Opinion Express View on Trump’s anti-immigration agenda: There will be costs for both India and the US

The vast majority of immigrants are not criminals… I ask you to have mercy, Mr President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away.” Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s direct appeal to Donald Trump, the 47th President of the United States, during a prayer service in Washington followed a slew of executive orders that he signed on his first day back in the White House. Shutting the door on those seeking to enter the US and holding the spectre of ejection over those already living there, these measures include ending birthright citizenship — automatic citizenship of children born in the US to non-citizens — and suspending the Refugee Admissions programme. To his voter base, sympathetic to rhetoric about a “large-scale invasion” of America by “illegal aliens”, these orders are the first concrete sign that Trump means to push through his anti-immigration agenda as a top priority.

Part of a mix of new priorities and old ones — a wall on the Mexican border harks back to his first term — Trump’s reversal of the broader US policy on immigration spells disaster for millions. They include people fleeing economic deprivation and military conflict, the “huddled masses” invoked in poet Emma Lazarus’s sonnet, whose American Dream of freedom and opportunity stands imperiled with a few strokes of a pen. For the US, too, there could be costs to pay: Foreign-born workers — including legally-admitted immigrants, refugees, temporary residents such as students and undocumented workers — comprise over 18 per cent of the US labour force, and moves to radically reduce their count could be economically damaging. For example, a joint study by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Brookings Institution and the Niskanen Centre estimated that such plans could curb US GDP growth by $30 to $110 billion in 2025. It would also cause a dent in much of what gives the US its edge, its leadership in innovation, not just in the technology sector — where immigrants play a key role at every level — but also in areas like biomedical research.

Advertisement

What Trump envisions will not be easy: Aside from logistical challenges — such as mobilising the US military to secure the borders and expecting overcrowded immigration detention centres to accommodate even larger numbers — there are legal and constitutional question marks. Several states are already suing to stop the birthright citizenship order which, they argue, violates a right enshrined in the US Constitution. The administration’s next moves will be watched closely, including by India. With Indian-Americans comprising 1.47 per cent of the US population, the orders are already causing disquiet, especially over the 20,407 “undocumented” Indians who are either facing “final removal orders” or being held in detention centres. Indian workers form one of the largest groups of H-1B visa holders and would be vulnerable in the coming weeks and months, as conditions change rapidly in Trump’s America.