President Trump should pay closer attention to his top aide. Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney delivered some words of wisdom about immigration during a recent trip to the United Kingdom.
“We are desperate — desperate — for more people,” Mulvaney was recorded as saying at a private dinner. “We are running out of people to fuel the economic growth that we’ve had in our nation over the last four years. We need more immigrants.” Mulvaney added that he was referring to immigrants coming in a “legal fashion.”
Still, the plea for more people is right on point for a country with a tight job market, dropping fertility rates and retiring baby boomers.
Once, Trump claimed to understand this, saying that he was only against illegal immigration.
Then, pulled right by the awful Stephen Miller and an animal desire to pander to his base, he endorsed a bill placing major restrictions on legal immigration, including high-skilled workers, while his administration proceeded to make it harder and harder for talented, educated people to settle here legally.
Then, in his 2019 State of the Union, Trump said he wanted “people to come into our country in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally.”
Actions never followed, as Trump has overseen sharp declines in legal immigration.
The nation’s economic growth and health of long-term entitlement programs demand population growth. Mulvaney should deliver his message directly to the president — if, that is, the president is capable of hearing truths he deems uncomfortable.