Shutdown vs. “S***hole” Countries

Popular Economics Weekly

The just ended government shutdown has little to do with 9 million children’s health insurance under the CHIP plan, or extending the Dreamers protection under DACA. It really has to do with President Trump’s insistence on shutting down immigration from non-white countries, as was evident from Trump’s “S***hole” comments that he wanted to limit immigration from African and other non-white countries.

What is so shocking about Trump’s comments is they repeat those of one who he claims not to admire. Adolf Hitler in 1928 openly admired America’s racist policies of that time that excluded non-whites and Jews from immigrating to the U.S.:

“The American Union feels itself to be a Nordic-German state and by no means an international porridge of peoples. This is revealed by its immigration quotas ... Scandinavians … then Englishmen and finally Germans have been accorded the largest contingent,” said Hitler even before the Nazi’s took power.

Specifically, Hitler admired the US Immigration Act of 1924 – also known as the Johnson-Reed Act – “which had erected openly racist barriers to immigration on the basis of a “national quota” system,” according to Yale Law Professor James Whitman.

“It was not until the 1965 US Immigration and Nationality Act that the US began to separate itself from the worst aspects of its racist past. And, as Trump’s presidency makes clear, that past has yet to be permanently overcome,” said Professor Whitman in a Project Syndicate article.

There is a reason why US immigration laws became more open. The US has always suffered from a labor shortage, so that it has been newly arrived immigrants that have filled the labor deficiency.

PEW Research states that More than 41 million immigrants lived in the U.S. as of 2013, more than four times as many as was the case in 1960 and 1970. By comparison, the U.S.-born population is only about 1.6 times the size it was in 1960. Immigrant population growth alone has accounted for 29 percent of U.S. population growth since 2000.

That is the most glaring sign that new workers are needed to maintain economic growth. US population growth cannot keep up with our demand for new workers. There is no other way to fill the 6 million job openings reported each month in the Labor Department’s JOLTS report.

Debate on the current House bill that doesn’t include an extension of the Dreamers’ protections was continued for 3 weeks, in the hopes that a bi-partisan bill keeping open the door for immigrants from what President Trump considers to be “S***hole”, non-white countries will be passed.

So this is important for economic reasons; as well as recognizing that America has always been a land of immigrants; that we keep a flow of qualified immigrants and their families coming from countries that can provide the workforce America has always needed to grow and prosper.

Harlan Green © 2018

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen