The understatement of the year: Immigrants will not fare well under a Donald Trump presidency. To complicate matters more, no one can tell if they will do much better under Hillary Clinton.
In other words, immigrants face a difficult time no matter which of the two frontrunners (so far) in the race for the presidential nomination of their respective parties is elected President.
Multibillionaire Trump has vowed to round them up, deport them, build a wall at the border. So extreme and offensive is his stance on an issue directly impacting the lives of millions of families that even the Pope felt compelled to state his disgust during his recent visit to Mexico
“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Francis said.
Trump’s xenophobia and hatred of immigrants has become the trademark of his campaign.
So loud and obnoxious is this character that, thanks to his hateful remarks, the number of Latinos registering to vote for the first time has gone through the roof. Ironically, this so called “Trump effect” could end up killing his presidential ambitions.
Then, there is Hillary Clinton.
Although she has changed her tune just in time to run for president, it’s impossible to forget her callous words about the unaccompanied Central American children that arrived in the U.S. border in 2014.
“We have to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border, that doesn't mean the child gets to stay,” she told CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
Not that the former Secretary of State was not aware of the dangers these children were fleeing from. In the same interview she admitted that violence in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, the countries the young refugees had managed to escape from, was the main reason for their dangerous adventure. Yet, she told the interviewer that allowing them to remain here, even though was safer, “was not the answer.”
The consequences of such policy were tragic.  A Guardian investigation revealed that as many as 83 deportees were murdered between 2014 and 2015, shortly after been sent back.
Recently candidate Clinton has taken the opposite position. She even has a new, emotional commercial, in which she promises help to Karla Ortiz, a 10-year-old girl worried about her parents’ looming deportation.
"I'm going to do everything I can so you don't have to be scared and you don't have to worry too much about your mom or your dad or somebody else in your family," Clinton said to the girl, who is sitting on her lap. "I'll do the worrying; I'll do everything I can to help, OK?"
Inevitably, to many people the new ad seems nothing more than a campaign gimmick.
There is not much to be said about Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, the other two Republican hopefuls, from whom immigrants can only expect demagoguery and repression.
Definitely, it seems that unless Bernie Sanders is elected president, immigrants will travel a very bleak road in the foreseeable future.