Itzel Vargas-Valenzuela’s job as program director of Advocates for Immigrant Rights and Reconciliation, in Kansas City, Kansas, means she specifically notices political advertisements in which immigrants are accused of stealing hard-earned public benefits from American taxpayers.
One recent ad from Missouri’s U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley grabbed her attention.
“(Lucas Kunce) would give amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, letting them draw down on Social Security without paying their fair share,” claims the narrator of the ads, airing throughout Missouri and northeast Kansas this cycle, “even with all the benefits they’re getting right now.”
The Hawley campaign did not respond to a request for comment, but Vargas-Valenzuela said her experience tells her the claim is untrue.
“If you're not basically a permanent resident or a citizen, you cannot get Medicaid,” she said. “You cannot get food stamps.”
As a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals act herself, Vargas-Valenzuela doesn't qualify for many federal benefits. The Obama-era program gives her temporary protection from deportation and permission to work legally, but not legal status.
Fears over immigration have powered much of the messaging in the 2024 election, and though the Kansas City area is not subject to around-the-clock campaigning seen in some swing states, residents are still bombarded with political content featuring nativist rhetoric.
Advertisements nationwide show the southern border in chaos, former president and current Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called last week for a “liberation day” from an occupation by migrants, and conspiracy theories about immigrants have flourished.
Immigrants and refugees in the metro are taking notice. Some say the rhetoric has a direct effect on them and their families.
For Vargas-Valenzuela, that impact looks like clients who are afraid to claim federal benefits, partly because of the kind of rhetoric featured in ads.
“People that would actually qualify, and need it, don't (claim it) because there's this fear of the public charge,” Vargas-Valenzuela said, referring to a federal rule that could prevent someone from getting a visa or lawful permanent residence if the government determines they are likely to rely on certain public benefits in the future.
Vargas-Valenzuela said, in Kansas and Missouri, the number of immigrants on federal benefits programs like SNAP and Medicaid “were so small compared to the eligibility.”
As for what fuels the rhetoric, Vargas-Valenzuela believes some people just want a scapegoat.
“There's this big, big push,” she said. “I would even feel, like, from both political sides.”
Frustration and false narratives
Frustration over false narratives and lack of support for the refugee community is what led Mariya Dostzadah Goodbrake, herself a refugee, to found Global FC. Her Kansas City, Missouri, nonprofit is focused on reaching the children of refugees through soccer.
Since immigrating to Canada from Afghanistan in the 1980s, Goodbrake said, “this type of rhetoric has become magnified, and it's become so intense.”
Edgar Galicia has observed anti-immigrant narratives circulate in historically-Hispanic neighborhoods of Kansas City, Kansas, and worries animosity towards entire groups of people will lead to attacks on individuals.
“Republicans’ vision for new immigrants has challenged the reality we live in,” said Galicia, executive director of the Central Area Betterment Association.
“There is fear of that anger being directed at specific individuals,” Galicia said. “I have felt it, I have seen it.”
Galicia thought the source of nativist sentiment could be a desire to return to the past.
“(But) nobody is looking at the price that it actually costs” to do that, he said. “A lot of people suffered without being included, being pushed away.”
Not all immigrants in the Kansas City area view the present moment as a cause for concern.
Baset Azizi immigrated to the U.S. from Afghanistan as a teenager in 2016. Now, Azizi considers himself a political moderate, and he has worked for Kansas GOP Rep. Jake LaTurner in Washington and on former Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt’s unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign in 2022.
“Before joining those offices, I was a little bit worried because of something you always hear in the news: that maybe Republicans are not always welcoming of refugees and immigrants,” Azizi said. “We built a great relationship and we are still in touch, and that (worry) wasn’t true.”
Azizi said he doesn’t know if recent high-profile conspiracy theories regarding immigrant communities are true, but he said he trusts popular acceptance of immigrants will come through their own hard work and by obtaining citizenship.
“Once you are a citizen, it doesn’t really matter,” he said, “because then, just like any American, you can participate in society.”
‘The rhetoric is … harming all of us’
Vargas-Valenzuela doesn’t think legal status or length of time in the country should matter in the face of bigotry, and she knows anti-immigrant hate is not just leveled against noncitizens.
“The rhetoric is, at the end of the day, harming all of us, regardless of how long we've been here,” she said.
Even organizations that cater to immigrant and refugee communities are adjusting their approach to publicity.
“We don't feel as though now is the appropriate time to expose the agency or our clients to any potential negativity that a story about our work or our people might elicit,” wrote a Jewish Vocational Services representative in an email when asked for comment on this story.
The group works to integrate and aid new immigrants and refugees around Kansas City, and racist conspiracy theories circulating online have accused Jewish people of importing immigrants to “replace” white people. Such conspiracies have served as the motive for the October 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh.
Vargas-Valenzuela’s organization met more than a year ago to plan for how to navigate this election cycle. Even with that plan, she said, they weren’t prepared for how bad rhetoric has gotten.
“It brings me back to 2017," she said, referencing the attack and murder of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an Indian national, at a sports bar in Olathe.
According to prosecutors in his case, prior to killing Kuchibhotla and injuring his friend Alok Madasani, both engineers at Garmin, attacker Adam Purinton poked Kuchibhotla in the chest, called him a “terrorist” and a racial epithet, and shouted, “Get out of my country!”
“That's the real life consequences of this rhetoric — it's hate crimes,” Vargas-Valenzuela said. “I think they're going to increase. They have increased. They did increase.”
According to the FBI’s annual crime statistics, reported hate crimes have nearly doubled over the last nine years, from 6,121 in 2016 to 11,862 in 2023.
Constant political messaging that casts immigrants as criminals, terrorists, and the people “poisoning the blood of this country,” as former President Trump said at a rally last December, has an acute impact on children too, Goodbrake observed.
“I had a young Congolese boy say, ‘My president hates me,’” she said, recalling what she called a shocking instance during the Trump presidency.
Goodbrake also remembered what people said about her own Afghan refugee family, which spent time in Iran and India before settling in Canada in the 1980s and 90s.
“I remember people in the community came to our house and made fun of me in school,” she said. “That we were killing cats, and were eating them.”
Similar accusations have a long history in American politics, having been leveled against immigrants as far back as the 1880s. More recently, in September, former President Trump repeated similar false claims during a nationally-televised debate about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets.
The persistence of these narratives is simple, said Goodbrake. “People fear what they don't understand.”
Despite the currently bleak political climate, Goodbrake and others aren’t ready to despair.
“I get fired up, and it really fuels me to kind of fight back against this (rhetoric),” Goodbrake said.
“Your heritage is beautiful, your cultural identity is amazing. Hold on to it. Do not be ashamed of it,” she said she regularly tells the kids and families she works with. “You have so much to contribute to the beauty of what Kansas City and the United States is.”
Vargas-Valenzuela also sees a chance for unity amidst the negative rhetoric.
“At the same time that there are a lot of people falling for the negative rhetoric, there are also a lot of people who are opposing it, and it really does give me some hope,” she said.
