Another look at immigration

Another look at immigration

The Babylon Bee is a national treasure. Did you see where they said that the president was declaring the White House an ICE free zone until construction is completed on his new ballroom?

The president is hellbent on shutting down immigration both illegal and legal – unless you are a white farmer from South Africa. The southern border has essentially been closed. Of the migrants showing up at the border, in direct contrast to the Biden years, none have been released into the country. The administration is setting records in deporting the migrants who entered the country illegally. Over 500,000 have been deported. So far more than two million illegal aliens have left the U.S., including 1.6 million who self-deported. Additionally, 485,000 illegals have been arrested by DHS. Of course caught up in all of this will invariably be some US citizens who are mistakenly arrested. For example, 21 US citizens had been apprehended in Florida but after it was reported in the Miami New Times, those names mysteriously disappeared from Florida’s Unauthorized Aliens Encounters Dashboard which is a database maintained by the Florida State Board of Immigration Enforcement. But in an enforcement effort conducted on this scale some mistakes are going to be made. The administration should strive for transparency. However, it is laughable that the administrations denies that it is profiling. I bet that those 21 US citizens were not white blue eyed males.

The president also wants to severely restrict legal immigration. It is projected that changes in legal immigration will reduce the number of workers by 2.8 million. Shutting down illegal immigration will cause thenumber of workers to fall by another 4 million. The administration has sought to severely restrict the number of foreign students enrolling in US universities. It has put a $100,000 fee on H1-B workers who come mainly from India and China. There is a new regulation that eliminates “duration of status” for foreign students, researchers, exchange visitors, and international media on F, J, and I visas, and instead cap each status at a maximum of four years. It has shut down travel from 19 different countries. There is probably more.

Many worry how these restrictions, and others, will impact the country. For example, restricting foreign students, especially those involved in STEM research will lead to a diminution is US research contributions. Over half of the US Nobel laureates in 2025 were immigrants. Now foreign universities are attracting these students as well as foreign researchers and US citizens whose research has been curtailed by the administration. Historically about 40 percent of all US Nobel laureates in chemistry, physics and medicine have been awarded to immigrants. I know some of the president’s xenophobic supporters scoff at these numbers and point out that if these researchers did their work outside the US, we would still benefit from their work.

I have mentioned the fear I – and millions of others – felt during the polio epidemics in the 1950s. Well Jonas Salk was the son of immigrants and Albert Sabin was an immigrant from Poland. If denied admission into this country, would they have been able to conduct their research elsewhere and would we and the rest of the world have benefited regardless? There is an economics research paper by Petra Moser and Shmuel San, the restrictive immigration quotas of the 1920s that reduced immigration by 90 percent specifically targeting Jews and Asians significantly reduced invention in the United States, including that by American-born scientists. During this period there were 68 percent fewer patents.

Click to access MoserParsaSan25.pdf

One of my dear friends sent me the story of Omar Yaghi who shared the Nobel prize in chemistry this year. I won’t repeat it here but it is clear that Yaghi born in Jordan to a refugee family is an inspiration. My PhD advisor, the great Karl Brunner was from Switzerland and was one of the world’s leading monetary theorists.

I have written about how much I oppose the president’s “fortress America” policies. I praise his shutting down the massive flow of illegals into the country. I know that criticisms have also arisen from educating the students from countries that are adversarial to this country. I do favor a serious study of our legal immigration policies. What I hope for is a more careful vetting process and a careful delineation of the rules and their justification. I just think it is somewhat ironic that the president shows such distain for immigrants when his wife is an immigrant and the vice president’s wife is the daughter of immigrants.