The new administration and its current policies aimed at illegal immigrants hailing from Mexico are perplexing and unwarranted.

    Money spent on policing the roundup of so many people and the preposterous building of the border wall could be better spent.  Especially considering many of them are families with children who are caught in the crosshairs of this messy debate.

    Rather than lumping an entire group of people into a class viewed as criminals why not provide aid to those who did not choose to even come here in the first place.  Children given the opportunity to finish high school and then receive some type of aid to attend college or a trade school are much more likely to have the necessary tools to contribute to society.

    This is not a new idea but a continuation of a previous campaign initiated by former President Obama called the Dreamer Act.  Furthering this would ease tensions amongst the two countries and allow for the unwarranted stereotype to dissipate.

    It is unfortunate that the current climate is so divisive and uncompromising.  The blanket painting of the “Other” is disheartening and is a slippery slope.  We are a nation founded on un-selective immigration, especially with regards to ethnicity or religion.  The very first settlers came here to escape those very same ideological types of persecution.

    It has only been a week in for the new administration and already an alarming precedent has been set towards a very exclusionary foreign policy.  Only time will tell how this will affect trade markets around the world if we are becoming more and more closed off and hard to negotiate with.