President Donald Trump summarized his controversial doctrine as "America First" and "Make America Great Again." No matter what the future holds, history will forever characterize him as the first 21st-century president to defend American sovereignty and declare its exceptionalism without apology.

Critics blasted him as an isolationist who should extend more goodwill toward the rest of the world. They elected President Joe Biden, who came out of the gate with an entirely different approach. The conflicting leadership leaves the United States with another issue that divides friends, relatives, neighbors and colleagues.

In addition to an anti-Wilsonian war policy, Trump wanted impenetrable borders and strict enforcement of immigration policies. Mixed among hard-working Latin Americans and others looking for better opportunities, Trump insisted, were "bad hombres," including rapists and murderers.

He imposed emergency pandemic travel restrictions, built hundreds of miles of a wall, and empowered the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to do its job without fear of retribution from on high. Trump's policies and words combined to drive illegal immigration numbers to historic lows. His approach discouraged illegal entry and perilous journeys north across treacherous terrain.

Trump's scandalized opponents elected Biden after he promised an entirely different approach at the border.

Biden campaigned on a promise to reverse Trump's immigration and border policies. He halted the construction of the wall, reinstated the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and promised to ease the process of foreigners obtaining asylum in the United States. He would end the practice of requiring Central Americans seeking asylum to shelter in Mexico while their cases were adjudicated.

Even before Biden took office on Jan. 20, the message was clear south of the border. People struggling to find work, income, and food in some of the hemisphere's most depressed and corrupt environments heard Biden's plan as an invitation to head north and cross the border.

The result is what might prove an unprecedented humanitarian border crisis.

"Biden failed to call this a crisis, but this is a crisis," says Tim Micklin. "I'm telling you, it is a crisis."

Micklin, a 64-year-old veteran, sells anti-Biden, pro-"America First" flags, T-shirts and a variety of schwag along the Arizona-Mexico border. He's among multiple people living near, viewing, and dealing with the manifestation of our new president's policies and words.

The Washington Examiner last week published a package of articles detailing the border dilemma and the plight of immigrants trying to get here and stay here. The interviews and observations offer readers more than the standard pro-and-anti immigration arguments and provide objective insights that might help anyone with any position on this debate — or either side of the border — to better understand the people involved and the ramifications for immigrants, our country, and children who suffer the indignities of a conflict they did not ask for and do not deserve.

One article in The Colorado Springs Gazette addresses the struggle border towns endure as they use limited resources to deal with the needs of arriving populations. Like the child immigrants, these towns did not ask for this challenge but have no choice other than to contend with it.

"This isn't a dumping ground," one Arizona resident said near the border.

Zachery Reeves of Phoenix does not mince words.

"Our economy is hard as it is right now, and then for us to support everybody else ... America is a very welcoming country, but right now, we don't have the resources."

One cannot help but move past the shallow and offensive claim that immigration concerns are based on "racism" against nonwhite immigrants.

Reading about the genuine human concerns, on both sides of the border, makes any such claim sound ridiculous. Involved in this mess are real people, of all ethnicities and backgrounds, just trying to survive and maintain any hope of seeking or maintaining stability, health and happiness.

Hopefully, this editorial helps reframe the debate, for anti-immigration hawks and those who elected Biden because of his border policies. This conflict is simple for no one.

In the words of Yuma, Arizona, Mayor Douglas Nicholls:

"Every part of the country experiences immigration in a different way. It doesn't just affect the border communities. That's only where it starts."

REPRINTED FROM THE COLORADO SPRINGS GAZETTE

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