On April 21st, US President Donald Trump, facing severe criticism for his administration’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis, declared a 60-day halt in issuing green cards to purportedly prevent immigration to the United States. While his assault on immigration was clearly intended to invigorate his fanbase for his upcoming reelection campaign, that immigrants have been singled out as disease-carriers is not surprising given the long, ugly history of epidemics being associated with immigrants.
In the 1800s, Irish immigrants were blamed for bringing cholera to the United States, Italians for polio, and Jews for tuberculosis. In the 1900s, Chinese immigrants were similarly accused of spreading bubonic plague. When the influx of Haitian refugees in the 1980s coincided with the AIDS epidemic, Haitians and Africans were blamed for the disease. Today, xenophobia has turned its gaze upon those of Asian descent, who, accused of spreading the coronavirus, face intense prejudice.
Yet, one crucial but overlooked point dismantles these fears about immigrants being active vectors: while human mobility transforms regional human-to-human transmission into global outbreaks, immigrants and refugees are relatively static compared to seasonal travelers. Unlike tourists and business travelers, who travel back and forth across borders on a temporary but regular basis, immigrants and refugees have settled in their adopted countries fairly permanently. Their often-limited resources prohibit frequent travel. In contrast, cruise ships sailing for weeks despite having infected people on board helped carry the coronavirus around the globe, contributing to the mounting toll of cases and deaths. And the return of hundreds of thousands of Canadian snowbirds to Canada after wintering in Florida, a COVID-19 epicenter, raised fears among health officials about an increase of infected cases in the country.
