[Edgewise] US immigration crackdown: A self-prescribed poison capsule

Financial renaissance? Quite the opposite, the nativist, white nationalist agenda threatens America’s financial well-being

By intensifying its large-scale crackdown on non-white immigrants and tightening entry restrictions on overseas nationals — particularly from what Donald Trump has derided as “rubbish nations” — the administration asks Individuals to consider it’s laying the groundwork for an financial renaissance. 

Contemplate Vice President JD Vance’s disingenuous try and pin the nation’s financial troubles on immigrants. “It’s easy economics,” he says. “You probably have fewer individuals, fewer unlawful aliens attempting to purchase houses, which means Americans are lastly going to have the ability to afford a house once more.”

This can be a pipe dream. Immigration has been the lifeblood of the US for hundreds of years, and choking it off now runs counter to the strategic — and rising — want of developed nations just like the US to replenish getting old and shrinking workforces. Harshly proscribing the movement of immigrants is a poison capsule that may solely result in extreme financial injury.

Skinny financial justifications merely masks Trump/MAGA’s persistent attraction to racist xenophobia, which is the true driver behind the escalating severity of immigration restrictions. For them, making America “nice once more” is premised on making it overwhelmingly white once more.

So, Trump has ordered a journey ban on nationals from 20 African and Center Jap — predominantly non-white — nations and mandated intensified scrutiny of candidates’ social-media histories as a part of eligibility checks for vacationer and different non-immigrant visas. He halted the range visa (inexperienced card lottery) program, after a green-card holder shot and killed two Brown College college students and an MIT professor.

From efforts to finish birthright citizenship to plans to revoke the citizenship of hundreds of naturalized Individuals, the administration has layered new measures onto ongoing, typically brutal, ICE raids that focus on individuals deemed “unlawful” primarily based on bodily look. 

Whereas the US Supreme Courtroom allowed this observe, Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent stated, “We must always not need to stay in a rustic the place the Authorities can seize anybody who appears to be like Latino, speaks Spanish, and seems to work a low wage job. (Reinforcing Trump’s agenda, Republican Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio has launched the Unique Citizenship Act of 2025, which might outlaw twin citizenship.)

The White Home has additionally imposed steep new charges on non-immigrant visas: $100,000 yearly for expert employees on H-1B visas and an extra $250 for many non-immigrant candidates, together with vacationers, on high of the present $185 software price. 

Speedy and long-term drawbacks

The crackdown instantly constrains US entry to extremely expert tech and different professionals, critically wanted well being care employees, and high-value vacationer spending, whereas additionally disrupting labor provide in agriculture, building, meals processing, and different sectors. 

Like many superior economies, the US is dealing with a shrinking and getting old workforce. With a fertility charge of 1.6 stay births per lady — effectively beneath the alternative degree of two.1 — by 2030 roughly one in 5 Individuals is predicted to be 65 or older. This demographic shift means fewer employees supporting the financial system and elevated stress on Social Safety and different social security nets. 

Regardless of this troubling forecast, Trump and his allies lament “childless cat women” and demand on returning ladies to “conventional roles” to spice up native births. Nevertheless, pro-natalist insurance policies are pricey and produce solely delayed outcomes. They’ve failed in nations like Japan and Germany regardless of tax incentives and youngster allowances, largely due to excessive prices of residing and fashionable attitudes towards household and gender equality.

Nascent synthetic intelligence is unlikely to resolve future labor shortages. Whereas AI can enhance productiveness in sectors like manufacturing, logistics, and transportation, nearly all of US employees — roughly 80% — are employed in service industries. 

Inside these, about 23% of all employees occupy human-centric roles, reminiscent of well being care, private care, and social providers, which require empathy and private judgment. AI can’t totally exchange these roles; productiveness features in different sectors is not going to be sufficient to offset labor shortages throughout the financial system.

Ideological blindness

Immigration has to this point shielded the US financial system from the extreme labor shortages which have troubled nations like Japan and components of Western Europe, the place low beginning charges and restrictive immigration insurance policies exacerbate demographic decline. 

In 2024, foreign-born employees made up 19% of the US labor power, significantly in sectors dealing with essential shortages reminiscent of expertise, agriculture, and well being care. Over the previous 20 years, their inflow has accounted for practically half of U.S. labor power progress.

But ideology blinds Trump and his loyalists to the historic actuality that immigration has helped offset inhabitants — and, by extension, labor power — decline in the US. Their nativist, white nationalist agenda threatens not solely the nation’s constitutional democracy, but additionally its financial well-being. Individuals ought to guarantee this agenda ends along with his time in workplace. – Rappler.com

Rene Ciria Cruz is an editor at positivelyfilipino.com. He edited the e-book A Time to Rise: Collective Memoirs of the Union of Democratic Filipinos (KDP), (UP Press), and was Inquirer.internet’s US Bureau Chief 2013-2023. He has written for the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle, Pacific Information Service, and California Lawyer Journal.