Trump’s mistakes on immigration
John Bolton, the former national security adviser, writes in his new book that President Donald Trump makes decisions based on only political considerations.
Talking on ABC, Bolton warned about the serious dangers of a second Trump term: “The biggest fear I have is that his policymaking is so incoherent, so unfocused, so unstructured, so wrapped around his own personal political fortunes, that mistakes are being made that will have grave consequences for the national security of the United States.”
Trump’s already making many such mistakes. One of the most debilitating is his severe crackdown on foreigners seeking to immigrate here.
This is being done for only one purpose: to stir up Trump’s base for the election by exploiting nativist fears and demonizing “the others.” There’s nothing new about this. Trump announced his run for president by denouncing supposed hordes of Mexican “rapists” pouring across the border, and during the 2018 midterm elections, he tried — and failed — to scare voters with a nightmare “caravan” of criminals invading from the south.
The COVID-19 pandemic has given the president and his hardline advisers an opening to slam shut the “golden door” of American promise. That might appeal to his most xenophobic supporters, but it could be self-defeating: Halting immigration threatens to throttle the economic recovery
Trump is counting on to sway voters in November.
The administration’s latest moves would cut off work visas to hundreds of thousands of foreigners — mainly in the technology world, but potentially affecting sectors from landscaping and hospitality to medicine and higher education. Team Trump claims they’re protecting jobs for out-of-work Americans, and yes, a lot of families are hurting badly. But on balance, immigrants are job makers, not job takers. Their energy and entrepreneurship fuel America’s economic engines. And their taxes subsidize the social services enjoyed by older Trump voters.
That’s why the business community reacted so furiously to Trump’s new rules. Here’s Thomas J. Donohue, chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: “Putting up a ‘not welcome’ sign for engineers, executives, IT experts, doctors, nurses and other workers won’t help our country; it will hold us back. Restrictive changes in our nation’s immigration system will push investment and economic activity abroad, slow growth and reduce job creation.”
Or Jessica Herrera-Flanigan, head of public policy and philanthropy for Twitter: “This proclamation undermines America’s greatest economic asset: its diversity. Unilaterally and unnecessarily stifling America’s attractiveness to global, high-skilled talent is short-sighted and deeply damaging to the economic strength of the United States.”
Even some of Trump’s allies realize the damaging impact of his policy. In May, nine Republican
senators warned the president that “Guest workers are needed to boost American business, not take American jobs.”
But Trump is not listening. His agenda is to weaponize the COVID-19 crisis and virtually abolish the iimmigration system. For instance, new rules make it almost impossible for refugees or asylum seekers to gain entry into this country, even though American law and tradition commit the nation to providing a safe haven for desperate and destitute exiles.
As Nickole Miller of the University of Baltimore law school wrote in The Washington Post:
“The cumulative effect of these rules will be to effectively rewrite the refugee definition out of existence and end asylum in the United States.”
Moreover, the administration has halted the issuance of green cards. It has blocked more than 2,000 children at the southern border, many of them under 13, from even applying for refugee status. And though the Supreme Court thwarted Trump’s attempt to cancel the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which bars the deportation of about 700,000 “Dreamers” who were brought here as children, the president has signaled he will look for another way to abolish those safeguards.
Bolton is right: By focusing solely on his own political fortunes, Trump risks making decisions that could have “grave consequences” for the country. But here’s the irony: By restricting immigration, Trump could be undermining the best argument he has for his own reelection — a robust economic recovery.