BORDERING ON INSANITY

If you listen to the main stream media, you know that Donald Trump changed U.S. immigration policy to authorize ICE to physically separate children from their parents. This bitter, cruel and heartless man has no regard for human rights. He is putting people in concentration camps, for political purposes. He is frequently compared with Adolph Hitler. People are outraged. They are writing him scathing letters and demanding action. Who could blame them. How can we tolerate such behavior?

The only thing missing in this narrative are some very real, but inconvenient facts. Our immigration laws are a mess. Whether this was done deliberately or just through incompetence is somewhat irrelevant. What is relevant is that Donald Trump, like any other President, is confronted with only bad options.

Before you judge President Trump, please take a moment to learn the facts. Thousands of people are flooding to our borders. No one can blame them. They are trying to escape countries with systemic poverty and the United States is a far better alternative, even if one must get here illegally. Recent news broadcasts, shown around the world are telling people how to game the system. If you show up at our border, ask for asylum, you will be allowed to enter. You will be given a slip of paper saying you need to come back for a hearing on your legal status. You then just walk away. Very few people bother to show up for that hearing. Why would they? Irresponsible media reports are encouraging people to take long and dangerous trips by promising them they can just walk across the border into the promised land.

Many, but not all the adults showing up with children at the border are real families. History has taught us that evil people are more than willing to exploit children. For example; It is routine for terrorists to use children as human shields.

This means if we just follow the existing system and allow any adult showing up with children to walk into the country at least some of those children will be exploited. Some of them will be victims of sex trafficking. Sometimes the “children” aren’t even related to the adults, they may even be MS13 members.

There are approximately 12,000 children in U.S. protective custody. The majority, 10,000 of them, showed up at the border with no parents. They were abandoned by their parents and sent unaccompanied to the border.

There are approximately 2,000 children who did arrive here with adults claiming to be part of a family. The proper process for claiming asylum is to do so in Mexico. No family is separated if they follow the rules. Instead, people enter the U.S. illegally and then claim asylum. A high percentage of people claiming asylum are lying. ICE reports that 80% of asylum claims are bogus. I know of no one who disputes that fact, they just ignore it.

While adults can be charged with a crime for entering the U.S. illegally that law does not apply to children. That is why 10,000 kids were sent to the border by themselves. This also means that even if adults enter the country illegally, if they have children with them after 20 days either the entire family must be set free or the children must be separated from the parents and put in protective custody. If family members legally residing in the United States can be found, the kids are given to them. They are given medical care, food and clothing and they attend school. This is a far cry from the cages used by the Obama administration. Yet the media ignored that when Obama was President and would like you to believe these are concentration camps. There is a constant problem with resources because that also requires congressional approval, which is resisted by the same people who are trashing Trump.

Trump was faced with two bad options. He could continue to basically allow anyone to just walk into the country, if they had some kids in tow or he could enforce the law resulting in some children being separated by their parents.

He chose to enforce the law and then he went to congress and pleaded with them to change the law. The same people shrieking with outrage at Donald Trump will not consider changing the law because they want this crisis. They need this crisis. They think this crisis will help them gain political power. They couldn’t care less about the impact on those children. They want heart wrenching videos of children weeping as their parents are led away. This plays right into their narrative. At a minimum they want this crisis to continue through the midterm elections.

Sometimes a President must make very difficult decisions. Winston Churchill ordered thousands of men to fight the Germans, when there was no hope of victory and no attempt at rescue so that Britain could try to rescue thousands of other men stranded at Dunkirk. Someone needs to make those kinds of decisions. If your child is held hostage by terrorists, you would probably be willing to do anything to get them back. But a President knows that if we give in to terrorists the result will be more hostages. This does not mean he hates the hostage and doesn’t care what happens to them, it just means his duty to the country may trump his personal compassion.

Every President is faced with impossible decisions. The job is made even more difficult when public outrage based on incomplete facts is added to the mix. We should all be concerned over the tragedy of people living their lives in unspeakable poverty. However, we should also learn from the mistakes of others. Europe is paying a terrible price for showing compassion to refugees and opening borders to anyone who showed up. What started out as an act of human compassion resulted in a nightmare.

The fact is we need to secure our border. We should set up the fairest possible system for letting people from other countries come here. But the most unfair system of all is letting those people who game the system get the advantage. That is unfair to those who played by the rules and came here legally. It is unfair to those who would like to come here now but can’t because they are crowded out by those who have no interest in playing by the rules.

One may or may not agree with the decisions made by Donald Trump. You may hate his personality. But if you disagree, then please combine your disagreement with an option for another strategy that will solve the problem. Merely screaming at him and pretending he is some horrible monster is not a solution. It is rather part of the problem.

TDM

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