Letters to the Editor: If Trump is so against illegal immigration, why doesn’t he bolster legal channels?

To the editor: I have been closely following the recent unrest in Los Angeles and thought Mark Z. Barabak’s column was the best analysis of President Trump’s mishandling of the protests against the ICE raids (“Putting the bully in bully pulpit, Trump escalates in L.A. rather than seeking calm,” June 9).

Barabak so correctly wrote that Trump was “launching an assault on the Constitution and the limits of presidential power.” In terms of the two subjects of the “bully pulpit” and presidential powers, I am baffled why pundits in the media have yet to point out an omission in Trump’s harsh anti-illegal-immigrant agenda. If he is so hardline against undocumented migrants who break laws to come here, why hasn’t he used his pulpit and his presidential power to honor all of the prospective immigrants in Mexico and the Central American countries who have gone through the right channels by obeying the immigration laws and have been on waiting lists for several years to come to the U.S.?

With the stroke of a pen, he could grant them automatic green cards and a fast track to citizenship for obeying our immigration laws, which would in effect benefit his own public uncompromising stance against undocumented immigrants. The bottom line is that Trump is ignoring a policy that would actually highlight his administration’s stance on adhering to legal immigration.

Salvador Montoya Ortega, Bakersfield