Here we go again – Republicans seeking stronger border security (and President Trump seeking a workable wall in FY2020), Democrats fighting it tooth and nail, average Americans shaking their heads, too many Washington leaders passing the buck, content to fail. Let’s return to facts.
For Fiscal Year 2020, beginning October 1, 2019, President Trump has requested a “border wall” – specifically, $8.6 billion to protect Americans from the continuing flood (up to 2000 persons per day) of illegal immigrants, record drug trafficking (killing more than 70,200 Americans in 2017), high levels of human trafficking (generally girls), and stated terrorist ambitions. Democrats in Congress say “dead on arrival.”
The absurdity of this pitched battle for less than 9 billion dollars in a 4 trillion dollar federal budget, Democrats saying this kind of security is not needed – makes normal people laugh, cry or just get sick.
Facts speak for themselves – and are not partisan. Crime is inordinately high in and around cities that give “sanctuary” to illegal aliens. Drug trafficking is on the rise across the southwest border – especially foreign heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, methamphetamines, marijuana, dangerous synthetics and precursor chemicals used to produce deadly drugs inside the United States. The vast majority of foreign illicit drugs enter over the Southwest border.
Likewise, a 2006 study by the National Institute of Justice found “25,647 females from eight countries” – Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela – “were brought across the U.S.-Mexico border for the purpose of being sex trafficked.” Higher numbers are likely today, since the average age of illegal entrants is lower.
Inaction – or politically motivated action undermining compromise on the 8.6 billion dollar “wall” – is objectively unconscionable, morally repugnant, and simply inexcusable. Yet, here we are. All over again. We face an intransigent, indignant, arrogant Democrat House majority, obstinate Democrat Senate minority, no apparent chance for the wall or compromise.
The spectacle is something to behold – especially from Washington DC. Leading Democrats are convinced they will get more votes in 2020, if not more voters, if they leave borders essentially the same – open – and then advocate that citizen- rights should attach to non-citizens, including illegals. Mostly, they think they win by opposing the President.
What sticks in the craw, more than any foregoing fact, is that the whole political discussion has become detached from rational decision-making, decoupled from hard, incontrovertible fact. In this way, it has become decoupled from average Americans, who respect rational decision-making and facts.
The most recent example, which flew from the Wall Street Journal last week: An article describing in detail how enforcing border sanctity in Italy was actually stopping – dramatically stopping – the upsurge of refugees and bad actors flooding in from Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
The article, which leaned on maritime rather than land deterrence, was entitled “Initiative Stems Migration to Italy.” Conclusion: Migrants crossing a defended zone fell from 13,000 in 2017 to a few hundred this year, down from 5,200 crossing the zone first two months of last year, to 262 crossing same period this year – after ramped up deterrence, barriers, interdiction.
So, whether migrants enter from sea or land, interdiction works. Boats, walls, people, deterrence, and interdiction – work. Do we have to ask again: How many Democrat lawmakers live behind private walls? We should not have to ask – because walls, in concert with other security measures, work.
So how do we find ourselves here, again? More importantly, how do we get out of this witch’s brew of political rhetoric, wrong-headed recitation of non-facts as facts, moral actions called immoral, immoral acts called moral, and obvious endangerment of American citizens, territorial integrity and way of life?
Answer: Obviously, in the long run – that is, in 2020 – we can vote. But in the short run, we need to keep coming back to facts – real facts, the sort mentioned above, and speaking up. At some point, if not in a town meeting, conference or hearing, if only in the quiet of the night, Democrats who oppose onrushing reality, common sense, rational decision-making and incontrovertible facts, will pause, and correct course. If not, here we go again.