Trump Should Heed Advice from Teddy Roosevelt on Immigration

Immigration became a huge issue in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Under Barack Obama, nearly 20 million illegal aliens have been allowed to remain in the US. Over 100,000 of them are convicted felons who have been released from US custody and returned to the streets of America to continue victimizing American citizens. In many parts of the nation, illegal aliens have taken the jobs of American citizens.

I know there is an argument claiming that illegals only take the jobs that Americans won’t take, but that’s not true. I know people who used to work in construction but can no longer find a job because some contractors have been hiring illegals. They hire illegals at lower pay and often pay them cash under the table, thus avoiding having to pay their share of employment taxes.

In 2011, Alabama passed some strict immigration laws. Critics said that farmers would lose millions of dollars in crops that wouldn’t be harvested because Americans would not take such menial jobs. However, that didn’t turn out to the case. At the time the immigration legislation went into effect, the unemployment rate in Alabama was 9.8%. One month later, the unemployment rate fell to 9.3%. Two months later, the Alabama unemployment rate dropped again to 8.7%. That’s a 1.1% drop in the state’s unemployment rate in just 2 months after the immigration bill went into effect and thousands of illegals were reportedly leaving the state.

I lived most of my life in Arizona have seen firsthand how the influx if illegal aliens have destroyed entire neighborhoods that were once family-friendly places to live. I’ve seen houses occupied by as many as 30-40 illegals. In my own neighborhood in Mesa, once illegals began to move in, the crime rate went up. There was an increase in car thefts, car and home break-ins, physical and sexual assaults.

Just around the corner from our house was a conveniences store that we (wife and daughters) sometimes would walk to. In 2015, an illegal by the name of Apolinar Altamirano, shot and killed Grant Ronnebeck, the 21-year-old clerk working behind the counter. Alatmirano dumped a jar of coins on the counter and demanded a pack of cigarettes. When Ronnebeck told the illegal that he needed to count out the money and hand it to him. Altamirano got upset and asked the clerk:

“You’re not gonna take my money?”

At this point surveillance video showed that Altamirano pulled out his gun and shot the clerk. Then he stepped over his body and took two packs of cigarettes and left the scene. Ronnebeck died from the gunshot wound.

Several years ago, I visited Arizona to see my elderly parents and had the chance to drive through my old neighborhood. I was shocked to see our nice family-friendly neighborhood look like a Mexican ghetto like I’ve seen south of the border. The grocery store we used to shop at was totally Hispanic. Even all the signs and labels were in Spanish. A friend of mine in law enforcement told me that I was lucky to have left the neighborhood and store unharmed because it’s now a high crime area due to the hundreds of illegals living there.

Over the years, I’ve reported many time of illegals victimizing American citizens. I even questioned if Barack Obama should be held accountable for the crimes that his liberal immigration policies allowed to happen.

So, when Donald Trump during his campaign, categorized illegals as being criminals and rapists, I knew that to be largely true. However, the liberal Democrats and media pounced on Trump’s comments, calling him a racist and a hater, when in reality he was largely speaking the truth.

Perhaps Donald Trump should take the advice of President Teddy Roosevelt. On January 3, 1919, Roosevelt wrote a letter to the President of the American Defense Society. His letter was read publicly on January 5, 1919 and Roosevelt died the next day on January 6. In that letter, Roosevelt basically said that anyone allowed to immigrate to the United States should assimilate 100% into American culture and learn to speak English. Roosevelt wrote:

“In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with every one else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed or birthplace or origin. But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American.

“If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn’t doing his part as an American.

“We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile. We have room for but one language here and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, and American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house; and we have room for but one soul [sic] loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.”

There are places in America today where a person can get physically injured if they display the American flag. Around 2010, some students at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California wore t-shirts depicting the American flag on May 5, Cinco de May. These students were physically threatened and accosted by Mexican students at the school who shoved Mexican flags into the chest of one student while others shouted:

“F— them white boys, f— them white boys” and “they are racist. They are being racist. F— them white boys. Let’s f— them up.”

School administrators blamed the American boys wearing American flag t-shirts and told them to go home and change their shirts or turn them inside out. The parents of the boys filed a lawsuit against the school, claiming the school had violated the constitutional rights of freedom of speech by banning the American flag t-shirt and allowing the wearing of Mexican flag shirts by students at the same school.

A liberal judge in San Francisco ruled against the parents and the American flag. The case appealed to the US Supreme Court who refused to hear the case, allowing the lower court ruling favoring the Mexican flag over the American flag here in the US, to stand.

This is what Roosevelt was talking about and this is the immigration policy that America needs. Everyone coming to America, Hispanic or Muslim, they need to assimilate 100% to American culture, learn to speak English or risk being deported back to their home countries. We shouldn’t be spending millions of dollars in printing everything in English and Spanish or any other language. We shouldn’t be spending millions of dollars catering to people who don’t speak English and have no intention of doing so.

I’ve known third generation Mexicans in Arizona who still could not speak English and only spoke Spanish. Since everything in the state was in English and Spanish, there was no need for them learn English.

I’ve often wondered why so many people come to America to live the American dream but then refuse to embrace the American way of life. Many Muslims say they have no intention of changing America yet they live by sharia law and want everyone else around them to also live by and respect sharia law.

That’s not the 100% assimilation that Teddy Roosevelt wrote about and it should not be tolerated by anyone immigrating to the US. They either become American and love America or they get kicked out and sent back home.