Trump is using the crisis to restrict immigration, while Bill de Blasio is using it to empty the jails.
Anyone surprised by President Trump’s tweet Monday about suspending immigration to the U.S. either is faking it or hasn’t been paying attention.
The president made his feelings about foreign nationals clear long before he won office, and he’s been nothing if not consistent. He believes that legal and illegal immigrants alike elbow Americans out of jobs and overburden social services. And he is unpersuaded by the evidence undermining such claims—evidence, ironically, that continued to pile up under his own presidency.
According to the Pew Research Center, some 44 million people living in the U.S. were born in another country, and an estimated 10 million are here illegally. Nevertheless, before the pandemic, the unemployment rate stood at a 50-year low, and job openings outnumbered by more than a million the number of people looking for work. Factory workers were getting signing bonuses, and fast-food chains were offering six-figure salaries to managers. Poverty among minority groups was falling to record levels, and wages were rising faster for less-skilled workers than for their supervisors.
In other words, Mr. Trump’s strong economic record refuted most of his anti-immigrant alarmism. All of it had been accomplished without hundreds of miles of new barriers along the southern border, without mass deportations, and without banning new immigrants. The president surely understands this, but he also knows how to keep his base of supporters engaged. Dumping on the country’s most recent arrivals is a tactic with a long political pedigree.
Most news coverage of Mr. Trump’s announcement is of the hair-on-fire variety that we’ve come to expect. But as The Wall Street Journal reports, the directive won’t do much more than codify what’s already happening: “Even without an executive order, the administration has already all but ceased nearly every form of immigration.” Moreover, the order “is expected to include exceptions for migrant farmworkers, who make up about a 10th of the workforce on U.S. farms, and health-care workers, particularly those helping treat coronavirus patients.”
It has been noted that immigrants are overrepresented in “essential worker” occupations—everything from physicians to taxi drivers—which is something the White House might keep in mind as the pandemic plays out. What’s more important, however, is that we had a significant labor shortage not long ago, and it’s hard to revive an economy if there aren’t enough workers to fill jobs.
Mr. Trump will catch grief for using the coronavirus scare to push a mostly unrelated immigration agenda, but his political opponents are playing similar games. Springing criminals from jails and prisons to protect them from catching the virus is one of many examples, and potentially the most dangerous one. Since when did the well-being of convicts become more important than the safety of society?
We know that a large share of crime, including violent crime, is committed by repeat offenders. We also know that these offenders are disproportionately black and Hispanic and primarily target members of their own racial or ethnic group. The media have been obsessing that low-income minority communities especially have been harmed by the pandemic—health-wise and economically. Returning large numbers of criminals to these neighborhoods prematurely is unlikely to help, especially when government and law enforcement are counting on people to adhere to behavioral guidelines voluntarily.
On Saturday, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio urged residents of the nation’s largest city to snap photographs of people who are not social distancing, mark their location, and report them to authorities. Some of us wondered how he squared this pronouncement with New York’s sanctuary-city policy for illegal immigrants. Apparently, criminal illegal aliens wanted by federal immigration authorities are to be protected, but citizens sitting too close to one another on a park bench are to be ratted on and fined up to $1,000.
Mr. de Blasio was also among those first calling for the release of inmates and for less-aggressive policing during the lockdown. In recent weeks, rape, robbery and felony assault are down from last year, but murder, burglary and car thefts have risen. And subway robberies have increased by 54% while ridership is down by nearly 90%, according to the New York Post. The paper reports that at least 50 newly released individuals have already been rearrested, and in some cases set free a second time.
“I think it’s unconscionable just on a human level that folks were shown mercy, and this is what some them have done,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference Monday. Really? A 2018 Justice Department report analyzed recidivism rates among inmates freed in 2005 and concluded that “an estimated 68% of released prisoners were arrested within 3 years, 79% within 6 years, and 83% within 9 years.”
It’s not “unconscionable,” Mr. Mayor. It’s predictable.
This piece originally appeared at The Wall Street Journal (paywall)
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal