Take the Deal, Joe

President Biden wants Congress to appropriate more funds for aid to Ukraine and Israel, the support of which, he maintains, is vital to America’s national security interests.  Republicans are saying that the price for their support is Biden’s agreement to take and spend more money on our southern border.  Biden should take the deal.

Conservatives, myself included, believe that the first need for any society is public safety.  Threats to public safety can come from natural disasters, foreign invasions, crime, too little government, or too much government.  The government’s first task should be to keep people safe from whatever threatens them, including a government which might otherwise trample their civil liberties. Safety should not be the government’s only policy, but it should be seen as the prerequisite for the achievement of anything else by the government or the governed.

Republicans argue that the situation on our border with Mexico constitutes a national security crisis and thus a threat to the public safety.  They’re right.  The number of illegal entries has reached about 10,000 a day.  A caravan of immigrants from Central America has entered southern Mexico and is beginning to make its way north to the Rio Grande.  Current estimates put its size at 8000.  No doubt it will grow as it goes.

My own views on immigration are more liberal than those of most Republicans.  I believe that the free flow of labor and capital across international lines, regulated only to promote legitimate national security interests, will facilitate free markets and free trade and thereby maximize worldwide prosperity and especially that of the United States.  To that end, I share Ronald Reagan’s view, as expressed in his January 1989, Farewell Address, that America should be open to “anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”

But this doesn’t mean our borders should be entirely open and unprotected.  We have to guard against the entry of gangbangers, drug dealers, and other criminals, as well as terrorists bent on evildoing on our soil.  To minimize their chances of coming in to do evil and thereby destroy our public safety, we need fences, walls, and other physical infrastructure, as well as the administrative infrastructure of border guards to keep the bad guys out, and immigration judges to determine who has the good will and the good heart which should earn them entry.  And all this will cost money—far more than President Biden seems currently willing to spend.

To date, Biden, his Homeland Security Secretary, and most Democrats have been telling us there is no border crisis.  Biden and his supporters maintain humanitarian concerns require admission of more immigrants, while Homeland Security actually is finding and deporting many who might otherwise pose a danger to law, order, safety, and national security.  But the continuing influx of illegal immigrants indicates that whatever the Biden Administration is doing is too little. 

Some critics have charged that Biden is reluctant to take too hard a line on border protection for fear of alienating the Squad and other Democratic progressives in Congress.  But within the Democratic Party itself more dissatisfaction with Biden’s immigration policies may be growing.  African Americans in big cities such as Chicago and New York are especially unhappy with the arrival of more and more immigrants to their neighborhoods and the threats they are believed to pose to the safety of Black neighborhoods.  To date, the Black mayors of Chicago and New York have been more critical of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who’s arranged for buses to take immigrants north.  But it may be only a matter of time before Biden, too, becomes the subject of Black anger as well, and that could spell doom for his re-election prospects.  There’s no danger that Blacks will suddenly swing to the Republicans in 2024.  But if Blacks become disaffected with Biden they could go to the polls in smaller numbers.  Black turnout for Hillary Clinton in 2016 dropped by more than 5% from turnout for Barack Obama in 2012.  Their failure to support Clinton as avidly as they supported Obama may have contributed to her loss of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and the White House.  Should Biden be able to develop a more effective immigration and border protection policy, he could conceivably prevent a similar fate from befalling him.

But in developing more effective policies, Biden should be governed by more than concerns for his own political future.  He should realize that whatever the merits of supporting Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan in the name of American national security, national security and public safety begin at home.  If Biden truly wants to promote America’s national security interests, he should begin at the southern border.  He should accept the GOP’s offered deal.  

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Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville and taught politics and government at Tarleton since 1987. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990 to the present).  He was Mayor Pro Tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014.  He is a member of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the Stephenville Rotary Club and does volunteer work for the Boy Scouts of America. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.