Recently, the Biden administration rolled back key elements of President Trump's strong border enforcement policy, an approach that saw illegal crossings fall. Now, the drumbeat of changes is starting to imperil more than just border security: our national security hangs in the balance.
Biden has decided that “asylum seekers” will no longer wait in Mexico, and they will no longer have to prove that they are victims of political persecution. Instead, merely fearing criminal and/or domestic violence, or claiming to fear it, will do. In addition, construction on the wall has been halted; deportations, even of criminals, have been sharply curtailed; Obama-era “catch and release” programs for recent arrivals have been resumed; immigration agents tasked with homeland enforcement have been reassigned; a path to citizenship has been proposed for every illegal immigrant currently in the country; and the prospective attorney general, when asked if illegal immigration laws would be enforced at all, could only reply “I don't know.”
For those concerned about the security and integrity of our border, these are all red flags. For aspiring illegal immigrants, however, they are like manna from Heaven. The number of people surging across the southern border has already picked up. It threatens in the next few months to become a veritable tidal wave. Most will come from Central America, but increasing numbers are also from as far afield as Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Needless to say, the more the Earth's poor feel that they will be welcomed in the United States, the more they will come.
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Republicans, who are much more likely than Democrats to be concerned about this problem, are unfortunately powerless to do anything about it. Democrats and progressives, who tend to regard illegal immigrants as morally and culturally superior to benighted “Anglos," control the presidency, all federal agencies regulating migration, the House, and the Senate. Thus, if they wish to open the door to illegal migrants — even millions or tens of millions of them — “We the People” can do nothing but sit back and take it. In 2022, assuming our elections are at least vaguely fair, we might reacquire a voice in these matters, but until then we have to accept that a “refugee” tsunami is headed our way.
As it turns out, this is just one of the reasons why Republicans and conservatives are despondent. Frankly, our views have become an irrelevance not just in immigration matters, but in all policy areas.
For instance, the Biden administration is plowing ahead with plans for ruinous levels of new federal spending. The $1.9 trillion COVID “relief” bill is just a down payment. Massive outlays on “infrastructure," green energy, health care, free college education, and “social justice” initiatives like slavery reparations are in the pipeline. Anyone with sense can see that inflation and higher interest rates are coming...but, as usual, there is nothing we can do about it. Combine this looming disaster with the unprecedented threats to the unborn, to Second Amendment rights, to free speech, to religious liberty, and even to our basic ability to operate businesses and make a living, and it's easy to see why many patriots are questioning their futures in this country.
As if all this were not bad enough, there is also the growing stigmatization of dissent to consider. Conservatives are increasingly being hounded from the public sphere, banned from social media platforms, fired from their jobs, and derided as “traitors," “white supremacists," and “extremists." The bar for such accusations, needless to say, is low, and it sinks lower every day. Those of us who voted for Trump find ourselves not just on the losing end of a presidential election but despised and persecuted in our own land. We were driven out of most educational and cultural institutions long ago. Now the business and political worlds are conspiring to make our isolation complete. No, we're not like the Jews in Nazi Germany, but we often don't feel welcome in our own communities anymore either, and that's a sad thing to admit.
And so, a ready (if “outside the box”) solution presents itself! If soon the cities and villages of Central America are to be emptied of their “huddled masses” — that is, of every intrepid/beleaguered soul who imagines that life in America may offer a ray of hope — then it is inevitable that vacancies will arise in these tropical locales.
Might I suggest, therefore, that, instead of suffering from depopulation and destabilization, the governments of these Central American nations should seize the opportunity that 74 million forlorn Trumpers represent? Most of us, after all, are industrious, conscientious, law-abiding, family-oriented, God-fearing, honest, and decent. We're exactly the sort of migrants that any country — except America, apparently — would want. Why not make an even trade, therefore? Biden's USA wants all the impoverished Guatemalan subsistence farmers it can get its hands on, and American conservatives want a fresh start, a fair shake, and a land of opportunity and relative freedom in which they can pursue their dreams and live according to their values. Who's to say, then, that Make America Great Again (MAGA) couldn't just as easily become Make Guatemala Great Again (MGGA)? Seventy-four million Trumpers would go a long way to breathing new life into a region that has long fallen short of its promise. What say you?
Heck, we could probably sweeten the deal still further: Biden and the Dems would presumably be happy to throw a few trillion dollars (what's it to them?) at us would-be exiles, and the countries that agreed to take us in, to grease the wheels of this ideological cleansing. It's a small price to pay to rid yourself of millions of “deplorables," right?
This, of course, is mostly tongue-in-cheek...for now. We conservatives are not yet ready to abandon the country we love, but we are ready to begin asking the question: will it someday abandon us?
Donald J. Trump is not the only patriot, therefore, who may eventually find that the prospects of a life in exile are arguably superior to the constant derision, harassment, and persecution he faces here at home. It's a big, wide world, after all, and sunnier climes abound. The United States of America has been the “shining city on a hill” for over 200 years, yes, but, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end...
Food for thought.
Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com. He appears on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.
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