Donald Trump’s inauguration was fascinating watching for a number of reasons. Big Tech barons, right-wing heads of state and Liz Truss paying fealty to their new overlord; Hillary Clinton unable to withhold a chuckle as Trump outlined plans to rename the Gulf of Mexico. It’s imagery so bizarre liberals would have struggled to hallucinate it a year ago.
But perhaps most striking sight was the thousands of Americans descending upon Washington in support of a man convicted of 34 counts of felony becoming leader of the free world – and how uniform their reasons for this were, when asked by broadcasters.
Mary Glynn from Rockaway in New York told the BBC’s Today programme that even though she was the daughter of immigrants, her priority was closing the border: “If you came here illegally you should leave, come back legally!” Asked by Justin Webb if this held true even if 10 million people had to be deported, even if it affected the economy, she replied: “It’s a point of the law.”
Indeed, 89 per cent of Americans who voted for Trump felt that “American values and beliefs are being undermined and cherished traditions are under threat”. For the first time, a majority of Americans support a full border wall with Mexico – as in all 3,000 kilometres of it. The President is keen to show he’s not all bombast and bluster. On his first day in power, he declared a national emergency at the southern border and suspended the app via which asylum seekers make claims.
It’s not that Americans are delusional about immigration’s effects on their lives – Joe Biden’s presidency oversaw record levels. But some of their reasoning sounds contradictory and a little familiar. Three quarters of the country still support skilled immigration – even if they’re vague as to what skilled actually means.
In 2016 Brits saw the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage echo similar sentiments, only for these to combust upon contact with reality – universities needed funding from international students, hospitals and care homes needed staff.
As a result, record student visas were issued, while carers were added to “shortage occupation lists” and thus exempt from visa rules under the new immigration scheme. All of which meant that in the year to June 2022, our population grew faster than any time since the 1960s. In closing down to the EU we opened up to the rest of the world: Indians and Nigerians have filled more jobs since 2019 than Brits.
Post-Brexit shortages of HGV drivers led to threats of food shortages, permeating the public consciousness to the extent that a meme of border control, asking Shamima Begum whether she could drive a lorry, became popular.
If only Trump’s voters had known what we do now: immigrants are easily cast as the bogeyman, and we only realised too late that they were the workers we needed. In the heady last days of EU membership back in June 2016, 56 per cent of us named “immigration and asylum” as the top issue facing the country – two years later, this figure had almost halved.
Worker shortages have already proven a major contributor to the inflation Americans are suffering from, according to the Federal Reserve (the American equivalent of the Bank of England). Mass deportations carried out under the Bush and Obama administrations were calculated to drive 88,000 American-born workers out of employment for every million unauthorised immigrants seized, due to the reduced local consumption of goods and services.
It’s true that drawing parallels between Trump and Brexit is nothing new – in 2016 you couldn’t move for thinkpieces comparing the red bus with the orange buffoon. But in the last Trump administration there were moderating influences to challenge or blunt his whims.
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Read MoreSecond time round, he’s fixed things: aides, his chief of staff and attorney general were selected on the basis of loyalty rather than competence or Capitol experience. In the Supreme Court, six out of nine justices are Republican appointees, while moderate Republicans have either retired or accept Trump as the new normal.
So this time Americans will see the decisive break with the status quo and international agreements that we have. Trump has already withdrawn from the Paris Agreement on climate change, and from the World Health Organisation, complaining that China “contributes nearly 90 percent less” to the WHO than the US despite having three times their population. He has said he wants to introduce a 25 per cent tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada – last summer it was estimated his proposals would cost the average American household an extra $2,600 (£2,100) per year.
America will eventually find out that in a globalised world, you can’t just cut yourself off: a report last year found Brexit reduced the average UK wage by £2,000. We continued to trade with the EU far more than anyone else, we just did it with more red tape – ironically, exactly what we left the EU to avoid.
It took six years for the majority of the British public to admit we were wrong to leave the EU, according to pollsters. Let’s hope Americans swallow their pride a little sooner – because unlike us, they don’t have to live with their mistake forever. In four years time, they get to choose again.
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