Trump’s Insane War on Immigrants

Six more countries, including Africa’s most populous, have been added to Trump’s travel ban. He has also slashed, again, our annual refugee ceiling, to just 18,000, now fully 92% below the peak of 230,000 (while global refugee numbers are at flood tide). He’s also made it much harder, if not impossible, to apply for asylum pursuant to international norms. Ordinary legal immigration is far tougher too. Paperwork takes years, if not decades. And now anyone receiving any public benefit — or just deemed likely to — is ineligible. Further, they’ve announced yet another round of big fee increases for processing immigrants; achieving citizenship will now cost thousands. Even refugees applying for asylum must, for the first time, pay a fee. And the past program for fee waivers is largely defunct.

Trumpists have long insisted would-be immigrants should follow legal procedures and get in the line. But Trump is choking off the line. And he keeps saying countries “don’t send us their best.” How moronic can you be? Countries don’t pick who they “send.” People pick themselves — pick themselves up and go. And anyone with such enterprise and grit would likely be an asset to our nation.

The war on immigration is insane. Condemning America to be an increasingly backward nation in decline. Especially as ever more Americans age and hoover up pension and health benefits, with fewer working people paying taxes to support that. We need more immigrants to replenish our workforce. Immigrants — and, yes, refugees — contribute more economically than they cost. And rejuvenate our society. (They are also (contrary to Trump’s fear-mongering) on average more law-abiding than the native-born.)

But Trump’s policies send a clear message to ambitious people worldwide: go elsewhere.

It’s not only self-harming, but a fundamental betrayal of what America is all about. Yet when 90% of Republicans say they approve of Trump, his shameful and deceitful immigrant-bashing is, above all, what they approve of.

The plaque on the Statue of Liberty has been revised:

Stay out, you tired, you poor,

You huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

You wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Or pay us thousands of dollars in fees;

I douse my lamp and shut the golden door.