The Quote Below—More Misinformation the Media
“America needs secure borders. It also needs to live up to its ideal as a nation that welcomes people in search of a better life and the blessings of liberty.
“It’s naive or xenophobic to dispute those imperatives. One goes to our security as a nation, the other to our nation’s very soul. Yet years of cynically divisive politics have left Congress ideologically entrenched, a place where strong border security and thoughtful, compassionate immigration and refugee policies have come to be treated by too many as mutually exclusive.
“And so instead we get an overwhelmed immigration enforcement system and political theater – cruel performances like those playing out in Texas and Florida, where Republican governors dupe immigrants into being shipped to more liberal places like New York, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C. This is the behavior of thuggish political opportunists looking to score cheap points with their base at the expense of vulnerable men, women and children, not the work of serious leaders. . . .
“If sincere people on both sides of the aisle can come together on a step like that, it just might set the stage for the broader package of reforms this nation needs, one that includes both intelligent border security measures and a path to legalization and citizenship for deserving people whose only “crime” was to break the rules to enter this country in search of a better life.
“America’s place in the world as a refuge for suffering, persecuted people is an important part of what makes it, as President Barack Obama liked to say, the essential nation. A nation that lived up to that ideal wouldn’t use human beings as political props; it would bring good people out of the shadows. . . .
“We can be secure, and we can be good — if we reject the false narrative that we can’t be both.” — Immigration Games, Times Union (Albany, NY), Editorial Board, 9/25/22 [Link]
Fact Check of Above Quote: This editorial tries to appear evenhanded, but it isn’t. It offers lip service to a secure border, while promoting mass amnesty and eventual citizenship for illegal aliens—a reward for lawbreaking which will only encourage more illegal immigration across our border. At the same time the editorial writers claim it is the “soul of our nation” to offer “a better life and the blessings of liberty” to foreigners. And just how many might that be? Hundreds of millions probably would like to come. Are we morally obligated to let them all in? Certainly, we need limits so that American citizens can enjoy a decent life and liberty. And we cannot enforce limits unless we have a secure border.
These writers reveal their indifference to border security and our rule of law when they claim that illegal aliens are “deserving” people whose “only crime” is breaking our laws. Evidently, in this view, our laws don’t merit or deserve enforcement. Also indictive of their attitude is the invective they hurl against governors who have shipped illegal aliens to “sanctuary” cities that profess to welcome them. The editorialists call this tactic “cynical” and “thuggish.” In reality, these are acts of last resort by state leaders who seek a way to dramatize the reality of an open border and the hypocrisy of those who condone it. It now seems that these sanctuaries are not so happy about having to pay a price for their policies.
For many years, immigration advocates have proposed border control in exchange for maintenance and expansion of mass immigration. These advocates usually get what they want, but the border controls rarely happen. This editorial is just a new edition to this tiresome bait and switch. The lesson to learn is that we need border control first with no strings attached.