This is not a recent decision. Several months ago, the US ambassador to Panama, John D. Feeley, announced that he would step down after President Trump failed to condemn the radical actions of the white and neo-Nazi supremacists in Charlottesville last August.

Due to the politicization of his decision, Feeley chose to explain his reasons in the first person through an opinion article published in the Washington Post.

Feeley proposed that in the face of the violation of privacy and the regular channels of an administration that published his letter of resignation, it was necessary to argue in his own voice his situation, especially after having left office and not being subject to the presidential oath.

Initially, the media argued that the resignation of the ambassador was due to the denigrating comments that Donald Trump had made regarding the countries participating in the visa lottery (which he called "shithole countries"), but Feeley explains in his column that "I resigned because the traditional core values of the United States, as manifested in the President's National Security Strategy and his foreign policies, have been warped and betrayed. I could no longer represent him personally and remain faithful to my beliefs about what makes America truly great."

For the former ambassador, the anti-immigrant measures instituted by the Trump administration, as well as its short-term goals in the same sense - such as the definitive rescission of the program of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or the border wall with Mexico - are sufficient reasons to believe that "America is undoubtedly less welcome in the world today, as the president pursues a unilateral and isolationist path".

According to Feeley, the populist views of this government do not honor the voters who elected him, who "deserve better."

"They deserve an enlightened and informed debate about the true nature of the globalized economy," he explained. "And the need for education and reimagined job-skills programs to keep us competitive."

On the contrary, and as we have been denouncing since the beginning, the former ambassador agrees that the presidential rhetoric has transformed immigrants into the scapegoat of national problems.

"Demonizing migrants may placate the few genuine racists in America, such as those who carried torches in Charlottesville," said Feeley. "But those Americans constitute a sideshow minority, just as felons are only a tiny fraction of today's hard-working migrants.”

Faced with the danger of a fragmented country and under the command of a divisive president and instigator, the former ambassador draws a line of action in his own transformation, now as a private citizen: "I plan to speak to Americans and explore our nation’s fears and perceptions about the migration challenges we face," he explained, emphasizing his next role as a communicator and journalist.

"As someone who is fully and proudly American, and yet by life experience fully bilingual and bicultural, I will now do my best to help," he said. "Where the president seeks to build a wall, I seek to build a bridge (...) I am confident that we can heal the polarization that afflicts us, one conversation at a time."

According to the Washington Post, Feeley will soon join the Univision team and the Fusion Media Group as an immigration content writer.