Will Donald Trump ever visit Queens, the land of his youth? If you did, you would most likely be horrified. According to the census, Queens is the most racially and ethnically diverse community in the mainland United States. It’s hard to imagine a nationality or culture that isn’t represented there. Immigrants make up nearly half of the neighborhood’s population and more than half of its workforce. And I think it’s great. For example, when I walk through Jackson Heights, I see the essence of America as it should be: a magnet for people from all over the world seeking freedom and opportunity, people like my own grandparents.
And no, Queens is not a hellish nightmare. It may not be lush and green, but there is less serious crime per capita than the rest of New York, and New York is, believe it or not, one of the safest places in the United States. It is also relatively healthy, with a life expectancy about three years longer than that of the United States as a whole. But Trump has declared that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Look, I know it’s controversial that the MAGA movement [Hagamos que Estados Unidos vuelva a ser grande] It fully meets the classic criteria of fascism, but can we at least agree that its language is increasingly fascist?
And also their politics.
Last Saturday, the New York Times reported that if Trump becomes president again, he plans to adopt drastic anti-immigration policies: scouring the country for immigrants living in the country illegally and setting up huge camps to concentrate them before deporting millions of them them. People suspected of belonging to cartels and drug trafficking gangs would be deported without procedural guarantees. Suspicious to whom, for what reasons? Good question.
If you think this doesn’t affect you because you’re an American citizen, you should know that Trump gave a speech on Veterans Day in which he promised to “eradicate” the “thugs of the radical left.” who, in his opinion, are being “destroyed,” become an echo of people like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini—infecting the United States “like a plague.” Who is considered a “radical left”? Well, today’s Republicans – not just Trump – have a very broad definition. Finally, they systematically accuse Joe Biden of being a Marxist.
Given all this anti-democratic rhetoric, it seems almost distasteful to point out that a Trumpian war on immigrants would also be an economic disaster. But it would be like that. Apparently that’s not what Trumpists believe. That Times article quoted Stephen Miller, who led anti-immigration efforts during Trump’s White House tenure, as saying that mass deportations “are being welcomed by American workers, who are now being offered higher wages with better benefits to fill those jobs “. Very few economists would agree with this.
If there is something behind Trump’s hostility toward foreign workers—beyond outright xenophobia—it seems to be the view that the United States has a limited number of jobs to offer and that immigrants are taking those jobs away from locals. However, the truth is that the number of jobs and therefore economic growth is limited by the available workforce and not the other way around, except in times of recession.
And the contribution of immigrants to the country’s long-term growth is surprisingly large. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. workforce has increased by 14.6 million since 2007. Of these additional workers, 7.8 million – more than half – were foreign-born. Oh, and if these immigrants are taking jobs away from Americans, how is it possible that the unemployment rate is near its lowest level in 50 years? In fact, we desperately need these workers, not least because they will help us meet the needs of an aging population.
Now they may fear that less educated immigrants are depressing wages and increasing income inequality. But the ultimate conclusion after decades of research on the subject is that this appears not to be the case. Even the least educated immigrants bring different skills and choose different occupations than their native counterparts, so they end up complementing rather than replacing the native workforce. And let’s not forget that Trump officials tried to cut off the supply of skilled foreign workers to America’s tech sector, apparently thinking it would save good jobs for Americans, when in reality it would only undermine our technological advantage.
This is not to deny that sudden waves of immigration can burden local communities or that we need measures to mitigate these impacts. But that is very different from widespread opposition to immigration, which is as American as apple pie, not to mention pizza and bagels, foods brought by previous immigrants and which were once the subject of as much prejudice and hatred as those of today Immigrant.
America doesn’t need us to make it great again, because it already is. But if they wanted to destroy that greatness, the two most important things they would do would be to reject their commitment to freedom and close their doors to people seeking a better life. Unfortunately, Trump seems determined to do both if he becomes president again.
Paul Krugman He is a Nobel Prize winner in economics. © The New York Times, 2023
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