President Trump must call upon Congress to build a big, beautiful, humane border wall with Mexico, a state whose government has gone so far as to publish pamphlets on how their ever-so-economically valuable citizens can infiltrate the U.S. without detection.
In the same breath, he must also call upon Congress to grant Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients a path to citizenship.
When President Trump announced the end of DACA, there were local protests abound. University administrators nationwide came right on cue, stating their unconditional support of undocumented students.
Our neighboring University of California has even filed a lawsuit, ironically claiming in it that the rescindment of President Obama’s unilateral decision is “nothing more than an unreasoned executive whim.”
Ever the preeminent constitutional law professor, President Obama emphasized to us all that DACA was only a temporary fix to a longstanding problem. And Hillary Clinton has been much harsher on the issue: The former Secretary of State said the children of undocumented immigrants should be sent back in a 2014 CNN interview.
As a conservative, I cannot in good conscience support such extremes as Mrs. Clinton’s, or the stance of those who want unconditional amnesty. Mass deportations and mass amnesty without enhanced border security are not unlike applying Band-Aids to a gaping wound: we’re still left bleeding in the end.
Mistakes have unfortunately been made now for decades regarding U.S. immigration policy. It is axiomatic at this late stage to say that we do not prioritize immigration to fit our nation’s needs when there is an unadulterated inflow of millions of undocumented immigrants to the country. Our collective failure as citizens to secure the border with finality has meanwhile led to whole generations being delivered into legal uncertainty. This cycle must end.
According to leaked Border Patrol interviews, DACA was used (if by misinterpretation of its intent) by new undocumented immigrants under the age of 30 as permisos to come lay claim to United States residency. It made border control more challenging.
By extension, criminal cartels infiltrated the United States’ semi-permeable borders amid DACA to violently acquire new gang territory. The Washington Examiner reported Aug. 30 that the murderous MS-13 gang used foot soldiers to surge across the border after DACA’s instatement.
We risk further self-harm if we continue to defer action on both undocumented immigration and border security, which are issues inextricably linked to one another.
As demonstrated by his executive action, which includes a six-month grace period, President Trump is up to the task of catching this political hot potato.
We should want Congress to give DACA recipients real hope. DACA recipients suffer under the stresses of not knowing their legal homes. The humane option is to support their amnesty, under the context of never letting this tragedy happen again with undocumented immigration. Their parents caused and our society has enabled this veritable refugee situation to occur. To truly fix it, we must avert future millions from suffering similar pains, and our nation must never again bear the multi-billion-dollar debt of fully absorbing millions of penurious non-citizens.
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Democrats and Republicans: Let’s Make America Great Again, one individual amnesty and one allegorical brick at a time, together. It’s the solution few of us want, and all of us deserve.
Ryan Margraf is a columnist at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo. The views presented in this column are his own.
