Listen Up! Donald Trump and the issue of illegal immigration | Commentary

 “Christians, you have to get out and vote. You won’t have to do it anymore. (In) four years it will be fixed. In four years, you won’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good; you’re not going to have to vote.”

-Donald J. Trump at a recent rally.

Wow!

And if that doesn’t tell you enough about what Donald Trump will attempt to do if he is again elected President of the United States, hear what his running mate, J.D. Vance, said the other day in support of Project 2025, a radical, alt-right manifesto outlining some frightening initiatives.

According to Wikipedia, the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, also known as Project 2025, is a 920-page document initiated by the Heritage Foundation. Its aim is to provide a collection of right-wing policy proposals to reshape the American federal government to support Donald Trump’s agenda should he again become president. This would give Donald Trump unprecedented executive power and steer the United States toward autocracy. Donald Trump claims he has not read it, but he often supports its content.

So, this is what J.D. Vance, a potential vice president of the United States, says about Project 2025. “We really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power. I don’t think there’s a compromise that we’re going to come up with. Unless we overthrow them (the Democrats) in some way, we’re going to keep losing.”

Wow again.

For those who support Donald Trump both in the United States and, to some extent, in Canada, you can forget anything else about Donald Trump. Forget that he is a convicted felon. Ignore the charges that he is guilty of sexual assault and tax evasion. Forget that he is a serial liar who is as capable of slurring his words and going off-topic as President Joe Biden. 

But you cannot forget or ignore the increasing evidence that Donald Trump and his running mate are determined to change the United States into an autocratic country that cares nothing about the democratic process. Although there are many other indications of this movement, some of them described in Project 2025, the quotations from Trump and Vance above are sufficient all on their own to see where all of this could be heading. 

On the one hand, I find it hard to believe that many Americans, not attached to the MAGA cult, are still prepared to hold their nose and vote for Donald Trump regardless of how he might change their country. On the other hand, there is a need to address, at the risk of being labelled as a racist, the elephant in the room, and that is illegal immigration.

That has become a huge problem in the United States as it is in many other parts of the world, especially Europe. Many Americans are seeing what is happening with uncontrolled immigration as a threat to their way of life and the rule of law. 

Donald Trump has been gaining success in establishing himself as the one person who can resolve the problem of illegal immigration. This in spite of the fact that a bipartisan bill was worked out between Democrats and Republicans that would have passed in Congress. But Trump killed it. He wanted illegal border crossings to remain out of control until he could be seen as the one to fix it. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a staunch Republican, put it this way: “We spent months on a bipartisan bill to secure the border, but Trump didn’t want us to do anything at all. He told us to kill the bill.”

That left President Joe Biden with no option other than to issue an Executive Order related to border crossings that could not by law have been as stringent as a bill passed by Congress. Nevertheless, that order has reduced illegal border crossings by about 40 per cent.

 Regardless of either of these initiatives, Donald Trump, in my view, is still seen by many Americans as the one who will best control illegal immigration. Sadly, that could be what pushes multitudes of them across the brink to vote for him.

Americans who worry about illegal immigration cannot get much comfort from what they are seeing in Europe these days. In many cases, violence between immigrants, many of them illegal, and citizens who want to protect their way of life, and in one case, a radicalized imam threatening an Islamic takeover of Europe. 

And one may wonder how that is working, especially seeing in an otherwise spectacular opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics, a mockery of the Last Supper, sacred to Christian identity. Whose idea was that?

Of course, all things political got pretty shaken up in the United States last week. The game has changed, and Kamala Harris is going to give Donald Trump a run for his money. In just 48 hours after President Joe Biden removed himself from the race, she wrapped up the delegates to ensure the Democratic presidential nomination at their Convention in August. She has also moved the polls already to be in a very tight race with Donald Trump.  

Kamala Harris will make gains in many of the various demographics in American politics, especially women and young people. There may well be a path to victory for her. But she will not win, in my view, if she does not adequately and definitively address the issues of illegal immigration that foster the fear of many Americans.  She needs to take that back from Donald Trump.

Canadians, too, should not have their blinkers on when it comes to illegal immigration. There are not many major issues in the United States of America that do not, in time, have a residual effect in Canada.

That’s just the way it is.

Hugh Mackenzie

Hugh Mackenzie has held elected office as a trustee on the Muskoka Board of Education, a Huntsville councillor, a District councillor, and mayor of Huntsville. He has also served as chairman of the District of Muskoka and as chief of staff to former premier of Ontario, Frank Miller.

Hugh has also served on a number of provincial, federal and local boards, including chair of the Ontario Health Disciplines Board, vice-chair of the Ontario Family Health Network, vice-chair of the Ontario Election Finance Commission, and board member of Roy Thomson Hall, the National Theatre School of Canada, and the Anglican Church of Canada. Locally, he has served as president of the Huntsville Rotary Club, chair of Huntsville District Memorial Hospital, chair of the Huntsville Hospital Foundation, president of Huntsville Festival of the Arts, and board member of Community Living Huntsville.

In business, Hugh Mackenzie has a background in radio and newspaper publishing. He was also a founding partner and CEO of Enterprise Canada, a national public affairs and strategic communications firm established in 1986.

Currently, Hugh is president of C3 Digital Media Inc., the parent company of Doppler Online, and he enjoys writing commentary for Huntsville Doppler.

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