Mr. Trump has now demonstrated why he is regarded as having great skill in deal making. Our country is in a period of deep political division and no subject is proof of this more than the illegal immigration issue. Many of us, probably a substantial majority, feel that unsupervised and unrestricted immigration is a major problem which we wish our political representatives to resolve. However a great many others feel just the opposite and have done everything possible to retard and obstruct any such resolution. These latter proponents argue that immigrants are a blessing, both economic and social, and consider the resulting diversity to be a great virtue. They make little distinction between legal and illegal immigration, considering those who skirt the established process as being simply undocumented. In addition they welcome those who come claiming asylum and resist the solution of encouraging asylum in Mexico where there is similarity of language and culture, free from the racial animosity which is claimed to be rampant in the United States.
This political battle has led to the present stalemate in which our country's usual immigration procedures are being overwhelmed. Efforts to reinforce our control over immigration are being resisted and great numbers of asylum seekers and others coming illegally are entering into the population at large. Many communities view this phenomenon as a negative, complaining of the rapid cultural disruption, including illegal activities, as well as a financial strain on their resources. Others, however, including our largest state, see it differently, offering compassion and sanctuary from federal authorities.
So now we have a grand political compromise being considered by the President. In his proposal asylum seekers, both those coming through the points of entry as well as those caught entering illegally, can go to those areas where they are received positively and, one would presume, there would at the same time be freed up resources for the immigration authorities to retard their filtering back into other areas where they are considered problematical. The initial response from many Democrat politicians and liberal media sources has been critical of the idea, accusing Mr. Trump of using the problem for political purposes. However with such statements they risk being considered as insincere and hypocritical.
We often hear it said that the individual states and communities are laboratories where new ideas can be tried out, which if successful can be imitated by the rest. Communities which declare themselves to be sanctuaries, and who consider such influxes to be on balance beneficial should welcome the President's offer. In doing so they can serve as examples to the rest of us about how to work out the social and economic implications. Additionally they could free up their new residents from the constant anxiety of living in secret and could even allow voting in local elections. It seems to me that our bitter ideologic conflicts are to this point largely theoretical. As someone with something of a scientific background, there seems no better way to come to a consensus than such a practical experiment.
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