Lately, President Trump can’t seem to stop himself from making unwise comments about immigration. He reiterated his support for H-1B visas at the U.S.-Saudi Arabia Investment Forum last week, claiming it’s “MAGA” to bring in these foreign workers.
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So what’s going on with the president? The most likely answer is that his laser focus on trade deals is clouding his rhetoric. Many of the countries he’s negotiating with want their citizens to continue to migrate to America. Trump, apparently caring more about maintaining a barrier to foreign products than foreign nationals, appears to be catering to these sentiments. In other words, he’s willing to prop up H-1Bs and student visas in order to make trade deals.
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Many of the countries with which Trump engaged in trade negotiations this year demanded guarantees that their citizens could still migrate to the U.S., whether on student or H-1B visas. China, in its ongoing negotiations, insists that America allow its people to obtain student visas as part of any trade deal. While other proposals have been rejected, this one appears to have been accepted by Trump.
India’s ministers are pushing the administration hard in its negotiations to allow tens of thousands of Indian workers into the country. South Korea raised immigration in its trade talks with Trump. The country was particularly incensed over its citizens being arrested and deported after they illegally migrated to work at a Georgia factory.
That incident now serves as Trump’s primary pitch for H-1Bs. In his disastrous interview with Laura Ingraham earlier this month, he said the following about the detained Koreans in Georgia:
In Georgia, they raided because they wanted illegal immigrants out. They had people from South Korea that made batteries all their lives. {snip} You can’t just say a country’s coming in, going to invest $10 billion to build a plant and take people off an unemployment line who haven’t worked in five years and they’re going to start making them missiles. It doesn’t work that way.
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Trump wants manufacturing to return to the U.S. The issue is that he doesn’t seem to care where the workers come from. What’s important is that they are working in America, not that they are Americans. It may seem America First to Trump, but it doesn’t seem that way to many of his supporters.
This sheds light on Trump’s particular brand of economic nationalism. For decades, he’s warned that foreign countries are ripping America off and that our leaders need to put an end to it through high tariffs. In Trump’s view, America had gone from a winner to a loser due to bad trade deals and stupid leaders. He pledged to make America win again as president. These are sentiments nearly all American nationalists share.
What differentiates Trump from others, however, is that he’s less wedded to the need for Americans to be working these jobs. Trump wants America—as a state and an economy, not so much as a people—to win. This mentality usually means the people win as well. But this is not guaranteed in all cases. Advocating for H-1Bs to take American jobs is an example of a wrongheaded hope that it will make the country “win.” It won’t.
Trump loves deals. He wrote a whole book about the subject. If he views making concessions on immigration as a way to make deals with foreign countries, he’ll do it. What matters, from his point of view, is securing an agreement he thinks is favorable to the long-term interests of America. For Trump, that appears to mean more limits and duties on foreign products than on foreign people.
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The post Trump’s Trade Focus Muddles His Immigration Agenda appeared first on American Renaissance.
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