Immigration at the southern border and the Wall top the list of most contentious, hard to follow, and outright spun issues since President Trump took office. Recently, the president vetoed legislation, supported by 12 Republican senators, hampering the Wall’s construction. Speaker Pelosi announced she seeks to override the veto after the Congressional break. Two days later, the president tweeted a video of 247 illegals breaking into the country as a unit at night; it’s title - “This is a national emergency.”
The president promised the Wall to the American people. It’s his signature issue; so his opponents, even Republican ones, have sworn to prevent it. They’ve attempted to block him in the press and in courts. The likes of George Soros backed a migrant caravan to coincide with the mid-term elections.
The number crossing the border each month varies depending on who makes the claim. One reason for the discrepancy is that the government can’t actually count successful crossings and must guess based on the number apprehended. However, logic dictates that the current flow is altering the make-up of our country and putting strain on resources.
Both sides agree families now make up 50% of those apprehended, and that this trend began 5 years ago under Obama when, according to former attorney general Jeff Sessions “word had gotten out…that anyone who tried to cross the border with a minor would almost certainly be ‘given immunity from prosecution.’” Therefore, “the number of unaccompanied alien children at U.S. ports of entry increased by a staggering 636 percent from April 2017 to April 2018.” (WhiteHouse.gov)
Border detention facilities, built over decades as need arose, were designed to house mostly single, mostly male migrants. Part of what constitutes the crisis is the lack of facilities for families. It’s difficult to determine which minors belong to which undocumented adults, and in some cases, which minors are actually minors. Some migrants carry disease. In 2018, 2 children died in border detention.
Just as stories conflict about the numbers of illegals, so do those about what percent seek asylum, what percent are child traffickers, and what percent of women have been raped on the journey. But common sense dictates that child trafficking and rape would be common, as migrants seek to take advantage of loopholes in our asylum laws, and criminals, wanting to blend in with migrants, acquire women and children to both enhance credibility and sell in the US.
“Because current law sets an easily met standard for "credible fear," refugees fleeing actual persecution and violence are bogged down in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services backlog, which has swelled more than 1900 percent since the end of the 2012 fiscal year. (WhiteHouse.gov) This means that the Obama Administration set the precedent of setting asylum seekers free with the frankly ridiculous directive to return for court dates.
The Left labels the Trump approach as unfeeling simply because, as a law and order president, he’s instructed his departments to follow the law. The Left ignores that the Obama administration’ sometimes employed the same methods (putting illegal aliens in pens) and other times ignored the law entirely (keeping some families together, when the law requires separation.) By following the law, the President upholds his job as executive. By publicly explaining his actions, he rightly passes the buck to Congress, which refuses to create functional legislation. Additionally, if Trump instructed his departments not to follow the law (as did President Obama) he could be impeached.
The Left argues that the Wall won’t solve anything, that most illegals do utilize points of entry, that citizens along the border don’t want a wall for various reasons - including tourism, and that illegals commit crimes at a lower rate than the population. However, all news sites - even Left leaning ones - that focus on border towns which have a wall or fence say that crime in these communities dropped substantially after construction. One wonders that, if illegals don’t commit crimes and walls don’t work, how crime could’ve reduced. And, if illegals use ports of entry, how would building a wall shunt the flow of illegals to a new location?
Since the details supporting each sides’ positions contradict, one must examine how each interprets their story. The Left shuns common sense with their duplicity, saying people who commit crimes, whether it’s those who enter the country illegally or California’s death row inmates, deserve compassion while victims of violence and other crimes don’t. Republican swamp dwellers also spout duplicity, claiming a crisis and doing nothing. Only President Trump’s rhetoric passes the sniff test - whether or not his facts are fake news. He demonstrates that smugglers and human traffickers exploit the weakness in our immigration system; that if any number of decent families invade our border, they not only put strain on our system, they make their home countries worse by diminishing the population of decent people; and that the only real solution is not to spread wealth, but incentivize its growth in the migrants’ home countries so that they stay home.
