I have been reading some reactions to the latest white-supremacist effort from the White House. Obersturmbannführer Stefan Miller is taking advantage of the Covid-19 crisis to further restrict immigration, even to the point of barring entry into the U.S. of medical professionals who bring us desperately needed help and of technologists who help to keep us abreast of the latest foreign developments. The pretended excuse for this radical change is the old “Them furreners are gonna come in and take away your jobs!” I don’t know whose jobs would be taken, given that America is woefully short of fine scientists and skilled medical personnel. 

Aged as I am, I need the care of many physicians to keep me going. Now my urologist is an American, as is my cardiologist, but my internist is from Armenia, my nephrologist from Croatia, my psychiatrist from India, and my dermatologist from Pakistan. Where would I be without these physicians?

As we are not turning out enough physicians and nurses, so too are we lacking in well-trained scientists and technologists. Our public education system has collapsed. American students emerge from school ignorant of math and science in comparison to students in other developed countries. We need these foreign scientists and technologists to close the science/technology gap between us and our commercial and military rivals.

The new restrictions are designed to make it virtually impossible to obtain asylum and to obstruct all immigration with unendurable delays. This is simply a sneaky way of trying to end immigration altogether. Miller and his like are mono-maniacal extremists, like the Know Nothings and America Firsters of old. Their legally questionable obstructions and their SS tactics are continuing a shameful reversal of American immigration policy. I look forward to Trump’s resounding defeat and the return of these monsters into the jungles of the Far Right.