According to Max Boot – a talking head popular with the mainstream media – President Trump is a defense and foreign policy neophyte who “ignores the real threats that his country faces.” In a recent column in the The Washington Post, Boot argues that the caravan of asylum-demanding Hondurans currently headed for the U.S. border doesn’t merit the president’s attention because there are more important things to worry about, like China and North Korea, for example.
Boot is typical of the intellectual elite, who constantly lecture the American public on the supposed benefits of lax immigration enforcement. He admonishes that, if we were to just let the caravan enter the U.S., “We would undoubtedly be getting hard-working newcomers who, like most immigrants, will make our country even greater than it is.”
In defense of this assertion Boot cites a Politifact article claiming that we are experiencing “a net outflow of illegal immigrants from the United States back to Mexico.” So, in his estimation, there’s plenty of room for more foreigners, who are better than Americans anyway. But there are some serious problems with his logic.
To begin with, there is no basis for claiming that a column of un-vetted foreigners will inevitably be composed of “hard-working newcomers.” In fact, the September 11, 2001 terrorists all entered the United States lawfully, after having been subjected to background checks, and turned out to be both dangerous and lethally committed to diminishing America’s greatness.
Additionally, Boot calls Honduras, “a tiny country that is afflicted by poverty, corruption, political violence and one of the world’s highest homicide rates.” Honduras hasn’t been invaded by a foreign adversary, so it would appear that all of the violence and corruption are being visited on Hondurans by other Hondurans. Accordingly, wouldn’t it be prudent to assume that a caravan of 1,500 Hondurans might contain a few public safety threats?
There’s also no reliable evidence that we’re experiencing a net outflow of illegal aliens – back to Mexico or anywhere else. Politifact cites research by the Pew Research Center claiming that illegal Mexicans were forced out of the job market by the Great Recession of 2008 and went home.
Of course Politifact immediately follows its gushing praise of Pew’s study with this doozer: “There are no perfect statistics when it comes to illegal immigration — it’s inherently impossible to track accurately.” Accordingly, logic would dictate that Pew’s attempts to track illegal aliens returning to Mexico are inherently inaccurate.
Boot, a Russian immigrant and rabid anti-Trumpite, doesn’t seem to understand that America’s influence on the world stage flows directly from American sovereignty. Allowing a rag-tag band of Honduran agitators to compromise the integrity of our borders, and violate our immigration laws, sends a clear message to countries like China and North Korea. It tells our adversaries that we are weak and subject to manipulation.
On the other hand, average Americans put President Trump in office because they are tired of hearing clueless coastal elites like Boot preach to them about the benefits of uncontrolled mass migration. They understand intuitively that a failure to protect America’s borders will deprive us of both national security and economic stability. And without those, we will no longer have the resources, nor the power, necessary to respond to what Boot considers “the real threats.”