“The economy is booming. “Immigration is a major cause,” reads a headline in the Washington Post. But Gallup reports, “Immigration is moving to the top of the list of top issues.”
American politics is mired in a profound contradiction. Stirred by Donald Trump's relentless and cynical attacks on foreign “others,” a record 28% of voters now rank immigration as the country's most serious problem. And yet the facts couldn't be clearer: The surge in immigration under the Biden administration denounced by Trump is fueling a booming economic recovery.
Trump's influence on his followers is so great that they ignore the reality in their own lives and communities. Who will fund the pension benefits of these aging white men in red MAGA hats who shout at Trump rallies to build walls and deport foreigners? Immigrants, that's who.
“Immigrants are an integral part of our labor market, filling gaps created by demographic changes in the United States and contributing to strong economic growth,” concludes the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “The idea that immigrants make things worse for U.S.-born workers is false. The reality is that the labor market is absorbing immigrants at a rapid pace while keeping unemployment for U.S.-born workers at record lows.”
This truth has not stopped Trump, who has long advocated a doctrine of “alternative facts” that he alone prescribes. And he is just the latest in a long line of demagogues who have demonized foreigners for political reasons throughout our history.
These days, Trump's main targets are Latinos and Muslims, with some anti-Asian slurs. If anything, he is stepping up his anti-immigrant crusade by accusing foreigners of “poisoning the blood” of native-born citizens and vowing to begin “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
Biden's chaotic and confused response to the huge influx of undocumented migrants along the southern border has given Trump a political gift, and in the latest ABC/Ipsos poll just 18% approved of Biden's handling of the immigration issue while 63% disapproved.
But Biden's missteps should not obscure a fundamental truth: Trump's anti-immigrant campaign is based on a big lie that is comparable in audacity to his completely false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. When he insists that immigrants are bad for the country, Trump — who married two different immigrants — is incoherently and irrefutably wrong.
“Immigration has boosted the U.S. labor market further than almost anyone expected, helping to cement the country’s economic recovery from the pandemic as the most robust in the world,” writes The Washington Post. The New York Times agrees: “The U.S. economy’s recovery from the pandemic has been stronger and more sustained than many experts expected, and a recovery in immigration is a big reason.”
Many factors play a role here. The U.S. birth rate has fallen to 1.6 children per woman, well below the rate of 2.1 needed to keep the population stable. Meanwhile, baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964 are leaving the workforce, and these two trends alone could lead to demographic catastrophe.
Then came COVID-19, and as the Post reports, “The workforce that emerged after the pandemic subsided was smaller than before: millions of people retired early, stayed home to care for child care or stayed away from sick to become, or decided to look for new jobs entirely.”
Trump's draconian immigration restrictions only exacerbated these problems, and Biden's policy reversal gave the economy a significant boost. “A resumption of visa processing in 2021 and 2022 boosted employment and allowed foreign-born workers to fill some gaps in the labor force that remained across industries and locations after the pandemic closures,” the Times reports.
“Since January 2020, the number of foreign-born workers in the U.S. has increased by approximately 2.8 million,” writes Business Insider, and today immigrants make up a record 18.6% of the U.S. workforce. As economist Bill Adams of Comerica Bank puts it, “Foreign-born workers accounted for all of last year's job growth, offsetting the impact of an aging native-born workforce.”
The impact of imported labor will be even more significant in the future. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that immigrants will contribute $7 trillion in economic growth over the next decade—if they are not slowed again by a Trump comeback. What is crucial is that Trump's supporters would not only vote against their own interests. They would also darken the future of their children and grandchildren.
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