The case for immigration; one country decides

 

The case for immigration; one country decides

Swiss voters speak

 

Gordon L. Weil

Mostly overlooked, a Swiss referendum this week made a major statement on immigration that will echo in the U.S. and Europe.  

The vote in Switzerland, a direct democracy where citizens regularly hold popular votes to decide public policy, is proof that immigration won’t go away as an issue, at least in North America and Europe. 

While President Trump has largely made good on his promise to close the door to new arrivals, his policy won’t be the last word.  The Swiss put the question starkly.

Voters were asked to decide if the small country should place a cap on its population.  As the ceiling neared, the government would have to limit immigration, even preventing divided families from re-uniting.  It might have to forego the benefits of access to the EU market if it blocked employment for workers from elsewhere in Europe.

The Swiss vote was a reminder of a key element of the British decision to quit the EU.  One of the prime causes of Brexit was the increase in foreign workers. The European arrivals would take jobs from Brits, it was claimed, and, after they settled, they would reshape the country’s culture, shedding Merrie Olde England and the moribund British Empire.

The pro-Brexit voters believed that their country’s greatness would enable it to profit from going it alone.  The loss of Europeans both in the labor force and in the consumer marketplace did not weigh heavily enough to influence the outcome.  While the British economy did not collapse as a result, its growth slowed.

In Switzerland, the issue was placed before the voters by the largest political party, a right-leaning organization that opposes immigration.  It made several economic arguments that were meant to show that new arrivals would place excessive strain on the country.

It argued that there would not be enough housing to handle additions to the population.  Rural areas would be increasingly “paved over” to accommodate urbanization.  The schools would be stretched and the quality of education would decline.  And there would not be enough support personnel, like doctors, to handle the increase.

These comments assumed that Switzerland could not grow to accept a continual increase in its population.  The proponents did not consider that contributions, professional and financial, that immigrants could make would allow the national economy to grow.  Their position amounted to saying that the country could not prosper if it had a larger population.

The government expressed its opinion, opposing the initiative because it would harm the national economy. It argued that national prosperity would suffer if the country lacked enough labor to maintain and increase production.  Health care and construction, both dependent on foreign workers, would suffer.

The Swiss economy depends on links with other economies, notably the EU.  Ending immigration could isolate the country, potentially ending several international agreements.  The analysis also showed that immigrants contribute more to the economy than the demands placed by them on social welfare programs.

This debate has direct parallels with politics in Britain and the United States.  In Switzerland, under direct democracy, the people themselves got to decide, not politicians seeking to create and exploit fears.

The cap was opposed 55% to 45%.  The electoral defeat came because the large urban areas strongly opposed the proposal to limit population. The Swiss Confederation is divided into state-like “cantons,” and cantons like Zurich and Geneva favored immigration.  Small, rural cantons opposed.  It was the kind of rural-urban, conservative-moderate split seen in American politics.

The result may be explained by more than economic issues.  Proponents also cited the increase in the number of Muslims, making discrimination a factor.

The Swiss referendum reflected a debate about the nature of the world’s economies.  Nations may be so interconnected that the movement of workers is not a diabolical threat, as some claim, but an inevitable effect of the new economic links that extend well beyond national borders.

Nor is immigration the result of a globalization plot, designed to destroy national economies and turn power over to hidden economic rulers.   Supply lines that cross borders and workers whose skills offer value beyond their home countries are organic developments, not the result of sinister schemes.

The Swiss government opinion pointed out that approving the proposal would damage the country’s reputation, which is partly based on its creation and operation of the International Red Cross.  By capping its population, “Switzerland would isolate itself and lose its credibility,” it said.

This is the message of the Swiss referendum for the U.S., as it pursues an America First policy. The Swiss think as highly of themselves as do Americans.  Just as the U.S. serves as a constitutional and economic model, Switzerland serves as a humanitarian and democratic model.

Preserving national “credibility” and its thriving economy should be as important to the U.S. as it is to Switzerland.

