Independent Trump Can Solve Immigration Paradox

Both the right and the left are to blame for policies that looked the other way as millions of illegal immigrants began pouring into the country starting in the 1980’s. The business community benefited with cheap labor off the books which had the effect of undermining the value of American labor and the labor movement. The globalist left supported illegal immigration to erase national borders and turn the United States into a province of the world. Leftist groups like the National Lawyers Guild worked to help the new arrivals get on welfare as a means of redistributing wealth.

President Barack Obama offered a well-intentioned temporary solution for the Dreamers by signing a constitutionally dubious executive order, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA, which offered temporary protections while not addressing citizen status. This caused the state of limbo that the Dreamers live in today. President Obama should be credited with presiding over more deportations, on average, than has President Trump in his first year in office.

President Trump is the type of independent president who could take on both right and left special interests, both of which do not have the best interests of America at heart, by offering amnesty to the Dreamers, who should be permitted to apply for citizenship without fear and who would then be properly vetted, and at the same time building a wall on the Mexican border and tightening up other points of entry.

Other aspects of immigration reform that President Trump should take on could include tightening the standards of family reunification, known colloquially as chain migration. This program is proper regarding the immigration of the new citizen’s immediate family which includes parents and minor children. The program was, however, expanded beyond its original mission to include adult siblings and their spouses and families which has further expanded to include the newly arriving sibling’s spouses and families. A fairer and more inclusive system would consider applicants for immigration based on merit rather than family relations.

Offering immigration to refugees is a long and honored American tradition that can nevertheless be abused as, it should be noted, the blind sheik, who was the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing, and the Tsarnaev brothers, who bombed the Boston Marathon, arrived in this country as refugees. While this country should be a haven of last resort, our government could take measures, working with other nations, to ensure that refugees from war-torn nations are settled into nearby nations that are like their own with an eye toward returning home when the disaster subsides and when it is safe to do so.

International law and custom, not to mention common sense, dictates that all sovereign nations reserve the right to determine who enters their respective national homes. All nations, in this regard, act no differently than do the individual or the family which exercise the natural right to determine who enters their own private place of domicile. With this principle in mind, the United States should maintain a liberal policy by opening the national door to qualified immigrants who want to contribute to our economy and to the American way of life.

Chuck Morse is a radio host who broadcasts live Thursday's at 10 a.m. ET at WMFO-Tufts. Chuck hosts the podcast "Chuck Morse Speaks" on iTunes and Stitcher and his books are available on Amazon.com. For more of his reports — Click Here Now.