 This month the Congressional Republicans proved once again that doing what’s right for the country takes second place to appeasing Donald Trump. On February 3, 2024 the U.S. Senate introduced a bipartisan border security bill which included aid to Ukraine and Israel. Within hours Trump slammed the bill as a win for Democrats. Trump’s lobbying efforts turned many Republican Senators against the bill and it quickly failed to advance. The fact that Trump can dictate to Republican members of Congress which policies to back shows a real lack on Congressional leadership, and is illustrative of today’s Republican Party.  Politics and the Border: Immigration and border security are among the top issues for both Republican and Democrat voters. The problems at the U.S. border with Mexico have been decades in the making, but they have gotten worse under President Biden, as I outlined in a previous blog. As soon as President Biden came into office, the House Republicans seized on the “border crisis” as an issue to attack him with. Last October, while the House Republicans were scrambling to elect a new House Speaker, the Biden Administration requested more than $105 billion from Congress, mostly to provide military aid to Ukraine and Israel. The request also included about $14 billion to improve security at the southern border. Among other things, the funds would have been used to hire more border agents, install new inspection machines to detect fentanyl, and increase staffing to expedite asylum cases. With the House of Representatives in chaos, it was up to the Senate to move forward on a spending package for Ukraine and Israel. Senate Republicans approached the Democrats with a way forward. They would only back additional assistance to Ukraine if the Democrats agreed to their border security proposals. The Senate leadership soon put together a bipartisan group of Senators to negotiate a deal.  Even before the text of the bill was finalized, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, “I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions and Millions of people, many from parts unknown, into our once great, but soon to be great again, Country! Also, I have no doubt that our wonderful Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, will only make a deal that is PERFECT ON THE BORDER.” Speaker Johnson, who speaks with Trump regularly, declared the bill “dead on arrival” in the House if it was approved by the Senate. If there was any doubt about Trump's motives, he clearly spelled them out on a post to “Truth Social” on Feb 5, 2024. Part of the post read, “This Bill is a great gift to the Democrats, and a Death Wish for the Republican Party. It takes the HORRIBLE JOB the Democrats have done on Immigration and the Border, absolves them, and puts it all squarely on the shoulders of Republicans.” In case Republican Senators didn’t get the message, Trump called several of them to tell them that the bill was helping Joe Biden, and he (Trump) needed the crisis at the border to continue in order to get elected.
Hypocrisy Over Border Bill: For months Republicans in Congress have demanded new border security measures, only to reject them once they were in hand. Even Mitch McConnell, the top Senate Republican, said that Republicans couldn’t get a better deal even with a Republican in the White House. The bipartisan Senate bill would have provided $20.2 billion for the most substantive changes to border and immigration policy in over a generation. The bill would have overhauled the asylum system, making it more difficult for migrants to qualify. The practice of “catch and release”, in which migrants are released into the U.S. while their claims are being processed, would end. Funding would be available to hire more border agents, asylum officers, support for border states, and even some border barriers. The bill would have granted the president new authority to shut down the border during periods of high migrant crossings, and visas for legal immigrants would be increased by 50,000 a year. The National Border Patrol Council, which represents more than 18,000 border agents, came out strongly in favor of the border bill. The council’s president called the bill transformative and far better than the current status quo. He went on to say that the bill would “drop illegal border crossings nationwide and allow our agents to get back to detecting and apprehending those who want to cross our border illegally and evade apprehension.”  House Impeaches Secretary Mayorkas: If the House Republicans were serious about border security, they would have worked with their Senate colleagues to get it done. But that was not going to happen with Donald Trump calling the shots in an election year. Instead, they chose to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and “breach of public trust” amid a surge in unauthorized migrant crossings. The Republican’s first attempt to impeach Secretary Mayorkas failed last week by three votes. Their second impeachment attempt earlier this week passed by only one vote. The impeachment of Mayorkas is a pathetic attempt to deflect attention away from the House Republicans, who are not serious about passing border security legislation, and place the blame for the border problems on the Biden Administration. The articles of impeachment will go nowhere in the Democrat controlled Senate, and will have accomplished little more than appeasing Donald Trump.  Democrats May Get the Last Laugh: Fixing the broken immigration system and securing the border are top of mind for most voters. But the Republicans can no longer claim that the Democrats did nothing to fix the problem. The Republicans were the ones who killed the Senate bill that would have provided billions of dollars to secure the border and improve the broken immigration system. Democrats in the House and Senate backed the bill, as did President Biden. Donald Trump is responsible for the bill failing so that he could keep the “border crisis” a campaign issue.  The failure of the “National Security and Border Act, 2024” is further proof that the Republican Party has lost its way. It is the height of hypocrisy for House Republicans to impeach the Homeland Security Secretary for not securing the border when they helped defeat a bill that would have done just that. This seems to me to be a dereliction of duty and un-American. The amount of sway that Donald Trump holds over the Republican Party should give all Americans pause. He rules the Congressional Republicans like a puppet master, and will stop at nothing to get reelected. The Grand Old Party is no longer the party of Lincoln when it is beholden to a man who puts himself above the rule of law, above the Constitution, and above the needs of the American people.  If you enjoy reading this type of commentary please subscribe to my blog and tell a friend. You will receive an email notification when new blogs are posted. The email will come from the site’s email: armchairamerican1776@gmail.com.
