One of America’s most famous immigrants is about to ask Donald Trump to let more foreigners into the country.
Elon Musk, native of South Africa and creator of Tesla and Space X, appears to be taking the side of technology companies, who want the government to allow more highly skilled workers into the country for jobs that American citizens aren’t filling.
It sounds like a no-brainer. In addition to the high-tech worker issue, the country’s birth rate continues to decrease. Without the arrival of immigrants (allowed in legally), the population would be unchanged or more likely declining.
This element of immigration is about as far removed from illegal crossings at the Mexican border as it could be. We are talking about educated people who want to come to the United States to fill good-paying technology jobs — not penniless families fording the Rio Grande without permission.
A story on the Politico website, though, makes it clear that this topic will be anything but a no-brainer when Trump takes office in January. The technology executives definitely have a strong advocate in Trump’s new buddy Musk, but the incoming president is on record in word and in first-term deed as supporting reduced immigration of all kinds.
One of the reasons Trump won a second term last month is because President Biden listened to the left wing of the Democratic Party and relaxed border enforcement. Only in the year before the election, recognizing the error, did the Biden administration keep significantly more people from entering illegally.
Plenty of Trump’s close advisers — Politico specifically mentioned Stephen Miller, who will be deputy chief of staff for policy in the incoming administration — would rather the country allow virtually no immigration at all, even for trained people who are likely to find a job.
Tech leaders are optimistic that if Musk can get through to Trump, he can convince the president to let in more immigrants with employable STEM skills — in science, technology, engineering and math.
Their reasoning is that his well-known desire to get all illegal immigrants out of the country puts him in a good position to argue for more legal immigration, “especially if it comes wrapped in an argument about making America more competitive,” the Politico story said.
But Miller and his allies will fight back. They will repeat their claims that foreign workers take American jobs and even reduce pay in high-tech jobs. Trump listened: In his first term, he reduced legal immigration and denied applications and extensions for skilled workers. It will be interesting to see if there are any changes to this pattern next year.
One obvious solution to this dilemma is to get more young Americans interested in STEM education and jobs. That way, we wouldn’t need immigrants. The larger question, though, is why this isn’t already happening.
Young people have embraced the use of technology; why aren’t greater numbers of them willing to learn how it works and research ways to make it work better?
If there is a reason to reject the anti-immigration mindset, it’s that America is a country of immigrants. With the exception of American Indians, everyone in the United States has multiple ancestors who came here from someplace else. The melting pot is part of the country’s DNA, and it makes more sense to allow legal immigration with defined limits than it does to close the door to everybody who wants their chance at the American dream.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
