Favorite Trump Quote: "We'll See What Happens"

Border Patrol Chief: No Migrant Was Able to Scale New Border Wall

11/28/2018 - Leah Barkoukis Townhall.com

Migrants stormed the United States’ southern border over the weekend but one place none of them were able to cross was the new border wall, Rodney Scott, chief of the San Diego Border Patrol sector, told Fox News on Monday.

Scott explained that the area the migrants breached was in a scrap-metal border wall near San Diego.

"We've identified those (holes) for Congress," Scott said. "And long-term, I'm hoping that Congress steps up to the plate and fixes those to shut off the draw.

"But in the meantime, I'd like to point out that not a single migrant climbed over the new border wall. We have about eight miles of border wall completed here in San Diego -- unfortunately, that's not complete. So the military came over in the last several weeks to help us fortify different areas, but it's those weak areas where we have not upgraded the infrastructure that the migrants were able to breach."

When it's finished, the new section of border wall near San Diego will replace about 14 miles of an 8- to 10-foot-high scrap metal wall with an 18- to 30-foot bollard-style wall topped off with an "anti-climbing plate," CBP announced earlier this year.

The San Diego Sector wall construction is one of Border Patrol’s top priority projects, CBP said, given that the San Ysidro port of entry is one of the busiest border crossings in the world, for both legal and illegal traffic. (CNS News)

Scott's comments about the wall's efficacy comes as debate over its funding heats up. 

While President Trump has called for a minimum of $5 billion, Democrats are adamant that no more than $1.6 billion will be spent on it. 

When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked Tuesday how he could get Democrats to agree to give the amount Trump desires, he responded, "Well, we're---we're talking about it. 

"We're trying to get the president the money he would like for the wall. That's part of the year-end funding discussion, which is ongoing, not only among the appropriators, but with the administration as well," he continued. 

"And we're hoping -- that's one of the many things we've got to wrap up here at the end of the year."

Merit Based Immigration is a Worthy Cause

Trump’s Merit Based Immigration Can Focus on Investment in America, Creating Jobs and Higher Wages for Americans Rather Than Stealing Them Away

11/24/2018 - Peter Ferrara Townhall.com

President Trump wants to reform immigration to be based on merit, rather than lotteries, anchor babies, and chains of poor, unskilled, uneducated relatives, all with their hands out asking for public assistance from American taxpayers. Merit means immigration based on what the immigrant can bring to, rather than take from, America.

President John F. Kennedy, the last great Democrat, articulated the policy well in his 1961 Inaugural address, when he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” Trump’s vision is to apply this principle to those who are seeking to emigrate to America. 

There is one immigration provision that already follows Trump’s merit-based immigration vision, the EB-5 visa program. That provision of current law provides 10,000 visas a year to foreign investors who are willing to invest half a million in state designated distressed areas creating at least 10 new jobs for American workers, or $1 million creating jobs anywhere in America.

Instead of letting waves of unskilled, uneducated poor foreigners in to compete with domestic American workers, driving their wages down, the EB-5 visa program would let in waves of investment capital to hire domestic American workers, bidding their wages up. That follows perfectly Trump’s vision to Make America Great Again.

But on his way out the door, anti-business President Obama tried to sabotage the EB-5 visa program, proposing regulations in January 2017 to increase the minimum required investment for the visas. Even immigrants with a million dollars to invest in America couldn’t qualify for entry into the United States. True to form, Obama preferred entry for unskilled, uneducated, immigrants without much to contribute to America.

That is the fundamental problem of the socialist Democrats today, who don’t understand how to create jobs and rising wages, unlike President Kennedy who created a jobs and wages boom in the 1960s. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), John Cornyn (R-TX), Dean Heller (R-NV) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) wrote a letter to the incoming Trump Administration opposing these midnight Obama regulations, seeking deference to Congress on the issue.

