Taking the oath to become new American citizens in Boston, 2018

Should America Still Welcome Immigrants?

Citing the economic crisis created by the pandemic and the need to protect American workers, President Trump announced in June that the federal government would “temporarily suspend immigration into the United States.” Trump’s executive order bars most foreign workers from entering the country and sharply restricts the number of immigrants allowed to come and start new lives. The policy is a major shift in how the U.S. government has traditionally viewed immigration, and it prompts a fundamental question about the role immigrants play in our country. An advocate for immigrants and a U.S. congressman face off on this important issue.

October 12, 2020

Americans care deeply about freedom. We also work hard, love our families, and take care of our neighbors and communities. These powerful values bind us across race, ethnicity, religion, and immigration status. In fact, these are the very threads that knit our country together and are a powerful part of our founding story.

Newcomers who accept the challenge of leaving behind old lives to build new ones in America are the kinds of dreamers who have helped build our nation for generations. In fact, America’s history is, in part, made up of successive waves of new people from different places arriving with little more than dreams of building a better life and becoming part of the great American experiment. They live the American motto e pluribus unum—out of many, one.

Newcomers have helped build our nation for generations.

Immigrants are critical to the functioning of our communities: Just like other Americans, newcomers care for the sick and elderly, teach students, build homes, and feed the nation by picking crops and opening restaurants. Newcomers also raise families, practice a faith, and watch favorite sports teams compete on the weekends. And importantly, newcomers are helping fight Covid-19 alongside their U.S.-born colleagues as doctors, nurses, pharmacists, grocery store clerks, and delivery drivers.

Asking whether America needs immigrants is like asking whether our nation should even exist at all. You might even say the question is designed to divide us and push us to turn our backs on others. This is the opposite of what we must do in a time of national crisis. We need everyone working together to move America forward.

The most important indication of who we are as Americans is how we treat other people. Most Americans know that being a welcoming neighbor is part of what makes us strong. We are a nation that welcomes new ideas, new energy, and new dreamers to come and make new lives here, and we always will be.

—WENDY FELIZ

Director, Center for Inclusion and Belonging at the American Immigration Council

We live in unusual times, and unusual times call for unusual solutions.

The coronavirus pandemic has prompted an economic collapse of a speed and size not seen in this country since the Great Depression. Some 40 million Americans have lost their jobs in the span of only a few months. The number of bankruptcies is soaring. Many families are unable to pay their rent or the mortgages on their homes.

Facing these dire circumstances, President Trump made the sensible decision to sharply limit the number of immigrants and guest workers allowed into the country. The last thing struggling American workers need is additional competition from new immigrants and foreign workers. Most Americans agree: A recent poll by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland found that nearly two-thirds of Americans support a temporary halt on nearly all immigration.

The last thing struggling American workers need is additional competition.

It’s important to remember that immigration exists to serve the interests of the nation and not the other way around. Large-scale immigration and guest-worker programs simply do not make sense for the nation at a time of massive unemployment, and they certainly do not benefit the tens of millions who are jobless.

It should be the responsibility of American businesses to seek out unemployed American workers—and even provide some additional training where necessary—before turning to foreign workers. It’s the government’s responsibility to create conditions under which domestic employers rehire idled American workers.

Even in tumultuous times, we should be able to come together to do what is right for our fellow citizens. President Trump has taken a step toward doing that. With unemployment rates approaching record highs, there are ample U.S. workers of all skill and educational levels who are ready, willing, and able to fill the jobs that become available as the economy reopens. Immigrants and guest workers don’t possess any magical powers that Americans don’t have, and the U.S. doesn’t need foreign workers to get the economy back on its feet.