[PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian (in Astoria, Oregon) and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as an Oregon state government manager and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing pubic policy – to what I write. If you are reading this, thanks for doing so and please don’t hesitate to respond so we can engage in a dialogue, rather than just my monologue.]

To read some news accounts recently, you’d think that immigration policy was a new issue.

It’s not.

Would-be policymakers in Washington, D.C. ( I write would-be because they have not actually come up with a policy) and states along the border between the U.S. and Mexico have struggled with the issue for years, with no solutions in mind, perhaps in part because we are a nation of immigrants; at least my generation’s forbears were.

Donald Trump, who deals in overstatements, even said in early August on the presidential campaign trail (yes, it is incredible that the blowhard is viewed these days as a genuine candidate for the nation’s highest political office) that “this was not a subject that was on anybody’s mind until I brought it up at my announcement.”

Absurdly, Trump even advocated two so-called “policy innovations:” Abolition of birthright citizenship and mass deportation.

Many reporters let that Trump’s inaccuracies ride, but New York Times columnist Charles Krauthammer would not be still. He performed a service by putting Trump’s comments in a context, with these points, under a telling headline – Borderline Lunacy:

THROWING OUT BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP: If you are born in the United States, Krauthammer reminds readers that “you are an American citizen.” That’s because the 14^ttth amendment to the Constitution exists. Rounding up and deporting all of the citizens, mostly children, who were born of immigrant parents, admittedly many of them illegals, would require years of work and millions, perhaps billions, of dollars in costs.

MASS DEPORTATION: Trump told NBC reporters that “all illegal immigrants must leave the country, along once they’ve been kicked out, we’ll let the good ones back in.”

“On its own terms,” Krauthammer writes, “this is crackpot. Wouldn’t it save a lot just on Mayflower moving costs if you chose the ‘good ones’ first – before sending SWAT teams to turf families out of their homes, loading them on buses and dumping them on the other side of the Rio Grande.”

“Less frivolously,” Krauthammer adds, “it is estimated by the conservative American Action Forum that mass deportation would take about 20 years and cost about $500 billion for all the police, judges, lawyers and enforcement agents – and bus drivers! – needed to expel 11 million people.

“This would all be merely ridiculous if it weren’t morally obscene. Forcibly evict 11 million people from their homes? It can’t happen. It shouldn’t happen. And, of course, it won’t ever happen. But because it’s the view of the Republican front-runner, every other candidate is now required to react. So instead of debating border security, guest-worker programs and sanctuary cities – where Republicans are on firm moral and political ground – they are forced into a debate about a repulsive fantasy.”

WHO BENEFITS FROM TRUMP’S EGO-DRIVEN BOMBAST? THE DEMOCRATS: If you are a conservative alarmed at the country’s direction and committed to retaking the White House, Krauthammer says you should be concerned about what Trump’s ascendancy is doing to the chances of that happening.

“The Democrats’ presumptive candidate is flailing badly,” Krauthammer writes. “Republicans have an unusually talented field with a good chance of winning back the presidency. Do they really want to be dragged into the swamps — right now on immigration? – that will make that prospect electorally impossible?”

As a footnote, Oregonian columnist David Sarasohn added his voice to the debate over the weekend when he wrote a piece on the immigration debate, with an emphasis on Oregon.

“It was always hard to figure out the logistics,” Sarasohn writes, “of just how more than 100,000 undocumented immigrants in Oregon were going to quickly shipped out of the country…There would be the matter of tens of thousands of Oregon families being taken apart, and large part of the Oregon economy ceasing to exists, but, hey, we’re about a principle here.”

Point made.

Responding to the writing of Krauthammer and Sarasohn, this writer hopes that we will find a better way to have debates about critical issues facing this country, including immigration.

We need rationale, moral, thoughtful people who will vie to lead this country where ALL of us reside.