The Wall Street Journal editorial described US President Donald Trump's announcement yesterday that he would order a 60-day pause to issue permanent residence cards (the green card) to prevent people from immigrating to the United States, as a political distraction that could become a major constraint on economic growth if it continues long time.
She criticized the move, saying Trump wanted to quickly recycle the US economy and start "like a spacecraft," but now he plans to reduce the human resources needed for a robust recovery by suspending more immigration to the United States.
The newspaper asked why this matter is considered necessary even for public health reasons, highlighting that Trump has banned travel to the United States from most parts of the world, his administration has suspended transactions for almost all new visas for foreigners, and foreign governments have suspended unnecessary travel to the United States, in addition to mandatory quarantine For a period of 14 days for new arrivals, ensuring that any new increase in corona virus is minimized from abroad.
She said there is also no clear evidence that immigrants are more associated with spreading the virus than anyone else, noting that hot spots of infection have erupted in major cities such as New York, and in meat packing plants in the Midwest, where immigrants reside, but the spread there is due to living Or work or move around indoors, not to higher rates among immigrants.
The newspaper added that almost all economic evidence shows that immigrants are boosting American growth and jobs, and referred to this study by former economist at the Federal Reserve, Madeleine Zafoudny, in which she said that unemployment rates were low in states experiencing migration booms such as Texas and Iowa, and that "more Of immigrants reduces the unemployment rate and raises the workforce participation rate for US citizens within the gender and educational level themselves. "
The newspaper also stated that immigrants in this epidemic provide "basic" work such as farm labor, meat packing, food preparation and grocery delivery that help the country survive.
The pressure group called "the new American economy" estimates that 3.8 million workers in the food industry are born abroad, and about 28% in agriculture. And the proportion of American doctors, nurses, and other US health workers born abroad is about 16.5%.
The Wall Street Journal commented that all this indicates that Trump's real accounts here are political, and that the price of all of this may be a slower economic recovery that harms the American public at large.