Immigrant caravan is now a political play for midterms: Today's talker

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A caravan of about 5,000 Central American migrants heading through Mexico is bound for the United States despite threats from President Donald Trump to seal the border and cut off funding for Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. 

Ban all immigrants, take care of Americans

This country must learn to tighten its financial belt and quit spending money it doesn't have. A start is banning entry of the 5,000-migrant caravan from Central America.

The United States is generous when it comes to helping other countries. In the meantime, our debt is out of control. The monthly report of the Treasury Department shows we have a $779 billion deficit, which is nearly a 17 percent increase from 2017.

The deficit reflects our poor spending habits. We can start trimming our budget by banning all illegal immigrants from entering the USA — no matter the originating country. According to PolitiFact, illegal immigration is costing American taxpayers anything between $43 billion and $279 billion by different scenarios.

We have thousands of Americans in need. We've recently been faced with natural disasters, i.e., Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, Hurricane Florence in the Carolinas, Hurricane Michael in Florida, and there were the wildfires in California, too. These disasters have left thousands of Americans without housing, food, electricity, medical care, jobs.

We need to take care of our own before trying to help people from other countries. If we continue to take in undocumented immigrants because we have good hearts, we are spreading our help and support of U.S. citizens too thin.

For the time being, I propose that we ban all immigrants from entering America. from all countries, stop helping other countries with aid, take care of our people, and pay off our debt.

I know it sounds cold but think of this: If you have a choice to help your family at the expense of trying to help the whole community, knowing you do not have enough resources, what would you do?

And since this type of migration through a caravan is an annual event, a plan should be in place before it reaches violent levels.

Michele Sprague is a freelance writer on national issues. She's also the author of “Single Again 101.” 

What our readers are saying

Everyone who supports open borders should sponsor a family and personally provide support, shelter and be legally responsible for their actions until they are documented. Call it the "put up or shut up" system.

— Jim Davis

I would like to thank this caravan for reminding Americans why we voted for President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

— Riff Schmidt

Letter to the editor: 

We all see things from our own perspectives. In the world of politics, sometimes we look at things through the eyes of politicians who have an agenda. But the visual is worth a thousand words. The caravan of immigrants coming through Mexico can be seen as people who are looking for a better life — families with women and children escaping the possible oppression in their own countries. I see those types of people, but President Donald Trump and his supporters see murderers and crime. We know Trump's agenda is strictly to promote fear, and that seems to play directly to his base.

The result of this Rorschach test is only one of Trump's dark views on immigration, stemming from a deeper concern involving racism and a support of white supremacy — a culture that seems to surround him. 

Linda Gefen; Boca Raton, Fla.

What others are saying

The Los Angeles Times,  editorial: "The caravan is offering President Donald Trump a pretext to do something he was trying to do anyway. ... New immigrants who are in the United States without authorization tend to be people from Asia who enter the country legally and then overstay their visas, not desperate border-crossers from Latin America. But the latter serve as a convenient bogeyman for Trump to rile up the xenophobes among his supporters. Do not be fooled by the man behind the tweets."

Newt Gingrich,  FoxNews.com: "The very idea that thousands of people believe (or are being told) they have a right to invade America and demand that we take care of them tells you how sick the system has become. The time to draw the line and fight for an honest immigration and border control policy is now. The caravan is the perfect symbol of the arrogance — the organized effort to destroy the rule of law — and the contempt for the American system that the left exhibits every day."

The Dallas Morning News,  editorial: "It’s unfortunate that the president offers no thought for the struggling and desperate people who make up the caravan. At the same time, there’s no reason not to require countries to use the money U.S. taxpayers send them to foster better circumstances for their people, so they can feel safe inside their own countries. If those governments can’t do that, Trump is right. We should find better ways to deliver help to Central America."

Don't cut aid to Central America

As many predicted, the threat from endless migration has struck again. This time, the sore feet of the migrants are coming from Honduras and aiming for the U.S. border.

President Donald Trump has warned that if a caravan of 5,000 Central Americans isn’t prevented from breaching the U.S. border, American foreign aid to our southern neighbors will be cut.

Yet those countries have up until now, brushed off similar Trump administration threats. They know that their countries are unable to halt the widespread terror from vicious gangs.

But the loss of tens or even hundreds of millions of U.S. aid will not tip the balance between security and chaos. Either the aid is diverted to benefit the elites, or it is sponged up in payments to U.S. aid contractors, or it is insufficient to lift the area’s economy and poverty.

Yet there are ways in which we can help these Central American countries to fight back against the violence Trump is warning against. When I worked for the Agency for International Development (USAID), I was sent to chronicle programs that aimed to do exactly what we need to do in Central America — remove the weapons from the gangs or militias, retrain the former fighters so they can learn an honest living and feed their own families, and deliver some self-respect, which may be the most important factor. 

We must not threaten to cut aid to central America. Will we demand that Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico use bayonets and machine guns to block poor and frightened families from entering the U.S.? Will we threaten to block trade and commerce with countries, unless they tear infants and children from the arms of their parents?

I think the world is better than that and we must adopt what USAID has learned in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The solution to this migration crisis is not at the U.S. border, but in the deadly streets of the countries these immigrants are escaping. The U.S. military should give direct military and police aid in these countries, and it should work with USAID on goals and principles, as U.S. bullets clear the way for peace.

This is more than an antidote to violence. It is a way to defeat poverty, terror, and a terrible clash of humane values along the U.S. border, which Trump has threatened to shut down.

Ben Barber is a journalist a photographer who has covered foreign affairs for Paste BN, HuffPost, The Washington Times and The London Observer.

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