Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Myth vs. Truth: Dissecting the Republican narrative about the border

"Any decent human being has empathy for immigrant refugees worldwide. Any and all honest comment on the border situation of America must include that it has been seen as a problem for years. You have never publicly accepted that fact. And it is arguable that Democrats have done a better job there than Republicans have.
zab, You're right. Trump did not reduce illegal immigration. Facts to Trump, conix et al, are of no value unless they fit their cause.
Illegal immigration rose significantly while Donald Trump was president,..."

By Rep. Gerry Connolly
Washington, February 14, 2023

Republicans are clamoring over themselves to blame President Joe Biden for any and every challenge facing America. Nowhere is that more apparent than on the issue of immigration and border security.

If you listen to my Republican colleagues, you’d believe Joe Biden single-handedly broke our immigration system and refuses to fix it. They keep this lie alive by perpetuating a series of myths about Democrats and the border.

It’s time to correct the record.

MYTH: The Biden administration has implemented an “open border” policy that has created chaos at our border with Mexico.

TRUTH: President Biden inherited an immigration system in tatters. The Trump administration cut off legal pathways to citizenship, leaving would-be migrants with fewer lawful methods of entering the country. They cut funding to Central American countries in 2019 as they splurged on an ineffective, costly wall.

It was the Trump administration that tightened sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, exacerbating the macroeconomic crises that have led hundreds of thousands to flee and arrive at the southern border. When they pulled the rug out from various, essential assistance programs, they made the problem worse.

But our immigration system has been broken for many decades — long before Joe Biden or Donald Trump took the oath of office. Time and again, Democrats have proposed solutions to fix the immigration system in a reasonable, humane way. And time and again, Republicans have opposed these efforts at every turn.

One might recall that in 2013, House Republicans thwarted comprehensive immigration reform after an agreement was reached in the Senate. Many of those same House Republicans who prevented that legislation from passing are now intent on blaming irregular migration, an issue our country has dealt with for over a century, solely on the Biden administration.

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[Insert: Republican Obstructionism Is The Real Scandal That’s Plaguing Washington
[...]In what should be evident to the American people, the next several months, and possibly years, will be a gross repeat of the past four years of government inaction on the issues that matter most to the American people. Republicans promised to focus entirely on jobs nearly two-and-a-half years ago that have produced no jobs, and their total lack of interest in immigration reform or addressing gun safety measures will be amplified as they celebrate spending all their time on Benghazi, the I.R.S., and more attacks on the Affordable Care Act. The mainstream media has been complicit in focusing on phony scandals instead of the GOP’s lack of a coherent agenda to help economic recovery or the American people, and there has been no better example than the rapidly decreasing national debt that has been supplanted with persistent coverage of Benghazi, the I.R.S., and government seizure of journalist’s phone records that is a direct result of Republican policy under the Bush Administration. In fact, all of the phony scandals can be laid at the feet of Republican ineptitude and economic malfeasance to thwart the President’s attempt to govern. As journalist Dan Rather opined on Thursday, “And no wonder they’re slapping high five behind closed doors. President Obama must feel like he’s Gulliver tied down, every time he turns around he can’t really move in any way. It raises the question: Can he get anything done in this second term as president with the Republicans playing this obstructionist role?”
May, 2013 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=88093941
.. and ..
F6 Re: StephanieVanbryce post# 202147
Saturday, April 20, 2013 10:38:44 PM
Post# of 511825
Immigration Bill Opposition Building Among Conservatives
04/19/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/18/immigration-bill-opposition_n_3109770.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Congressman Says Bombings Reveal Danger Of Immigration Bill: ‘Radical Islamists…Are Trained To Act Hispanic’
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX)
Apr 17, 2013
http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2013/04/17/1879411/congressman-says-bombings-reveal-danger-of-immigration-bill-radical-islamistsare-trained-to-act-hispanic/ [with comments]
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Tea Party Congressman Uses Boston Marathon Bombing To Justify Opposing Immigration Reform
Rep. Steve King (R-IA)
Apr 16, 2013
http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2013/04/16/1874071/steve-king-boston-immigration/ [with comments]
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Muslim Woman Attacked After Conservatives Repeat False Speculation About ‘Dark-Skinned Suspects’
Apr 19, 2013
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/04/19/1896921/muslim-woman-attacked-after-conservatives-repeat-false-speculation-about-dark-skinned-suspects/ [with comments]
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Arkansas Lawmaker Nate Bell (R) Mocks Boston ‘Liberals,’ Says They Wish They Had Assault Rifles
Apr 19, 2013
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/04/19/1895381/arkansas-lawmaker-mocks-boston-liberals-assault-rifles/ [with comments] [ http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=87071473 ]
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(linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=86869877 and preceding and following
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=87079937]
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There’s only one problem with their affinity for blaming Democrats — it doesn’t hold up to basic scrutiny. In fact, between December 2022 and January 2023, the Biden-Harris administration halved the number of encounters at the border and reduced the number of Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, and Haitian migrants by 97 percent.