Immigration policy: U.S. urgently needs an answer

Immigration policy: pride and prejudice

U.S. needs an answer

 

Gordon L. Weil

Immigration has become a bedrock issue in the U.S. and many European countries.  

Coming up with an American immigration policy has become so divisive that achieving consensus seems impossible.  Two presidents have brought the country to the point where a solution is stalemated.

A cornerstone of Donald Trump’s presidency has been ending unauthorized or illegal immigration.  He has succeeded in almost shutting down illegal entries over the southern border.  He has also pushed efforts to remove long-time, productive residents whose elimination would boost the number against whom he had moved.  He now targets legal immigration.

Joe Biden allowed foreigners to pour across the southern border.  He lacked an immigration policy, perhaps because he had other priorities.  He clearly reversed Trump’s first term approach, possibly to appeal to minority voters.  Instead, he created broad public concern that the U.S. could not even control its own borders.  He set the stage for the Trump revival.

The original Americans, aside from the Indians, were immigrants from western Europe.  Racially they and their descendants are white.   Whatever the Constitution and laws might say, their followers have expected that the country would remain predominantly white, and Blacks would remain subservient.  Underlying the issue of immigration policy is race. 

The most obvious expression of this sentiment was the exclusion of Chinese for many decades.  Today’s unfounded claim that the U.S. is a Christian country carries the implicit message that the white founders set binding terms for the future.  Minorities remain at the sufferance of the majority.

Demographic projections indicate that the U.S. will be majority non-white in two or three decades.  If voters would cling to white control, they could oppose immigration on the grounds that new arrivals will accelerate change in the nation’s racial make-up.  To some, the election of President Obama was a warning.

Humanitarian and economic causes have led millions to seek new homes in countries with stable, democratic governments and the opportunity for better lives.  Some want asylum and many want economic and social freedom.  The response can be a mixture of pride and prejudice.

Their influx has raised concerns in potential host countries.  People worry about the economic and social change resulting from major additions to the national population and the political power of the newcomers that could disrupt traditional patterns of control.

In the U.S., the issues that arise from immigration have become embedded in the basic discourse about the nation’s future.  Some concepts are widely accepted, while others are seriously challenged.

Americans generally understand that their country is a nation of immigrants.  Waves of people from foreign countries have flowed into the U.S. throughout virtually all its existence.  Each group has faced resistance and even discrimination in the decades after their arrival.  African Americans, who did not migrate willingly, suffer exceptional indignity.

Immigration has been a major source of population growth.  More people has meant more workers able to operate the tools of virtually all aspects of the nation’s stunning economic growth.  Their growing personal prosperity has created a burgeoning consumer economy.  American economic greatness has depended on immigration.

Moving beyond the sentiment that the national territory was large enough to accommodate millions more, the U.S. adopted an immigration policy.   While new arrivals should continue to be welcomed, the country could reasonably meter the flow to ensure stability.

Trump has been intent on expelling as many unauthorized residents as possible.  It proved relatively easy to identify long-term, law-abiding illegal entrants and attempt to expel them to make his numbers look good.

The public concern about immigration did not focus on such people but rather on recent and lawbreaking immigrants.  While reassured about border security, the public was not enthusiastic about the removal of contributing community members or separating parents from children, who might be citizens.  Nor was ICE’s denial of their due process rights.

Trump wants to reverse the citizenship of immigrant children born in the U.S. by a new interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment.  He blocks the entry of people from some countries.  He wants green card applicants to leave the country and reapply from their home countries.

He has recently indicated that he would like to roll back legal immigration.  The number of legal immigrants and refugees was virtually identical in 2024 to what it was in 2015.  There is no rising tide to be blocked unless race is the issue.

Immigration is vital to the economy.  In 2023, immigrants contributed $2.6 trillion, about 13 percent of Gross Domestic Product.  They paid $492 billion in taxes.  After the slowdown in immigration, American economic growth may slow.

Trump’s total anti-immigrant policy, reaching productive residents, will reduce the size of the U.S. population and of the American economy.  The Democrats offer no alternative.  This is where bipartisan leadership must begin.

