Former Obama Border Patrol chief: Trump is right to pressure Mexico to stop flood of illegal immigrants.
Mexico has gone from 'inept bystanders to facilitators' of migrants from Central America, says Mark Morgan, former Border Patrol chief for President Obama.
Unlike the 1990s – when 90 percent of the border crossers were turned around and sent from whence they came – the new migrants are families who intentionally walk up to our border agents and get released into the U.S. after simply saying the magic word “asylum.”
So here’s the question: Why aren’t Democrats being held accountable for the border crisis or for blocking asylum reform?
Watch any media outlet discussing the crisis and invariably a talking head will point out that Congress seems unwilling to deal with the problem. Such a general characterization grossly distorts the reality of the situation. It is not Congress that is failing to act; it is specifically Democrats in Congress who are refusing to protect our national sovereignty.
THE BORDER IS A HOT MESS. WHAT’S TRUMP TO DO? HERE ARE HIS OPTIONS
Case in point: How many Americans are cognizant of the fact that Republicans sought passage of asylum reform this past year, only to be stymied by Democrats who want illegal immigrants to continue flooding over the border – understanding that the new arrivals will one day become citizens through amnesty and be casting votes for Democrats for the next generation?
In normal times, Democrats taking such a ridiculously hostile position to the welfare of our nation would be blasted as traitors. But these are not normal times. This is an era where the majority of the media have not only lost their objectivity, but are now essentially operatives for the Democratic Party.
If there was any mention of the Republican effort to stem the tide of the asylum applicants, it was described as being “hardline” and “extremist,” and basically anti-immigrant.
An objective media would cease denying that the 100,000 immigrants illegally stepping onto U.S. soil last month alone is indeed a crisis of historic proportions. When even Obama's weak-kneed former Homeland Security chief, Jeh Johnson, admits it’s a crisis, it’s time for the media to stop parroting Nancy Pelosi’s talking points.
The media conveniently ignores the fact that coyotes who exploit the desire of impoverished Central Americans to make a new life in the United States have found a golden ticket for embedding their clients into American society. They simply instruct their clients to request asylum.
The asylum laws -- written in a different era – were used to give safe haven to persecuted human rights defectors from the Soviet Union or Castro’s Cuba. The drafters never envisioned that requests would be made upon sticking one’s toe over the border or that our agents would be prevented from simply turning illegal immigrants back to their home countries where an asylum claim was an obvious ruse.
There’s a very simple solution to ending this crisis immediately. What the media fail to mention is that a number of bills that would have ended the asylum fiasco have been introduced by Republican legislators, only to be stymied by the Democratic majority in the House.
Congressman Bob Goodlatte’s Secure America’s Future Act would permit border agents to place asylum-seekers in third-party countries until the asylum application is processed. It would mirror the U.S.-Canada Safe Third Country Agreement, whereby asylum seekers from Canada seeking entrance at the U.S.-Canadian border are sent back to Canada until the asylum cases are decided. President Trump floated this idea with Mexico, which at first feigned cooperation, but then backed off.
The Goodlatte bill would allow for agents to turn the asylum seeker away, even if the third-party nation was designated by the U.S. unilaterally. The left-leaning lobbying group Migration Policy Institute conceded that passage of the bill would solve the problem: “In the event of a unilateral safe third country deportation, all asylum-seekers approaching the border would be turned away and that would dramatically reduce the number of requests to pursue asylum from Central America.”
While the media have indeed acted like an arm of the Democratic Party in suppressing coverage of this needed bill, the fault lies to a great extent with the Republicans themselves, who do a lousy job of promoting their own agenda.
It’s not enough just to kick and scream that Democrats are not cooperating. The president and Republican leaders should be holding joint press conferences announcing the introduction of the bill, along with follow-up press conferences to announce the name of each Democratic legislator who voted against it or bottled it in committee.
It might not force the media to cover the issue in a more balanced way, but at least some of the Republican points would bleed through.
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Before Democratic legislators can be held accountable for their betrayal of our national sovereignty, we first must be able to educate the average voter as to what proposals were put before them to end this asylum craziness that’s blowing up in front of our eyes.
Only then can voters target those legislators who failed to act.
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