”

“If you go to a factory here in Michigan, you will not find wall-to-wall immigrants, you will find wall-to-wall robots and machines,” he continued. “Immigrants are being scapegoated for issues they have nothing to do within our economy.” 

Andrew Yang says immigrants are being scapegoated for issues they have nothing to do with. #DemDebate #DemocraticDebate #DemDebate2 pic.twitter.com/BeEMgsH3YE

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) August 1, 2019

Yang was pushing back against the idea that immigrants to the U.S. are creating more competition for other Americans in the job market.

President Trump has frequently blamed other countries for taking jobs from U.S. workers, in addition to advocating for stricter immigration laws.