But now the Trump bureaucracy is inexplicably moving ahead with the Obama anti-business regulations, as the bureaucrats fail to understand President Trump’s merit-based immigration. Under the new proposed rules, the investment thresholds for EB-5 visas would be raised to $1.35 million for distressed areas, and $1.8 million for any investment creating jobs in America. Kathy Nuebel Kovarik, Chief of the Office of Policy and Strategy, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has indicated that the Trump Administration wants to get this Obama era regulation done this year.

The power grabbing federal bureaucrats at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Homeland Security also propose to seize from the states the authority to designate which areas would be labelled as distressed, as if federal bureaucrats would know better than state and local officials which areas in their states are distressed and most in need of new capital investment.

Lawyers, venture capitalists and real estate developers think this new regulation would kill the EB-5 investment program. Bureaucrats and Democrats do not understand how Trump’s policies of tax cuts and deregulation worked so well to restore booming economic growth to America, after years of Obama’s secular stagnation and “new normal” of no growth. This is why Trump needs to be reelected in 2020, because only he understands how it is done.

American Action Forum (AAF) reports that through these EB-5 immigrants, $20 billion has been invested in the U.S. since 2008, over $5 billion in 2017 alone. These investments have created 174,000 jobs, 16 jobs per each EB-5 immigrant investor.  

Rather than restricting EB-5, President Trump should expand it, for more jobs, capital investment, and higher wages. AAF estimates that increasing investor visas to 20,000 a year would increase U.S. GDP by $11 billion annually. Ending the Visa lottery program would free up 50,000 visas a year that could be devoted to the EB-5 investor program, increasing capital investment, jobs, and higher wages for American workers. Even more could come from ending chain migration.

These reforms would contribute mightily to changing immigration to the U.S. to a merits-based concept, focused on allowing immigrants to America who could contribute the most to America. 

Sword of Radicalism - Democrat Downfall

Let the Democrats Keep Showing Their Hand

11/16/2018 - David Limbaugh Townhall.com

The Democratic Party's emerging radical bloc is alarming, but the leftist group's youthful intemperance could backfire and re-energize Republicans' 2020 electoral prospects.

Even before all the hanging chads and miraculously divined ballots have been examined in Florida, newly elected leftist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is already engaging in activism in the halls of Congress. On Tuesday morning, the future representative from New York joined a protest organized by the Sunrise Movement outside the offices of Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi to demand immediate action on climate change -- as if the dinosaur wing of the Democratic Party weren't sufficiently extremist on environmental issues.

Ocasio-Cortez, who validates the maxim "youth is wasted on the young," is part of the Justice Democrats, which promoted leftist challengers during the 2018 Democratic primary cycle. The Sunrise Movement is demanding House support of a "Green New Deal," which contemplates forming a committee to write policies aimed at creating jobs by moving the nation off fossil fuels -- as counterintuitive as that may strike you.

Waleed Shahid, the Justice Democrats' communications director, insists that the Democratic Party's leadership must get serious about the climate and the economy. "Anything less is tantamount to denying the reality of climate change," said Shahid. "The hopeful part is that we're ushering in a new generation of leaders into the Democratic Party who understand the urgency and will help build a movement to create the political will for bold action." Yes, they must get moving before any more of Al Gore's hysterical doomsday predictions fail.

The adage "with age comes wisdom" is biblically based and objectively observable -- except, perhaps, in the case of Pelosi and her old-guard Democrats. They have invited all types of radicals into their coalition, so they can hardly complain when the fruit of their poisonous tree begins to blossom. Accordingly, Pelosi pretended to support this presumptuous upstart's mini-rebellion.

"We are inspired by the energy and activism of the many young activists and advocates leading the way on the climate crisis, which threatens the health, economic security and futures of all our communities," said Pelosi. "I have recommended to my House Democratic colleagues that we reinstate a select committee to address the climate crisis. ... We welcome the presence of these activists, and we strongly urge the Capitol Police to allow them to continue to organize and participate in our democracy."

