Yes, America is great again with US President Donald J. Trump returning to power in the White House, but his administration must march full steam ahead on two crucial missions: Cracking down corruption, as well as restoring safety and security in the nation’s cities, suburbs and rural communities.
The United States is the world’s wealthiest and most powerful country, but when you visit major American cities, many are left confused. New York City is the global hub for finance with the New York Stock Exchange, Wall Street banks and headquarters to super successful hedge funds and investment banking firms.
Nevertheless, just walk the streets of New York City at any time of day and night, and you are walking into a concrete jungle with dirty streets, hordes of homeless people, graffiti plastered on walls and hoodlums running the neighborhoods. You could easily mistake NY for a Haitian village, the slums of New Delhi, or a South African resettlement campsite.
How could foreign visitors feel confident about investing into America if they take tours of New York City? They will ask: If America is so rich, why does its financial hub look so filthy? And with crime running rampant all across the country, how can investors feel safe if they choose to emigrate their families to the United States?
America’s drug abuse, such as the fentanyl crisis, has shattered the lives of many Americans, destroyed good families and has impacted all communities in the country. The scourge of fentanyl abuse has even wrought havoc in the rural regions of our great nation.
In June 2023, I visited the United States and it was my first time in the country since December 2019. I was eager to come, since I had endured over three years of COVID lock downs in China and was also thinking about moving my family to America.
It didn’t take long to have doubts about such plans after returning to the USA. My first stop was in New York City and my hotel was a few blocks away from Wall Street and South Street Seaport. One would expect this area to be relatively clean, safe and attractive to tourists, but I saw many crazy people shouting at themselves, homeless sleeping and muggings as if such an atmosphere is commonplace and ordinary.
And let’s talk about the New York Metro. You feel like you are walking into a tunnel that leads you to hell, with its poor lighting, crumbling infrastructure and criminals seizing control of the platforms.
As an American, I already knew NY was never a city of serenity, cleanliness and harmony and so I made plans to take a rural tour of New England. I studied at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire and was eager to return to the Granite State, since my last visit there was in August 2001 for an alumni reunion.
But to my dismay, I discovered a land of lovely natural scenery, cool summer weather but while staying at a hotel in Bedford, the nights were loud with Somali immigrants partying in rooms and I could observe drug deals in plain sight. They seemed to have no fear of the police arresting them.
When eating breakfast at the hotel, I could overhear families, white, blacks and Hispanics, all discussing similar themes. They were talking about fentanyl, disclosing that they were either: abusers, recovering addicts or had close family members who were abusers.
I sat shocked since I was a college student in New Hampshire in the 1990s and Bedford was known as the place where affluent families were residing at. Back then, to say you came from Bedford would suggest your family were millionaires. But now, Bedford is just another town rocked by fentanyl abuse.
The discovery was alarming and shattered my hopes of returning to the USA in the near future. Even if I moved to New Hampshire, my family would not feel safe.
But President Trump is turning the tables by empowering ICE to conduct immigration raids and mass deportations. The illegal immigrants from Somalia have inflicted tremendous harm to communities in New Hampshire and they will soon get chased out and deservedly so.
By pushing ahead on mass deportations, America will become much safer. President Trump is restoring the American mission to keep the country more secure and his actions will make the US economy much stronger and this will spark a boom for inbound tourism and foreign direct investments (FDI).
Foreign-born business people will feel much more confident about investing into America when they see cleaner streets, lower crime rates and healthier Americans. To make the US safer, President Trump must fight hard against the Mexican drug cartels.
President Trump is taking the right steps to protect our nation’s borders, deporting illegal immigrants and conducting military operations near the US Southern Border to fight against the drug cartels, human traffickers and weapons smugglers who are destroying America and profiting from it.
President Trump should also work more closely with the sovereign governments of Mexico and Canada in fighting against drug cartels, in order to reduce fentanyl abuse in North America. President Trump can succeed in his mission to make America safer again and that will lure in more foreign-born tourists and investors in the country as well.
(Tom Pauken II., author of US vs. China: From Trade Wars to Reciprocal Deal, AFAI Senior Fellow, Geopolitical Consultant based in Beijing, China)
X: @tmcgregochina
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