At The Border

It's worth listening to this entire press conference in Nogales AZ by Senators Sinema (I-AZ) and Lankford (R-OK) regarding their recent border visit. Sinema is chair of the Senate subcommittee on the Border, while Lankford is the ranking minority members.  They have made several prior visits, and Sinema has been very vocal about the need for better border control.

Sinema, Lankford Hold Press Conference at Arizona/Mexico Border https://t.co/OGVLwz5axY

— Sen. James Lankford (@SenatorLankford) May 24, 2023

 A few things that jumped out at me:

The composition of border crossers has changed dramatically with Spanish-speakers no longer in the majority.  More and more illegals are coming from Central and South Asia, Russia, Africa, and China.

Unlike with Mexico and some other Spanish speaking countries, where we have agreements allowing us to access criminal records, we have no way of knowing if these illegals from other regions are criminals.

The Mexican cartels control the flow of illegals, determining when and how many are coming on any given day.

Border Patrol personnel are bogged down processing asylum requests at Ports of Entry and unable to adequately police the rest of the border.

Only about 10% of asylum requests are legit.

Notwithstanding the above, once the asylum requests are made the applicants are released within the United States and it usually takes years before they have a hearing, which they often don't show up for.

Not stated directly by the senators, but evident to anyone knowledgeable, is the Biden administration's game playing with the process and with public reporting of illegal entry to the United States.  They know the public is unhappy with the collapse of border security so they want to appear to be doing something, but they also want to keep the flow of illegals coming.

I applaud the effort by both senators to come up with a bipartisan legislative proposal, but doubt they will be successful.  The dominant Progressive wing of the Democrats is opposed to anything that would stop the border flow (and they hate Sinema) and a number of Republicans are opposed to any compromise and would rather keep the border as an open political issue.

The bigger problem is that President Obama, and now President Biden, have sent the message the compromise is not possible legislatively and any Republican supporting a compromise would be a chump.

Compromise means both parties don't get everything they want.  Sometimes it means compromising in the middle, sometimes it means I get this provision and you get that provision.  Any Republican participation in a compromise will require increased border security and enforcement.

With his DACA Executive Order, President Obama demonstrated that, with the stroke of his pen, he could undo a legislative compromise and there was nothing his opponents could do about it.  And President Biden has demonstrated that with Democratic control of the federal bureaucracy, he can make any statutory language meaningless by manipulating the budget and enforcement process.

It's hard to see how any Republican legislator could support compromise legislation, no matter how good the wording is, because any Democratic administration will simply gut the enforcement provisions via the bureaucracy.