MYTH: The Biden administration has ignored the border and is refusing to commit proper resources to it.

TRUTH: The idea that Democrats have ignored the situation at the border and refused to commit resources to solving it is another outright lie. In reality, the Biden-Harris administration and congressional Democrats have surged record levels of funding to the border.

The FY23 government funding package that President Biden signed into law provided Border Patrol with $7.153 billion — a 17 percent increase from the year before. Additionally, the funding package provided $65 million for 300 new Border Patrol agents, $60 million for 125 new personnel at points of entry; and $230 million for technology like autonomous surveillance towers.

House Republicans voted against this historic funding.

MYTH: Biden’s “open border” policies allow undocumented immigrants to flood the country with deadly fentanyl.

TRUTH: Republicans continue to blame vulnerable migrants fleeing violence, hunger, and natural disasters for illicit drug smuggling, but facts are stubborn things. Over 90 percent of fentanyl, and over 80 percent of total illegal narcotics, arrive at legal points of entry—not between them—and are smuggled largely by Americans—not undocumented migrants. In fact, migrants accounted for less than 9 percent of fentanyl trafficking convictions in FY 21, compared to more than 86 percent for American citizens.

In December 2022, CBP seized 4,500 pounds of fentanyl, the largest amount ever recorded. Incredibly, just five of those 4,500 pounds were seized at the border by U.S. Border Patrol. Republicans are focused on 1 percent of the problem, 100 percent of the time.

MYTH: Biden’s “open border” policies have allowed criminals and terrorists to pour over the southern border unchecked, contributing to a spike in crime in America.

TRUTH: Study after study has shown that undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S. citizens. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Alternatives to Detention Program provides a strong example: The latest data from ICE released on Feb. 3, 2023, demonstrated 99.4 percent of immigrants monitored on ICE’s Alternatives to Detention Program attended their court hearings compared to the .6 percent which failed to attend their hearing.

Not all undocumented immigrants are tracked through this program, but immigrants, when paroled into the United States, overwhelmingly are lawful individuals that attend their court hearings. An American Immigration Council report found that over the past 11 years, an overwhelming 83 percent of immigrants attended their immigration court hearings, and those who failed to appear in court often did not receive notice or faced hardship in getting to court.

Republicans who assert the Biden administration is releasing countless dangerous migrants into the country are not only trafficking in xenophobic, anti-immigrant sentiment, but they are also peddling lies that are categorically false.

The situation at the border demands serious policy solutions that provide a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients; address the root causes of migration like repression, political instability, violence, hunger, and lack of economic opportunity; and fix our own broken immigration system.

To read this piece as it appeared on The Hill, click here ..
.https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/3857782-myth-vs-truth-dissecting-the-republican-narrative-about-the-border/

https://connolly.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=4691

Quite obviously conservative forces have been able to con enough Americans to ignore the facts of history, and they have been able to do it basically by managing information dishonestly. The effort has been enabled by corporate media. It is a real problem, particularly in light of the now very serious attack on American democracy by Musk et al. See:

U.S. government officials privately warn Musk’s blitz appears illegal
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175781335