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Trump and the roar of the paper tiger
Michael Shannon.jpg

After spending the last two years on the sidelines warming up on a stationary bike, President Trump has decided it’s time for him to get into the immigration game. When Agent Orange is unleashed, illegal immigration will once again be, well, illegal!

The situation is grim. The Get-Tough-on-the-Border-Guy will be taking in more illegals than Obama did at his laissez-faire peak. Estimates for this year alone are in the neighborhood of 1.5 million more additions to the diversity that is our strength.

So, it’s probably a good idea for Trump to stop being a figurehead in his own government and get serious about fulfilling his primary campaign promise. Or as the Washington Post puts it, “As Trump struggles to curb unauthorized immigration, his rhetoric gets tougher, but quick solutions are elusive.”

That could be because Trump’s a paper tiger. Even his “tough rhetoric” comes with its own set of problems. His pronouncements have a tendency to expire before the problem is solved. 

Trump promises to close the Mexico border and then before traffic cones are airlifted from a factory in China he changes his mind and avocado shipments are safe until the next temper tantrum.

Trump tells one audience the US is full up of immigrants and it’s time to call a halt until he can build a fire under the melting pot. Then he tells another he’s decided to double the number of H-2B guest worker visas. 

That will certainly cut down on groundskeeper arrests at Trump resorts, but the increase will continue to keep citizen farm wages at Juarez levels while Hispanic workers brought in for the harvest can scout locations for the rest of their family who will join them after the visa expires.

Our Border-Guard-in-Chief has a list of culprits he’s blaming for the immigration crisis including Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. He rails against the judicial system. Trump has special scorn for Democrats who won’t help. And he attacks illegal-enabling lawyers who coach fraudulent asylum applicants on the exact language needed to trigger the conveyor belt of US largesse. 

The truth is the person responsible for the failure to keep Trump’s immigration promises is the same person he sees in the mirror each morning when the president conducts a muster drill for his hair. Trump bears 80 percent of the responsibility for the failure and passive-aggressive, housebroken conservative Mitch McConnell, Curator of the Senate, bears the rest.

I’m with Michelle Malkin, who told Breitbart: “I don’t want to hear empty threats anymore about how [Trump’s] going to do what he should have done many, many, many months ago. What are you waiting for? Do it.”

Every suggestion that follows should have been done in January 2017. Clean house at the Department of Homeland Security. Kirstjen Nielsen was a start but there are plenty more like her.

Why is the present legal staff incapable of finding loopholes in immigration law that Trump can exploit to expand enforcement? Evidently leftist lawyers can find plenty because thousands of illegals are currently streaming through the gaps. Only those ‘serving’ the Trump administration find the immigration code impervious to an interpretation that puts citizens first.

Jessica Vaughn of the Center for Immigration Studies gave Breitbart seven actions Trump could take, some of which you’ve read here before. The new ones are force Mexico to sign a Safe Third Country Agreement so ‘asylum’ applicants can wait for a ruling in Mexico. And stop issuing work permits to asylum applicants already in the U.S.

The Trump voting base was under the impression they were electing a man who would reverse the tide of illegals streaming across our southern border and deport the 25 million illegals, including their dependents, who have taken up an unvexed residence in the US. 

Nothing has changed during the months Trump dithered. 

A Pew Research Center survey says Republican voters still rank sealing the border and deportations as “their top priority to ensure a better quality of life for themselves and their middle-class families.”

Meanwhile voters are coming to the realization they elected Jeb Bush without the naps.


Michael Shannon is a commentator and public relations consultant. He can be reached at mandate.mmpr@gmail.com.