Immigration is in total chaos and free fall. Mexican cartels are riding roughshod over the Biden administration and our southern border. They are exploiting weakness at every level of our ineffectual federal government and our divided political process. Sure, liberals want the new votes, and conservatives the inexpensive labor that both expect from immigrants, but this is totally out of control.
U.S. government actions are totally defensive — concentrating on converting more hotels, convention centers, and military facilities to “refugee camps” amounting to a new Latin-American city on U.S. soil every month, and creating a modern day “underground railroad” transporting immigrants to those locations around the country, in a desperate attempt to keep up with the cartels. I guess that’s infrastructure.
Immigration is a good thing and we need it. But the U.S., and not Mexican cartels, should manage and control the process.
Definitive action can be taken that is also humanitarian. Set up and staff immigration and asylum application processing centers in the countries of origin. Build huge secure facilities there, if necessary. Transport all illegal immigrants that reach U.S. soil, regardless of age, to their country of origin for orderly processing on their own soil. Set up airline transportation to U.S. cities for properly processed applicants, bypassing the cartels in Mexico. Announce this policy by every conceivable means in Latin America and Mexico, and enforce it.
Send Vice President Kamala Harris to Latin America, along with a checkbook, to clear the way with respective governments, not to come back without measurable progress.
Meanwhile, focus on getting the political process concentrated on a pragmatic revision of immigration law. Put infrastructure behind the immigration problem as additional incentive and it might help Congress focus.
— Steve Hartung
Anchorage
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