Trump’s Immigration “Suspension” is an Immigration Ban

In a tweet on April 20, United States President Donald Trump suggested the possibility of a temporary immigration suspension in light of the worldwide COVID-19 outbreak. The tweet read:

“In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!”

This alleged Executive Order, if brought to pass, would be nothing more than a further delivery on that campaign promise and one meant to divert attention away from Trump’s failure to halt the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. and to save lives. It is nothing more than an authoritarian move meant to expressly take advantage of a crisis and further his thinly veiled anti-immigration agenda. 

A Closer Look at What Trump Really Meant

Trump is widely known for his tweets, which often contain misleading information or entirely untrue statements. His tweets are also known for their thinly veiled allusions and coded messages to his followers and fans. There are a couple of turns of phrase in this tweet that clue us into what Trump’s tweet really says. 

“Protecting the Jobs of Our Great American Citizens”

One of the consistent and dangerous narratives Trump has adopted and espoused is the idea that immigration leads to the loss of job opportunities for American citizens and this piece of his tweet leans direction into that idea. But this is widely known (and proven) to be untrue. 

According to the ACLU, various studies and experts have said exactly the opposite. A study performed during the Bush administration noted that the perception that immigrants take jobs away from American workers is “the most persistent fallacy about immigration in popular thought” because it is based on the mistaken assumption that there is only a fixed number of jobs in the economy.

Moreover, other experts note that it’s easy for Americans to blame immigrants for unemployment because they see the jobs that immigrants fill, but not the ones that they create (Stilt, as a company that is co-founded by two immigrants and employs American citizens, is a good example of this).

It’s also worth noting that immigrants, on average, contribute more than $90 billion dollars in taxes every year while receiving just $5 billion on welfare and other social services. Without their contributions, the Public Treasury (and those American citizens who received welfare and social services) would be operating with ~$85 billion less in funding.   

So, when Trump says and immigration suspension would help “protect” American citizens, it’s hard to see how removing job creators taxpayers from the economy is helpful. 

It’s almost as if immigration isn’t a problem…

“Invisible Enemy” 

And that brings us to another phrase that warrants exploration — “invisible enemy.” 

This is an interesting bit of linguistics because at first glance you’d think Trump was referring to COVID-19, the pandemic that is crippling the world in real-time. But interestingly enough, nowhere in the tweet does he mention COVID-19, coronavirus, the word “pandemic” or anything syllable that suggests this tweet has anything to do with the ongoing crisis at all. 

In all honesty, the only context someone reading this text would have to think it’s related to COVID-19 is that it was sent out during the current pandemic.

But that’s probably the point. That’s plausible deniability. That ambiguity makes it easy for Trump to suggest the context of the COVID-19 outbreak while dog-whistling to his racist, xenophobic base about something else entirely.

It’s almost as if the “invisible enemy” Trump is referring to isn’t COVID-19, but immigration…

Proposing an Immigration Ban Hurts Immigrants

While an immigration suspension would go a long way to hurt immigrants hoping to come to the U.S., it’s already shifting of responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic to them while erasing the contributions of the immigrants who already live here. 

The U.S. Has Failed to Combat COVID-19 Effectively

One of the likely reasons for a tweet like this is to deflect responsibility for the extremely poor handling of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. — and it has been poor. 

Nearly half of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the crisis (and that’s only gotten worse as time goes on). And with The U.S. accounting (as of this writing) for more than a third of the world’s total cases (with thousands more being confirmed every day), that disapproval rating even seems low.

The truth is, the United States, as a whole, is doing a terrible job of combatting this pandemic. But with the current leadership in place, taking responsibility and course-correcting are out of the question.

It’s much easier to shift the blame. But if you’re going to skirt responsibility, you’re going to need a scapegoat…

Immigrants Are Helping at the Frontlines

So if the U.S. (read: U.S. Government) isn’t to blame for the out-of-control COVID-19 situation in the U.S., it must be that invisible threat we discussed above — immigrants, obviously. 

Except it’s been widely documented (here and in many other places) that immigrants in the U.S. are the people on the frontlines of battling COVID-19. According to Healthcare.org, thought, Immigrants account for: 

• 18.2% of healthcare workers
• 23.5% of formal and nonformal long-term care sector workers
• 27.5% of direct care workers
• 30.3% of nursing home housekeeping and maintenance workers

The truth of the matter was captured perfectly by New York Democrat Jerry Nadler when he wrote, “President Trump now seeks to distract us from his fumbled COVID-19 response by trying to put the blame on immigrants. The truth is many immigrants are on our front lines, protecting us as doctors, nurses, health aids, farmworkers, and restaurant workers.”

To suggest that immigration, and by extension the immigrants it brings here, is somehow the solution to the current situation is about as far from the truth as you could get.   

These are the people combating COVID-19. They’re the ones who, day-in and day-out, are risking their literal lives to care for others as this virus is ravaging or threatening the people closest to us. 

And yet, these frontline workers are the people Trump chooses to vilify. 

Why? 

Because this isn’t about COVID-19… 

This isn’t a Potential Suspension, It’s a Defacto Ban

Even without walking through the point above, it would be easy to understand that Trump has a hardline anti-immigration stance. Every single immigration-related move he’s made as President has sought to limit, eliminate, and reclaim resources meant to help immigrants come to the U.S. and build lives here. 

We already know all of this. 

And this latest move — a potential suspension of all immigration into the U.S. is no different. 

Worse still, this move, if passed, will further and reinforce the false narratives that immigration is damaging to the U.S. and that it has exacerbated the COVID-19 outbreak.

But, as illustrated above, these narratives are not only categorically untrue, they are, in fact, the actual fallacies. 

This alleged forthcoming immigration suspension ban is just another racist, xenophobic move to shift blame and scapegoat immigrants while they are doing more to fix the situation than the sitting President of the United States. 

Frank Gogol

I’m a firm believer that information is the key to financial freedom. On the Stilt Blog, I write about the complex topics — like finance, immigration, and technology — to help immigrants make the most of their lives in the U.S. Our content and brand have been featured in Forbes, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and more.

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