Her groveling wasn't enough to pacify the implacable Justice Democrats, who tweeted: "Our response: Not good enough. Pelosi is reinstating a 2007 committee tasked with investigating the harms of climate change. We don't need more investigation. We need specific plans matching the urgency and scale mandated by the UN's IPCC report on catastrophic climate change."

The good thing about cliches is that, usually based on human experience, they're often true. So, the current plight of the Pelosi Democrats is that they have made their bed and now have to lie in it. For the next two years, they're going to be lying in the same bed as the rebels -- a bed that has two left sides.

The Democrats have lived by the sword of radicalism, embracing every last crazy idea of the extreme left and incorporating it into their agenda, and may they electorally die by that sword in 2020.

Democrats used to tack to the center during general election season, knowing America has been a center-right nation. But since Obama's presidency, they've begun playing their left hand more openly. In the bluest of areas, they can afford to reveal their outright socialism, which explains Ocasio-Cortez's unapologetically socialist campaign message. In other venues, such as Arizona, their radicals have to feign centrism, which explains Kyrsten Sinema's chameleonic transformation to would-be centrist.

The developing schism in the Democratic Party is a positive sign for Republicans, who should greatly benefit from Democratic fissures, especially if they lead to the Democratic Party's moving even further to the left and exposing its radicalism.

Though the electoral demographics seem to be shifting leftward -- and though our public schools, universities and dominant media culture are indoctrinating more Americans every day -- it's unlikely the majority of the country will be comfortable with leftist extremism as soon as 2020.

But this is hardly something Republicans can rejoice over, because until they get their own act together, they won't be able to properly capitalize on intramural conflict among Democrats. But from my perspective, anything that awakens a complacent America to the existential dangers posed by the radical left, which increasingly controls the Democratic Party, represents cause for hope and optimism.

It's Back to Basics for Everyone - or All is Lost!

The War for the Soul of America

11/9/2018 - Pat Buchanan Townhall.com

The war in Washington will not end until the presidency of Donald Trump ends. Everyone seems to sense that now.

This is a fight to the finish.

A postelection truce that began with Trump congratulating House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi -- "I give her a great deal of credit for what she's done and what she's accomplished" -- was ancient history by nightfall.

With the forced resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his replacement by his chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker, the long-anticipated confrontation with Robert Mueller appears at hand.

Sessions had recused himself from the oversight role of the special counsel's investigation into Russiagate. Whitaker has definitely not.

Before joining Justice, he said that the Mueller probe was overreaching, going places it had no authority to go, and that it could be leashed by a new attorney general and starved of funds until it passes away.

Whitaker was not chosen to be merely a place holder until a new AG is confirmed. He was picked so he can get the job done.

And about time.

For two years, Trump has been under a cloud of unproven allegations and suspicion that he and top campaign officials colluded with Vladimir Putin's Russia to thieve and publish the emails of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

It is past time for Mueller to prove these charges or concede he has a busted flush, wrap up his investigation and go home.

And now, in T.S. Eliot's words, Trump appears to have found "the strength to force the moment to its crisis."

His attitude toward Mueller's probe is taking on the aspect of Andrew Jackson's attitude toward Nicholas Biddle's Second Bank of the United States: It's "trying to kill me, but I will kill it."

Trump has been warned by congressional Democrats that if he in any way impedes the work of Mueller's office, he risks impeachment.

Well, let's find out.

If the House Judiciary Committee of incoming chairman Jerrold Nadler wishes to impeach Trump for forcing Mueller to fish or cut bait, Trump's allies should broaden the debate to the real motivation here of the defeated establishment: It detests the man the American people chose to lead their country and thus wants to use its political and cultural power to effect his removal.

Even before news of Sessions' departure hit Wednesday, Trump was subjected to an Antifa-style hassling by the White House press corps.

One reporter berated the president and refused to surrender the microphone. Others shouted support for his antics. A third demanded to know whether Trump's admission that he's a "nationalist" would give aid and comfort to "white nationalists."

By picking up the credentials of CNN's Jim Acosta and booting him out of the White House, Trump has set a good precedent.

