President Donald Trump`s Conservative Stance on Immigration Will Fire Back?

travel ban protest

America is a land of opportunities and a powerful nation which is well recognized globally. Since 19th century people from different parts of the world migrated to the United States of America in search of better economic opportunities.

The Act to encourage Immigration signed July 4th, 1864 by President Lincoln to encourage immigration was the first and only major law in American history.Under this Act, people from all of the world were welcome to facilitate infrastructure development in the USA. President Lincoln, in his Annual Message to Congress on December 8, 1863, called for government assistance. “I again submit to your consideration the expediency of establishing a system for the encouragement of immigration. All though this source of national wealth and strength is again flowing with greater freedom than for several years before the insurrection occurred, there is still a great deficiency of laborers in every field of industry, especially in agriculture, and in our mines, as well as of iron and coal as of the precious metals. Even after so many decades, America has been facing the shortage of man power to work in various industries”. Keeping shortage of man power,Barack Obama also pursued his predecessor’s policies with minor changes in the existing immigration laws to facilitate the growth of the USA economy hence always welcomed the immigrants.

President Trump signed executive order in March 2017 which placed temporary travel restrictions on resident of six Muslim countries. He also signed an executive order on stricter enforcement and review of the H1B visa- popular in the technology industry to bring “highly skilled” foreign workers into the US. President Donald Trump after becoming president of America has created constant pressure to stop unwanted guests to the territory of the USA. Every nation has legal and moral right to decide who should or who should not be welcomed. But Donald Trump and his administration have completely ignored the contributions of the migrants to the economy of the country.

Currently immigrant USA workforce in a range of industries, accounting for over 41 percent of all farming, fishing, and forestry workers as well as nearly 25 percent of those working in computer and math sciences. The contribution of the migrants to the USA economy is huge. Hence, we can conclude safely that migrants are an assets not a liability for the USA. In a globalized and a competitive world every nation has to call for the best brains to facilitate the ongoing development process. For example, China town in the USA is mostly run and maintained by Chinese businessmen and small and medium scale entrepreneurs. President Donald Trump and his administrations recent antidumping duties slapped on China failed to curtail Chinas trade. Wong and Li argued that in the USA skilled and locally born Indians are regarded as model minorities similarly Chinese in diaspora have typically transplanted to their receiving lands five basic relationships: patrilineal kinship and ties of territory, religion, business and various types of production. Both the communities are well integrated into the system of the USA. Unskilled and skilled workers are required to run the country. Both categories of workers are essential to run and sustain the economy.

The current threat to the workforce of the USA is rapidly ageing population of the USA. According to the USA ageing population statistic, the number of older people is projected to increase by 135 percent. The ageing population will place substantial economic burden on public programme.The slow growth in the working age population will mean that there will be relatively fewer people to pay the taxes necessary to support public programmes for the older population and fewer people to provide the services that older people need.In this situation, closing USA doors for the migrants for a long period would multiply the political problems for President Donald Trump and his administration. PresidentTrump needs to annihilate racial discrimination which the members of the migrant communities happen to bear in everyday life. Trump needs to formulate inclusive policies so that including migrants contribute to the growth of the USA in all spheres.

Rahul Kumar is a PhD fellow and a Senior Journalist & Columnist based in New Delhi (India).His academic interestslie in the field of international migration and Indian Diaspora. He is also a Human Right activist and has been contributing articles on social, cultural, political and economic issues. Currently, he works as a freelance Journalist with the Asian Independent UK. He is a founder member of Global Research Forum for Diaspora and Transnationalism(GRFDT). He can be reached at [email protected]

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