By Carolyn Shore Aresu as Libby Shaw
What we need at the Tex/Mex border are more judges. But for the Texas GOP boots, guns and fear works best.
Cross posted on Texas Kaos.
Most of us are aware of a recent crisis at the Texas-Mexico border in which literally thousands of unaccompanied children from Central America are making their way to Texas. These children are arriving alone, without parents or relatives. Reports suggest that the children are fleeing from gang violence in their home countries or they are coming to look for a parent who migrated here. Others may be leaving their countries because of dire economic circumstances.
Although children crossing the border alone has long been an issue, the recent spike could be attributed to better weather or an increase in poor economic conditions in their home countries, officials said. Others simply want to be reunited with their parents, who may have left them with relatives in their native countries.
Children make the arduous trek from Central America across Mexico by train or with the help of smugglers called "coyotes," officials said. Most often, the youths from Mexico and Central America try to cross the border in the Rio Grande Valley because it is the southernmost point of the United States for them to cross.
While this situation should be treated as a humanitarian crisis it didn't take long before hard right conservative clowns like Rick Perry, Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick to roll out the fear machine. Blow those dog whistles until our ears ring. The state is under a siege of "others!" Conservative flame throwers conflate the
status of these children with terrorists, human traffickers, drug cartels, diseases and criminals. Heaven help us! We are in the throes of an
IMMIGEDDON!
The photographs say crisis. The faces of Central American children and families peering from behind fences, crowded rooms, makeshift beds on hard floors of Border Patrol facilities illustrate a humanitarian emergency that has overwhelmed federal government.
The tales of why the tens of thousands of immigrants are coming tear at the heart. One social worker from El Salvador told The New York Times that she left a good job to get her 11-year-old away from the violent gangs in her neighborhood.
Lisa Falkenberg, the author of the Houston Chronicle op-ed piece nailed it. This
humanitarian emergency is nothing but a political windfall for hard right conservatives like Dan Patrick, the Tea Party Republican candidate for Lt. Governor.
Candidates like Dan Patrick, the Republican nominee for Texas lieutenant governor, couldn't have dreamed up a better backdrop for their crusades against immigration reform if they'd paid a political consultant to stage it.
In a way, Patrick, a Houston state senator, finally got photographic proof of those invading Mexicans he's been ranting about on the campaign trail.
Except, these folks aren't Mexicans. They're largely from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
But they'll do.
Of course, the Texas GOP doubled down and took a hard line on immigration in its recent 2014 platform.
Timing is perfect as well, coming just after Texas Republican delegates at the state convention scrapped a practical solution to immigration reform including a guest worker program in favor of a stance that demands securing the border first. As if the latter could ever be accomplished without the former.
It can't. And that's the point, I guess. To keep the argument burning. Just as we do with abortion. Not to solve anything. But to rile. To enrage. To mobilize.
That's right. Gin up the rage and the hate. Trot out warfare rhetoric whenever possible.
It isn't just a humanitarian crisis created in large part by worsening poverty and increasingly violent conditions in the immigrants' home countries. It is a crisis in border security -- one even worthy of warfare rhetoric, it seems.
Texas' top leaders, led by Gov. Rick Perry, channeled Iraq on Wednesday when they approved a "surge" of Texas law enforcement to "combat" the flow of immigrant children, families and others into the country. The operation will reportedly put boots on the ground and patrols in the air and water.
And if you read a Patrick press release these days, you might think it was IMMIGEDDON. A recent statement managed to evoke disease, hardened criminals and terrorists all in the first paragraph.
Although Rick Perry said the state would commit $1.3 million per week to border efforts he and the Department of Public Safety will not say how the money will be
spent. Which makes me suspect this war on the border is more about political theater than it is of substance. That, or as some my friends suspect, Rick Perry will take the money from education and infrastructure. The liberty and freedom loving Texas Republicans don't support transparency where taxpayers are concerned.
Hispanicphobia.
The border crisis presents a political opportunity that the truly craven like U.S. Senator Ted Cruz could not resist. It gave him yet another opportunity to get his face in front of the camera to throw more red meat to his tea party hate club. So far, this seems to be the only role Ted Cruz plays in Washington D. C.
