A Student’s Perspective: Looking at the Presidential Platforms

I am going to cover three main candidates and their foreign policy platforms. Hopefully, in an entertaining and informative manner. This is my warning, I am biased and I will include my opinion in this article because this is the opinion section.

Gary Johnson is the candidate for the libertarian party, and has a more reasonable platform than the hardline zero government radicals in his party. He plans to reduce American foreign intervention.

Johnson’s foreign policy is based on observations that American foreign intervention has caused more harm than good in the 21st century. He will remove American forces from the Middle East and avoid nation building.

In addition, he vows to halt American funding of foreign military powers. Johnson intends to pursue a more cooperative course with our foreign allies and says he will only send American troops abroad after just procedure and the authorization of congress. Johnson’s immigration policy is to make legal immigration easier to make illegal immigration less appealing.

He believes militarizing the border is impractical and will only encourage immigrants to place themselves in greater danger. He believes in legalizing marijuana and releasing non-violent drug offenders which would hopefully reduce the amount of illegal substances crossing the border by devaluing smuggling.

Hillary Clinton’s platform is, to sell it short, extensive.

Her foreign policy and defense agenda supports local forces in the Middle East while continuing the use of American air power to combat ISIS. She is in support of seeking a diplomatic solution to the situation in Syria and the Sunnis-Shia split in Iraq. Her approach to preventing attacks at home will use intelligence efforts to stop attacks before they happen and working to repair police relations to strengthen communities. She want to step up gun regulation by preventing gun sales to suspected terrorists, enacting improved background checks and restricting access to military style assault weapons.

She also supports creating a path to citizenship for potential immigrants. She has expressed the need to enforce immigration laws but has also said that any efforts must be conducted humanely. Clinton has pledged to accept 65,000 Syrian refugees if she is elected. It is worth pointing out here that since September 11, 784,000 refugees have been resettled by the United States and only 3 have been arrested in connection to terrorism.

In addition, refugees are statistically less likely to commit crimes than native citizens and more likely to join the American economy leading to new businesses and growth.

Trump’s immigration platform according to his website is to tighten border security, increase deportation efforts, remove birthright citizenship, and make it more difficult to hire foreign workers.

A positive of Trump’s policy is that he would crack down on migrants who overstay their visas. The visa system exists for a reason to allow temporary worker status in the US, but the key is it is temporary and that caveat needs to be enforced.

Trumps efforts on ending birthright citizenship would require modifying the constitution’s 14th amendment. He wants to add clauses to visas requiring companies to hire American workers before visa workers. He would get rid of J-1 visas which are for foreign youth in favor of “a resume bank for inner city youth provided to all corporate subscribers to the J-1 visa program.” Trump would make the refugee program more rigorous and use the money saved from programs which refugees utilize like food stamps and medicaid to help American orphans and high crime neighborhoods.

Trump’s foreign policy is to take out ISIS in the first hundred days of his Presidency and until recently he has been keeping his plan a secret. He spilled the beans on his plan which was to give his generals 30 days to come up with a plan. Trump has stated that he will not allow Putin to “go into Ukraine,” despite Russia invading Crimea in 2014. Trump has had to ask military advisors why the US cannot use nuclear weapons, he has said he would not rule out using nuclear weapons in Europe, he has shown he does not know what the nuclear triad is and has said publicly that he thinks more countries should have nuclear capabilities.

Thank you for reading, now send all of your pent up rage to: respectfulhatemail@gmail.com. No, really, this is actually a contact email and I will respond to my favorite and well thought out commentary.