If they reopen, will they come?

UNABLE to tweet the virus away, his chances for reelection threatened and validated by thousands of empty seats at his comeback rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, his mantra that the United States would reopen, “vaccine or no vaccine,” taken up by the governors of Texas, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas and California, US President Donald Trump has lowered down the moat of restrictions allowing travel within and without communities, cities and in-state.

Within weeks, tens of thousands of new cases forced the governors to hit the emergency pause button.

The “reopeners” — claiming their right not to wear masks and put their lives in danger — apparently got what they wished and took thousands with them to coronavirus testing centers. They came, they saw, they Covid. America recorded its highest single-day new coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases, with 40,870 new infections confirmed, prompting governors in states such as Texas and Florida to reintroduce some restrictions. In addition, the United Kingdom-based Guardian reported that Trump had canceled a golf trip in response to the news.

Elsewhere in the reopening world, the global death toll passed 490,00, while 9.7 million cases have been recorded worldwide. (The 10-million mark should be breached by time of publication.)

The UK government announced a 14-day mandatory self-isolation for travelers; Brazil recorded 46,860 new cases on June 26 with no slowdown in sight. India’s Federal Health Ministry reported 17,000 new cases, pushing the country’s total above 500,000 “with infections surging in major cities, including the capital New Delhi.”

Australia and New Zealand warns about admitting new immigrants or workers. Winston Peters of New Zealand First, New

Zealand’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister, said New Zealand “should tighten its liberal immigration policies and concentrate on improving the skills of its own workforce following the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Saturday saw Johns Hopkins University announcing total confirmed cases at 9,815,246 with the US leading at 2,467,837, followed by Brazil, Russia and India.

Looks like borders and barriers to immigrants and workers will be an intrinsic part of the new normal.

Back in the US, the reopening resulted in hundreds of thousands of new cases and deaths. Texas alone reported 130,000 cases and more than 2,300 deaths. .

Reopening across states was ordered by the governors following the US president’s claim that America is doing great.

In his speech at a Turning Point Action Address to Young Americans in Phoenix, Arizona, Trump said America and his administration are “doing the greatest — we had the greatest economy we ever had, the greatest job numbers we ever had, the greatest of everything.”

Buoyed by a spike in employment numbers in May, Trump said, “You saw, last week, the jobs numbers, the biggest ever. You saw the retail sales numbers, the biggest ever. Number one.” Biggest ever jobs numbers? Mr. Trump must be referring to the June 5, 2020 news release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. His own government agency in charge of reporting actual, factual data did say “total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 2.5 million in May and the unemployment rate declined to 13.3 percent.”

Biggest even retail sales numbers?

Trading Economics did mention that US retail sales “jumped 17.7 percent from a month earlier in May of 2020, recovering from a record 14.7-percent fall in April, and much better than forecasts of an 8-percent increase. It is the biggest rise on record, as Americans went back to work and many stores reopened after the coronavirus lockdown.”

But “compared to the same month in 2019, retail sales fell 6.1 percent. Also, sales were 12.7 percent lower in the three months to May than in the 3 months to February before the pandemic started.”

The “greatest” claim during the rally in Phoenix as the result of his insistence to reopen America, was followed by a telling admission from Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey who warned that the state’s hospitals were likely to hit surge capacity soon because of new cases that surged past 66,000.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott hit the pause button on the Lone Star state’s reopening “ordering bars closed and telling restaurants to limit themselves to 50 percent capacity rather than 75 percent.”

In hindsight, Abbot said in an interview with KVIA- TV in El Paso last week that “if I could go back and redo anything, it probably would have been to slow down the opening of bars.”

As for immigrants, even if America does by and large reopen, they are not welcome.

On the same day that Trump claimed the US was never better, he issued a proclamation banning foreign workers from getting to the US on the H- 1B and H- 2B temporary work visas, and students and interns on the J- 1 and multinational manager or executives on L- 1 intra- company transferee.

The June 23, 2020 proclamation was a follow-up to the April 23 60- day immigration ban. Interestingly, the June proclamation came at the end of the 60-day period.

In contrast to his claim during the Phoenix rally that America was doing great, the proclamation issued by the White House states that the reason for the immigration ban was that immigrants and foreign workers are competing for the few, limited jobs available.

The US president’s proclamation officially states ( not just a rally claim) that the overall unemployment rate in the United States nearly quadrupled between February and May of 2020 — producing some of the most extreme unemployment ever recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While the May rate of 13.3 percent reflects a marked decline from April, millions of Americans remain out of work.”

Immigrants, Trump officially states, are unwanted competitors.

“Lawful permanent residents,” the proclamation says, “once admitted pursuant to immigrant visas, are granted ‘ open- market’ employment authorization documents, allowing them immediate eligibility to compete for almost any job, in any sector of the economy.”

“American workers compete against foreign nationals for jobs in every sector of [ the US] economy, including against millions of aliens who enter the United States to perform temporary work.”

Therefore, the proclamation was issued to stop aliens seeking to work in the US in the working visa categories — as well as the dependents, spouse and/or minor children of the visa holders.

The ban is scheduled to end Dec. 31, 2020 “and may be continued as necessary.”

It will be a blue Christmas for green card holders and US citizens, whose family members being sponsored on immigrant visas will not make it this year.

America’s reopening is on hold. So are the immigrants and non- immigrant workers who cannot come.