PanAm Podcast: Is Trump as Anti-Immigrant as the Media Makes Him Out to Be?

The maisntream media has reveled in painting Donal Trump as a product of fundamentally nativist and xenophobic worldview. His proposed wall and travel ban have thrown the American left into hysteria, as the nation appears more divided along cultural lines than ever. But how radical is Trump's agenda? In his first nine months in office, Trump has prioritized deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes on American soil, which hardly seems draconian. Even most liberals and Democrats, I would imagine, would agree that non-citizens who commit crimes in the US should be deported. Conservatives and libertarians have plenty of ground to make a reasonable case for common sense measures: measures that will not reward those who broke the law by coming to the US illegally. Furthermore, from a fiscal standpoint, mass illegal immigration poses serious threats to financial solvency, as illegal immigrants use our education, healthcare, transportation, and infrastructure, but by and large do not pay taxes. Ultimately, it is the prerogrative of the US government to set its own immigration criteria; we need a point-based meritocracy like the highly successful system used in Canada.