The election is over and now it is time to begin the hard conversations of what is real and what is rhetoric in President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda. What is right and what is wrong? What values are we going to embrace as individuals, as a nation, and what values are we not?
Show Us the Immigration Card in Your Winning Hand
Trump won. Trump voters please show us your hand. What is it that you, as a Trump voter, believe in? What policies of Donald Trump are you going to support in our country and what are you not?
Let’s talk immigration. We have 11 million or so illegal, undocumented people living in our country. What is going to be the method for a pathway to citizenship for them? Let’s focus on these people and their families.
Donald Trump’s Immigration Policy
I looked at Donald Trump’s Immigration policy on his website: DonaldJTrump.com
Point number 5 states:
5. Immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties. All immigration laws will be enforced – we will triple the number of ICE agents. Anyone who enters the U.S. illegally is subject to deportation. That is what it means to have laws and to have a country.
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So, “anyone who enters the U.S. illegally is subject to deportation”. I understand that, and in part I agree with it. I want to know what it looks like for families already established and living here. What are you, as a Trump supporter, willing to allow it to look like?
We’re rounding ‘em up
According to Donald Trump’s own words during his campaign, it looks like rounding up people in droves and deporting them is his answer. What Trump said during his Sept 2015, 60 Minutes interview about illegal immigrants in the US can be found here at CBSNews.com
Here are some quotes from his interview.
Donald Trump: “If they’ve [illegal immigrants] done well they’re going out and they’re coming back in legally”.
Donald Trump: “We’re rounding ‘em up in a very humane way, in a very nice way. And they’re going to be happy because they want to be legalized. And, by the way, I know it doesn’t sound nice. But not everything is nice”.
Personally I believe Trump’s language is poor. When talking about millions of people and “rounding ‘em up”, it has a chilling ring to a 1940’s Germany. “It doesn’t sound nice. But not everything is nice” doesn’t make me feel any better about his plan.
What about the kids?
So what about undocumented parents who have been living here for years and years? What about the children of these illegal immigrants who were born here, are US citizens, have grown up here, attend schools here, and have never been to Mexico or the foreign country of their parents in their lives? What is the right thing to be done for these kids?
Immigrants, both legal and illegal, represent 19 percent of the school-age population (five to seventeen years old) in this country.http://openborders.info/public-schools-for-immigrant-children/
These children are your neighbors, your kid’s classmates. They play and hang out together. Many were born here and are US citizens. For the Latino kids, some don’t even know how to speak Spanish. These children have been raised American. They don’t know how to live their lives in Mexico any more than you or I would.
So when you see the “rounding ‘em up” of these children’s parents by Trump’s ICE agents, what are you going to do? Are you going to stand by and watch families be torn apart? Are you going to watch these kids, raised just as American as your own, be forced to follow their undocumented parents to not only a foreign country, but one totally foreign to them?
Real world solutions are needed
This is potentially a real world scenario. These kids and their parents, these families, are not just numbers. They don’t exist as only data points in a report. They are real people, living lives as best they can in this country in homes next to you and me. You know them, your kids know them, and they deserve to know where we stand with them on immigration.
I have a friend who said Donald Trump “will work to find a path to citizenship for current illegal immigrants”. Removing 11 million people from our country first is not the pathway I will support. Is it what you are supporting? Is it one of the reasons you voted for Trump?
I support legal entry into the US. I do not support tearing families apart and sending children raised in this country to a foreign one. It is cruel, and as America we can do better. The pathway to citizenship for the illegal and undocumented people living here now, needs to be made without deporting them and their children first.
I have friends who are school teachers. The day after the election many of their students, these children, showed up for school scared, many with swollen eyes from crying. They are terrified that their parents will be rounded up and sent to Mexico with or without them. They asked, “Why? Why would people vote for a man that says he will deport us?”
If you voted for Trump, please imagine this is your child, and then answer their question. And if you profess to believe in unity, if you claim that family is important, are you going to allow mass deportation happen to the families of these children?
If you’re not, will you stand with me and support a pathway to citizenship that respects the family and is a process that will not traumatize millions of children in our country?
Todd is a Men’s Life Coach, an entrepreneur, a licensed healthcare professional, a husband, a father, and a world traveler. His mission is to co-create a strong and compassionate world by facilitating transformation through understanding, trust, and empowerment. He received his coaching education from Newfield, a certified coach training school, and is a member of the International Coach Federation. Learn more at Empowered Men Coaching.
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This article originally appeared on The Huffington Post
Photo credit: Getty Images
You all should take a long hard look across the blobe and see how other countries deal with illegal immigrants. Several that I have been in recently will General issue a cell until they decide how to kill you and where dump the body. And before you get high and mighty about – The US was / is paying and supporting the murders in both countries.
What we can do, and certainly ask for Boris, is a method for handling the current illegal immigration problem with words and actions that reflect our country’s principles as a nation of immigrants.
You give them no citizenship. You deport them and break up families if they choose not to take them with or you must because their home country won’t recognize the children. There should be no benefit to breaking the law. Accrued social security should be forfeiteded, etc.
Ensure this fact is well known. Cross illegally and have “anchor babies”. You won’;t because they’ll be removed from your care. Come illegally to work and retire in your home countries, it won’t happen.
I’m curious what you are proposing John if Mexico doesn’t take the US born kids back with their parents? Who is raising them then? Who is paying for their care? Who becomes responsible? I also think it is interesting you feel accrued social security should be forfeited. It seems by this statement you recognize they are working, thus contributing to our society. Maybe there is a better way to deal with working families than just sending them back?
When the parents can’t care for children for whatever reason, the state does unless family takes them in and there may very well be. Some of them work. Some of them don’t, what usually society is that they demand more resources from society than they contribute. Fact is we already know what happens when there are no consequences for breaking the law. We’ve seen that during the foreclosure epidemic. Banks were foreclosing on properties, which should have never been foreclosed on. Well, the problem was that when they were caught, all they had to do was give the money back.… Read more »
I hear you John. I like your analogy of the financial crisis. What I think it exposes is how the people who gained the most, the CEO’s and the executive management, walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars and no consequences for deceitful and fraudulent lending practices, while the man and his family in the house is booted to the street. I am for legal immigration. What I am not for, is our government letting illegal immigrants create lives here for tens of years, then decide to boot them out. I want to see a pathway to citizenship available… Read more »
When ever I hear the term “tearing families apart” I think of our justice system tearing a father away from an innocent child just because he robbed a bank.
When ever I hear the term “tearing families apart” I think of our justice system tearing a father away from an innocent child just because he robbed a bank.
Thanks for your comment Douglas, and your sarcasm did not go unnoticed. 🙂 My concern is for families living here long enough to have had kids, raised them here and have them attend school, and who may or may not even speak Spanish. The moral ship to round up their parents with or without the kids and send them back to Mexico long since sailed in my opinion. Other options are needed.