Reality is what doesn’t go away even if you don’t believe in it (paraphrasing Philip K. Dick)

By Herbert Rothschild

Despite its name, reality TV isn’t reality. That distinction keeps hitting Donald Trump upside his head. It changes his behavior although not his conceit that the world is his show.

There are the failures President Trump has chosen to ignore, such as his inability to end the fighting in Ukraine, which he boasted during the campaign that he could accomplish in 24 hours, and in Gaza (more than ever, Israel is the tail wagging the U.S. dog). Then, there are failures he has tried to depict as successes, such as his tariff negotiations and the attendance at his military parade last Saturday. Finally, there is one he’s had to acknowledge — ridding the country of immigrants living here without legal permission.

On Thursday of last week, Trump wrote on social media, “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”

The next day, according to the New York Times, Tatum King, a senior ICE official, via email told regional leaders of the agency, “Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.”

With the most likely worksites off limits to raids, ICE won’t be able to make the 3,000-per-day quota that White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller had pressed the agency to meet. Responding to that pressure, ICE had quickened its pace early this month, with arrests topping 2,000 on both June 3 and 4. Those numbers were well above the daily average of 660 arrests during Mr. Trump’s first 100 days back in office. That big push precipitated the crisis that persuaded Trump to rein in the agency.

Note: After I wrote this column, CNN reported that Homeland Security, the department that includes ICE, rescinded that guidance. We’ll see what happens next.

That Trump didn’t anticipate the labor shortages mass deportations would cause says a lot about the narrowness of his conceptual horizon. Republican lawmakers in Florida could have told him. In anticipation of a crackdown on immigrants, last year the state Legislature passed a bill allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to work 30-hour weeks. This year, there were bills to allow them to work full time, to remove employment restrictions for certain 14- and 15-year-olds, and to allow 13-year-olds to work in agricultural jobs during the summer of the year they turn 14. Those bills, however, failed to pass.

Last June I wrote a column titled, “Dare we say it? We need immigrants.” Its scope was much broader than the concentration of immigrant workers in sectors like farm work, food processing, and hotels and restaurants. I discussed the demographic reality — a declining and aging population of U.S. citizens unable to sustain the necessary ratio between workers and retirees. The current birth rate of all women in this country is under 1.7. To avoid population decline, it must be at least 2.1.  

Birth rates have fallen throughout the industrialized world, with South Korea reaching the lowest rate — 0.72 in 2023. In addition to the general concern the declines have caused, they are of special concern to nativists everywhere because immigration is the obvious fix for the problem.

For many decades, starting with a guest worker program in 1955, Germany rejected the extreme racism of its Nazi era and chose that fix. With first-generation immigrants now making up 18% of its 83 million people and second-generation immigrants another 5%, Germany is second only to the U.S. in numbers of immigrants. But former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open borders policy during the Syrian refugee crisis produced a political backlash. The far-right Alternative for Germany party won more than 20% of the vote in this year’s national election and holds the second largest number of seats in the Bundestag. Germany has tightened its borders, even though its birthrate is below 1.4.

The alternative to immigration that nativists favor is to promote childbearing by the “right people,” which in the U.S. basically means white people. J.D. Vance is the most prominent “pronatalist” in the Trump administration, although it should be noted that he doesn’t focus on the white birthrate, perhaps because his wife is second-generation Asian Indian. Speaking at the March for Life on Jan. 24, Vance declared, “I want more babies in the United States of America.” And on March 26, his boss, voicing his support for in vitro fertilization, said, “I’ll be known as the fertilization president.”

Some of the pronatalist policy ideas floating around the administration are a $5,000 baby bonus after delivery, expanded child tax credits, menstrual-cycle education, preference for parents in Fulbright Scholarship awards, and a “National Medal of Motherhood.” Expanding the child tax credit is the only one of these proposals that would effectively address the current financial disincentives to childbearing in the U.S., and it was Republicans in Congress in 2022 who ended the 2021 expansion that reduced childhood poverty to its lowest level on record.

Reacting to these proposals, MomsRising CEO Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, whose organization claims it advocates on behalf of more than a million mothers and families, said in a press release that they are “sheer lunacy. . . . There’s no question that families need policies that make it possible for moms and parents to care for their kids, go to work and contribute to their communities.”

She said that affordable child and elder care, access to maternal health care and paid family leave would better encourage people to start and grow their families. Republicans, however, don’t favor such policies, and their “Big Beautiful” budget bill will exacerbate the economic hurdles the average family faces.

Trump’s supporters don’t understand that our country must choose between what they regard as their replacement and gradual self-extinction. That understanding requires an objective and not even very long-term way of thinking uncongenial to them. Trump himself, quick to respond to warning signs that his policies aren’t working, will perforce allow most residents living here illegally to remain. But he has made the issue of their presence so toxic that it will be years before we adopt a rational policy about our demographic sustainability.    

Herbert Rothschild’s columns appear Fridays. Opinions expressed in them represent the author’s views. Email Rothschild at herbertrothschild6839@gmail.com.