Criminal

“All Americans not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants; the public service they use, impose burdens on our taxpayers. That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace… We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong, and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.”

Which former President gave this speech at their State of the Union Address? Was it Ronald Reagan? Donald Trump? Either of the Bushes? Gerald Ford? Nixon? No. It was William Jefferson Clinton. And every word he said was absolutely right, and the entire chamber, Democrats and Republicans alike, stood and applauded. That was back in a time when politicians in this country could actually agree on certain basic principles. It was a time prior 2008 before our country was “fundamentally transformed”. If anyone said those exact same words today, they would be labeled a “racist xenophobe”. But at the time, Bill Clinton was called our “first black President.” How could someone who was considered our first black President be racist against people of color?