Trump’s immigration U-turn shows he’s no Hitler, but solving the problem requires more than sympathy for asylum seekers

I am an immigrant – a legal one. Over 16 years, I've gone through a succession of work visas, acquired a green card, married an American citizen (herself an immigrant), passed the citizenship test and will very soon take the naturalisation oath, accompanied by my wife and our two American-born sons.

Since 2002, I and members of my family have entered the United States umpteen times. Occasionally, those crossings have been fraught. Once, before she got her green card, my British-born daughter was held up by immigration officers, who doubted that she was visiting her father.

So I can understand the moral outrage over the separation of asylum-seeking parents from their children at the US-Mexican border.

I can sympathise, too, with the parents, most of whom are from poor and violent Central American countries. My wife was once an asylum seeker from a poor and violent country. Her main motive for leaving Somalia for Holland (via Kenya and Germany) was to avoid an arranged marriage to a man she scarcely knew.