Freedom of the press does not mean guaranteed immunity of the press from the same kind of abuse the press directs at the president.

John F. Kennedy was beloved by the media elite. Yet JFK canceled all White House subscriptions to the New York Herald Tribune and called the publisher of The New York Times to get him to pull reporter David Halberstam out of Vietnam for undermining U.S. morale in a war in which Green Berets were dying.

Some journalists have become Trump haters with press passes. And Trump is right to speak truth to mainstream media power and to accord to the chronically hostile press the same access to the White House to which Robert De Niro is entitled. Since the days of John Adams, the White House has been the president's house, not the press's house.

Pelosi appears the favorite to return as speaker of the House. But she may find her coming days in the post she loves to be less-than-happy times.

Some of her incoming committee chairs -- namely, Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters and Elijah Cummings -- seem less interested in legislative compromises than in rummaging through White House files for documents to damage the president, starting with his tax returns.

To a world watching with fascination this death struggle convulsing our capital, one wonders how attractive American democracy appears.

And just how much division can this democracy stand?

We know what the left thinks of Trump's "base."

Hillary Clinton told us. Half his supporters, she said, are a "basket of deplorables" who are "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic -- you name it." Lately, America's populist right has been called fascist and neo-Nazi.

How can the left "unite" with people like that? Why should the left not try to drive such "racists" out of power by any means necessary?

This is the thinking that bred Antifa.

As for those on the right -- as they watch the left disparage the old heroes, tear down their monuments, purge Christianity from their public schools -- they have come to conclude that their enemies are at root anti-Christian and anti-American.

How do we unify a nation where the opposing camps believe this?

What the Trump-establishment war is about is the soul of America, a war in which a compromise on principle can be seen as a betrayal.

Ideological Leftists Destroying Our Republic

The Gloomy American Left

11/9/2018 - David Limbaugh Townhall.com

The fury of leftists is a constant today, and it's not just because they hate President Donald Trump. Despite all their dreamy talk of compassion and love, they seem to be a miserable lot.

Democrats recaptured control of the House of Representatives this week, and leftists are already grinding their teeth over Trump and salivating at the prospect of putting him and Justice Brett Kavanaugh through investigatory and impeachment hell for the next two years.

You can't help but see it. Throughout America, leftists are perpetually agitated. They're not happy unless they're unhappy. They populate protests with their crude gender caps and scream about perceived slights, discrimination and inequality. They usurp law enforcement authority to stop traffic in Portland, Oregon. They threateningly protest at conservative celebrities' homes.

They are not pleased that the economy is growing and people are prospering under President Trump but choose instead to mire in angst over alleged income inequality among Americans. With a Republican president in office, it wouldn't matter if every American family were earning at least $250,000 a year. As long as some people were making substantially more, they'd demand remedial government action.

It's true not just of the economy but also of the environment, abortion, health care, public education and immigration. Pick any of those issues, among others, and consider what would happen if Republicans caved on it. Do you think leftists would be satisfied if the government outlawed the coal industry, mandated prohibitive automobile emission standards, funded abortion on demand, fully socialized medicine, doubled the already obscenely bloated federal education budget and removed all restrictions on our borders? As for the latter, I remind you that many of them actually advocate the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- like the sovereignty-shattering anarchists they are.

It's not just that most of them are implacable malcontents. It's also that they can't afford for their constituencies to be satisfied, because their political power hinges on perpetuating categories of victimhood and assuming de facto guardianship over them. To us, they preach bipartisanship and collegiality; to their wards, they proclaim that they are with them and that conservatives are against them.

Consider their uniformly negative and irrational reaction to the objectively improved economy under President Trump. It seems that it is not improvement in the lives of minorities they seek but minorities' permanent dependence on them. They are utterly unmoved by minority unemployment's being at historic lows and minorities' wages being at historic highs. Real-world, empirical evidence means nothing. All that matters is that leftists claim to care more than conservatives about minorities; minorities must ignore their lying eyes.

