The Border “Crisis” Has Been Resolved!
That’s right.
Beginning with Ronald Reagan and running through Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, together with the U.S. Congress and in a bi-partisan way, America’s leaders have solved and settled the “illegal immigration” problem once and for all.
Many times.
Up until the late 1980s, the southern border was pretty much an unregulated line in the chaparral. People moved across easily and readily, but by the time Bill Clinton became president, it had become an issue, and one that Clinton dealt with in his 1994 “Crime Bill.”
There were five “key immigration-related goals” outlined in that legislation, which came with piles of dough for personnel and high-tech equipment including various border structures, remote video surveillance systems, thermal imaging devices, in-ground sensors and more.
The five stated “immigration-related goals” were:
1) Strengthening border control;
2) Expediting the deportation of undocumented immigrants and documented immigrants who had committed crimes within the U.S.;
3) Asylum Reform that would expedite asylum claims and streamline the process;
4) Developing a Law Enforcement Support Center and providing state and local law enforcement officers with 24-hour access to INS records;
5) Reimbursing states for immigration-related incarceration costs.
Curiously, both the anti-crime portion of the bill (that helped put away thousands of career criminals for long periods of time, thus reducing crime generally) and the concomitant issue of border security have both fallen by the wayside.
In case you didn’t remember or weren’t alive then, the bi-partisan Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, signed into law by President Reagan, legalized 2.7 million undocumented aliens in conjunction with employer regulations that would prevent illegals from working without authorization.
None of the above stemmed the tide of illegal immigration mainly because not only was no real “documentation” created, but also employers were warned not to challenge any documentation presented by a prospective employee. In the wake of the bill’s failure to police or monitor either businesses or job-seekers, fake IDs and fake Social Security numbers became common and inexpensive.
A $600 million 2010 Border Security Package that New York Senator Chuck Schumer called “smart, tough, and effective” and which would, he promised, “effectively enhance the security and integrity of our nation’s border” proved completely ineffective. However, it at least had Mr. Schumer acknowledging that among the hundreds of thousands of illegal border crossers were “drug smugglers, the gun runners, human traffickers, money launderers and organized criminals that seek to do harm to innocent Americans…”
Schumer and the Democratic Party have never been for enhanced controls at the southern border. Apparently, a wide-open border is what they’ve always wanted but it is and was never something they could articulate out loud because it would cost them votes, particularly among those border states directly affected.
Hence their regular and consistent call (in the past anyway) for a “bi-partisan comprehensive” border security bill. They were calling for something that they knew was never going to happen for two reasons: firstly, the Democrat plan included amnesty for virtually all border crossers and that was something Republicans would never vote for and secondly because both parties have used the border situation to raise funds for re-election campaigns. Democrats have always been in favor of “legalizing” whosoever has already entered the U.S. seeking work or welfare. Republicans too, at least too many of them, have been in favor of that legalization, but have always voted against it for fear of losing support among their constituents.
Which is why President Trump had such difficulty and faced so much resistance to his southern border wall; the president was serious about doing something about the border but never realised that not enough senators and representatives of either party wanted to do anything meaningful along that border. The unresolved situation has been and continues to be a money-raiser for both parties with both sides blaming the other for the inaction.
And, if you’ve not had enough bullcrap from the ruling parties, here’s what our current bemused and befuddled president promised would happen when his latest reform bill was authorized:
As part of a commitment to “modernize” and “restore humanity and American values to our immigration system,” President Biden said the new spending package would serve to “keep families together, grow the economy, responsibly manage the border with smart investments, address the root causes of migration [something the Clinton-era Crime Bill also promised to do], and ensure that the U.S. remains a refuge for those fleeing persecution.”
Well, the U.S. has remained a haven for refuges but not necessarily for those fleeing persecution. The Biden Administration has set out a welcome mat for all who wish to relocate here at U.S. taxpayer expense from around the world.
And the border is once again totally unregulated.
The ongoing calamity now unfolding at both the northern and southern border of the U.S. is not good for this country and especially not good for the hundreds of communities directly tasked with handling the onslaught. The chaotic nature of the effort will continue until we not only elect a president who takes the issue seriously and a congress with the will and ability to finally resolve the issue.
As far as I can tell, this administration’s handlers will continue to invite the rest of the world to these unprotected shores for at least another two years. And, depending upon the results of the 2024 election, perhaps even longer… much longer.
How comforting it would be to have serious people in charge of serious issues.
Such an event can’t come soon enough.
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