Sen. Sinema Says It’s a “No Brainer” That Biden Should Visit Border

Maybe she missed the mendacious White House memo that Biden has, in fact, visited the border “since he took office,” which is what Karine Jean Pierre claimed a few weeks ago.  It wasn’t true, of course.  Biden has never visited the US-Mexico border throughout his Vice Presidential and Presidential tenures — combined.  As I’ve noted before, the best spin Jean-Pierre’s predecessor could concoct was to point out that Biden had once driven near the border as a candidate in 2008, nearly a decade-and-a-half ago.  Arizona’s newly-minted ‘independent’ US Senator told Fox’s Rich Edson that she and some Republican colleagues are planning to head down there early next year, urging the president to do the same:

“I absolutely think the president should visit the border. In fact, I think anyone who is responsible for setting or making policy on the border should visit the border. I mean, that’s that’s a no brainer, right?”

— Rich Edson (@RichEdsonDC) December 20, 2022

“The asylum system right now allows individuals to present themselves not just at ports of entry, which is the proper way to do it, but even to come in between ports of entry like in the desert or in a river … we shouldn’t allow that to occur.”

— Rich Edson (@RichEdsonDC) December 20, 2022

It’s hard to argue with any of that, although Sinema added that while Biden has shirked his duty on border security, neither Barack Obama nor Donald Trump did their jobs on that front either.  Obama was bad on immigration, but not nearly this bad.  Trump had struggles and missteps on the immigration issue, but his administration took security and enforcement much more seriously than either Democratic administration, ultimately crafting and implementing a range of successful policies.  But Biden has been, by far, the worst.  There’s no comparing his failure’s to anyone else’s.  Sinema is right that the border has never been fully secure in her lifetime, but her current proposed bipartisan solution is not the right answer.  It doesn’t “meet the moment,” as politicos are so fond of saying these days, for reasons I’ve discussed at some length.  The editors of National Review expand on the subject here:

While the GOP cavalry did not arrive in the numbers many had hoped for last month, the party did retake the House. Congressional Republicans will be running the lower chamber in less than a month; it makes no sense to negotiate now, when they have less power and leverage, rather than later…Put aside for the moment that a rational government shouldn’t need to rely on a CDC edict and the falsehood that the coronavirus is still a major public-health emergency to exclude illegal migrants from its borders. Of course, history says that deals like Tillis-Sinema — trading some form of amnesty for the promise of more enforcement and border security — don’t work as advertised. The Reagan-era Immigration Reform and Control Act, for example, “conferred amnesty upon some 3 million illegals in exchange for promises of stepped-up enforcement at the border and in the back office,” as we wrote in 2012. The amnesty side of that equation went off without a hitch, while the enhanced enforcement never arrived…More fundamentally, there’s no reason to believe that additional funding and authorities would make any difference to the Biden administration, which is ignoring the law now to allow a historic flow of illegal immigrants into the country…If Tillis and Sinema could promise an end to Biden administration lawlessness — driven by its apparent belief that any bogus asylum-seeker should be permitted into the country and never deported — their handiwork might be worth considering; since they can’t, it deserves to be ripped up and thrown away forthwith.

One can appreciate the intentions behind trying to do something to mitigate this Biden-caused catastrophe, but Tillis-Sinema is not the right move. To the extent that they can help draw any serious attention to the problem, which the White House tends to dismiss as ‘stunt’ work by Republicans, then more power to them. If they can convince the president to go down there to survey the historic, embarrassing, lethal mess he’s created, that would be fine. But I fear that any presidential excursion to the southern boundary would end up being a photo-op-minded exercise in useless box-checking. If Biden is willing to really witness what’s going on, without an advance team sanitizing reality and steering him clear of the true damage — while listening to frontline agents with genuine curiosity an interest — then a trip might be worth it. Given this crew’s track record, I fear the chances of that really happening are slim to none.  As things go from historically bad to even worse down there, I’ll leave you with the state of Texas doing what it can to stave off the total chaos that the federal government has actively invited:

NEW: The state of Texas has been bringing in more shipping containers to create a lengthy makeshift wall at a popular crossing area in Eagle Pass. Razor wire deployed in front of it, with flood lights set up behind it. Crews have been bringing in more & filling any gaps. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/6kvTnm0wez

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) December 20, 2022

And one more statistic, for context:

Keep this in mind when you see much bigger cities like New York or Chicago whining about the crisis created by a few hundred migrants being sent their way… https://t.co/zwjkvViLX7

— AG (@AGHamilton29) December 19, 2022

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