Leftists, who now dominate the Democratic Party, no longer have a vision for the country, other than to fundamentally transform it -- to divest it of its founding principles. They profess to be offended by President Trump's goal of making America great again, but many of them don't believe it was ever that great in the first place, and they're on a mission to remake it in their image.

Most of them are outright socialists who don't believe enough in America's uniqueness to care about protecting its borders. They support ever increasing taxes, but not because they want to balance the budget or improve people's lives. Rather, they prefer that the government -- as opposed to individuals -- control the expenditures of money.

But in the past few years, the left doesn't spend much time even on these issues. Leftists' singular focus is on Trump -- getting rid of this monster whose very presence is destroying their lives. Opposing Trump, his agenda and his appointments and deriding him around the clock is their be-all and end-all. It is their negative life force -- the energy that drives and sustains them.

The silver lining to all this negativity is that they will continue to overplay their hand into the 2020 election, losing credibility and faith with the majority of Americans by exchanging whatever semblance of optimism they had for the perverse privilege of obsessing over Trump.

How could a majority of Americans, even in the modern era, be attracted to a party whose rallying cry is not a better economy, a stronger America, enhanced freedom and prosperity, or a more wholesome culture but purging the nation of a president it abhors?

March of Migrants - An Invasion to Destroy the Land of Opportunity!

Sense of Entitlement Fuels Increasingly Violent Pedestrian Invasion Forces

11/3/2018 - Deroy Murdock Townhall.com

“Daddy, I don’t want a Volkswagen. I want a BMW. And I want it NOW!”

This attitude is grating enough among spoiled teenagers. Even worse, this sense of entitlement permeates the pedestrian invasion forces — euphemized as “migrant caravans” — now marching up from Central America, through Mexico.

Undetermined thousands of illegal aliens, largely from Honduras and El Salvador, have broken into Guatemala and then broken into Mexico. They intend to break into America. Last month, news cameras caught them swamping the gate that separates Guatemala’s Ciudad Tecun Uman and Mexico’s Ciudad Hidalgo. They banged on the barrier, and down it came. A wave of humanity rushed forth, like floodwaters pouring through a ruptured levee on the mighty Mississippi.

Hondurans are poor, and their nation is no hotbed of hope. Most of these people seek to brighten their life prospects. But the path to greener pastures must be legal. These people all should stand down, retreat, and apply for visas at the embassies of the countries to which they wish to emigrate. No land — not least the USA — is obligated to accept these people. They have no right to live anywhere else without their destination nation’s permission.

A complex set of international customs and legal precedents holds that those in distress should seek relief in the “first country of asylum” safe enough for them to take refuge. International law does not recognize a right for those fleeing chaos or squalor to shop from one nation to the next, as if they were homebuyers who skin up their noses at houses A and B and demand house C.

Beyond Cancun, Mexico is not quite paradise. However, with a per-capita income of $19,900, according to the CIA World Fact Book, it is more than twice as prosperous as El Salvador ($8,900) and Guatemala ($8,100) and nearly four times wealthier than Honduras ($5,600). The frightful, deadly MS-13 gang is far less influential in Mexico than it is in those three Central American countries. So, maybe the people snaking our way should stop in Mexico and enjoy that country’s relative prosperity and comparative tranquility.

In fact, as NBC News reported, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto unveiled his “You are at home” plan. Last week, he offered housing, healthcare, education, and employment to itinerant Central Americans who had reached Chiapas and Oaxaca states. He asked them to apply for this first step toward permanent refugee designation.

Between 1,700 and 2,000 migrants reportedly have accepted Mexico’s generosity. The majority, however, have rebuffed Peña Nieto and continue trudging toward America.

“Thank you!” a group of invaders shouted in a town called Arriaga. They just had voted down Peña Nieto’s plan with a show of hands. According to CBS News, they added: “No.We’re heading north!”

“Our goal is not to remain in Mexico,” said Honduran Oscar Sosa, 58. “Our goal is to make it to [the USA.] We want passage. That’s all.”

