Trump has right, and law, on his side

The footage of a marching column of thousands of Honduran refugees advancing resolutely on the United States border is making outstanding television. This group of desperate people, including women, children and babes in arms, has already barged its way across Guatemala. On Sunday (US time) they faced down a line of armed Mexican policemen who were finally ordered to retreat.

Unless the Mexican government manages to stem this human tide, it is going to wash up against the US border fence along its frontier with Mexico, where President Donald Trump has vowed to stop them.

However laudable the motives behind this extraordinary migration, those involved and moreover those in the West’s liberal establishment who are egging them on are just plain wrong. No country can allow an uncontrolled mass of migrants to flood across its borders without any proven right to asylum. Barack Obama might have wavered and found some way to admit them. Trump will not. And however much his political opponents dislike it he has the law on his side. And no less importantly, polls show he has other allies.

Many relatively recent migrants to the US appear to support him, on the basis that if they had to go through the often tortuous regular channels to get their residence or citizenship, why should not the marchers do the same?