My favorite question for hysterical Trump-hating liberals is this:
‘How many illegal immigrants did President Obama deport during his eight year tenure?’
The vast majority have absolutely no idea because their blind loathing of Trump is so extreme they simply refuse to view Obama as anything less than a perfect, living Saint.
So when I ask the question, their brows instantly furrow with confusion, their cheekbones twitch uneasily, their breath sharpens with indignation, and then they launch into raging whataboutery.
‘WHAT ABOUT TRUMP?’ they scream, repeatedly and with increasing frenzy, until their voices are hoarse and my ears are fried.
Well, I’ll come to Trump and his decision yesterday to axe Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, otherwise known as the DACA ‘Dreamers’ program, in a moment.
Obama may have led the charge slamming Trump’s DACA announcement on Tuesday – but it’s still important to remember that the last president deported three MILLION illegal immigrants
But let me first focus on Obama’s own record on illegal immigrants.
After all, it was Obama who led the charge yesterday to slam Trump’s announcement as ‘cruel’ and ‘self-defeating’ because the young undocumented people concerned ‘want to start new businesses, staff our labs, serve in our military, and otherwise contribute to the country we love.’
Fine words, but then that, of course, is precisely why many illegal immigrants want to come to America in the first place.
The Trump-hating liberals who don’t know how many illegal immigrants their hero Obama deported, tend to guess at anything from ‘50,000’ to ‘500,000.’
Some go a lot lower, believing that Saint Barack would have been incapable of deporting anyone, such is his inherent basic human decency.
It’s at that point I reveal the shocking answer:
From 2009 to 2016, Obama deported more than 3 MILLION illegal immigrants.
That’s an average of 375,000 a year, 31,250 a month, 1,027 a day, or 42 every single hour.
The vast majority of these people were sent back to Mexico, prompting Janet Murguiá, president of the National Council on La Raza, a Latino advocacy group, to label him, in 2014, “the deporter-in-chief.”
By contrast, Trump has deported far, far fewer illegal immigrants during his nine months in office.
So spare me the sanctimonious hypocritical outrage from the likes of Barack Obama over illegal immigrants.
He threw more of them out of America than any president in history. Fact.
However, to his credit, he did at least try to do the right thing for the children of illegal immigrants by signing an executive order introducing the DACA program.
It’s an arguable point whether he had the legal authority to do so, which is why Attorney General Jeff Sessions was able to use legal argument to defend the announcement yesterday.
But from a moral standpoint, this is a no-brainer, surely?
It does indeed seem cruel and unfair to threaten to deport 800,000 children of illegal immigrants who are in America through no fault or choice of their own.
All those on the DACA program volunteered their personal information and immigration status to the government in the belief it would not then be used against them to effect their deportation.
But to Obama’s credit, he signed the executive order of DACA – letting children raised here, brought through no fault of their own, if they have no criminal record, work and stay in the only country they know
These are not hardened criminals we’re talking about.
These people were required to have near unblemished records to even qualify for DACA and 9 out of 10 of them are working taxpayers.
Nor do they become legal citizens under this program. Instead, they receive a 2-year renewable referral of deportation along with a work permit and eligibility for other government benefits in time.
The DACA ‘Dreamers’ would have been thrilled at finally acquiring some form of official status in the US.
This was their first real step to fulfilling their dream of becoming fully-fledged Americans, rather than simply the undocumented kids of illegals.
Now that dream lies in uncertain tatters and the Dreamers will all be filled with terrible fear about their future.
Imagine spending most of your life in a country, reaching adulthood as a decent, law-abiding, hard-working person, and then being thrown out?
That is what many of them now face.
For President Trump to say with a straight face, as he did yesterday, that he has a ‘great heart’ and a ‘great love’ for the Dreamers, and to brief that he has been ‘at war with himself’ over this issue, is thoroughly disingenuous.
So was his statement that “I do not favor punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents.”
Sorry, Mr President, but this is exactly what are you now threatening to do.
As with Trump’s call to ban transgenders in the military, which came after he promised to ‘do everything in my power to protect our LGBT citizens”, this move smacks of shameless hypocrisy and the complete opposite of either heart or love.
Trump is being totally disingenuous. He claims to have a great heart, but Tuesday’s announcement showed the opposite. If he wants to Make America Great Again, he should stop picking on the most vulnerable members of society like transgenders and Dreamers
Yet there is still hope.
In reality, neither of these decisions is yet final.
Trump’s proposed transgender ban is still being mulled over by the military.
And, after furious reaction from fellow Republicans, he has now also kicked the DACA can down the line for six months, giving Congress the chance to show the compassion he refuses to show because he’s keener on appeasing his base than appeasing those who wouldn’t vote for him in 1000 years.
(Of course, by doing this, he is behaving just like a self-interested politician, which ironically is how he persistently assured his base he would not behave when he ran for president)
So how will this all wash up?
Nobody pretends this is an easy issue to resolve.
There are an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in America and up to a million more come over the border every year.
Presidents from both parties have wrestled with this problem, badly, for decades.
Trump positioned himself during his campaign as the man who would be very tough on law and order. As he said yesterday: ‘We are a nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws.’
So what he is doing is entirely consistent with that narrative, however unpleasant it may seem.
But great leaders understand that to truly unite a nation, it is important to deploy a few carrots with a big stick.
If Donald Trump wants to Make America Great Again, then he should stop picking on the most vulnerable members of society like transgenders and Dreamers.
He has, contrary to popular opinion, got a heart. I saw it first hand many times during filming of Celebrity Apprentice.
And we all saw it last weekend when he hugged and kissed young victims of the Houston floods.
It is imagery like that which can define a US presidency, because America itself has a gigantic beating heart, as was displayed by all those extraordinary people who risked their lives to save Houston victims.
At the core of that heart is the American dream: the idea that if you work hard and care for your family, you will get the same opportunity as anyone else to succeed in life and achieve your goals.
This decision by President Trump threatens to kill that dream for people who have done nothing to warrant such treatment, and who in fact have done everything they can to warrant becoming bona fide American citizens that everyone should be proud to support.
Think again, Mr President.
And if you won’t, then I hope Congress does the thinking for you and rights this wrong.