So, there’s a lot of debate about the need for the wall, and a lot of people concerned about immigration and fear-mongering about the dreaded “caravan of immigrants.”
I had never heard of MS-13 before Trump became president, but now, he’s using that as the boogeyman for immigration. So I decided to look into MS-13.
MS-13 is a criminal gang of narco-terrorists that originated in the US in the 70s and 80s, and maintains a huge presence in Central America, mostly in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. These are facts that I doubt Trump would disagree with.
MS-13 is terrible in those countries. Among other things, they target not only enemy gangs, but all the families associated with enemy gangs. They target police and government officials. They force children into their gangs. They are nothing short of a terrorist organization. And I believe Trump will still agree with this assessment.
But now knowing all that – MS-13 runs rampant in Central America, causing bloody chaos and killing all over the place – what about the families who live there? What about the parents who want to protect their children from these narco-terrorists? What can they do?
Well, they get together, form a caravan, and make their way north. They head to a country known for its freedoms and security. They head to the United States of America.
If you followed the caravan, they weren’t full of drug thugs heading to bring cocaine to our borders; most of them were families trying to flee the violence and chaos in Central America.
And where did the caravan go? Did it head to the wide open desert in the middle of Arizona, where the thousands of them could flee, unchallenged across the open border? No. They went to Tijuana.
When they interviewed these people in the caravan – and you have to give them the benefit of the doubt, just like I am doing with President Trump right now – they all came here wanting to plead their case for asylum. And based on what I have shown above, pleading their case for asylum seems like a slam dunk when their homeland is overrun with narco-terror gangs.
But what President Trump has done is to turn them away, and NOT allow them to make their case for asylum. “Sorry, America is closed to you. Go home.”
I think if given the choice, most of these undocumented immigrants would choose to come here legally and within the system. However, it’s been made clear to them they we don’t them here.
If we really want to cut down on immigration – without having to build a wall that we will constantly have to monitor, maintain, and repair – then here’s what we really need to do:
- Allow some immigrants with legitimate security claims to seek asylum within our country. If they haven’t committed a crime, why not take them in if they really want to be here?
- Bolster their governments at home to cut down on corruption and fight against groups like MS-13 in Central America. It worked with the war on terror to fight al-Qaeda and ISIS on their territory, so why don’t we do the same thing with groups like MS-13?
- Provide jobs for the people in their country. There’s a big reason illegal immigration started dropping after NAFTA: you no longer had to make a dangerous and illegal trek to America – there were good paying jobs in Mexico where you could earn a decent wage and take care of your family. We should be looking to expand free trade to these other countries, not cutting it off altogether.
Of course, this all works except for two things: we’re still sending jobs outside the country, and we’re still letting some Central Americans into the country.
If, after all that, you still think we need a wall – and to turn a blind eye to the evils occurring in Central America – then maybe you really have other problems. If you can’t look at the caravan and think that maybe some of them have a point for wanting to come here – and even considering that maybe of the hundreds of people at least some of them might have a valid reason to be let into this country – then maybe you’re just racist and xenophobic.