Members of the Trump regime and Trump himself are offering different justifications for attempting to ban all immigration, but that's what the latter says he's going to do.
Trump said last night that he will sign an executive order of some description to stop all immigration for reasons related to the coronavirus.
Trump says the order is necessary because immigrants will take our jobs, but one of Trump's top advisers said it's necessary to protect the health of Americans.
National security adviser Robert O’Brien earlier Tuesday cast the president’s announcement as a move to protect the American people’s health. O’Brien said the temporary immigration halt would not be “dissimilar” to limits on travel to the U.S. from China that Trump put in place in January.
“We’re trying to do everything, the president’s trying to do everything he can to put the health of the American people first during this crisis,” O’Brien said on Fox News Channel. “So this is one step. It’s not dissimilar to the restrictions on travel from China that he implemented back on Jan. 29 at the very outset of this public health crisis.”
You know, if anyone is going to be ban immigration, it should be other countries.
The United States has by far the most identified cases of the virus worldwide and the highest body count. As of this writing, the U.S. has seen over 43,000 deaths from 800,000 confirmed cases. We've responded to the virus worse than any other country. Mexico should probably ban travelers from the United States in the interest of public health.
The idea that this is necessary to protect jobs doesn't add up either. Trump also tried to stop immigration even when the unemployment rate was at historically low levels of about 3 percent.
If we're being real, this is nothing more than a culture war dog whistle. The Trump regime wants people to think immigrants are both responsible for spreading the virus and for taking their jobs away. But the truth is Trump himself is responsible for both of those things. Trump's bungled response to the virus and the amount of time he has wasted and continues to waste is why things got so bad, so quickly.
In related news, the United States is exporting the virus.
MEXICO CITY/PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Mexico and Haiti have detected coronavirus infections among migrants deported recently from the United States, officials said on Tuesday, part of a growing trend of contagion among deportees.
The new infections come after an outbreak among deportees to Guatemala, where the government at the weekend linked almost a fifth of all cases of the new coronavirus in the country to flights returning migrants from the United States last week.