Isolationist Hogwash

The pandemic is strengthening anti-globalism. Donald Trump is misleading the American people when he sells immigration bans as economic measures. But Germany will be facing tough conflicts as well.

Like the American president, all politicians who already champion isolationism are feeling validated by this pandemic. It is true that an epidemic is best curtailed by limiting the movement of potentially infected people and by enforcing social distancing. That includes border closures.

However, the American example in particular shows that primarily symbolic isolation measures posing as health protection are not sufficient. Donald Trump likes to claim that he was among the first people worldwide who took the “Chinese virus,” as he calls it, seriously. Had that actually been the case, he should not have stopped with a unilaterally imposed travel ban on China. He should have at least tried to convince the rest of the world of the importance of his effort – and he should have been stricter with regard to the treatment of Americans returning from China.

The worldwide struggle for masks and protective gear, outsourced to China and other low-wage countries by rich Western states long ago, provides further ammunition for nationalists and anti-globalists. The same applies to the struggles of the industrial sector. As a result, large factories in America and Germany have shut down due to disruptions in international supply chains and the fact that they hardly have any parts in stock. Attacks on this system stopped being the exclusive talking points of populist parties a while ago.

Health Protection Is Being Used as a Pretext

While European countries and regions dependent on tourism are loudly pushing for a swift end to the travel ban, Trump is taking the opposite approach. He wants to seize this period of crisis to ban all immigration. This has very little to do with health protection. Considering the enormous effort it takes to obtain a Green Card, it would hardly make a difference to require an initial quarantine period for immigrants.* Given this, Trump admits that it is not solely a fight against the “invisible enemy” aka Sars-CoV-2, but against the economic recession – and thus, also about the fight against Joe Biden, who wants to take back the White House for the Democrats in November.

But that is just hogwash. It is absurd to lend credence to the belief that the 22 million newly unemployed in the United States would rejoin the workforce more quickly if Washington stopped handing out work permits to foreigners, regardless of qualification level. The supposed competition that seasonal workers in the U.S. pose is a chimera, just as it is in Germany. Even conservative hardliners engaged in the immigration debate have long been aware of the fact that the domestic workforce is not willing to do the backbreaking jobs that, for example, Latino seasonal workers do on the onion and strawberry farms in the American Southwest.

Regardless, proponents of barrier-free international trade and an open world in general are facing trying times. Germany is the best example. The higher-than-average results regarding the containment of the virus here, albeit still fragile, need to be protected. Every border that is opened, every tourist and business form of travel will remain controversial and need to be justified for a long time to come. Populists will not miss the opportunity to warn about Angela Merkel’s “border-opening debate debacle.” Germany, the champion of export and world travel, is facing tough political conflicts as well.

*Editor’s note: A Green Card is officially known as a Permanent Resident Card which allows one to live and work permanently in the United States.