evidence: The current president hopes to turn back the clock, and make American great again by rebuilding low-margin businesses like coal and steel and limiting immigration to a trickle. That’s a losing strategy. We are in a brain-based economy, and he still thinks we’re in one based on brawn. We need to attract the world’s hardest working, most ambitious and smartest people. We want them to live and work here and become as American as they want to be. Some may never assimilate, sending money home and returning there themselves. Sometimes to attract the smart engineer, we will need to allow her to bring her less-talented brother, or her beloved mother. But even if immigration wasn’t critical to our economic well-being, the value of welcoming newcomers and diversity is central to our national identity. The comment you heard over and over again when children were separated from their guardians at the border was, "that is not us." "That’s not how America does things." The revulsion was instantaneous, non-partisan, and nonideological. That policy was an affront to America’s core values. Donald Trump is a masterful self-promoter, and a man of ambitious and relentless persistence. But the American character carries its own persistent core values. Taking children from their parents violated those core values. And even this president had to take heed.