Trump banning immigration is a slap in the face to all Americans

Every time I think this president can’t do anything else as disgusting as the last despicable thing he had come up with, somehow he manages to take it a step further. As of Monday night, President Trump declared that he would “temporarily suspend” all immigration into the U.S.

Unemployment is ballooning. We need to start thinking a lot more than we are about the need to restart the economy and achieve as much of a v-shaped recovery as possible. However, what jobs exactly would this be saving for Americans? The low-skilled jobs that the vast majority of the people in the U.S. don’t want to do (like temporary farm permits)? Or the highly-skilled, H1b-style jobs most of which only exist because we can’t find people to hire in the country (and no, H1bs should not be going to Indian outsourcing shops)?

Now, of course, who knows what this Executive Order actually means or how effectively it will be executed. Consulates are closed right now except for emergencies, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has suspended (for health reasons) processing of anything that requires an in-person interview. Is Trump’s plan to prevent current green card holders from becoming U.S. citizens? That would only hurt job creation: immigrants make up an incredible percentage of founders in the Fortune 500 and have created companies that employ many millions of Americans. There are hundreds of Americans who today have jobs either directly at companies I’ve started or indirectly through our vendor and service provider companies. If Trump actually “suspends” immigration, how many people who would one day be building our next greatest companies, and get caught in the middle, wasting time, resources, and energy trying to legally enter the U.S.? People who could be creating new jobs for others? Indeed, just six months ago, I myself may have been caught in the middle — as my citizenship was finally being processed. (That process took 27 years because our immigration laws are beyond terrible).

President Trump does not realize that these radical anti-immigration pronouncements actually reinforce and give real ammunition to the sorry argument that conservatives are racists. Personally, I am tired of that. Trump’s behavior regularly forces that debate on actual honorable conservatives. This president has frequently removed the distinction between legal and illegal immigration, and on a regular basis demonizes legal immigration, starting with the attempt to block green card holders from coming into the U.S. in the very first iteration of the “travel ban” in January 2017. (That was the first time since I escaped the Soviet Union some 30 years ago that I actually felt afraid about my rights.)

These types of statements and the decisions they result in are truly, to borrow a word from the man himself, sad. They are demeaning to those of us who have immigrated to the U.S. legally and have worked hard our entire lives to give back to our communities, create more jobs, and support the country.

Above all, it is maddening to see that, apparently, the president has had ample time to focus on suspending immigration, but he did not have time in the last three months to effectively protect the country from the greatest threat it has faced in almost a century, nor does he have the time now to actually manage the re-opening of our economy.

All told, this is as far from courage and leadership as anything I know.