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How many times during this pandemic has the president made one decision when reality demanded the opposite?
He called the COVID-19 outbreak a hoax instead of taking it seriously. He appointed Mike Pence to direct the U.S. response to the crisis instead of an expert. He forced states to compete for vital supplies, instead of distributing them nationally. Then he suggested injecting disinfectants to kill the virus, leading to a spike in poison-control-center calls.
“ Despite what Trump says, immigrants are not a special threat. They are especially threatened. ”
With immigration, Trump is repeating the pattern — by seeking to ban it, using the coronavirus crisis as a justification. Instead, as a matter of both justice and public health, the U.S. should do the very opposite: extend the rights of citizenship and permanent residency to all.
On April 20, Trump tweeted that he will “temporarily suspend immigration into the United States” as a response to COVID-19 and to protect American jobs.
Related: Trump signs executive order temporarily halting certain green cards
Immigrants are not the cause
First, the notion that “suspending” immigration can halt the disease is both false and dishonest.
It is the United States that is currently the world center of infection. If we accept the belief that nations where the disease is spreading pose a danger to people elsewhere, then this is the nation that poses the greatest danger to the world. This government has a responsibility to the whole world, not to ban immigration, but to handle the health crisis here effectively — which it is failing to do.
Second, the well-worn myth that immigrants are “stealing” American jobs has always been wrong and dangerous. The pandemic further reveals how immigrants don’t ruin this economy for Americans. Rather, the economy — and society — depends on their labor.
For instance, immigrants make up 15% of registered nurses — and nearly one-third of doctors — in this country. Without these foreign-born workers, we’d be suffering a severe shortage of medical personnel in the middle of a pandemic.
Essential to food supply
Agriculture is even more dependent on immigrant labor. These essential workers are risking their lives and livelihoods to produce the food we’re surviving on during this pandemic.
Even Trump seems to understand this much — after pushback from industry executives, he exempted immigrant guest workers from his blanket ban. Still, his administration is trying to lower their wages. And more recently, he ordered meatpacking plants to remain open, despite an increasing number of infections and deaths among their heavily immigrant workforces.
Meanwhile, ICE raids continue.
On the first day of California’s shelter in place order, agents — wearing the very N95 masks medical professionals are demanding and being denied — raided immigrant communities in Los Angeles. In Washington, D.C., ICE agents detained a man by coming to his family’s home, pretending to be doctors, and then abducting him after he opened the door.
All this is why, despite what Trump says, immigrants are not a special threat. They are especially threatened.
Evidence emerging from around the world tells us that aggressive testing, quarantine, and treatment of the sick with ample, free health care are keys to populations surviving the outbreak and safely reopening the economy. These are the very things being denied to residents of the United States.
Stop the scapegoating
Immigrants should not have to pay the price for these failures. Rather, now is the time to extend full rights to migrants, as both a matter of justice and because it will lead to a healthier society.
This is already being done elsewhere: Portugal responded to the pandemic by granting citizenship rights to all migrants in March. The decision was made to secure Portugal’s migrants access to the national health service. While the move may sound shocking to Americans, Portuguese society has not collapsed. In fact — for a number of reasons — Portugal seems to be faring better than other countries in Europe during the pandemic, including its beleaguered neighbor, Spain.
Congress also needs to stop turning a blind eye to undocumented workers, many of whom work in the agricultural and other essential sectors. The recent stimulus package, which aimed at giving financial support to workers, completely excluded the undocumented, who will receive neither unemployment benefits nor the $1,200 stimulus payments promised to other families. This injustice needs to be corrected in the next round.
The alternative is continuing to persecute a community that has no other option but to go out and work, exposing itself to COVID-19 without any health insurance. How can anyone expect a healthy nation where 11 million immigrants can’t stay home and help “flatten the curve”? Or, making matters worse, where immigrants are rounded up, detained in squalid conditions, and then often deported, spreading the virus to other countries?
Just as social distancing makes logical sense to help contain COVID-19, ending all anti-immigrant policies and protecting the collective freedom to move and stay is a must for healthy communities around the nation.
Khury Petersen-Smith is the Michael Ratner Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Josue De Luna Navarro is the New Mexico Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.
