'You Came Here Legally': Navarro Literally Silenced After Pushing Colleague on Immigration
What a difference a word makes.
David Urban, a former senior adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign who now works as a contributor for CNN, brought fellow panelist Ana Navarro up short on Tuesday with one quick word that had even the voluble Navarro speechless for a moment.
The word was “legally.”
The moment came on “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” when Urban first punctured the myth that the majority of migrants trying to enter the United States over the southern border are motivated by physical fear rather than seeking economic opportunity.
If “asylum” from political persecution in Central America is what the immigrants are seeking, Urban said, they could just as easily find it in Mexico without continuing their journal north.
“Just to make a point — not too fine of a point — they were safe when they crossed into the border of Mexico. So these kids — and the families fleeing a murderous regime in El Salvador or horrific conditions in Guatemala — they are safe in Mexico and why do they come to the United States? For jobs. It is economic.
“They are safe. Are they not safe in Mexico?”
That appeared to be too logical an argument for Navarro, an immigrant herself.
“Whether people like it or not, the United States — I can answer this,” Navarro began. “As somebody that came to the United States … ”
“But you came legally,” Urban interrupted.
That silenced Navarro for a moment. It wasn’t a long moment, as anyone who’s watched her debate would know, but it was clear she had to think about the answer. (Check out the argument at the Daily Caller website here.)
“Because I had money,” she responded. “Because my parents had money…. But even if my parents had not had money, David, my parents were fleeing a dictatorship. My parents were fleeing a communist, totalitarian regime. They would have done anything desperate parents do to bring their children.”
“But they came legally,” Urban said.
And that’s the point that illegal immigration activists — and Democrats — deliberately leave out of the conversation.
In the past 10 years, about 700,000 foreigners per year have become naturalized citizens of the United States, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
In 2016, more than 1 million people entered the United States legally, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
So the framework exists for it to happen. It just needs to happen according to the law.
And that’s the crux of the argument. For all their talk about family separations and “sparks of divinity” in murderous gangs, the bottom line is that illegal immigration activists want to do away completely with the distinction between those who entered the United States in accordance with its laws, and those who slipped into the country under cover of darkness or deception – literally making the first thing they do within the country’s borders a criminal act.
Of course, Navarro’s point was that the United States is a beacon of hope, unlike any other country. But that’s not a reason that everyone who wants to come in should be allowed to walk across the border at will. If anything, it’s an argument for exactly the opposite.
Apologists for illegals like Navarro can spin the story in any way they choose, but it always comes back to a single word: Legally.
Navarro’s parents may indeed have been desperate to escape Nicaragua’s Sandinista communist regime (a “totalitarian” regime that Democrats in the U.S. Congress supported at the time). But at least her parents had the decency to respect the laws of their chosen country.
Its unfortunate that her daughter doesn’t have the same respect for doing things legally.
Because no matter what country you’re in, that one word makes a world of difference.
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