The Trump Administration plans to end the temporary protected status that let 200,000 Salvadoran nationals live and work in the United States for nearly two decades, believing they would stay forever. Many now ponder a move north, but the Canadian government is not exactly rolling out the welcome mat.
“You can’t just come to Canada and cross the border and stay there for the rest of your life,” explains Member of Parliament Pablo Rodriguez, a Canadian government envoy to the United States. Canada welcomes immigrants and refugees, Rodriguez told reporters. But “there are rules” and any entry must be made legally.
Likewise, “there are rules” in the United States, where immigration statutes form part of the broader rule of law, a key feature of democratic government. Trouble is, millions of foreign nationals break those laws and enter the United States illegally, hoping to remain here for the rest of their lives.
Foreign nationals do so with the assistance of Democrats seeking an imported electorate and government bureaucrats eager for bigger budgets. Republicans in need of a spine transplant are also down with it but both parties could learn something from a phrase popular in the Canadian province of Quebec. “Maîtres chez nous” means “masters in our own house,” and that applies in immigration policy.
If some bureaucratic buffoon at the United Nations says the United States must accept more Syrian refugees, then Americans are not masters in their own house. Likewise, if the government of Mexico encourages its citizens to violate U.S. immigration law and cross the border illegally, which it does, Americans are not running their own show.
Immigration should be like the NFL draft, without regard to nationality or ethnicity and based on skill, merit, and the needs of the nation. The particular needs of foreign nationals, however pressing, are not the primary concern of the United States.
If people fear violence or oppression in their country, it does not follow they should come to the United States. Salvadorans fleeing violence can more easily find refuge in Costa Rica, Panama, or even Mexico. Syrian refugees would be more at home in the vast reaches of Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan, where the rules of Islam prevail. Saudi Arabia is another possibility.
Americans are not masters in their own house if a casino-style system determines who gains entry to the United States. The nation has no need for lucky lottery winners such as Saipullo Saipov, the Uzbek Muslim who murdered eight people in New York City last October. Likewise, chain migration allows green card holders to bring in relatives on a practically unlimited basis, regardless of whether or not they benefit the nation in any way.
By being maîtres chez nous the United States is not about “breaking up families.” On the contrary, foreign nationals leave family behind when they come to a nation they don’t know. Central American parents also placed their own minor children in the hands of criminal human traffickers. That mass act of child abuse should be brought to bear in any discussion of the alleged “dreamers.” This writer, a legal immigrant, would like to see them work for political and economic reform in their own countries.
The illegal lobby wants all dreamers and temporary Salvadorans to stay. Canada’s Pablo Rodriguez is telling them they can’t just cross the border and stay for the rest of their lives. But the temps may have a better alternative in a country that leading Democrats profess to admire.
Cuba has fewer than 12 million people, so there’s plenty of room for newcomers. Cubans speak Spanish, so no need to learn a difficult new language such as English, or French. The climate is tropical, just like El Salvador. So no freezing winters as in Winnipeg, where they say it’s so cold people jump into burning buildings. And prominent Democrats never cease to remind us that Cuban healthcare is top notch.
According to President Obama, Cuban medical care is a “huge achievement.” Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison, the deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, notes that Cuba, with half the per-capita health care spending of the United States, gets “better health outcomes than we do.” So it’s a better deal for the arrivals, who need not worry about some newly elected government changing the rules. The same political party has ruled Cuba for more than 50 years, and single-payer health care comes bundled with single-party government.
President Trump, meanwhile, is not the first to advocate an America-first immigration policy.
As the chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform from 1994-1996, Texas Democrat Barbara Jordan argued, “it is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest.” That’s what it means to be maîtres chez nous.