President Trump thinks that the government being shut down will bring him a win either way. He’s wrong. 

He had both houses of Congress in his party’s control at the end of 2018 when the need for a spending bill first appeared, and instead of letting one pass through easily he chose to make a demand for funding for his border wall. It’s the same border wall that he said many times on the campaign trail that Mexico would pay for, but now it seems he is saying the American taxpayers will pay for it.

In making his demand, he made it impossible for his party to pass a spending bill at all since they could not agree on whether to give in to him or on how much funding to give. Now he seeks to lay the blame at the Democratic Party’s feet for the problem he has created.

He has even tried to say that every living former President of the United States agrees with him on the border wall. Every living former President of both political parties has said this is a lie.

There are those that would say the government has shut down before, and they would be right. However, the reasons were different. In the two presidencies it happened, it was over protecting people from being hurt by the loss of funding. 

It is not disputed that there needs to be immigration reform or that the border needs some form of aid in security, but this is not the way to go about it, especially when one of the agencies that will run out of funding in February is the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Border Security. It seems the President is about to shoot himself in the foot.

A more reasonable solution than this wall would be a less militaristic approach to the border. However, since the drug cartels are trying to get things in tothe country that are worse than marijuana and out ofthe country that are more dangerous than a pocket knife, we need also some modern border security.

A more reasonable suggestion and compromise is to scrap the wall President Trump has in mind since every model he has so far is useless. Instead, we should use a more humane model, like the one they have in California that lets families talk to each other while separated and pass notes. It is monitored by cameras and heat sensors along with night vision, and it has some seismic sensors to prevent tunneling.

This would give those who want more security what they seek, and, in exchange, they would give more entryways to cross, along with more staffing in both the visa departments as well as at the crossings. There would also be more judges installed in the immigration system so that court cases of immigration can be considered properly. There would also be a way for those in the country illegally before 2016 to have a path to citizenship with a penalty in some form, combined with back taxes paid of course. The Dreamer Program would also be put back into place.

This would give Trump a big win on immigration on both the security front as well as dealing with those in the country illegally already while appealing to immigration advocates, even if it didn’t totally please his base at the same time. It would reopen the government. It would boost his approval ratings overall while giving him some good press. It would also ease tensions with the federal government and California a bit while giving Americans some good paying jobs.

Now if all the politicians including the President can get off their high horses and agree to even some of it, America might be on the right path once more. America is a nation of immigrants after all. While some Americans are born here, our roots lay with those that came here from somewhere else originally. Americans must not lose sight of that by thinking just in terms of their lifetime.

Nor should they reserve the privilege of the American Dream to just themselves. That was never the intent of the American Dream. Yet, somehow, it has become the normal way of thinking in recent years.

As Americans, we have a responsibility to spread the dream responsibly to other parts of the world while allowing the rest of the world to influence the dream at the same time. It is how we as Americans, both individually and as a society, grow. There are examples of that in food, entertainment, academia, etc. President Trump must think smarter along with thinking more inclusively than a mere wall.

*Tips his hat and walks out the door, heading for the bookstore*