The US needs to welcome immigrants, not demonize them

By The Editorial Board

EVEN for an administration that makes no secret of its antipathy toward immigrants, recent rhetoric from the White House has been alarming and inflammatory — and at odds with reality.

The facts are: Immigrants are more likely to be in the workforce, and start businesses, than native-born Americans. They are less likely to commit crimes. Even unauthorized immigrants pay more in taxes than they get back in benefits, many of which they’re ineligible to receive.

Nor is it true that they’re taking jobs away from Americans, as the president claims. The US currently has about 7 million job openings, far above historic norms. In some cases, employers can’t find workers with the right skills. In others, they can’t find workers at all — and the decline of immigration is one big reason why. Compared to a year ago, there are more than 300,000 fewer immigrants working in construction, landscaping and food service. Earlier this month, some 2,000 businesses and industry groups signed a letter highlighting the “dire shortage of seasonal labor” and urging the administration to make more visas available.

Yet in one statement last month, the president claimed that “most” immigrants “are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels”; blamed them for “failed schools, high crime, urban decay, overcrowded hospitals, housing shortages, and large deficits”; and cast them as predators “looking for ‘prey’ as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone.”

The White House called this missive “one of the most important messages ever released” by the president. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem doubled down, calling for “a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”

The apparent impetus for these repugnant outbursts was the Nov. 26 shooting of two National Guard members by an Afghan immigrant in Washington, as well as a long-running benefits scam in Minnesota that has led to charges against dozens of people in the state’s Somali community. Both crimes were abhorrent and should be prosecuted. The administration, however, seems to view them as a pretext to undertake a broad closure of legal immigration routes — to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries,” as the president put it.

Whatever a “permanent pause” turns out to mean, such an effort would be of a piece with the administration’s broader anti-immigrant agenda, which has included imposing new travel restrictions on more than a dozen countries, gratuitously revoking visas, detaining international students and researchers over social media posts, levying huge fees on H-1B visas, reducing opportunities for foreign graduates to legally work, and even making it harder for the children of legal immigrants to become permanent residents. That’s to say nothing of the mass deportations.

Immigrants are essential to the broader American economy, filling skills gaps, stimulating demand, increasing economic growth, encouraging innovation and boosting productivity. They’ve been a crucial element of Silicon Valley’s world-beating success — founding 60% of the country’s top artificial intelligence companies — while dominating US graduate programs in the most demanding fields. Needlessly harassing these workers makes no sense. As the US ages and its birth rate declines, immigrants are only going to become more important in the years ahead.

Rather than demonizing them, what’s really needed is what Congress has been avoiding for two decades: a comprehensive reform that secures the border, increases the number of legal immigrants and creates a pathway to legal status for those currently in the country illegally.

A deal of this kind would acknowledge reality while making the country richer, stronger and safer. It would also recognize that welcoming immigrants is, and always has been, the American way.

BLOOMBERG OPINION