Even before reaching San Diego or El Paso, some of these marauders are behaving like…entitled, litigious Americans.

A dozen Hondurans launched a lawsuit against President Donald J. Trump and the Department of Homeland Security. The plaintiff’s action, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., claims that the Trump Administration’s deployment of the U.S. military to block these Hondurans violates their Fifth Amendment due-process right to asylum proceedings. 

As the late, great Yogi Berra must be saying in Heaven: “Only in Central America.”

So, who are these ingrates who spurn Mexico’s hand of friendship and insist on a right to enter America? The Left/media portray these invaders as a sort of floating PTA meeting.CNN anchor Chris Cuomo purrs: “They’re more mothers than monsters.”

In fact, only “about 20 to 30 percent” of these illegals are parents and unaccompanied minors, Roy Villareal, deputy chief patrol agent of the Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector, told the Washington Examiner. The remaining 70 to 80 percent of those on the move, Villareal says, are “single, adult males.” Even more worrisome, these unattached grown men have been rough. “We have been trying to avoid, at all costs, violence on the border,” Mexico’s ambassador to Washington, Gerónimo Gutiérrez, told National Public Radio on Monday. “Unfortunately, some of the people in the caravan have been very violent against authority.”

To sample such aggression, watch this video of what appear to be masked male migrantshurling rocks at a Mexican helicopter as it flies overhead. The chopper twice takes evasive action, lest it get struck and crash.

This violence is not isolated, and the mayhem could get much, much worse.

Mexico’s Interior Minister Alfonso Navarrete told Radio Enfoque (Focus Radio) 100.1 FM last Tuesday: “I have videos from Guatemala that show men dressed in identical clothing, sporting the same haircuts, handing out money to women to persuade them to move to the front of the caravan,” to serve as the soft, vulnerable, tear-inducing tip of this human spear.

Navarette added: “We know, for a fact, that some members of the caravan threatened [Mexican] Migration Institute personnel, and we have images showing many of them preparing Molotov cocktails.” He explained that, thanks to the pedestrian invaders, “the wounded we have on the Mexican side are policemen, more than ten, two of them are serious, with traumatic brain injury.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Thursday released this disturbing statement:

“We continue to be concerned about individuals along the caravan route. In fact, over 270 individuals along the caravan route have criminal histories, including known gang membership.  Those include a number of violent criminals — examples include aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, armed robbery, sexual assault on a child, and assault on a female. Mexican officials have also publicly stated that criminal groups have infiltrated the caravan. We also continue to see individuals from over 20 countries in this flow from countries such as Somalia, India, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. There is a large segment of this population that we know nothing about and we must be prepared to defend our border and enforce our laws to protect the citizens of our country.”

This is what America faces: Wave after wave after wave of thousands of uninvited, unidentified, jobless, predominantly male, somewhat sue-happy, increasingly violent, illegal aliens determined to penetrate our southern border and make themselves at home in our country.

Too bad they don’t follow my mother and father’s example.

When they wanted to pursue better lives by moving from Costa Rica to America in 1962, my parents did something likely considered racist today: They visited the U.S. Embassy in San José, filled out visa applications, got their passports stamped, and then came to America. The Land of the Free greeted them with tremendous warmth, love, and opportunity — and then did the same for our other relatives who arrived, mainly after my birth in Los Angles in 1963.

Lucky us.

Remember: these people all walked in after they knocked on America’s front door and were invited in.

Those who now fill our TV screens around the clock, however, have no claim on our sympathy. Unlike lawful immigrants, those who are determined to barge into America illegally deserve nothing but water cannons and tear gas if they reach the southern frontier. These pedestrian invaders could have rung our collective bell and waited for us to answer. Instead, they have organized themselves into a human battering ram and are poised to smash our door into splinters, run inside, and help themselves to America’s bounty. They should think long and hard before triggering the righteous rage of this home’s overburdened owners.

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor and an emeritus media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.

Please America -- Get Educated, Inspired, Involved -- Save Our Republic!

