President Donald Trump cares about three things when it comes to immigration policies in the US. First and foremost, the interests of American citizens must be considered before any other nation’s people. Once all has been done to protect the rights and freedoms of American citizens, Trump’s next priority is that no one enters the country illegally, no matter the circumstances. The president has gone so far as to use words like “infest” when describing illegal immigration. When Democrats heavily criticized Trump for a police that resulted in the separation of thousands of Mexican children from their families, the President tweeted exactly how he felt:
“They [the democrats] don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our country, like MS-13.”
–President Donald Trump
While many critics of the Trump administration find his rhetoric morally repugnant and arguably racist, others believe he is simply trying to protect the United States against threats from foreign entities. In recent news, a caravan of migrants, mostly emanating from Honduras, has been making its way towards the United States, with hopes of escaping poverty, violence and other issues plaguing the country in Central America. President Trump, staying true to form, responded to the caravan’s plan by threatening to cut all foreign aid to Guatemala and Mexico if they allowed anyone to pass through illegally.
Additionally, using a threat akin to a father telling his children that he’ll turn this car around if they don’t stop, President Trump said that if Mexico refused to hold back the Honduran migrants, he would close the southwest border of the US:
“I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught, and if unable to do so, I will call up the US Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!”
–President Donald Trump
Those of you who think our president is a bit on the reactionary side, in terms of how responds to trouble, I don’t fault you for having that perspective. The Trump administration announced on Friday that the US will now deny asylum to any migrant who attempts to enter the country illegally.
For those unfamiliar on the subject, a person can be granted political asylum from a country different from where they hold citizenship if they can show the potential new country proof that conditions in their home country are inhumane. If a person is granted political asylum, your new home country will not extradite you back to wherever you claimed residence before.
In the aftermath of World War II, most of the world’s countries offered asylum to Jewish refugees who survived the Holocaust, resulting in the UN’s adoption of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1951. The official language of the treaty defined a refugee as an individual with “a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
President Trump’s most recent proclamation bans migrants from applying for asylum outside of official ports of entry, or borders, according to CNN. The proclamation will take effect Saturday morning, lasting for a minimum of 90 days.
“The United States expects the arrival at the border between the United States and Mexico of a substantial number of clients primarily from Central America who appear to have no lawful basis for admission into our country…”
–Presidential Proclamation Addressing Mass Migration Through The Southern Border of the US
After a close reading of the President’s proclamation, I found his justification for the asylum denial interesting. Trump references that “other presidents have taken strong action to prevent mass migration,” in a manner that indicates that he feels his actions would have no base, if not for it being previously done in the past. He goes on to explain that the goal of the suspension is to “channel these aliens to ports of entry so they do so in an orderly and controlled manner.”
These people are not animals. Any language used to describe the treatment of thousands of Hondurans as a group needing to be channeled into an orderly fashion only furthers the frustrating rhetoric that immigrants are seen as less than human.
I agree that entrance to any country must be done legally and with proper paperwork, but herding humans like cattle is not the answer.
