Racism and US Immigration Policy

By Chris M. Ingram, LL.M., ESQ 

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Before I get started, let me first apologize to my many readers, who look forward to my articles, for the delay in getting these out. I’ve been suffering from pneumonia since December 14th 2017. I’m still in recovery, and I have a ways to go, but I’m getting there. So, thanks to all of you who have been patient and very supportive of my articles over the years 🙂 – just know that I love doing them and will continue to keep them coming as best I can.

President Trump’s “tough” language against immigrants from Africa, Haiti and El Salvador, whilst expressing a preference for ethnic people from Norway (a.k.a. white people), once again put America in an increasingly poor light around the world. To any rational thinking person, we have to conclude that our President is a racist, to deny it or seek to defend it is to simply to deny what the President has already declared. If you’re non-white, i.e., Haitian, African, Hispanic, etc., do you feel at ease with the way the President describes people who look like you? A person who is not a racist does not say incendiary negative, bigoted things about non-white people.

Ok, this is where we’re at now in 2018. We have to accept it, deal with it and look forward. President Trump has done some great things with the economy. Can’t deny that. However, in order to feel at peace, we’d need to dive into the unemployment numbers to see if there are indeed winners and losers. Winners will certainly be STEM workers, but what about agricultural workers, or people in areas of urban decline, like Michigan and Coal Country, are there winners there?

This article is about looking at racism in America especially as it might pertain to current and future US Immigration policy. For my high flying clients – investors and aliens of extraordinary ability – everything, for now, looks positive, indeed great, but for how much longer remains to be seen.

Just as an aside, it struck me that when President Trump cited he’d like more people from Norway, I immediately remembered Anders Behring Breivik  aged 32 from Norway pictured left. Anders shot and killed 85 school children one-by-one whilst they were on a summer camp in 2011 – many of them he hunted down, as they were on an island, with his high velocity assault weapon. Anders even shot some of the kids as they tried to swim away. If that were not enough, Anders  also killed 8 others in a bomb attack. So, I ask myself, do we really need more people from Norway any more than we need more people from any other country? Surely, there are good and bad wherever you come from.  Why should we be trying to ban Muslims, since according to the Department of Homeland Security’s own study, they are no more violent than any other race or religion?

In fact, far more terrorist killings are perpetrated by the white ‘far right’, than the equally heinous killings perpetrated by religious fundamentalists, but somehow we only go to war with the latter and describe some of the former, as being ‘equally fine people’. Really?

For America to be great, it cannot be seen as a racist country, because it certainly is not, even though there are some racists in the White House today. It’s sad, but temporary. In this great America, we have Congressional elections every two years and of course our Constitution certainly makes America great too.

According to a recent Pew Study only in Israel and Russia has Trump’s performance ranked higher than that of the former President Barrack Obama. According to NBI’s GfK Branding Survey the ‘American’ brand has dropped from #1 to #6 in the world, despite the American economy now breaking all stock market records.

It’s a very troubling thought that as the American economy soars, its reputation plummets. I guess one has to ask, why? Here are my two cents worth: –

Why is the American Economy Booming?

The American economy has certainly been doing well, if you look at America’s Growth Domestic Product (GDP – the value of what a country produces each year), we’ve been doing well with 3.1% for Q2 2017, 3.2% Q3 and 2.6% Q4 compared to the UK, whose GDP over the same time period hovered around 1.7%.  Moreover, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in the USA is 4.1%, almost full employment. Interestingly enough the UK also enjoys a 4.3% unemployment rate.

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Truth is, the American economy has been improving inexorably for almost seven years straight, but since President Trump came into office the stock market has exploded. The single biggest reason is the promise of massive tax cuts for businesses, and the subsequent passing of a major tax reform bill that cut the corporate rate of tax from 35% to 21%, roughly a 40% tax cut.  So, any company that is set to have its taxes cut by 40% is going to be inherently worth more moving forward, as that tax reduction represents discretionary cash that the company would not ordinarily have.  So, is the economy really doing well, or have share prices just gone up because of a revaluation?

Another factor of America’s booming economy is there is a significant growth in “confidence” in the American economy. When businesses are confident about their future they invest more and hire more. So, the tax cuts have certainly achieved their desired affects. In an economy, the only color of importance is green.  In other words, the US economy, at least in the short term, can continue to do well, despite any tough rhetoric from the President regarding race.

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Racist Immigration Policy

Whilst the US economy continues to do well and survives in its own realty, President Trump is certainly conflicted about taking any firm position on America’s future immigration policy. As a result, the President’s tone changes from one day to the next depending on who is in the room with him, or what he might have just seen on T.V. Indeed, the leader of the Senate, (R) Mitch McConnell, said from the podium, words to this effect, ‘Mr. President, when you let us know what you want, we’ll be craft a Bill you will sign.’

There are anti-immigration hardliners in the Republican party such as Senators Cotton and Purdue who authored the RAISE ACT, which sought to half legal migration and create a universal lottery system to permit entry all those who qualified based on merit. So, having a PhD might get you into the RAISE ACT lottery, but not guarantee you a visa. The RAISE ACT was dead on arrival, since to the majority of the Republicans and to all the Democrats, it was a completely non-viable Bill that would not even be given a vote or discussion on the floor of the Senate.

So now we have racist rhetoric coming from the White House, but anti-racist politicians on both sides of the Senate and the House. For example, House Leader (R) Paul Ryan, described the President’s colorful language as ‘disheartening’ and ‘unhelpful’.

