Where is the outrage that we are turning away highly-skilled immigrants who could make the difference in our competition with China? Wouldn’t an “America first” policy capitalize on our desirability as a destination for the talented instead of slamming our doors? Wouldn’t we be welcoming those who will create the key technologies for the future, like artificial intelligence?

Before Trump, Republicans used to stress that they were all for legal immigration but only opposed the illegal variety, but that’s all changed now. In fact, as Alex Nowrasteh at the CATO Institute argues, Trump failed to budge the number of illegal immigrants in the United States but radically diminished the number of legal immigrants. Sen. Tom Cotton and other Republicans are now on the record as favoring less legal immigration. According to some estimates, if the immigration rate had remained unchanged during Trump’s term, we would now have nearly 2 million more prime-age workers.

Those workers would be driving trucks, administering IVs at hospitals, cleaning hotel rooms, picking vegetables, and designing software. They’d be starting businesses (immigrants are 80 percent more likely to do this than native-borns), paying taxes, and caring for the elderly. And, by the way, they would be helping to bring down the overall price level.

But Trump distorted the Republican party into a xenophobic, blinkered cult that wrongly sees immigrants as a drain instead of a boon.