Good grief! Get a load of today’s immigration story in the New York Times. It is some of the best unintentional comedy of this election cycle.
First, some context: The Biden administration, with its incoherent immigration policy, has been causing a humanitarian disaster that is completely overwhelming border communities in Texas and Arizona. At President Joe Biden’s direction, the Border Patrol is now forced to process and release thousands of illegal border crossers into small towns and cities in South Texas, such as Del Rio and Laredo. These municipalities are completely unequipped to deal with this Biden-generated crisis.
The local, mostly Latino residents of these areas are, as a consequence, rapidly becoming what I find it amusing to call “Biden Republicans.” That is to say, because of Biden’s policies and their destructive effects on their local communities, Latinos in South Texas are now the vanguard of the ongoing Republican realignment of the national Hispanic vote.
The crisis at the border is very real. And the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona, Greg Abbott and Doug Ducey, for some time struggled to find a way to make this problem felt in other parts of the country that Biden could not as easily ignore. At first, back in April, they were ridiculed for what was wrongly interpreted as a mere political stunt when they started offering migrants free bus rides to the major urban hubs of the United States.
But the migrants turned out to be eager to take advantage. And why not? The mayors of these two cities had ostentatiously declared them “sanctuary cities.” They had boasted that diversity made them stronger and that migrants were welcome.
But — uh, oh, here come the migrants! And suddenly, these same mayors are now calling for their brown pants, calling out the National Guard, calling for federal funds.
New Yorkers and Washingtonians were happy to support Biden in causing this crisis while it was happening in distant cities far to the southwest. But send a few dozen busloads of migrants, and they’re suddenly really, really upset about it. Call it “East Coast privilege.”
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser wants to mobilize the National Guard, for which immigrant advocates are hilariously roasting her.
“The last thing we want is a militarized response to a humanitarian crisis,” said Andrea Scherff, a core organizer with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, a coalition of grass-roots groups. Noting that Washington is a sanctuary city for immigrants, she said, “We should meet housing needs for everyone.”
Bowser was singing a different tune when it seemed like no costs were involved. “We celebrate our diversity and respect all D.C. residents, no matter their immigration status,” she had said. This was a perfectly sensible thing to say when it was McAllen and Brownsville being overrun, not Washington.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claims that “there is a process in place for managing migrants at the border” and that this is somehow disrupting it. She is, of course, wrong, as she so often is. There is no process for dealing with the situation at the border — that is precisely why these governors have been offering bus rides to migrants at taxpayer expense.
The resources for handling the problem in places like Del Rio are nonexistent. The District of Columbia, on the other hand, is ideally situated to handle such an influx. And its leaders openly, loudly welcomed the influx … right up until they realized someone might take them up on their empty attempts to appear altruistic.
It’s all fun and games to be a sanctuary city when all you have to do is say things to make yourself look good. When the actual migrants come seeking sanctuary … well, that’s when things get tricky.
* Article from: The Washington Examiner
