Special to WorldTribune.com
President Trump must declare a national emergency on our southern border. He has no choice—and neither does America.
For weeks, a partial government shutdown has dragged on with no end in sight. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer refuse to give Trump the $5.7 billion necessary to begin constructing a wall/steel fence along much of the U.S.-Mexico border.
In fact, Pelosi and Schumer have openly taunted and insulted the president. They have called him a “petulant child” who likes to throw “temper tantrums.” At a Wednesday meeting, Pelosi waved a one-dollar bill in front of Trump’s face, saying this is all the money for the wall he will ever get from the House Democrats. Pelosi and Schumer have vowed to block Trump from enacting his signature campaign promise.
This is a political death struggle. Hence, compromise is impossible; Democrats believe they can now break Trump’s presidency by shattering his credibility on border security.
Moreover, radical Democrats and their media allies keep repeating their seminal talking point: That our porous southern border is a “manufactured crisis.”
They are lying.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, during the past two years illegal aliens have been arrested for over 4,000 homicides, 30,000 sexual assaults or rapes and 100,000 physical assaults. More than 90 percent of the heroin and fentanyl pouring into our country comes across the southern border. Last year alone, the opioid epidemic claimed the lives of 57,000 Americans. This is as many who died during the entire Vietnam War.
Our border crisis is the equivalent of Vietnam every year—a war liberals argue was one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century. Also, illegal immigration costs America $250-300 billion a year in education, welfare, health care and public housing costs. If this is not a “crisis,” then nothing is.
In fact, we are facing not just a border crisis, but an invasion. Since the early 1990s, illegal immigrants have flooded our country, displacing millions of American workers, draining our social welfare services, causing soaring violent crime, encouraging human and sex trafficking, and empowering the Mexican drug cartels to rampage across the southern border.
There is only one thing that can stop this invasion: a wall. Since Hadrian, history has proven that walls work. They work in Israel, Jordan, Tunisia, Kuwait and Hungary. And they have shown to work here.
As Karl Rove (of all people) demonstrated in The Wall Street Journal, illegal crossings in San Diego went down 92 percent since a wall was erected in 1995; in El Paso, Texas, illegal traffic dropped 95 percent following a wall being built in 1996; in Tucson, Arizona, illegal crossings plummeted 90 percent since the sector wall went up in 2003; and in Yuma, Arizona the sector wall established in 2008 caused illegal crossings to drop 95 percent. The reason Democrats and globalist Republicans don’t want Trump to build a wall along much of the border is because it will finally fix the problem—and thereby ending the unlimited supply of cheap labor (and votes) demanded by the donor class.
This is why Trump should declare a national emergency, take the money from the Pentagon budget and order the Army Corps of Engineers to begin construction on the steel fence/wall. If Congress will not allocate him the billions in funding, then he can—and must—do it himself. He has the full legal and constitutional authority to do so.
The 1976 National Emergencies Act, passed by Congress, gives the president the statutory power to not only declare a national emergency. It also explicitly authorizes him to order the military to build construction projects the president deems to be in the nation’s vital interest. Countless presidents—George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush—have used it for hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes (even when there was no loss of life). Barack Obama invoked it to combat—I kid you not—the swine flu.
Yet, at the time Democrats and the media did not wring their hands over a possible constitutional overreach. The reason is obvious: They fear Trump will finally achieve his central promise. The swamp would be defeated. And this would guarantee his re-election in 2020.
Mr. President, what are you waiting for? Pull the trigger. Middle America is waiting.
Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at WorldTribune.com and the host of “The Kuhner Report” weekdays 12-3 pm EST on WRKO AM-680 in Boston.