Why POTUS, SCOTUS are wrong on immigration
Trump’s ‘public charge’ rule would cut off immigrants who are critical to the growth and vitality of our communities large and small
President Trump’s war on immigrants is detrimental to the nation and our state. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ameya Pawar and Ted Cox
The U.S. Supreme Court got it wrong, but it was siding with President Trump, so no real surprise there.
The high court issued a 5-4 decision Monday dictated by its conservative majority allowing the Trump administration to implement its “public charge” rule on immigration. That allows immigration officials to weigh risk factors on aspiring immigrants as to whether they’re likely to become a “public charge,” meaning whether they’re apt to draw on a variety of government benefits including unemployment, health care, and housing assistance.
In other words, if immigration officials feel it’s at all likely that an immigrant on the border would eventually draw on some form of public assistance, they can tell that person there’s no room in the United States.
Which is ludicrous.
It’s also personal, not just to us but to the many products of immigrant families who’ve made a place for themselves in our country and benefited the United States with their presence. In the Pawar-Epstein household, both sides are recent immigrants — the Pawars from India, the Epsteins refugees from Germany.
Neither family was all that well off upon arrival in the United States, and could easily have been turned away if such a restrictive immigration policy had been in place at the time. That would have deprived the nation of a Chicago alderman, a doctor of physical therapy, a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, and a computer scientist on the Pawar side, and a university administrator, a New York Times best-selling author, and a lawyer now running for the Illinois Supreme Court on the Epstein side.
And it’s not just our extended family. U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth tweeted Monday on what she called a “disappointing ruling from the Supreme Court.” She added: “My family teetered on the brink of homelessness when I was in high school and relied on food stamps to survive. My mom is an immigrant — and, with this ruling, my family could’ve been forced to choose between her citizenship and going hungry.”
Illinois could have lost its junior senator.
Again, however, it’s not just personal. It’s misguided legally, in that the high court allowed the Trump administration to implement the rule while the actual legal case continues to bounce around in appeals courts before making its way formally back to the U.S. Supreme Court. Such a ruling, even the court’s own blogger admitted, “is normally intended to ‘preserve the status quo,’ but allowing the government to enforce the rule would have exactly the opposite effect, because the rule is a ‘vast expansion’ of what it means to be a public charge.”
It’s also just plain wrong for the country, and especially for our state.
Everyone knows Illinois continues to bleed population. What’s not often recognized is that the state isn’t losing residents moving elsewhere more than any other state is, but it is failing to attract new residents the way other states are. That’s in part due to Trump’s war on immigrants and his administration’s efforts to deter immigration.
The Census Bureau reported at the end of last year that just 595,000 international citizens came to the United States last year — the lowest level of the 2010s. The United States attracted more than 1 million new international residents in both 2015 and 2016 under President Obama, but that figure has fallen every year under Trump. The 595,000 new immigrants last year was a drop from 702,000 the year before, and fell below the 698,000 new U.S. residents registered in 2010.
Chicago is losing residents, for a variety of reasons, but it’s not regaining that population through immigration the way it did in years and decades past.
The problem is perhaps even greater in smaller communities that are being hollowed out as manufacturing leaves and the best and the brightest of those who remain head for big cities like, yes, Chicago. Rural communities are getting smaller and poorer. The state can do its best to lift those areas up through the capital bill, rural broadband, and public education and universities — the economic driving force of many areas across the state — but there’s nothing like a transfusion of human capital, of immigrants, to revive a downtrodden area and a local economy.
One of the simplest, purest, most effective ways to grow the economy is to grow the population. Without a sane, humane immigration policy, many rural communities are going to find that they’re not sustainable, while big cities strain under overtaxed resources. It’s a double whammy, losing population without the means to replenish it.
A 2018 study by the American Immigration Council found that immigrants in Illinois are critical to the state’s culture and economy, with one in seven residents being an immigrant, and with immigrants contributing $15 billion in taxes and spending $40 billion in the state. More than one in five Chicago-area businesses are owned by immigrants, and statewide immigrant entrepreneurs generated $2.5 billion in 2015. Across Illinois, immigrants pay $9.8 billion in federal taxes and $5.2 billion in state and local taxes, while spending $40.1 billion on the state economy.
The national birth rate is down, and there’s no sign of that turning around — not while a generation of young adults has to prioritize student loans over starting a family. So, without immigrants, the U.S. economy threatens to atrophy just as Japan and Ireland have under their stagnant or dwindling populations.
Attracting immigrants means not just attracting bodies, but also infusing talent and vitality into the culture as well as the economy. More and more, we have to recognize it’s what sustains our nation and defines us as a people, that we welcome all who are willing to embrace our freedoms and work hard to make a place for themselves.
In the meantime, though, those immigrants who are already here and waiting to be naturalized (or just to receive a green card) are going to be less likely to take advantage of the public assistance they may well need, with unintended consequences. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle pointed out just last fall that concerns about the “public charge” rule were driving immigrants to delay health care until absolutely necessary, so that they become a drain on the county health system and its emergency rooms.
We are a nation of immigrants. It’s what made our country great, and it’s the potential answer to many of our most pressing problems. If only the government and our president recognized that, instead of playing on xenophobia to pit community against community for short-term political gain.