By Steve Levy
How ironic that, at the same time Democrats were throwing open our border to bring in more potential future Democratic voters, there has been a seismic shift of Hispanic voters who are now seriously considering voting for Republicans in the upcoming midterms. https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/389093/hispanic-americans-party-updated-analysis.aspx
Meanwhile, Democrats, who, over the last three decades, justified illegal immigration as being a boon to our economy, are now lamenting the deleterious economic impact the undocumented pose on housing, education and health care. Interesting how having the immigrants shipped to their cities has them changing their tune.
Regarding the border, Democrats were willing to throw America’s security and prosperity under the bus in a tradeoff for millions of new illegal immigrants they invited over the border in the hope that they would soon receive amnesty and voting rights.
A case could be made that this was the most traitorous action ever taken by a major party in our nation’s history. Many pundits chalked up the massive influx of illegal immigration under President Joe Biden as being a stroke of gross negligence or factors out of the administration’s control. But it soon became clear that the open border policy could be nothing but willful. Some of it was just a consequence of wishing to do the opposite of anything the Trump administration did. Continuing Trump’s successful clampdown on illegal immigration through his Remain in Mexico policy, wall construction and messaging that it’s not worth coming here, would’ve been an admission that Trump was right all along and that his policies weren’t as cruel as his opponents had claimed.
Then there is the Marxist element within the Democratic Party, which is far stronger than most believe. A tenet of an AOC worldview is that borders are racist, bourgeois impediments for the uniting of the worldwide proletariat.
But the biggest reason for the willful evisceration of the border was the belief of Democrats that the short-term hit they would take on eliminating border enforcement would be superseded by turning red states into blue ones.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the immigration forum. Immigrants fleeing the socialist depression in Venezuela and Cuba were escaping cartels and chaos on the streets in their homelands, only to find that it is the Democratic Party in this nation that is veering America in that same destructive direction: vilifying religion and law enforcement and exacting a jihad on the traditional nuclear family and gender norms.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, frustrated in his inability to get the Biden administration to change course on open borders, has begun busing some of the illegal entrants to government and media power centers in New York City and Washington, D.C.
The number being sent to these cities is a drop in the bucket, compared to what Texas deals with every day. But the point is to bring attention to the stress that border communities have been experiencing since Biden began encouraging a surge in illegal immigration on his very first day in office.
The Democratic mayors in the cities took the bait. New York City officials, led by Mayor Eric Adams, lashed out at Abbott for trying to spread the burden around the country. Adams and his minions bashed Abbott for being inhumane, racist, and playing politics with people’s lives. Funny, but I don’t remember Adams lashing out at President Biden, who was regularly flying illegal aliens into the airport in nearby Westchester, NY in the dead of night.
Abbott’s ploy worked. We now have these liberal sanctuary city officials finally admitting that uneducated, non-English-speaking people with no money in their pockets are going to create major financial and logistical challenges for any host city for issues related to housing, schooling and health care.
That’s a big step forward because we can perhaps get away from the distraction as to whether illegal immigration is a net plus or minus economically. The Federation for American Immigration Reform long ago concluded that illegal immigration amounts to a net loss of approximately $100 billion a year for the American taxpayer. https://www.fairus.org/issue/publications-resources/fiscal-burden-illegal-immigration-united-states-taxpayers
Now that we have agreement on both sides of the aisle that illegal immigration leads to economic strain for host cities, we can concentrate on the solution.
Mayor Adams’ solution is to simply say, “You guys in Texas deal with it, so we don’t have to.” Of course, any objective, rational American who’s not poisoned by partisanship would conclude that the answer is for our president to reinstitute the policies of his predecessor, which had, in essence, gotten the flow of illegal immigration under control. Ah, but that would just make too much common sense.
Steve Levy is President of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as a New York State Assemblyman, and host of “The Steve Levy Radio Show.” He is the author of “Solutions to America’s Problems” and “Bias in the Media.” Website: www.SteveLevy.info. Twitter: @SteveLevyNY. Email: steve@commonsensestrategies.com.