Immigration and the Pandemic Paradox
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
For an administration that so vehemently denies the threat of Covid-19, the Trump presidency is quick to exploit the pandemic to implement increasingly restrictive anti-immigration policy. From describing Covid-19 in America as “very much under control” to claiming it will simply “go away,” President Trump has chronically downplayed the state of the pandemic while cases, and deaths, reach staggering and unprecedented levels. All the while, his staunch understatement of the pandemic has not prevented him from using it as a centerpiece of his rationale for new anti-immigration policies. The paradox? The president urges states to reopen but leverages the emergency powers and economic instability of a pandemic to bring America’s immigration system to a standstill. Not only does taking advantage of a pandemic undermine the public health threat that America faces, it now leaves thousands of immigrant families and individuals further in limbo as new immigration restrictions stretch into 2021. While these actions are by no means surprising for this administration, using the excuse of Covid-19 to pass inordinately restrictive policies hints at a lack of robust rationale for the actions in the first place. So let’s break down the administration’s faulty justification behind the June 2020 immigration restrictions.
First, let’s unpack exactly what the President’s most recent orders mean. In this sweeping executive order, Trump extended a ban placed on the issuing of any new green cards and banned L-1 visas (for intracompany transfers), H-1Bs (for workers in a speciality occupation), H-2Bs (for temporary non-agricultural workers), and J-1 visas for exchange visitors until at least the end of 2020. Essentially, placing a ban on legal immigration for the near future. In exercising his executive powers so loosely, the President laid out 2 simple justifications: one, citing the outbreak of Covid-19 and the impact of the pandemic and two, claiming that the actions would protect and retain thousands of American jobs. However, neither justification proves sufficient to warrant the almost complete crackdown on all immigration that has been carried out over the course of the last few months. In fact, his lack of justification reveals his attempts to use a pandemic as a facade to conceal immigration restrictions instated for political gain.
Let’s begin with the first justification, that the ban on visas and green cards will insulate against further impacts of the pandemic in America. However, as has been evidenced by the European Union’s refusal to accept American travellers due to the high Covid-19 infection rates in the country, much of the damage done by the pandemic in America is due to internal community spread. Study after study has shown that combating the coronavirus pandemic does not require sweeping immigration restrictions. Chiefly, travel restrictions do little to stop the spread of Covid-19 in America which owes a majority of its cases to extensive community spread. In fact, many potential immigrants would be returning to America from nations with far fewer cases than we now contain. If President Trump really cared enough about eradicating the coronavirus in America, he would stop encouraging states to open rapidly and stop holding campaign rallies with thousands of supporters against local ordinances. But from his actions over the past month, it’s clear that his main purpose isn’t to stop Covid-19 in America. So, what is it? With this order, his thinly veiled attempts to attribute the actions to Covid-19 show that his goal has always been to dismantle America’s immigration system with complete disregard for its implications.
Second, Trump’s sensationalized claim that his order will protect over 500,000 American jobs is a sweeping generalization that is equally faulty. Contrary to the President's claim that barring highly-qualified immigrant workers will reduce American unemployment, a study by the Bureau of Economic Research has in fact shown that such restrictions have little to no effect on creating native jobs and can even worsen economic conditions. Moreover, there has been no demonstrated increase in American wages through restriction of immigration. Examining more closely the types of visas that the ban applies to, H1-B visa workers specifically contribute much innovation in American businesses.
In claiming that American workers will fill jobs that the immigrants will now be barred from, the President overlooks a few key components. One, that unemployed workers in the US are not magically going to become qualified to fill those jobs. As explained by Jennifer Minear, the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association to the NYT, businesses use H1-B visas to fill positions they were unable to find qualified American workers for. And further, those employers must demonstrate that no American worker could fill that role in order to even receive a visa for their new employee. According to Ms. Minear, “We already have a shortage of STEM workers in the United States, they’re not just going to suddenly become qualified to do these jobs, just because they lost their job doing something else." And second, barring immigration doesn’t necessarily translate to employers firing immigrant employees. In fact, the pandemic has made many employers more comfortable with remote work environments in which they could retain foreign employees despite them not being able to return to the US until next year. With the combination of these factors, the President’s claim that a sweeping immigration plan would create hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans is contingent on the actions of employers who, for the most part, are keen on resisting the ban in any way possible.
Lastly, not only is the President’s justification innately flawed, the immigration restrictions will actually do more harm than good for a country which relies on immigrants as a large portion of their healthcare workforce and scientific research community. First off, nearly 30% of all doctors and surgeons and 22% of the entire healthcare force in America is made up of immigrants. All the more during a worsening pandemic, these medical professionals are crucial to Covid-19 response. Specifically, rural portions of the United States are experiencing droughts in healthcare that rely on immigrant doctors to expand and provide health care. According to Mahsa Khanbabai, an attorney with the American Immigration Lawyers Association, “You need these H-1B physicians who are willing to go to Alabama, Georgia, you know, parts of the beltway that just don’t have enough doctors. And now this sends a signal to all of them: Look, we don’t care about you, we don’t want you to work here in the United States.” And the immigration ban doesn’t just threaten the healthcare field, it jeopardizes much scientific innovation and research that is reliant on foreign workers. The H1-B visa which has been paused by the order is most commonly used to hire foreign workers for tech companies and faculty members for universities. “We find it extremely concerning, particularly as medical residents are brought in on H-1B visas, and faculty who are necessary to educate the US workforce,” said Lizbet Boroughs, associate vice-president for federal relations at the Association of American Universities in Washington DC, whose members include leading US research institutions. All in all, the executive order puts many potential scientific researchers and healthcare professionals in limbo at the time when we need them most.
Ultimately, neither the economic nor public health rationales of President Trump are sufficiently logical to justify his attacks on legal immigration. In fact, they expose his actions as nothing more than another unwarranted power grab for political gain. Rather than preventing families from being together and foreign workers from maintaining their employment, the President should be focusing his efforts on tackling the myriad of issues-- coronavirus, race relations, and economic failures-- that made June 2020 one of the most tumultuous months on record. Covid-19 is a real public health threat to millions of Americans, not a facade to conceal immigration restrictions and political ploys and it should be addressed as such.