Even if you could set aside for a moment the racist implications of the new immigration bill proposed by a pair of Republican senators and backed by President Trump, their economic arguments for why we need this legislation are hardly airtight. At first blush the idea that unskilled immigrants take away jobs from working-class Americans makes a sort of intuitive sense, but of course there are studies that say this isn’t the case; that, instead, immigrants fill the sort of jobs, such as in agriculture and the restaurant industry, that many American workers are not inclined to want. There’s also a larger economic point ignored by the bill’s proponents, which is that immigrants compose almost half of this country’s population growth, and so have obviously provided much of the needed labor over the past many years. Less workers would also slow the growth of the U.S. economy, which as this CNBC article indicates would run smack dab contrary to Donald Trump’s promises to grow the economy by leaps and bounds.
With its restrictions on immigrants who are allowed into the country on grounds of family connections, the bill would greatly increase the percentage of overall immigrants allowed in due to their job skills (though as the New York Times notes, the raw numbers of such immigrants would not substantially change under the bill). The emphasis on bringing in better-educated workers who might threaten the jobs not of the working class, but of middle class and upper earners, makes it worth considering whether one aspect of this bill is that it reverses the class war that Trump suggests has been waged against lower-income Americans: with the avowed purpose of protecting the working class, it seems to look the other way when it comes to competition from immigrants for higher-end jobs. But, again, there are serious reasons to question the premise that immigrants generally “take away” jobs in the first place. As a side note, the bill includes a preference for people with "entrepreneurial" skills, but not those with skills at promoting democracy or engaging in human rights activism; this is another sign of the rot of the thing — could Republicans not offer a leg up to immigrants who might benefit our country in ways other than purely economic ones?
Look at me, though, arguing as if this whole thing was about logic and reason! As is often the case with this presidency, the most important part of the appeal here is emotional — primal, even: an appeal to not-always-stated-aloud arguments about what REAL Americans look like and how REAL Americans should get first dibs on jobs. So the main stated reason for the whole bill is that newcomers are taking away American jobs, and that this has to stop; this was a huge plank in Trump’s appeal to voters last year, and it’s not surprising he’s pushing it now as a way to rev up his base in this time of increasing White House disarray and incompetence. But the bill’s a real two-fer, though, because even if White House adviser Stephen Miller pushed back against the idea at a briefing this week, the legislation would also have the effect of bleaching the shit out of the skin color of the immigrant flow coming into the United States; this would be the by-product of cutting back family-based immigration, not to mention of giving preference to English speakers.
Miller’s involvement is one of various tells that the racial angle is a major driver of this “reform”; formerly an advisor to Jeff Sessions, he apparently shares the senator’s worldview of a United States beset and deeply threatened by the arrival and propagation of brown-skinned hordes. The idea that newcomers are taking the jobs of Americans is bad enough; but this is inseparable from the fears and resentments of Trump’s white base that these takers are not like them at all, whether because of the color of their skin, their foreign cultures, or their non-Christian religions. The GOP backers of this bill have half-hidden an emotional appeal inside an economic nationalist one.
The bill roll-out was also a priceless introduction for many people to the arrogant and benighted Mr. Miller. You need look no further than his giving voice to a right-wing re-interpretation of the meaning of the Statue of Liberty at this week's briefing, and his condescending efforts to explain it to the White House reporters, to grasp the shallowness of this silly man. The Trumpers' America First shit may or may not play well with the base, but it should shock the conscience of the nation at large.
