Don’t blame Trump on immigration
Democrats stonewall solutions in Congress
Our current immigration system is failing the American people — as well as the immigrants and asylum seekers who truly deserve to enter this country.
President Trump has done everything in his power to fix our broken immigration system and secure the border, but Democrats would rather obstruct than work with him to find solutions. It is President Trump’s job to enforce the law as written, but he cannot rewrite or revoke broken laws.
Only Congress can.
That’s why President Trump is pressuring Congress to fix the broken system that harms legal immigrants and provides safehavens for illegal immigrants and the violent gang members who enable them.
“Congress must pass smart, fast and reasonable Immigration Laws now. Law Enforcement at the Border is doing a great job, but the laws they are forced to work with are insane,” the president tweeted recently.
According to the White House, most green cards in the United States are handed out based on family-based chain migration rather than skill or merit, which allows lowskilled immigrants who manage to get into this country legally to bring their extended family members. This leads to an increase in unskilled labor, the depression of wages, and an increase in government welfare spending.
Another giant flaw in our immigration system is the temporary worker visa pro-
President Trump provided a short-term solution with bold leadership and the signing of his executive order, but a long-term solution can only come with the help of Congress.
gram, which is outdated and difficult to use. Corporations and farmers complain that the system is unnecessarily complex and discourages the legal documentation of workers.
Another problem is that our generous asylum policy has attracted so many applicants that we lack the adequate legal infrastructure to process their claims in a timely manner. It was reported in January that more than 300,000 asylum applicants were waiting for cases to be reviewed by an immigration judge.
Then, of course, we have the absurd diversity lottery, which brings people from third-world countries into the U.S. for no other reason than being from the third world.
This not only poses a direct threat to the safety and security of American citizens, but it is also cruel to the immigrants themselves. How can we possibly expect people without the skills, education, fluency in English or familiarity with our culture to survive in today’s rapidly changing, hi-tech, servicesector economy?
Additionally, we have the obvious problem of an unsecured border. As the president has rightfully insisted, a nation without borders is no nation. Our porous southern border brings drugs and crime into our great country, and we cannot ensure homeland security without a wall.
We need only three legal immigration channels:
❚ A route for skilled workers valuable to our economy;
❚ the reunion of immediate family members instead of a chain migration system that allows people to bring in their extended families; and
❚ an asylum system that actually works to process valid claims quickly and efficiently.
Based on our outdated and ineffective immigration statutes, all of these things are impossible without congressional action.
Furthermore, if the way we currently deal with legal immigration is seriously flawed, the way we handle illegal immigration is arguably worse. The family separation controversy has little to do with the president’s policies and far more to do with laws passed long before he took office.
President Trump provided a shortterm solution with bold leadership and the signing of his executive order, but a long-term solution can only come with the help of Congress.
When given the chance to reach an immigration deal at the beginning of this year that provided a waiver for 1.8 million DACA recipients, Democrats rejected it out of hand because they didn’t want to contribute to a victory for the president.
Democrats would rather use the immigration crisis as a political tool. They railed against the president because of family separation. Then when the president acted to solve that crisis and prevent family separation, they attacked him for that as well.
Now that President Trump has demonstrated the necessary leadership to address family separation, the Democrats must decide: Will they work with the president to help end our immigration crisis, or will they continue to express faux outrage and block a real solution?