President Donald Trump's Nov. 9 presidential proclamation forbids anyone crossing America's southern border to seek asylum in the U.S. — no matter how legitimate the claim — unless they use a designated port of entry.

Never mind that the law clearly states that "any alien" who arrives in the U.S. "whether or not at a designated port of arrival" may apply for asylum.

As we wrote recently, this is the latest in a litany of constitutionally dubious attempts by the Trump administration "to curb legal, not illegal, immigration."

First came the infamous “travel ban” on immigrants from majority Muslim countries. That was challenged in the courts but upheld — albeit in a less draconian form — by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Then came the administration's zero-tolerance policy of separating children from parents who enter the country illegally. Called out as "cruel" and "immoral" by former first lady Laura Bush, that policy was ended in April. But only after it caused long-term damage to immigrant children and the reputation of the U.S.

Zero tolerance was followed by the Justice Department's hamstringing of immigration courts under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in effect taking away due process for many asylum seekers.

The administration has also been building a case to reverse our nation’s family-based immigration policies — what the president derides as “chain migration” — and end work authorizations for the spouses of H1-B visa holders.

Meanwhile, the administration has announced plans to end temporary protected status (TPS) for more than 300,000 immigrants legally residing in the U.S. from Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras and Sudan.

Last month, a federal judge in California granted an injunction against revoking TPS pending the results of a lawsuit he said raises “serious questions” about the policy and whether it was “based on animus against non-white, non-European immigrants in violation of equal protection guaranteed by the Constitution.”

Not surprisingly, the president’s proclamation on asylum seekers is also being challenged in court.

All of this has been front and center in this newspaper and others. But what’s gained less attention is the administration’s sharp reduction in the number of refugees — our most vulnerable immigrants —accepted by the U.S. After taking office, Trump slashed the annual cap on refugees from 110,000 to 50,000. In 2018 that number dropped to 45,000 and will fall to 30,000 in 2019.

The cap was 80,000 in the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency. But even that is a historically low number compared to earlier waves of refugees seeking sanctuary in the U.S. following World War II, the Vietnam War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In 1979, in the chaos following U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, President Jimmy Carter doubled the number of Indochinese refugees accepted by the U.S. from 7,000 to 14,000 a month — that’s right, a month. Carter said his administration was acting “with the compassion that has traditionally characterized the United States when confronted with such situations of human crisis.”

Over the next two decades, the U.S. took in more than 1.25 million Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians and other Southeast Asian refugees fleeing the ravages of communism. Today’s refugee crises — whether the result of civil wars in Syria and Sudan or gang violence in Central America — are no less tragic.

As Ben Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, recently told us, the so-called gangs in countries like Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are not “a bunch of kids spray-painting gang signs on walls in poor neighborhoods.” But rather sophisticated criminal organizations that are “as violent and in control of an area as al-Qaeda is in the Middle East.”

As we send troops to our southern border in preparation for an “invasion” of mostly would-be Central American asylum seekers, maybe we should be asking our political leaders and ourselves one simple question:

Are we acting with “the compassion that has traditionally characterized the United States when confronted with such situations of human crisis”?

What's your view?