Trump's attack on immigration.

Byline: Shahid Javed Burki

Curtailing - if not altogether eliminating - the entry of foreigners into the country was an important component of the plank that won Donald Trump the support of the segment of the population that came to form his political base. Most of these people lived in what was often called the 'fly over' country. The political and economic elite that had dominated the American system was concentrated on the two coasts. The elite had little knowledge of what was going on in the vast land that lay between the East and West coasts. There people were suffering, losing jobs to immigrants mostly from Mexico and Central America and competition from China. Anti-immigration and anti-China became the central planks in the policy programme Trump promised he would pursue once he took up residence in the White House. Building a wall all along the border with Mexico was an important part of this programme. The other was to challenge China By: not allowing it access to America's technology products.

The arrival of the coronavirus from China gave President Trump the opportunity to move forward with this programme. How Covid-19, the disease caused By: the virus affected the US-China relations and how could the pandemic be used to limit immigration were two parts of the Trump plan to win the support of his base. Today, I will discuss some aspects of the anti-immigration moves made By: the American President.

In his press briefing on Tuesday, April 21, detailing what his administration was doing to handle the Covid-19 crisis, Trump threw a surprise concerning immigration. By: that day the disease had claimed 44,988 lives in the US. For Tuesday, when Trump made the announcement pertaining to immigration, the death toll was estimated at 2,868. But for the President the more relevant number was the number of people who had lost their jobs because of the restrictions that were placed on human activity. The most important of these was the 'business lockdown'. According to health experts, these moves were seen as helping to lower the number of deaths attributed to Covid-19. But Trump ignored these views and tweeted that the states of Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia, all with Democrats as governors, should be 'liberated'. By: April 16, the number of people who had filed for jobless claims had jumped to 22 million. In this number, Trump saw a threat to his re-election in November.

His plans about immigration went to the extreme. He announced that...