Mass Migration: Mortal Threat to Red State America

11/2/2018 - Pat Buchanan Townhall.com

Among the reasons Donald Trump is president is that his natural political instincts are superior to those of any other current figure.

As campaign 2018 entered its final week, Trump seized upon and elevated the single issue that most energizes his populist base and most convulses our media elite.

Warning of an "invasion," he pointed to the migrant caravan that had come out of Honduras and was wending its way through Mexico. He then threatened to issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship.

As other caravans began to assemble in Central America, Trump said he would send, first 5,200 and then 15,000, troops to the border.

This ignited the predictable hysteria of the media elite who decried his "racism," his "lying" and his "attack on the 14th Amendment." Trump, they railed, is sending more troops to the Mexican border than we have in Syria or Iraq.

True. But to most Americans, the fate and future of the republic is more likely to be determined on the U.S.-Mexican border than on the border between Syria and Iraq.

Moreover, in challenging birthright citizenship, Trump has some constitutional history on his side.

The 14th Amendment, approved in 1868, was crafted to overturn the Dred Scott decision of 1857 and to guarantee citizenship and equal rights under law to freed slaves and their children.

Did it guarantee that everyone born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen? No. In the 1884 Elk v. Wilkins decision, the Supreme Court ruled that John Elk, a Winnebago Indian born on a reservation, had not denied his constitutional right to vote, as he was not a U.S. citizen.

Not for 56 years, when Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, did Native Americans become U.S. citizens.

Also, the 14th Amendment confers citizenship on those born in the U.S. and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." Children of foreign diplomats, though born here, are not citizens.

Most legal scholars do not think Trump can, by executive order, determine who is or is not a citizen under the 14th Amendment.

Yet should Trump issue an executive order and lose in the Supreme Court, the controversy could raise public consciousness and force Congress to enact legislation to clarify what the 14th Amendment precisely means.

Only Canada and the United States, among advanced nations, have birthright citizenship. No European country does. And the Conservative Party in Canada is moving to end it. Does it make sense to grant all the honor, privileges and rights of lifetime U.S. citizenship to anyone who can fly to the U.S. or evade the Border Patrol and have a baby?

Nor is this a small matter. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 6 percent of U.S. births (250,000 per year) are to undocumented immigrants.

Yet that 250,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to the total number of immigrants now coming. In 2016, President Obama's last full year, 1.75 million legal and illegal immigrants arrived, a record.

With two months to go in 2017, the estimated arrivals of legal and illegal immigrants is 1.61 million. Thus, in two years, 2016 and 2017, the United States will have absorbed more migrants, legal and illegal, than all the people of the 13 states when we became a nation.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, there are 44.5 million immigrants in the U.S. today, legal and illegal, a number that far exceeds the total U.S. population, North and South, at the time of the Civil War.

While almost all of our immigration before 1965 was from Europe, only 1 in 10 immigrants now comes from the Old Continent.

Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean provide a plurality of migrants, legal and illegal. They have displaced East Asia and South Asia -- China, Korea, the Philippines, India -- as the primary contributors to the burgeoning U.S. population.

We are assured that the greater the racial, ethnic, religious and cultural diversity we have, the stronger a nation we shall become. Whether true or not, we are going to find out.

For the European population of America, 90 percent of the country in 1965, will have fallen to about 60 percent by 2020, and whites are headed for minority status about 20 years after that. Of America's most populous states -- California, Texas, Florida and New York -- the first two are already minority-majority and the latter two are not far behind.

Yet the gaps between Asian and white Americans, and Hispanic and African-Americans -- in income and wealth, crime rates and incarceration rates, test scores and academic achievements -- are dramatic and are seemingly enduring.

To the frustration of egalitarians, the meritocracy of free and fair competition in this most diverse of great nations is producing an inequality of rewards and a visible hierarchy of achievement. Politically, continued mass migration to the USA by peoples of color, who vote 70-90 percent Democratic, is going to change our country another way. Red state America will inevitably turn blue.