Democrats in disarray over migrant buses to their cities
Opinion by Conn Carroll
It took three months, over 150 buses, and about 6,000 migrants, but Texas Gov. Greg Abbott finally has Democrats rethinking their approach to border security.
“Mayor Muriel E. Bowser is catching it from all directions over a problem she had no hand in creating,” Colbert King writes in his latest column, “and for which she, as D.C.’s chief executive, lacks both the responsibility and capacity to solve.”
King is writing about Bowser’s request that the Biden administration activate the D.C. National Guard to help deal with the food, housing, clothing, and medical needs of the migrants Abbott has been busing to D.C. since April.
“On the home front, Bowser is being condemned for not devoting more city treasure and staff to helping volunteer groups overwhelmed by the task of greeting thousands of asylum seekers,” King reports. “Bowser is also taking a huge hit from some city politicians and immigration advocates for asking the Biden administration to mobilize the D.C. National Guard to help respond to the crisis … Some aid groups characterize Bowser’s National Guard request as akin to treating migrants like combatants.”
King rightly rejects the idea that mobilizing the National Guard would be a declaration of war on migrants. As he notes, the National Guard is often called on to help in emergencies, including after Hurricane Katrina and during the COVID-19 pandemic. These were both emergencies, but in neither case did the Guard’s presence “militarize” the situation.
Make no mistake, though — our country is absolutely in the middle of a migrant emergency. King is not ready to blame President Joe Biden for a crisis that is entirely of Biden’s own creation, but he does allow that “the Biden administration must own up to the asylum-seeking migrant problem.”
And how does King want to address the “migrant problem”?
He wants to cut foreign aid to those countries from which migrants are coming. “The United States provides millions in foreign aid helping El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala stanch migration flow by fighting poverty, violence and corruption,” King writes. “The ongoing trek of migrants away from their countries might well be evidence of foreign aid’s failure. Those American tax dollars should be transferred to where they might do the most good: back into the United States helping vulnerable migrants with meager belongings to get off park benches, out of train stations, and on the path to obtaining human services they need.”
King is definitely correct that foreign aid has failed to solve the “root cause” of the migrant crisis. That is because the real root cause of the border crisis is Biden’s catch-and-release policies at the southern border, not poverty in other countries.
Until Biden and the Democrats are ready to admit that “if you let them in, more will come,” the flood of migrants into the U.S. will only continue.
While D.C. may be overwhelmed by 6,000 migrants over three months, Arizona and Texas have been forced to absorb almost 300,000 migrants over that same time frame. Since Biden became president, that number is 1.3 million.
Gov. Abbott should make it clear to Democrats that “the busing will continue until Biden’s policy changes.”
Cutting off funding to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala won’t stop the flood of illegals. They are coming from all over the world! First stop them from coming in, BUILD THE WALL! Then start rounding them up and sending them back. That is the time you start cutting the funding to those countries. Same with Mexico, they don’t want to take them back close the border to imports. Then we need to go after the cartels. If Mexico can’t or won’t put a stop to them, we send in the Seals, send in the drones. The illegal drugs and human trafficking is taking more lives than anyone can imagine. We are at war with the cartels no one is just willing to speak it out loud!