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Just like sending troops to the American border right before the 2018 elections, Trump's order banning immigration is an obvious political play that both offers no meaningful help on problems it purports to solve and actually makes the situation worse. Consider:
1) The rationale provided in the tweet is protecting jobs. But immigration (and in particular, migration of temporary workers) naturally decreases during recessions anyhow. As Doug Massey documents here: https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Immigration_fact_sheet.pdf
... The Great Recession saw a sharp decline of temporary workers and undocumented immigrants. People aren't trying to get jobs in the US when there's not demand for employment.
2) This makes the situation worse. As @nicolenarea writes here, we are seeing shortages of medical workers in acute areas, but that need could be met by foreign born doctors and nurses. https://www.vox.com/2020/3/30/21190971/foreign-immigrant-
Rather than restricting immigration, we should be setting up specialized streamlined visa processes to encourage immigrants with medical skills to come here.
3) The food supply chain -- including farm workers and meat packing plants -- relies heavily on immigrant labor, including temporary seasonal workers who come here on H-2A visas.
We're already seeing risks to that supply chain, so much so that that DHS has declared farmworkers essential https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-undocumented-immigrant-farmworkers-agriculture.html
So much so, in fact, that DHS actually *streamlined* the H-2A process to make it easier for prior H-2A visa holders to work this year: https://vegetablegrowersnews.com/news/breaking-agency-temporarily-amends-h-2a-rules-during-coronavirus-crisis/
What this tweet from Trump does to that is anyone's guess.
What this tweet from Trump does to that is anyone's guess.
Immigrants make America great, and also, healthy, prosperous, and well-fed. That's true for skilled immigrants like doctors, and for what is termed "unskilled" labor (though you try working in a field all day). This move by Trump makes America weaker, and we'll all suffer for it.
But he's bad at his job at addressing the substantive public health and economic crises, and all he knows how to do is gin up baseless fears of foreigners, and his attempts to blame China haven't been successful (and counterproductive to getting needed supplies), so here we are
