Opinion

President Trump is right, a border wall will help address the crisis

President Donald Trump speaks during his visit to the Border Patrol McAllen Station on Thursday. Building a wall will help stem the flow of undocumented immigrants and contraband over the border. President Donald Trump speaks during his visit to the Border Patrol McAllen Station on Thursday. Building a wall will help stem the flow of undocumented immigrants and contraband over the border. Photo: JIM WATSON /AFP /Getty Images Photo: JIM WATSON /AFP /Getty Images Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close President Trump is right, a border wall will help address the crisis 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

The president of the United States just delivered a clear, thorough, and compassionate explanation of exactly why America needs true border security.

President Trump accurately identified the rampant illegal immigration on our 1,954 mile southern border as “a humanitarian crisis, a crisis of the heart, and a crisis of the soul.”

He recounted the stories of some of the thousands of innocent Americans who have paid with their lives for their government’s failure, decade after decade, to stop violent criminals with no right to be in this country from slipping into our communities.

The President highlighted the economic victims, disproportionately black and Hispanic Americans, who are driven out of jobs and cheated out of good wages by the unchecked flow of cheap illegal labor.

He expounded on the greatest American tragedy of this generation: the tens of thousands of people who are dying every year from illegal drugs that are constantly being trafficked across our unsecure southern border. Opioid addiction is a national tragedy, and the border crisis is its greatest enabler.

President Trump also took care to point out the related tragedy of the exploitation, abuse, rape, and murder that illegal immigrants — many of them poor women and children — risk at the hands of organized transnational criminal gangs that profit from transporting illegal immigrants across the U.S. border.

The president has been extraordinarily attentive to this crisis and has a firm grasp on what needs to be done to solve it, as he demonstrated with his visit to a stretch of border in Texas just two days after his Oval Office address. Yet among the many cogent points he made during his address, one phrase stuck with me the most: “common sense.”

A commitment to ending the scourge of illegal immigration is plain old-fashioned common sense, just as the most effective means to do so, a permanent physical barrier, is common sense. Democratic voters recognize this, even if their elected officials don’t — a recent poll found that 71 percent of Democrats consider illegal immigration a problem.

That’s also a fairly common sentiment among legal immigrants. Even though America allows more legal immigration than any other country in the world, there are still millions of people waiting patiently for the chance to come here legally, and those who do make it generally have to undergo an expensive and time-consuming process, leaving them resentful of illegal immigrants who skip both the hassle and the line.

Our brave Border Patrol agents and law enforcement officials tell us a wall is essential to achieving true border security. The historical experience of democratic nations such as Israel and Hungary confirm that walls, when manned by committed men and women, can quickly end even the most violent of border crises. The success we’ve had with our own walls, built along limited sections of the southern border, also prove they can cost-effectively strangle the flow of illegal immigration.

Both our own experience and the advice of experts demonstrate that building a wall must be a fundamental element of any comprehensive plan to secure the border and end this crisis, just as it was in each of the bipartisan border security policy pushes over the last 20 years.

Until recently, even national Democratic leaders such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have enthusiastically supported border walls of exactly the sort that President Trump and national security professionals are now seeking. Unfortunately, Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are willing to extend the partial government shutdown indefinitely rather than provide funding for even a single foot of wall.

President Trump’s address framed the illegal immigration crisis in stark and moving terms, making a compelling case that we can no longer afford to ignore the ongoing legal and humanitarian crisis at our border. Until other politicians join the president in embracing common sense over petty partisanship, however, the national crisis on the border will continue.

Brad Parscale is the campaign manager for Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.