The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media:
“During four years in office, President Donald Trump reduced immigration admissions in every way that American law makes possible without congressional approval – cutting refugee numbers, [and] deporting law-abiding members of American citizens’ families. . . .
“In reality, the U.S. lacks a sustainable, rational immigration policy and has for decades. It just got demonstrably worse in the Trump years as his supporters were convinced that building a wall with Mexico was the solution to virtually any problem facing this country. And this isn’t just about the undocumented but about legal immigration, too. The United States does not allow enough of the latter, and that’s what has bulked up the former. A rational change of policy would surely start with providing a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants so that they might be fully productive and protected members of society. And perhaps the second move might involve a return to family-based immigration that would allow lawful Americans to sponsor relatives living outside the country. Although disparaged as “chain migration,” this is a system that works and helped build a country founded by immigrants.
“There are many other areas in need of reform, from restoring the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to boosting the H-1B visa program that has long provided temporary skilled foreign workers for everything from Johns Hopkins medical research to Chesapeake Bay blue crab packing plants. Immigration policy is complicated. Stoking racist fear of non-white “others” is not. The Biden administration needs to find its footing, better explain to the public why the nation needs overdue immigration reforms, like the kind President Ronald Reagan once endorsed, and do so as clearly and transparently as possible. Mr. Biden may not be the Great Communicator, but he did a better job of it Thursday. Whether that will convince many of the filibuster-prone Republicans in the Senate is another matter altogether.” Sure It’s a Crisis. It Never Stopped Being one, Baltimore Sun, Editorial Board, 3/25/21 [Link]
Fact Check of Above Quote: The U.S. certainly does need “a sustainable, rational immigration policy.” For the past twenty-five years we have had the highest sustained level of legal immigration in our history. During that time we also have witnessed an ongoing surge of illegal immigration. This combined flood of newcomers has created a divisive level of diversity which erodes our common culture. Research shows that urban areas with the greatest diversity also have the most significant breakdown of social and community ties. Mass immigration also harms American workers while the surge of population it causes puts growing stress on our infrastructure and environment. Nevertheless, the Sun’s editorialists see this irrational policy as rational. It can only be so for people whose reason has other priorities than patriotic attachment to America and her people.
Boosting H-1B visas is no reform at all. It floods our labor market with foreigners. particularly in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math). Contrary to what corporate management and their media shills claim, there are plenty of Americans qualified to do this work. Almost three-quarters of U.S. STEM graduates have had to find work in other fields. U.S. companies prefer foreigners with H-1B visas because they can pay them less than Americans and exploit them in other ways.
The Sun editorialists hail Ronald Reagan for signing an amnesty. That is true, but he granted it to only three million illegal aliens, far fewer the 11 million that Biden proposes. One might ask, however, if Reagan would have done so if he had known that the amnesty bill he signed would encourage waves of illegal immigration which would continue for decades, even to our present time.
The Sun editorialists are wrong to claim that the policy of “chain immigration” helped to build America. This policy didn’t come into effect until 1965, long after our country was built. By giving the family connections of immigrants a higher priority for admission than their skills, chain migration has not helped our national wellbeing. The editorialists proceed even farther into falsehood by claiming that immigrants founded America. In reality, it was settlers who carved a country out of the wilderness. Immigrants, people who move from one settled area to another, came later.
America was moving toward a rational and sustainable immigration policy during the Trump Administration. Maybe some day that can happen again.