What we don't need is political exploitation in this country. Here's U.S. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, arguing as only he can argue that the dramatic increase in numbers is the result of President Obama's 2012 decision to create the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. That's the executive order that gives temporary legal status and work authorization to young people brought to this country illegally as children.
Most experts dispute Cruz's claim. The rise in the number of unaccompanied children started a couple of years ago, as conditions in their home countries began to deteriorate. It's telling that the number of unaccompanied children from Mexico has not increased.
Predictably, state Sen. Dan Patrick had to jump in. The Houston Republican, his party's nominee for lieutenant governor, was again raising the spectre of disease and terrorism coming from the south and calling for state leaders to immediately allocate $1.3 million a week in emergency spending for the rest of the year for added border security. Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Joe Straus approved the "surge." None of the state's leaders called for a solution that actually has a chance of working long-term. It's called comprehensive immigration reform.
The border crisis is a very complex issue but most rational folks agree that militarization of the area is not the answer. Some immigrants are literally seeking asylum here.
But here's the thing to understand: this situation wasn't caused by lacking border security. And it won't be fixed by further militarization of the Rio Grande. Most of these children and families aren't trying to sneak across the border, as those crossing illegally usually do. They're not evading Border Patrol officers; they're running straight to them. They're behaving like asylum-seekers, not invaders.
According to news reports, many of the immigrants seem to be under the false impression that they will be given a temporary permit to stay in the country.
The rumor is probably rooted in the fact that many immigrants who can't be immediately deported are given a notice to appear in court. But the backlog for a court hearing to help determine if the immigrant has a good claim to stay here is 577 days, according to the Migration Policy Institute, and 363,239 removal cases are in the queue.
If we had an adequate number of judges we wouldn't have such a backlog. But don't expect the Texas or national GOP to make that happen. And so here we are.
But then, judges don't poll in Texas like guns, and boots, and fear.
Meanwhile, gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott defaulted to a divide and conquer strategy when he tried to pit white Texans against Hispanics. When he compared South Texas to a third world country Greg Abbott evoked the wrath of an
editorial board there.
“This year’s election should not fall into that traditional zone of venomous nativist rhetoric that inflames the passions of white conservatives at the expense of the state’s growing Hispanic population,” The Monitor said in its editorial. “Abbott has been guilty of such practices in the past and we need to declare as a region that we are tired of having Hispanics act as the bogeymen of Texas.”
Greg Abbott will pretend he didn't go there (and he will never stop using bogeymen) as he drags out his in-laws to campaign for him.
In Spanish.
Abbott doesn't speak a word of Spanish himself during the ad, but his sister-in-law, Rosie Phalen, and his mother-in-law, Mary Lucy Phalen, are on hand to talk him up while images of Abbott hanging out and smiling with his Hispanic in-laws flash by on the screen. The ad is slated to air on Spanish-language channels across Texas throughout the World Cup, a savvy move for the guy who says he wants to pull in even more Hispanic voters than former-President George W. Bush did way back when.
Let's watch Greg Abbott run away from his Party's platform on immigration that he fully supports. For recently Greg Abbott has developed a knack for fleeing from reporters when asked questions he does not want to answer.
He fled from CNN when asked about his association with Ted Nugent. He also fled when asked about his Party's stand on reparative therapy for gays. I guess Abbott hopes we won't learn he uses private planes owned by gay conversion funders.
Greg Abbott might be able to run away from reporters but he cannot flee from Wendy Davis and Texas Democrats from now until November. We know dog whistles when we hear them. We know when the fear machine is cranked into high gear.
The state and the country are in dire need of comprehensive immigration reform. Both the state and national Republican Party has demonstrated its cynical unwillingness and incompetence in this area.
There will be at least two gubernatorial debates. Greg Abbott will not be able to run off of the stage. He cannot hide behind the curtain. Wendy Davis had asked for six debates in different regions in the state but Greg Abbott is not interested in letting voters learn more about him.
Texas Democrats and Battleground Texas have thousands of volunteers knocking on doors every weekend. Volunteers are having conversations with their neighbors. We are not talking about liberty and freedom. We are discussing bread and butter issues that Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick would rather avoid.
Battleground Texas. Wendy Davis. Leticia van de Putte.
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