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As caravan nears, it is time Congress solved immigration

Last year, 1.13 million people legally immigrated to the United States. The total is the most of any country – by a lot. The total pretty much matches totals for the past several years. Clearly, there is no resistance to those who want to pursue the legal process of immigration.

The problem is with those who do not want to follow the channels that immigrants to this country have been following for well more than a century.

The problem is compounded by those who choose to politicize the immigration issue, refusing to differentiate between legal and illegal immigration, accusing those resistant to illegal immigration of being racist and comparing ICE to the Ku Klux Klan.

The problem is compounded by those who want to make believe a country without a southern border to force processing of immigrants is safe.

As a caravan of immigrants reached Tijuana, Mexico at the American border Thursday, the invasion that people made fun of in the weeks prior to the midterm elections became a reality.

All of this could have been avoided years ago if the people who acknowledged the country needed to secure its borders – including then Sen. Barack Obama – had actually done so instead of deciding it was more important that immigration become an election issue every two years.

It is entirely possible to be in favor of legal immigration and for a border wall, which would force processing of immigration hopefuls and greatly diminish the motives of illegal immigrants who do not have positive reasons for coming to this country. We believe if the major media would start reporting objectively on the immigration issue, they would find most Americans favor better border security – and legal immigration.

Instead of overheating the country’s dialogue the past six weeks, the media should have been asking who funded the caravan and who is paying for the buses food and shelter for thousands of destitute people. What have the people been told to expect at the border? Are all of them honestly seeking asylum or the legal immigration process?

In other words, who is managing this caravan?

We believe most of the people from El Salvador and Honduras who are nearing America’s border are trying to escape horrible rule and want better lives. But to think there is no one in the caravan with poor intentions is completely unrealistic.

President Trump has been pushing for a border wall that would bring order to the immigration process and drastically cut the number of people coming here with ill intentions. For that he has been called a racist in many quarters.

That is not what this issue is about.

The House and Senate, who have failed to address this issue for years, should spend this lameduck session overhauling the laws that impact all facets of our immigration process and coming up with funding for a border wall – both parties have spoken for it at different times in the past decade – once and for all.

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