“So the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty-two days. And when our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and fell greatly in their own esteem, for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God.” ~ Nehemiah 6:15-16
Donald Trump may have just won the White House.
In a powerful, effective, and brilliant speech on the issue of illegal immigration delivered last night in Arizona, Trump laid out a view of true immigration reform that will secure our borders, protect our national security, protect American families in their own neighborhoods and communities, and above all, protect America’s cultural values.
Trump’s plan is gloriously simple: let’s enforce the immigration laws we already have. This involves rapid deportation of anyone who is found to be in this country illegally, whether that person is apprehended by federal authorities or local authorities. Deporting criminal illegal aliens will be given the highest possible priority under Trump’s plan, to end the utterly foolish and dangerous policy of releasing aliens who are criminals twice over: once after they have been apprehended illegally trespassing on sovereign American soil, and a second time after they have committed an act of violence against someone who has the right to be here.
Trump has pledged, starting on day one, to build an “impenetrable physical wall” along our southern border. European countries such as Hungary have proven that border fences properly patrolled work. Even Norway is in the process of building a wall to secure its northeastern border with Russia against illegal incursions. Fences work, and Trump is determined to prove it. To paraphrase Kevin Costner, if we build it, they - illegal aliens - won’t come.
Although Trump did not address this mechanism specifically in his speech, there is a simple way to fund the building of this wall: taxing remittances, which represent money shipped to Mexico by Mexicans working in the United States. Remittances are the second largest component of the Mexican economy, after oil. A 4% tax on the $25 billion a year that’s sent south of the border would raise $10 billion over the next ten years, more than enough to build the wall. Mexico has all the incentive one could ask for to keep this spigot running wide open. We can even offer to lift the tax once the wall is built.
Trump pointed out that, according to the Boston Globe, under Hillary Clinton’s watch 13,000 criminal illegals were allowed to stay in the United States because their country of origin refused to take them back. Trump’s solution is brilliantly simple and devastatingly effective: no more visas for you. If you won’t take your criminals back, nobody from your country will be allowed to so much as set his foot down in America. That will fix that problem on day one.
To fix the problem of illegals working in America and taking American jobs, Trump poses ramped up enforcement of E-Verify. If illegals cannot find jobs in America because their legal status cannot be verified, they will self-repatriate. They won’t have to be deported since they’ll take care of that themselves.
(There are, by the way, no jobs Americans won’t do. I’ve worked most of the jobs the so-called experts tell us are beneath the dignity of the American worker. I worked in the fields doing stoop labor, I worked in a meatpacking plant, I worked as a car wash attendant, I worked as a janitor, and I slung hash to work my way through college.)
Trump also proposes shutting off immigration from any country - including Syria - in which it is impossible to properly vet prospective immigrants. He also proposes a perfectly constitutional ideological test to determine if a wanna-be immigrant is bringing values that will enable him to assimilate seamlessly into American culture or whether he wants to bring fundamentally un-American ideals into our society.
In addition, Trump pledges “to keep immigration levels, measured by population share, within historical norms.” This will ensure stability and consistency, and is similar to immigration policies adopted one hundred years ago to ensure population balance and assimilation.
Under Trump’s plan, no one will ever be able to obtain legal residency or citizenship by entering this country illegally. They will have to leave, return home, and go through proper channels. The days of unconstitutional executive amnesty will be over.
Trump is exactly right. If his recipe is followed,
“[P]eace and law and justice and prosperity will prevail. Crime will go down, border crossings will plummet, gangs will disappear, and welfare use will decrease. We will have a peace dividend to spend on rebuilding America, beginning with our inner cities.”
Trump is also correct when he says, “But to fix our immigration system, we must change our leadership in Washington. There is no other way.” And he’s also correct that this election may be our last chance to make the change that’s required. We are getting close to the point where it will be too late if something dramatic isn’t done.
Bottom line: if conservatives who care about border security and true immigration reform are looking for a reason to vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, they just found it.
