Donald Trump's desperately needed immigration wake-up call

The media meme of late has included ridicule for President Trump (how surprising!) because with the courts preventing the nation's border police from expelling those who illegally enter the country, the president has spoken of sending them various places (such as California and Florida), and then, when even office-holding Democrats have spazzed over the thought of having these people sent into their communities, the president has "backtracked" and said they'd instead be sent someplace else. The entire situation is absurd, but is the president showing "weakness" here, as some in the media have been suggesting? Is he flailing? Hardly.

In truth, there are two great goods being accomplished despite the absurdity of the situation. 1. The left-leaning politicians are being exposed for their hypocrisy. All the Pelosi-type talk about the "nobility" of all people, and thus the supposedly kind humanitarianism of inviting them en masse into the country, falls flat when the "they are welcome here" talk becomes real and specific. 2. It is making the people themselves actually think and not just ignore the debate or comfort themselves with Pelosiesque banalities. Yes, here means here. In your neighborhood. In your kids' schools. Using up your limited resources. It is a daily told lie that only hate, meanness, coldness, and general lack of heart make people call for legal and controlled immigration. That's an easy lie to buy in to. Why would you resist all the needy moms and their kids? Yeah, until one is forced to face the realities — that the majority of the border-crossers are not those sweet children seen in the media pix, no, nor are they mostly "moms." Most, in fact, are young men — poorly schooled young men looking at best for low-wage work. Many, in fact, will never work. Most in one way or another will become (even if such was not their plan) to some degree dependent on the public weal. Saying "Let them in! Have a heart!" is fine when it is a generalization about some faceless person sent to someone else's community. It is not so fine when it is about to be real and local, when the real costs, both monetary and social, will have to be faced and counted. These are truths we resist seeing The president is forcing us to see. In this, he is both doing us a favor and demonstrating once again what a smart (some would say "wily") guy he is.