A recent poll shows US illegal immigration fell nearly 65 percent in recent years. But anti-immigrant hysteria is still on the rise in America.

The report was released by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center.

Radio host Thom Hartmann argued that some in America fear immigrants and others use that fear as a political tool, scapegoating immigrants as the cause for American woes. Hartmann said the past 30 years of economic policy have lead to today’s economic crisis, but the anti-immigration movement is blaming immigrants instead.

“The jobs are gone and so you get demigogs like Newt Gengrich who are saying, ‘It’s them, it’s those brown people coming in from South America or from whatever you know, from Mexico’. The creation of an ‘other’ has always been the tools of demigogs and it’s always been a very convenient political tool and so we’ve got people on the right who are basically saying to people who are economically devastated and don’t realize it has nothing to do with immigration it has to do with trade policy, saying to them this is because of immigration policy, get hysterical. And they’re using that, and really it’s a very not particular subtle form of racism,” said Hartmann.

He also explained that it is a human instinct to view one’s family and community first and see others as threats; however humanity is now working in modern society to transcend that nature.