US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that the reason why countries like China, Japan, Russia and India were "stalling badly economically" or "having troubles" was because they are "xenophobic" and do not want immigrants.
Argued that migration has been good for the US economy, President Joe Biden said they immigrants are what makes his country "strong".
"One of the reasons why our economy's growing is because of you and many others. Why? Because we welcome immigrants," news agency Reuters quoted Biden as saying at a Washington fundraising event for his 2024 re-election campaign and marking the start of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
"Why is China stalling so badly economically, why is Japan having trouble, why is Russia, why is India, because they're xenophobic. They don't want immigrants. Immigrants are what makes us strong," Biden said.
Xenophobia is described as fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign.
As per to International Monetary Fund's forecast of last month, each country would see its growth decelerate in 2024 from last year, ranging from 0.9 per cent in Japan to 6.8 per cent in India.
IMF forecasts that the United States would grow at 2.7 per cent, slightly brisker than its 2.5 per cent rate last year. Many economists have attributed the better-than-expected performance partly to a migrants expanding the country's labour force, the Reuters report mentioned.
