A border perspective, then and now

In 1973, I was convinced by two friends from college that the three of us needed to have a deeper and more personal understanding of what our homeland was all about. It is a big country, after all, we were now “all grown-up enough” to heed the ancestral call of a simple phrase to discover our country and our roots. “Patriotic duty” might have been that simple phrase, but “Road Trip” was actually closer to what we heard and heeded. So in early summer of that year, with very little preparation and even less cash, we cranked up a 1967 Ford Econoline and hit the road. It was a great trip, down through Mobile, on through Mississippi, into bayou country and New Orleans. From there it was down into Texas, Brownsville, Corpus Christi, South Padre Island. We drove through the Big Bend area of west Texas, through hills and deserts of New Mexico and Arizona and into California. On the way, we even drove down into old Mexico. We swam the Rio Grande in deserted, desolate places where it was smaller than the Canoochee River and only four or five feet deep. Back then, immigration, borders, cartels, and all the rest were just words with no meaning at all to us. The people down there were mostly friendly, enough. We did have a little trouble in Juarez, but if three young foreigners in a beat-up van with long hair came rolling into your community, you would probably be a little suspicious too. Even back then, the border areas of Mexico were rough, poverty-stricken places. Now, when I see the continuing lawlessness, chaos, and out-of-control border policy, I can understand why people want to find a better place. I don’t know what the answer to the immigration problem is, but I DO know that the Biden administration has failed in its management of this problem to the point of it being a national scandal. A 64 per cent majority of the American public knows it as well and considers this to be the number one, most important issue the country currently faces. Every day, the illegal crossings into the United States continue. Every day, the evidence is well documented on the news. Everyone knows about it, yet every day, President Joseph Biden breaks his oath of office by ignoring the safety and sovereignty of this nation and allowing the borders to be ignored and violated. If Biden was the night watchman at the local Walmart, he would have been fired years ago.

Between 1880 and 1920, the highest number of immigrants to ever enter this country was recorded. They were legally coming to Ellis Island, New York, mostly from Europe. Twenty million immigrants arrived during that 40-year period. Today, nearly eight million immigrants have already illegally entered this country in just the 3-year period since Biden took office. Less than half of the number illegally crossing the southern border today are Mexican. The majority now are immigrants from all around the world. Many violating our southern borders are from countries that are some of the worst self-described enemies of the United States. The Biden government in its failure to fix this problem has lowered the world’s estimation of the strength and capability of the United States. You cannot maintain a safe, civil, and progressive country when you simply turn your head and refuse to admit to a monumental failure that is evident to the entire world. This week, a migrant caravan of over 2,000 is walking through Mexico on its way to the United States. They will arrive in the El Paso valley in the next two weeks. The President of Mexico, Manuel Lopez Obrador, says he will help the U.S. with the immigration problem if he receives 20 billion dollars a year in U.S. foreign aid. Otherwise, he says there is nothing he can do. The department of “Homeland Security” came about shortly after this country was attacked on 9/11/2001. 23 years later, we have a President who has presided over the greatest breach of national security since the Twin Towers came down. Thousands of people we know nothing about continue to pour into our country every day, and the leader of the country does . . . nothing.

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