 

MAGA melts; promises can't be kept

 

Gordon L. Weil

MAGA may be failing when it comes to some of President Trump’s key policies.

Like many candidates for executive office, he made promises with broad political appeal, but which ignored and encountered harsh reality – from political to economic to legal – that made keeping them impossible.

After making bold and popular promises, Trump last week backtracked on commitments relating to tariffs, immigration and military action. 

With global free trade becoming increasingly unworkable, Trump imposed a new system depending on a multitude of bilateral arrangements.  He levied across-the-board tariffs on almost all countries.  He acted swiftly in the belief that other countries would flock to make trade concessions so that he would lower tariffs aimed at them.

Economists warned that the tariff burden would fall mainly on American consumers as their cost was passed on by importers.  He denied that tariffs caused inflation and even denied that prices were rising.   Unhappy consumers saw prices on groceries increase, whatever he might claim.

No obvious effort was made to equate the dollar value of trade concessions made by others with the cost imposed by new tariffs.  Instead, Trump lowered tariffs in return for promises of massive new investment in the U.S., though it is doubtful that tracking foreign investment commitments is possible.  In the short-term, domestic manufacturing benefitted little from tariff protection.

Finally, Trump came to realize that his tariffs were driving up prices for individual consumers.  Last week, he ordered tariffs lifted on foods for which U.S. production was insufficient to meet demand, pushing prices up.  More tariff cuts on non-food items are said to be coming.

“Wait. If lowering tariffs lowers prices, what does raising tariffs do to prices?” Erica York, a vice president at the Tax Foundation, asked.  It may be called a matter of “affordability,” but that’s really inflation.

In the end, some relatively low tariffs may survive, but the policy itself is in trouble.  Even more troublesome is the possibility that the Supreme Court, usually supportive of his expanded use of power, could overturn many of his tariffs because they are illegal or even unconstitutional.  Such a decision could lead to undermining his assertion of unlimited power.

He floated the idea of returning some of the tariff revenue to American taxpayers.  This may have been an attempt to encourage the Court not to see tariffs as taxes.  It probably won’t work, leaving him in violation of his MAGA promise to not raise taxes.

On immigration, Trump promised what amounted to the complete elimination from the U.S. of undocumented or illegal immigrants, starting with the most criminal.  Dating from his first presidential campaign, that promise was the MAGA cornerstone.

He made clear he was trying to deport as many as possible, even if they were not criminals.  In fact, law-abiding, productive residents were the easiest to target, which concerned some people who had supported his policy.  He even reduced legal immigration. 

His anti-immigration policy had been the binding force among his supporters.  Last week, that changed. 

Trump said that the U.S. lacks people with “certain talents,’ who should be admitted so they can train Americans.  Some loyal Trumpers disagreed with that and with his willingness to admit 600,000 Chinese students.  Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the ultimate Trump backer, dissented, so Trump called her “wacky” and ceased supporting her.

When asked if his policy would displease MAGA backers, he asserted that he alone had invented MAGA.   That statement implied they must follow his lead.  However, because he had adopted policies espoused originally by others, that leadership is now in question.

He recognized that the U.S. cannot go it alone, especially in technical areas.  He may come to realize that the economic growth he wants depends on a growing population resulting from legal immigration.   Because of issues related to the immigrants’ ethnicity, he may encounter even more MAGA opposition.

After his first term, Trump prided himself on having kept the U.S. out of armed conflict.  That struck a contrast with the Democrats, pleasing his backers.  The bombing run he ordered on Iran began to raise doubts, though he excused it by noting that no American lives were lost.

Last week, he strayed even further from his commitment.  He stationed a huge American aircraft carrier, the world’s largest warship, in the Caribbean Sea as an obvious threat to Venezuela.  It might have been better placed in the South China Sea to face down Chinese marine aggression than to confront a relatively minor portion of the drug trade.

Trump risked restoring America’s role as the “world’s policeman,” a policy completely contrary both to his claim to being a peacemaker and his policy of keeping the U.S. out of foreign conflicts.  America First now seems to allow for the use of American military power abroad.

MAGA is melting.