Samantha Soued '24
The Southern border. We have heard all about it in political diatribes, as views on Spanish immigration have changed drastically in the GOP.
In 2004, George W. Bush explained his views on the border crisis in a way that would be unheard of in today’s political climate: "Many undocumented workers walked mile after mile, through heat of day and cold of the night. Some have risked their lives in dangerous desert border crossings. Workers who seek only to earn a living end up in the shadows of American life” (NPR).
He said this after proposing legislation that made it easier for people to cross the border to work legally in the United States – showing compassion and empathy. The current figure of the Republican party, Donald Trump, tweeted about Democrats and the border crisis in 2018: "They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country” (El Paso Times).
He speaks of migrants like they are a disease, and through this, he instills fear of foreigners (xenophobia) into anyone that falls for it. This is classic fear-mongering, and words like these have led to an immense rise in hatred (seen in the Neo-Nazi march in Tennessee earlier this week, where masked men were chanting “deport all Mexicans”).
According to the Cato Institute and numerous other research centers, “there is more and more evidence that immigrants, regardless of legal status, are less likely to commit crimes than native‐born Americans” – this is a fact that many politicians and Americans tend to disregard.
So, what happened in Congress on Wednesday, February 7th must’ve been surprising to all that were paying attention. For months prior, Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford negotiated with Democratic Senator Murphy and independent Senator Sinema to create a bipartisan bill that would send aid to Ukraine and reform border security – this occurred after Republicans said that they would not send more aid to Ukraine until the Southern border was dealt with.
Before (and after) the bill was finalized, Trump wrote on his own social media platform that the bill would be “great gift to the Democrats, and a Death Wish for The Republican Party. Only a fool, or a Radical Left Democrat, would vote for this horrendous Border Bill” (Politico). After his denigration of the bill, many Republicans followed suit, including Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell who was instrumental in conceptualizing the bill.
Even though ‘securing the border’ has been a focus in the political campaigns of Republicans, they seem to turn away from any material action. On Wednesday, a test vote was taken in the Senate (determining whether the bill would be debated on), in which 60 votes were needed to continue – the vote was 49 yes to 50 no. This was nearly straight down the party line. Why did Republicans turn on their most salient cause? And what did this bipartisan bill call for?
The bill included the strictest border reform proposed in decades. According to The Guardian, “the $118 bn bipartisan bill would have granted the president a new power to shut down the border when daily crossings pass a certain limit while also expediting the asylum review process, which could have led to quicker deportation for many migrants. The bill would have provided $60bn in military assistance for Ukraine, $14bn in security assistance for Israel and $10bn in humanitarian assistance for civilians affected by wars in Ukraine, and Gaza and the West Bank.”
But Republicans said that it was not enough, so they voted to do nothing at all instead. Democrats blame Donald Trump for sowing the seeds of refusal in his posts, where he claimed that it was “nothing more than a highly sophisticated trap for Republicans to assume the blame on what the Radical Left Democrats have done to our Border, just in time for our most important EVER Election” (The Guardian).
It seems that Donald Trump wants to continue to use this issue to campaign on – along with his Republican supporters in Congress. Many believe that they did not want the Biden administration to secure a ‘win’ in the months leading up to the presidential election. But President Joe Biden is now willing to take executive action on the border, overriding congressional approval.
According to the New York Times, “the plan under consideration would mirror the bipartisan bill that congressional Republicans thwarted. But even the White House acknowledges that executive action — even if it survived legal challenges — could not provide the sort of money and resources for controlling the border that Mr. Biden had wanted Congress to approve.”
This situation is summed up concisely by the White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández, explaining that “no executive action, no matter how aggressive, can deliver the significant policy reforms and additional resources Congress can provide and that Republicans rejected. The administration spent months negotiating in good faith to deliver the toughest and fairest bipartisan border security bill in decades because we need Congress to make significant policy reforms and to provide additional funding to secure our border and fix our broken immigration system. Congressional Republicans chose to put partisan politics ahead of our national security, [and] rejected what border agents have said they need” (Associated Press).
As contention over border policy rises, political parties seem to have switched roles. The Republicans are blocking any action regarding the Southern border, while Democrats are pushing for immense reform. This will continue to pan out in the coming weeks.
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