President Trump has been criticized for adopting his "America first" campaign slogan because of its fraught historical implications. But it shouldn't be controversial that Trump wishes to shape his policies for the benefit of the country he leads.
That's at least as true on immigration as in on any other issue. Trump signed two executive orders Wednesday setting in motion the building of a wall on America's southern border. There are many border walls in the world and there is nothing inherently wrong with them. (Comparisons with the Berlin Wall are utterly inapt, for that edifice was built to keep people imprisoned within, rather than intended to keep people out).
The trouble with a wall is not that it does too much but that it does to little. A wall won't solve today's most pressing immigration problems.
"We are in the midst of a crisis on our southern border," Trump said at his appearance at the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday. However that may be in the intangible sense that the U.S. no longer controls its frontiers as it should. It is not so if Trump's words were intended to convey a current flood of illegal aliens coming north into America.
Border crossings are way down. The Pew Research Center has found that the number of illegal immigrants coming from Mexico has decreased for the last nine years, and more Mexicans are leaving via our southern border than are trying to come in.
