Huddled Masses? Nah. Bring Me Your Ph.D.s.

Martin Elfman for The Chronicle Review

P resident Trump’s executive orders attempting to block immigrants from a selection of Muslim-majority countries have sparked a public outcry. Many of the strongest objections have come from higher-education leaders.

Though nearly all of these statements refer to the American value of welcoming immigrants, a significant number are grounded in the contributions that immigrants make to the institutions in question, and the risk that the orders pose to those contributions.

Janet Napolitano, a former attorney general and now president of the University of California system, wrote that “it is critical that the United States continues to welcome the best students, scholars, scientists, and engineers of all backgrounds and nationalities.” The Association of American Universities urged “the Administration, as soon as possible, to make clear to the world that the United States continues to welcome the most talented individuals from all countries to study, teach, and carry out research and scholarship at our universities. It is vital to our economy and the national interest that we continue to attract the best students, scientists, engineers, and scholars.”

“Were this source of talent to dry up or disappear,” wrote Jonathan Cole, a professor and former provost at Columbia University, “the nation could find itself with a deep deficit of talent to fill highly skilled jobs — to say nothing of the research departments at universities.”

These responses are similar to those from the business world, including statements from the CEOs of Adobe, Apple, Citi, and Google.

It is natural for universities, like tech companies, to speak from their own experience and with an eye toward those whom they serve. Their statements are, moreover, undoubtedly true: Colleges have long been dependent on the contributions of immigrants.

Yet in focusing on this as the problematic aspect of the executive orders, these institutions abandon, in a manner that unconsciously mimics the Trump administration’s position, the idea that all human life is intrinsically valuable. The notion that people are valuable because of what they contribute to our society — either intellectually or economically — is a relatively recent one. The commodification of humans, criticized by Pope Francis, is tied, in the history of ideas, to the origins of the fraternal twins capitalism and Protestantism. Productivity, in light of the famous Protestant work ethic, becomes a cipher for personhood: Those who add measurable value to society are seen as more worthy, and are afforded rights — such as ease of immigration — that are withheld from the less productive.

Although it seems sensible enough to want to attract talent to America’s shores, policies and endorsements that prioritize productivity are ethically iffy. The United States is not a corporation. Applying a corporate model to immigration might be instinctive (we want only “the best”), but what would this mean for those who fail to live up to their part of the deal? Privileging those seen as assets implicitly means disempowering those who, through no fault of their own, may not be in a position to provide obvious benefits: notably, the poor, the very young, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled.

O ur culture’s most prized immigration values, both national and religious, do not apply solely to the accomplished and the educated. The Statue of Liberty reads, in the words of Emma Lazarus, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The Bible instructs us to care specifically for the vulnerable: “Cursed be he who subverts the rights of the stranger, the orphan, and the widow,” reads Deuteronomy. “Just as you did to the least of these, so you did to me,” says Jesus. On that principle — that all life matters, regardless of its economic value — religious teachings find common ground with feminist, civil-rights, and disability-rights priorities.

When academics protest immigration policies solely because of potential missed opportunities to capitalize on intelligent minds, we tacitly support an elitist system that disregards the very people most in need. While universities may these days be looking increasingly like for-profit companies, with their focus on productive output and quantifiable returns on investment, it’s disheartening that this should extend even to their statements on matters of human rights.

It is a small step from immigration policies that value only the most productive to educational and public-health policies that do the same. By exclusively appealing to the myriad ways in which people from other countries contribute to American society, we not only reproduce the rhetoric of commodification, but we also reproduce the hierarchy of value it places on human life. When we commodify one body, we commodify them all.

Joel Baden is a professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale Divinity School. Candida Moss is a professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame.