900 immigrants PER DAY are coming into the city of El Paso, which had a population of about 685,000 at the beginning of 2022. It is Texas’ 6th largest city, and getting larger. The situation reached crisis levels this week when federal officials told the city council that they had no choice but to release 500 Venezuelan immigrants into the El Paso streets unless the city housed them.
This is a good time to point out that the feds offered no solutions: “We brought them here with our inane policies, but you have to give them room and board, or they go loose in your streets.” Worse and worser choices.
Of course, these numbers are way, way above what local shelters and churches can handle, and let’s face it, they’ve been handling these situations for a while. Can you imagine the burnout, even if you feel like you are doing God’s work? Many immigrants were women and children and the city reached into its coffers to get them into hotels to avoid little ones having to sleep on the streets. Apparently an El Paso county judge said the immigrants would not be released for their safety and to protect tourism. What’s missing? No mention of the safety of the law-abiding citizens of El Paso!
As I read this article in the New York Post, which I do generally like, especially Miranda Devine who has been doing non-stop reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop, I did what I usually do and go off on a tangent. First, I saw this headline: Anti-immigrant sentiment grows in long-welcoming El Paso, Texas, and I got my feathers ruffled. This article is also from the Post but the headline just makes it sound like somehow it is El Paso’s fault! The bottom line is that this article was written in May 2022, so if you think El Paso was pissed then…..
And then I saw an article by the Anti-Defamation League called Mainstreaming Hate: The Anti-Immigrant Movement in the US. We do not hate immigrants, but we hate the way our current White House resident is trafficking them across the southern border. And we hate that ranchers are routinely finding dead bodies on their land. And we hate that small children are drowning in the treacherous waters of the river, all because Biden makes them think they’re coming to the Promised Land. Yeah, we hate that.
Anyhoo, then of course I get another cup of coffee and then get even more fired up when I see an article by an MIT researcher. My educated brain tells me to keep an open mind and read their research, but my Texas-girl brain says that MIT don’t know nothin’ bout immigrant crossings, kinda like in Gone With the Wind: “Miss Scarlet, I don’t know nothin’ bout birthin’ no babies.” Yes, I thought I’d share that.
Anyway, I did read the article because of my generally healthy respect for research. Nothing against these scientists, but I think they may be too enamored with their own research. You can always tell when the researcher does the big reveal of information that the rest of us common folk just realize is common sense. The premise is that Americans are worried about job competition from immigrants, but the researchers dispel this myth with an earth-shattering finding:
“Instead, the striking thing about Americans’ attitude toward immigration is that they collectively tend to prefer immigrant workers with refined job skills instead of those lacking good training: Citizens will welcome, say, a computer programmer more readily than a manual laborer. People seem to be much more in favor of high-skill immigrants because they think they contribute more to society.”
And to that I say, “No shit, Sherlock.” The researchers go on to breathlessly exclaim that public officials could use these groundbreaking findings to “find new ways of gaining popular support for new immigration programs.” Ummm, here’s a new way: close the damn border, you idiots, and let people migrate legally so that we can vet them and their skill set. Boom.
And they also say things like this that just really piss me off: “Policy-makers need to better understand what causes anti-immigrant sentiments because resistant public opinion is the key roadblock for immigration reform in the U.S. and many other countries.”
YES, resistant public opinion DOES matter you morons, because it is our country, NOT yours for the taking to do whatever you please.
But I digress. Back to El Paso. About 150 or so of the 500 immigrants were sent on charter buses to the Big Apple. They didn’t really have plans to bus people out, but the feds gave them literally no choice.
But here is the awesome part. El Paso turned to Gov. Abbott for help and he suggested the use of state-funded bus transport, a program that began in April to transport migrants to sanctuary cities like Chicago, Washington DC and New York City. Hey, if ya’ll want to be a sanctuary city, Texas can help with that.
The best part is that the bill for this bus program does not have to be paid by El Paso or by the state of Texas. The transportation is reimbursable by FEMA. Yes ultimately we as US taxpayers are paying the bill, but it does give me a bit of joy to know that the bill is going directly back to Biden’s desk. Gotta love that. And here is a quote that I can love: "Arriving migrants have found that Abbott's busing strategy has brought them closer to their destinations and saved them travel costs." Wow, the citizens of Texas are SO GLAD we can help with this illegal transport and get these folks where they need to go.