Immigration policy is atrocious, but we also have to look at the bigger picture
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KAMLOOPS — It is hard to imagine the anguish of parents who are separated from their children at the U.S. border with Mexico. Parents coming into the U.S. hoping for a better life and the first thing that happens to them is that they are detained, and their family separated. The policy is ludicrous, and President Donald Trump should act now to stop it. I’m not against detaining the families, but they should be kept together as a group.
We also need to look at the bigger picture. The humanitarian crisis aside, the U.S. faces a crisis trying to control its southern border. Immigrants coming through in droves, trying to bypass border points and get into the U.S. any way they can. Many of them members of drug cartels, many gang members, many unsavoury people wanting to infiltrate another county. I don’t know the percentage of those “bad” people compared to those who simply want to erase their poverty in a land supposedly full of milk and honey. President Trump had a good point yesterday when he said Mexico was sending people “not the best” north, and these people range from drug dealers to terrorists. Trump’s call for a wall to be built on the border was perhaps tongue-in-cheek, but not totally unreasonable, whether it be a physical wall, or some other wall that will keep the situation under control.
According to Trump, the U.S. has just surpassed Germany as the leading country dealing with immigration. I say, according to Trump, because without fact-checking, we don’t know for sure, but if the statement is true, and you look at the number of countries Germany has to deal in comparison with the U.S, that’s a scary statistic.
We can’t be surprised at the number of people who want to escape the lawlessness that is Mexico today. And it is a situation that requires immediate action to bring it to an end. Immigrants have to enter any country legally, be vetted, and those who don’t fit should be deported. But separating children from their parents should have no part in that process, and while Trump has some valid points, condoning this kind of separation should not be one of them. As the President pointed out, you have only two choices- open borders or containment with due legal process. Can’t be both ways. But humanitarianism and compassion calls for better alternatives than those being presented right now. There has to be another way.
