So. Much. Winning. Colombia’s President Calls on Illegals to Return Home

So. Much. Winning. 

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has called on his fellow countrymen who are skulking in the United States to come home and help build their own country. 

What a novel idea. Why didn’t anybody think of that before?

👀https://t.co/AYV6rcX8SI

— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) January 31, 2025

Petro has been feuding with Trump for what seems like years, but in reality has been only two weeks, and he appears to be giving up the fight. Not that he puts it that way. He thought he was the unstoppable force, but he discovered that Donald Trump is the immovable object which was as harmed by Petro’s petulance as a windshield is by a mosquito hitting it at 70 mph. 

BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombia’s president is calling on his compatriots working without legal status in the United States to leave their jobs and return home as soon as possible.

“Wealth is only produced by the working people,” Gustavo Petro said in an early morning post on the X platform. “Let’s build social wealth in Colombia.”

The leftist president said his government would provide loans to those who take up his offer to return home and enlist in one of its programs to start a business.

Petro made his comments following a bitter feud over immigration last weekend with U.S. President Donald Trump that nearly triggered a trade war and rupture in diplomatic relations between the U.S. and its historic ally in South America.

No doubt some of these Colombians will return and become productive members of society, however difficult that is in Colombia. After all, there is a good reason why decent people left to go to the United States for a better life. Petro’s socialist policies won’t make it easy, but people can be resourceful. 

But I suspect that the criminals who came to the United States will decline the generous offer, and the many people who came for the welfare benefits, free housing, and, of course, free health care will only leave if coerced to do so. 

Still, this is a major victory for Trump, both in slapping down an opponent and in forcing countries to acknowledge implicitly that people left their countries because the opportunities at home were so scarce. 

There are two major reasons, and many minor ones, why migrants come here: to escape what Trump calls s**thole countries and to prey on US citizens who were made vulnerable by Biden. Harsh law enforcement is the only approach that will work on the latter, and making staying at home more attractive than illegally entering the United States is the solution to the former. 

Unfortunately, Petro is not likely to make Colombia a more attractive place to stay in the long run because he is a socialist. And long experience shows that US foreign aid has made little progress in helping Latin American countries become more prosperous and attractive to their citizens. A few countries are making progress–El Salvador is a great example–but many countries in the region are still a mess. 

Illegal immigration to the US has been a safety valve for those regimes–export the malcontents and the poor and make them our problem. Trump is foreclosing that option. 

It seems to be working.