So said President Donald Trump last Friday during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border that converged with campaign fundraising pleas to states along the border. The ‘crisis’ at the southern border has been a central issue for the Trump base since the 2016 election and will surely come up again as he campaigns for reelection in a little over a year and a half.

As Trump’s first term rounds out, it is crucial for the administration to view every move as a tactical campaign move with repercussions in mind. It is perplexing and a bit distressing that, in recent weeks, President Trump has dug his heels into the soil and doubled down on his xenophobia, perpetuating a false idea that the United States is “full” and forcibly deterring asylum seekers.

And it is all, as aforementioned, under false pretenses. When President Trump states to prospective Americans, “We can’t take you anymore. We can’t take you,” he remains blissfully unaware of the depopulation pandemic.

A study by the Economic Innovation Group showed half of US counties are shrinking each year, and 2018 exhibited the slowest growth rate in over 80 years.

The cure for depopulation is immigration. It is this mass migration that replenishes the economy and stimulates job creation. Migrants are not “straining the system” as Trump insists, they are resuscitating it.

By allowing immigrants into our country, we would be allowing “a new human capital pipeline” that would “counteract the profound demographic challenges that shrinking communities face in their housing markets, municipal finances, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and labor markets.”

Allowing in the entrepreneurial spirit that many immigrants possess would increase the durability of our economy and relieve the fatigue caused by depopulation. There is an array of programs available for implementation if President Trump would consider a policy beyond his dangerous ideology.