La ley es la ley

A nation of rules and laws

IN CASE you missed it, this is from a presidential interview last week in the Oval Office with reporters from 12 regional newspapers in the country, including the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

President Trump called for increasing the number of legal immigrants allowed into the United States. He made a similar appeal during last week’s State of the Union address.

“We need people in our country because our unemployment numbers are so low, and we have massive numbers of companies coming back into our country—car companies, we have seven car companies coming back in right now and there’s going to be a lot more—we’ve done really well with this, and we need people.”

Immigrants can help to keep the economy strong, he said.

“I need people coming in because we need people to run the factories and plants and companies that are moving back in. We need people.”

Critics claim President Trump is opposed to immigration. But it seems clear from these words that Trump is in favor of immigration. He is just in favor of legal immigration, not illegal immigration.

Some Americans might think: What’s the difference? Immigrants are all human. If there’s little difference, if illegal immigrants are treated the same as legal ones, why should we even have an immigration system at all? Or laws? It seems unfair to legal immigrants—who wait their turn and go through the system—if illegal immigrants get the same treatment. In fact, that sounds a lot like the argument for those who favor a completely open border to the United States.

To President Trump, immigration is a national policy issue, and any policy should be decided on what’s in the best interest of the United States, not the desire of each individual wanting to come here.

Yes, we are a nation of immigrants. But most of those immigrants, and their offspring, came here legally. We are a nation of laws, not just emotions. If it comes down to an argument between legal immigration and open borders in 2020, we think most rational, levelheaded Americans will go with legal immigration, and lots more of it.