The fact is that Donald Trump and those he surrounds himself with, like Steven Miller, who drafts most of his immigration policies, such as the “Muslim ban,”  actually don’t like any kind of immigration at all. Or at least any immigration other than immigrants with extraordinary qualification. As economist Paul Krugman said,

“Trump and those around him are profoundly hostile to immigration in general. Partly this is xenophobia, if not outright racism. If you repeatedly declare, as Trump has, that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” you don’t really care if they came here legally, you’re all but saying that what matters is whether they’re white.”

But there is more to it than that. Trump and his minions don’t understand how immigration affects employment and the economy. Neither did I until I read Krugman.  This is what he said, “People close to Trump have a zero-sum view of the economy, in which every job taken by someone born outside the United States is a job taken away from someone born here.” They don’t realize that the work of one immigrant worker can add to the work needed of other Americans.

But Trump and his fellows believe that work done by one immigrant always take away jobs from other Americans. The architect of Trump’s policies, Here is how Trump and Miller screwed things up:

“Back in 2020, Stephen Miller, one of the architects of Trump’s immigration policies, told Trump supporters that one of the goals was to “turn off the faucet of new immigrant labor.” Remarkably, Trump issued an executive order meant to deny visas to highly skilled foreigners, many working in the tech sector. Miller and his boss apparently believed that this would mean more plum jobs for Americans, when what it would actually do was undermine American competitiveness in advanced technology.”

America needs a lot of those workers it is trying to keep out of the country.By relentlessly attacking immigrants, Trump was making things worse for American workers!