Trump’s Wall, Obama’s Failure

Donald Trump’s promise to build an anti-immigrant wall on the Mexican border is a bunch of populist nonsense. It’s no less true that president Barack Obama will soon leave the White House on a failure that’s not only total but shocking when it comes to immigration.

It was an eloquent plea for openness and social dialogue that President Barack Obama delivered on Wednesday evening at the Democratic Convention. Inspiring speech, certainly, although a little soaked in the syrup of conviction and the feeling that America can only progress – as long as Hillary is elected president next November, of course. In any case, it’s the opposite of the heinous and furious speech from the Republican Trump, which Obama did not hesitate to denounce as toxic.

That said, and like he had done in January in his last state of the union speech, the president apologized for having failed to alleviate the divisions that have been tearing apart American politics for a long time. Divisions that have gone in crescendo during his presidency.

It will have been a failure full of consequences for American society, largely ascribable, moreover, to the ultra-partisan position that the Republican majority in Congress has decided to adopt for reasons that are as electoral as they are ideological. The failure, and then the absence of useful legislative results, will have had the heaviest consequences in two fields in particular: immigration and gun control.

Perhaps, in regards to the scandalous absence of progress on the gun control issue, it is the mediocrity of the Republicans, who are controlled by the National Rifle Association, that deserves all the blame. But still, on the ceaseless debate concerning the illegal immigration of Latinos, Mr. Obama has his share of responsibility due to the fact that nothing was put in place since his arrival to the White House eight years ago.

President Obama is in fact the one under which, compared to all American presidents, the greatest number of illegal immigrants has been deported. Under his administration, a record number of 2.5 million people will have been deported, primarily to Mexico and to Central America – which would be almost equivalent to those deported during the whole 20th century. It’s a more embarrassing reality for a president who has not stopped pleading for compassion given that a significant number of those deported are children and teenagers.

Obama’s strategy apparently consisted of showing firmness when it comes to border control in the hope that the Republicans would agree to take it easy and to reform the immigration system, which would have finally put in place, at the very least in stammering manner, necessary regulation procedures of illegal migrants. That bargaining attempt did not work.

Not happy about authorizing the massive deportation of migrants, and with a large number of them demanding refugee status, President Obama’s government went on to outsource the problem by financing the reinforcement of the surveillance, by notoriously corrupt Mexican authorities, of the violent border between Mexico and Guatemala. Without any real result other than worsening the misery and the ill treatment in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, these three countries are plagued by gangs and poor human rights.

In desperation, Mr. Obama attempted in November 2014 to impose, by executive order, reform of the immigration system and to force the Republicans to act, to some extent. Through this order a temporary regulatory program was created to halt deportation procedures of up to five million illegals and to authorize them to work in the United States for a three-year period. At the end of June, the project was absurdly overturned by the Supreme Court in a lawsuit brought forth by Texas.

In the end, unable to reform the immigration system, Mr. Obama will objectively find himself putting up barriers against a community whose economic contribution to the American society is important.