A wall against the world is suicidal

Wherever I go in Reno, there are signs like this in store windows. From what I hear, that's true most everywhere. Employers can't find the workers they want; some are even raising wages to try to attract applicants. Yet in this full employment economy, nobody -- or maybe not enough somebodies -- seem to want the jobs on offer.

What's going on? Actually, the problem may be pretty simple: a combination of Donald Trump and the MAGA xenophobes, plus the pandemic, have dried up the stream of immigrants whose continuing arrival is what gives the US economy its dynamism.

Econofact:

Due to increased restrictions on immigration and travel, which began with the COVID-19 pandemic in the early months of 2020, the net inflow of immigrants into the United States has essentially halted for almost 2 years. By the end of 2021 there were about 2 million fewer working-age immigrants living in the United States than there would have been if the pre-2020 immigration trend had continued unchanged.

... [the] decline in immigrant and nonimmigrant visa arrivals resulted in zero growth in working-age foreign-born people in the United States. Prior to 2019, the foreign born population of working age (18 to 65) grew by about 660,000 people per year, as reported in data from the monthly Current Population survey (see the first chart). This trend came to a stop already in 2019 before the pandemic, due to a combination of stricter immigration enforcement and a drop in the inflow of Mexican immigrants. The halt to international travel in 2020 added a significant drop in the working-age immigrant population.

Interestingly, this article makes the point that only half the shortfall of new immigrant workers was in the low wage sector we associate with newcomers. The US economy is also hurting because of the disappearance of a large cohort of people I think of as "brain drain" immigrants -- educated scientists and professionals. And that's before mentioning that much of the risk-taking entrepreneurship in our economy is the work of new immigrants. 

We're hurting because our way of life depends on new Americans. This is what building a wall against the world gets us.