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 Earlier this month Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had 48 migrants taken from a shelter in San Antonio, Texas and flown to the island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Was this a shrewd political move or a despicable act which preyed upon the vulnerabilities of desperate migrants? Probably both. The actions of DeSantis were clearly immoral and probably criminal. There are currently several investigations and lawsuits into the actions of DeSantis which will take months, if not years, to unravel. But in the meantime, the Florida Governor has succeeded in grabbing national headlines, delighting the Republican base, and causing outrage among Democrats.  In addition to increasing his own profile, DeSantis has spotlighted how the problems at the southern border are a huge vulnerability for the Biden Administration and an energizing issue for most Republicans. For the rest of us, this episode has shined a light on important issues that Congress has failed to adequately address. Immigration policies in this country are broken, causing security issues at the border, untold misery on migrants attempting to seek asylum, and chaos for our border states. Only Congress can fix this mess.  Scope of the Current Problem: DeSantis’ political stunt succeeded in focusing our attention on the massive surge of migrants who have been apprehended crossing the U.S. southern border this year. According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, more than 2.3 million migrants have been arrested during the 2022 fiscal year, which ends on September 30. This is the most arrests in our history. The surge in migration is being fueled by people fleeing the violence and poverty in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. Over half of the migrants arrested were immediately sent back to Mexico or their country of origin. But many of those who remain apply for asylum or another humanitarian status. These people, like the Venezuelans sent to Martha’s Vineyard by DeSantis, can stay in this country pending a court hearing. It can often take several years for asylum cases to be resolved. In the meantime, the migrants are free to stay and travel within the United States. Dealing with the influx of migrants flowing through legal, as well as illegal, points along the border, has overwhelmed border communities. Texas has taken the brunt of it, but California, Arizona and New Mexico have also been impacted.  Why Doesn’t the Government Act? Immigration and border issues are multifaceted and very tough to resolve politically. The last time a piece of comprehensive immigration legislation was signed into law was during the Reagan Administration in 1986. Rather than coming together to solve the problem, the major parties use the issue as a political weapon against the other side. As a result, most of the policies currently in place have come from judicial decrees or executive orders from recent presidents. This is a patchwork approach, and not very effective. For more information on the immigration debate and a good review of executive actions taken by the past few administrations, follow this link to the Council on Foreign Relations.  Has President Biden Made the Problem Worse? In a word, probably. Joe Biden campaigned on taking a much more humane approach to the southern border than Donald Trump did. True to his word, the President took dozens of actions during his first few months in office to overturn many of Trump’s immigration policies. These included ending travel bans from many Muslim countries, halting construction of the border wall, lifting the suspension of green card processing, increasing the number of visas issued to immigrants, and speeding the reunification of migrant families. Some of Biden’s efforts to overturn Trump’s policies have been blocked by judges, and others are still undergoing judicial review. All of these actions have signaled to migrants that the United States is a kinder and gentler place now that Trump is out of office. It's hard to argue that President Biden’s immigration policies didn't encourage more immigration to the United States.  So, What is to Be Done? The surge of migrants at the southern border requires a surge of federal resources to address the crisis. The Customs and Border Protection Agency needs to be beefed up as quickly as possible, and the border states need federal dollars and personnel to deal with the influx of migrants into their states. This is a national issue, and the border states need our support to humanely deal with the suffering along the border. The federal government needs to provide the financial resources required for case officers and immigration courts to more efficiently handle the huge backlog of applicants. If the United States can find billions of dollars to help Ukraine, and rightly so, it can find the billions needed to address some of the most urgent immigration and border issues. In the short-term, President Biden will continue to manage border and immigration efforts through the executive branch. But this a patchwork approach, and any policies put into place can easily be reversed by the next administration. The real solution is for Congress to negotiate a comprehensive package of reforms which address border security, the demand for high and low-skilled workers, the legal status of the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the country, and the enforcement of immigration laws.  Immigration law is complex, and it was not my intention to do a thorough examination of it here. There are many good references for those who are interested in taking a deeper dive into this topic. This site provides a good summary of the immigration laws in our country. The actions of Florida Governor DeSantis were reprehensible and some day he may pay a steep price for them. But in the meantime, his political star has risen. The one silver lining to this episode is that it has shined a light on an issue that deserves more of our attention. Border security and effectively managing immigration is one of the most important duties of the federal government, and it has failed. This should not be a political issue, but an American issue.  If you enjoy reading this type of commentary please subscribe to my blog and tell a friend. You will receive an email notification when new blogs are posted. The email will come from the site’s email: armchairamerican1776 @gmail.com.
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