By: Don Quixote
The citizens of the United States of America, fed up with Barack Obama’s refusal to stand up for America’s interests, elected Donald Trump to the presidency on a platform of America First. Obama failed as president to uphold the very purpose of a government “By the people, of the people, and [most importantly] for the people.”
The purpose of a government is to provide a collective benefit to the citizens of a country. According to the social contract, postulated by the western political philosophers Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, citizens give up certain rights in exchange for government protection and services. For the last 8 years under the Obama administration, the government failed to uphold the social contract by putting the interests of illegitimate, illegal aliens, who give up nothing for the benefits of living in our country, ahead of the interests of law abiding, taxpaying American citizens. This was done through many Obama programs and executive orders, including DACA and neglecting to enforce immigration laws. The United States is a land of immense opportunity that provides some of the best government services in the world. That being said, we have an obligation to protect and defend the American lifestyle from outsiders. That is not to say that all immigration is bad. Immigrants who are educated, speak our language, and have skills that can contribute to the exceptional nation that is America are 100% welcome here… if they go through the lawful immigration process. In fact, we need more brainpower and productivity to remain the best and most technologically advanced society on earth. Unskilled, illegal immigrants who do not speak our language and undermine working class American citizens by displacing them in the workforce have no place here. But, Obama welcomed them with open arms and fistfuls of cash at the expense of American workers and taxpayers. Donald Trump, on the other hand, has shown his commitment to the American way of life by putting American workers first.
Many people feel that Trump’s policies are unnecessarily harsh, and to be completely honest, it is an upsetting humanitarian crisis when our law enforcement agencies are forced to deport illegal aliens. Yes, it breaks up families and that is sad, but it is not something that should weigh on our collective conscience. People who are here illegally made a deliberate decision to disregard the laws and policies of our country. They knew full well what they were doing when they crossed our border illegally and should’ve anticipated the penalties for being here illegally that are codified in the law and made publicly available. The illegal immigrant has herself to blame if she is deported, and they cannot claim to be Americans at heart if they so blatantly disregard our immigration laws. The goal of Trump’s immigration policy is not deportation, as that would be inhumane. The goal is to discourage people from coming illegally in the first place. If we had consistent enforcement of immigration laws, aliens would have no incentive to come here and no deportations would be necessary. Barack Obama actually did illegal immigrants a disservice by not enforcing immigration laws fully, because it encouraged them to come.
If you are an illegal alien, we DO NOT want to deport you. It costs us even more money and forces us to use violence against typically peaceful illegal aliens. Our goal should be not to punish illegal immigrants but to deter them from coming illegally in the first place, and the first step in achieving that goal is to change our rhetoric, which Donald Trump has already done. Under the Trump Administration, illegal immigration is down 73% (1). That is mostly not due to any policy, but simply to change of rhetoric. Under the Obama Administration, illegal immigrants were told that they would be given de facto amnesty; law enforcement looked the other way, and illegal immigrants felt free to exploit our healthcare system, our welfare system, and all of our government services at the expense of taxpaying American citizens. Obama’s lax policies incentivized illegal immigration. Donald Trump changed this. He made it clear that we would not tolerate being exploited by illegal immigrants any longer. He literally said that he wanted to “build a wall!” to keep out illegal immigrants. Completely open borders are a race to the bottom for the people in more developed countries. As a result, we have an obligation to restrict who is allowed into our country, based on the priorities of our own country and our own citizens, and not the priorities of noncitizen aliens.
In the United States today, we have a quality of life so valuable that citizens of other countries will go through all sorts of trouble, including dangerous border crossings just to live in the U.S. illegally. We ought to recognize this and protect our prosperity, our country, and our fellow American citizens, by maintaining a government for the people (our own people, legal citizens, that is!)! You wouldn’t let a random person walk into your house, eat your food, and sleep in your bed. You would tell them to leave. It’s about time that we have a president willing to tell illegal immigrants to leave.
Sources:
1.http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/apr/25/donald-trump/illegal-immigration-lowest-17-years-trump-said/