Credit Trump for stressing touchy issue

Donald Trump, a resident of the State of New York, billionaire real-estate developer and current Republican candidate for President of the United States, making campaign kickoff remarks about illegal immigrants from Mexico deserves some serious examination:

“The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.

“They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. . . .“They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” he said, adding, “And some, I assume, are good people.” – Donald Trump

Why would Mr. Trump a man who was born in Queens, New York, who surely visited in his 69 years Liberty Island, home of the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island, America’s east coast immigration processing center of the late 19th to mid 20th century, make such remarks about illegal immigrants from Mexico?

I can’t claim to know the heart of the Donald Trump, but I will speculate on Trump’s views on illegal immigrants.

Liberty and Ellis islands are on U.S. Register of Historic places. They are and were symbolically the lighthouse of liberty beckoning and the entry port of legal immigration to America, particularly to a person like Trump who was raised in Queens, a borough of New York City.

Queens is close enough for a man interested in the history of immigration to this country to make a short trip southwest down Long Island to Brooklyn and look west across Upper New York Bay at the iconic sites.

Trump most likely has taken the ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty and while touring the Statue site he must have read the bronze plaque cast with 1883 sonnet written by Emma Lazarus titled “The New Colossus.” Its last paragraph says this:

“ ‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. ‘Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’ “

Trump after reading that would know as a student of circumstantial current and past immigration history that immigrants entering Upper New York Bay metaphorically by boat is the legitimate gateway to America while 5.9 million illegal Mexican immigrants sneaking across the country’s southern border with Mexico violate federal law and invade the nation’s sovereignty.

Donald Trump in preparation for his candidacy for president of the United States very likely knows that the U.S Federal Bureau of Prisons holds 33,108 Mexican nationals, — 15.9 percent of the federal government’s prison inmates.

Furthermore, Trump is also likely aware that there are 18,307 federal prisoners incarcerated for immigration crimes, 9.3 percent of the federal prison population.

Recently, Trump met with families of victims of illegal immigrant crime in California; Trump knows the life-changing impact on families who have lost their loved ones killed by illegal immigrants primarily from Mexico.

Americans should thank Donald Trump for speaking so frankly on the topic of illegal immigration and for making it one of the top campaign issues in the 2016 presidential election.

David Olen Cross of Salem writes on immigration issues and foreign national crime. He is a weekly guest on the Lars Larson Northwest Show. He can be reached at docfnc@yahoo.com or at