Remember the drastic steps taken by the government to slow down the spread of COVID? Whole sectors of the economy were shut down. And Trump was faulted for not doing enough to stop flights to the U.S. from Europe and Asia. We have a different crisis now, though not a deadly one. Thousands of children and adults are streaming across the Mexico-U.S. border every week, with no end in sight to the number of would-be immigrants entering the country. This is not due to some temporary phenomenon, like a revolution, an earthquake, a flood, or a famine. This is the new normal.
These are not bad people who are coming north to the U.S. People have a right to leave their homeland for a better, safer, more prosperous life elsewhere. And every nation has a right to decide who and how many people it will allow to cross its borders and become members of its permanent population. All Americans, without exception, are either immigrants themselves or the descendants of immigrants. That includes American Indians, who did not spring from the soil, like the Spartoi of Greek mythology. Rather, their ancestors were themselves immigrants from other continents.
We need to get past the name-calling on all sides. It is not racist or xenophobic to support established criteria and orderly processes for immigration. And people who urge admittance for the tired, the poor, the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” are not out to destroy America, but rather to fulfill its vision as they understand it.
We should close our southern border to all would-be asylees and refugees until we find a way to re-establish a humane, manageable, and implementable immigration policy. Hopefully, some common ground can be found that will be acceptable to most Democrats and Republicans, to most liberals and conservatives. We can’t afford to have a “Trump immigration policy” followed by a “Biden immigration policy.” We need an American immigration policy that most Americans can and will support.