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Without doubt, President Trump has an overtly racist agenda on US Immigration, referring to all Haitians as carriers of the AIDs virus. Then on January 15^th 2018, ends their eligibility to apply for Guest Worker Visas and also threatens to remove their Temporary Protected Status (TPS) along with El Salvadorians. This would result in 60,000 Haitians and over 200,000 El Salvadorians being deported, many of whom here in the US since 1999. Unfortunately, Haitians and El Salvadorians do not look like people from Norway.

The US Government was recently shut down over an ongoing dispute as to how to provide legal status to some 700,000 “Dreamers”. A Dreamer typically refers to predominantly Hispanic children who arrived in the US without papers under the age of 16. The median age of Dreamers upon arrival was 6 years old; the most common age was 3. The vast majority of Dreamers are now between 29 – 30 years old. Many would argue that they are as American as Americans.

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In dealing with the Dreamers, one day Trump refers to them in the most positive light and the next day, in the vilest light. Since there is no consistency in President Trump’s beliefs, as stated above, crafting a coherent US Immigration policy is near to impossible. However, it is hoped that by March 5^th 2018, when these 700,000 Dreamers are set to be deported, it is hoped that legislation will be passed to give them a pathway to US citizenship, if the Democrats are prepared to fully fund the building of “The Wall” for 25 Billion US dollars. We’ll see.

What About Graduate Level US Immigration?

For now, the status quo of all non-immigrant and graduate based immigration visas and Green Cards remains untouched. Any move against this level of migrant would be unequivocally and vociferously opposed by Big Business, Big Pharma and Big Agriculture, because there is already a chronic shortage in STEM workers and Agri workers. Remember, the economy is color blind, in fact it can only see green, and so any move against graduate level immigrants will be fearlessly resisted. So for now, we should be in good shape.

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Chain Migration vs. Family Reunification

The President and others talk about ending ‘Chain Migration’, the ability of US Citizens to sponsor family members, children, siblings and parents into permanent residency status or green card status. Whereas, moderates talk about ‘Family Reunification’ migration. Both sides are talking about the exact same issue, but the former is certainly inflammatory and the latter conciliatory. The whole point of citizens being able to bring their immediate family over, (average wait 13 years for siblings, 8 years for children over 21), is that it strengthens family bonds, and stable families are way more productive then smaller nuclear families. For instance, if Grandma can look after the kids while Mommy is able to get back to work, especially in a STEM field, that’s fantastic, right?

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Please note, that in order for a U.S. Citizen to sponsor a family member they have to financially guarantee in every way that their loved one will not become a public charge. Indeed, the sponsor must earn 125% of the poverty line before they can sponsor a family member. The amount they need to earn increases based on the size of the US family.

More People Like From Norway

One of the fundamental truths as to what made America great in the first place, was basically people leaving or fleeing from a very bad situation to come to this place of hope called America; where no matter what your background, color or creed, you could have the opportunity to prosper more in the US than where they were previously living. So, going back to the founding fathers, they fled Europe in pursuit of religious freedom, then came the Chinese and the Irish, along with waves over others from all over the world. The common thread was, the situation at home was worth risking life and limb to leave in the search of a better future in America. It was that desire to leave everything that made these immigrants work their socks off for their children and grandchildren, and the hope to be able to sponsor their family members too, so they could escape that same fate.

Since Europe has become almost as wealthy as America, and with free health care for the most part and other social benefits, there is not that much motivation for white Europeans who have a relatively cushy life, to leave to come to America. Many Norwegians are quite happy living in Norway, thank you very much, so by enlarge, they are not coming in any significant numbers. If you ask most Brits why they want to come to America, most of the time, they will say it’s the Floridian or California weather. However, the volume of white Brits coming to America has steadily declined.

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The people that are the most inspired to come to America are naturally and rightly going to be people from the poorest countries around the world, who nonetheless are the most talented amongst them. So, if you take many of want-to-be immigrants from Africa and India (South Asian), they are by far more educated than the above-average American, and this is the talent that US businesses are literally desperate for. The only problem with this reality is that these people do not look like those from Norway.

The reality is, that the future of America is not a wholly white America. If such an America were to occur, we’d definitely have to talk about ‘Making America Great Again’, because America would have not only lost its diversity, but also lost all economic strength, as companies who could not staff their businesses with the talent needed, would certainly move their businesses overseas in droves.

The irony is that in order to ‘Make America Great Again’, and not to make it white again, is to actually make it as inclusive and as diverse as possible, not just with highly talented people, but with those highly talented people being able to bring Grandpa and Grandma too.

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Enshrined in the Constitution is the ‘Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness’. So, if America wants to source the best talent around the world, they have to maintain all those elements that will make it worth while to that immigrant, as these talented immigrants have more than just America to choose from. I wonder, when will those anti-immigrant Congressmen whose parents and grandparents brought them here to America, including Donald Trump himself, accept this inconvenient truth?

If you have any immigration plans whatsoever, my advice is to start your US Immigration plans asap while these current pathways are still available. Call 760 754 7000 Today! Do not delay.

US Immigration Law Offices of Chris M. Ingram
Chris M. Ingram LL.M., ESQ – Immigration Attorney
Admitted in New York.
Practice Specializing in US Immigration Law
401 Wilshire Boulevard, 12th Floor,
[Cross Streets 4th and Wilshire]
Santa Monica,
California 90401
Tel: 310 496 4292