Here's Why Republicans Keep Insisting the "Border is Open" (Even Though It Isn't)
Here's Why Republicans Keep Insisting the "Border is Open" (Even Though It Isn't)
"Open borders" isn't just a panic-inducing rallying cry. It's a strategy republican politicians employ to increase presence at the Southern border during Democratic administrations.
If you were paying attention to the election rhetoric being bandied about last month, you might have caught the talking point about “open borders” emanating from seemingly every republican’s mouth.
Here are just some highlights:
Ted Cruz: “Biden Open Border Policy [is] A Very Craven Political Decision.”
Rick Scott: “Americans Don’t Want [Biden’s] Open Borders”
Marco Rubio: “Nothing Compassionate About Biden’s Open Border Policies” (then Rand Paul accused Rubio of being “the one for an open border”).
Josh Hawley: “Biden’s Open Border Policy Has Created a Moral Crisis.”
Tom Cotton “Insists the Border is Wide Open.”
Ron Johnson: “Our National Security is at Risk Because Democrats have Turned Border Security into a Partisan Issue”
Marjorie Taylor Greene “BLASTS Open Border Hypocrites”
Mo Brooks: “Socialist Democrats’ Open Border Policies for Helping Kill Americans.”
Lauren Boebert: the “Root Cause” of the open border crisis “is in the White House.”
Matt Gaetz “revealed Joe Biden’s Democrat administration’s complex and deceitful agenda by to evade our Southern Border law enforcement.”
Jim Jordan: “Biden’s Deliberate Support of Illegal Immigration Could Lead to Impeachment.”
Kevin McCarthy: the Biden Administration has “Utterly Failed” to secure the “open border.”
Elise Stefanik: “Biden’s Open Border Policies have been a Complete Disaster.”
The list continues.
If all one listened to was republican blather (like many do), one would assume our border — always the southern one, never the one with Canada — is as porous as Swiss cheese.
The so-called “liberal media” isn’t all that much better either it seems.
Interestingly, many of the same people clutching their pearls over brown-skinned migrants seeking asylum supposedly permitted free passage to ‘Merica are the same extolling US Border Patrol agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
If our borders are “open,” what are all those agents doing?
Have we ever heard a single Democrat announce the “border is open”?
No.
Because the border is not, has never been, “open.”
There is no evidence of people just “walking across our border.”
Like “out-of-control crime in democrat-run cities,” “democrat policies gave us out-of-control inflation,” “gas prices are all Biden’s fault,” and anything about “Hunter Biden’s laptop,” the “open borders” lie is another cynical ploy republicans have made their stock in trade to distract information-starved Americans from how badly the wealthy and corporations are picking their pockets.
But before we dismiss it as simply more mendacious red meat to the right-wing hate media crowd, we need to consider its intent.
“Open borders” isn’t just a panic-inducing rallying cry.
It’s a strategy republican politicians employ to increase presence at the Southern border during Democratic administrations.
It just so happens we’re likely to hear it the most right around election time.
In the months leading up to the 2016 election, Fox so-called “news” was all in a tizzy over the “migrant caravan.”
It was again just before the 2018 mid-term elections (and then dropped it the day after election day.)
And 2014.
And 2012.
And 2010.
It happened also during Bill Clinton’s tenure in 1994 and 98.
Why the sudden “border crisis” only when Democrats are in office?
It’s because the republican “open borders” lie gets amplified across social media and the internet in Mexico and Central America, leading to unassuming asylum seekers and those just taking advantage of our “free-trade” looking for work to believe Democratic administrations have “opened” the border to them when they haven’t.
While the republican-friendly corporate media is mostly mum about this, ABC host and reporter Martha Raddatz did press Texas Governor Greg Abbott on it in an interview last weekend.
She said:
You talk about the border wall, you talk about open borders, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard President Biden say, ‘we have an open border, come on over.’
But people I have heard say it are you, are former President Trump, Ron DeSantis; that message reverberates in Mexico and beyond. So they do get the message that it is an ‘open border,’ and smugglers use all those kinds of statements.
The first few months of the Biden administration, the right-wing Washington Examiner engaged in a quest to find a single Democrat advertising an open border.
Guess how many it found.
None.
The closest it came was WV Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema calling the situation on our Southern border “a crisis.”
A Michigan member of the House used the word “surge” when referring to immigration at the border.
A Democratic Texas mayor said it was a crisis.
Not a single one, nor any other Democrat, spoke the dreaded two words: OPEN BORDER.
Republicans, though...
They know how to stay on message, even if that message is complete BS.
In fact, republicans are so committed to securing our borders, a grand total of two voted to increase funding for it in a recent House bill.
191 voted against it while 227 Democrats voted for it.
Progressive author and talk show host Thom Hartmann proposed a response to “these degenerate political SOBs” that could be applied to family members, friends, and co-workers parroting the “open borders” canard.
Just ask, “What would it take for you to leave your home with all your possessions in a small bag and travel a thousand miles on foot risking rape, robbery, kidnapping, torture, and the murder of yourself and your family members?”
Just don’t expect a response beyond a few blinks.