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Sherry Robinson| All She Wrote

Rebecca Dow, Republican candidate for governor, wrote recently, There is a lot of rhetoric thrown around when it comes to securing our border…

Rhetoric is a nice word for whats being thrown around, and Dow did her own throwing recently in a newspaper op ed when she said the president and the governor opened our border, ended the previous administrations remain-in-Mexico policy and stopped building the wall.

The open-border accusation is often heard on the far right, but its not heard anywhere else. Thats a problem for Dow who would need votes from Democrats and Independents to win in November.

And its false, according to PolitiFact, a service of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a nonprofit school for journalists.

I would argue that the open-border myth is insulting to our border personnel who are doing their jobs 24/7. The vast majority of enforcement encounters result in people being turned away at the border.

President Biden continued Title 42, a Trump policy of refusing entry to most border crossers to curb the spread of COVID-19, according to PolitiFact, although its exempting children who arrive alone, as well as some families. On Dec. 2, the administration re-implemented the Migrant Protection Protocols, known as Remain in Mexico,which requires asylum seekers without proper documentation to wait in Mexico for their immigration court date.

Which is why immigrant advocates are complaining about thousands of asylum seekers stuck in dangerous Mexican border towns.

The administration has tried to back away from Title 42, but court actions so far are preserving it as a tool for immigration control. Which, in an election year, is fine with some Democrats.

Dow and three fellow candidates want the governor to send National Guard troops to the border, as Texas and Arizona have done. Candidate Greg Zanetti has not. The retired brigadier general of the New Mexico Army National Guard told the Albuquerque Journal the others dont understand the complexities of deploying the Guard on the border.

The National Guard cant be used for immigration enforcement. So in Texas and Arizona, theyve been helping for a few years. Assigned to keep watch in Texas, they lacked night-vision goggles so they stared into the darkness until they fell asleep, according to widespread media reports. They also built fence and clerked. In Arizona they cleaned stables sheltering the Border Patrols horses and maintained the patrols vehicles.

In March 2021, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called 10,000 troops for Operation Lone Star and authorized them to arrest anyone breaking Texas laws. Both the Army Times and Stars and Stripes reported that troops lacked equipment, didnt get paid for months, and had little to do. The state packed 36 troops into windowless trailers. Alcohol and drug abuse became so widespread that senior officers resorted to breathalyzers. The army saw upwards of 1,200 legal actions for everything from sexual assault and manslaughter to property loss.

State taxpayers pay the tab because their governors ordered the troops. In Texas the budget for border security spiraled from about $800 million in 2020 and 2021 to more than $2.9 billion in 2022 and 2023.

The cost alone should give us pause, but remember that National Guard members have jobs and lives. If a governor calls them to do busy work, someones kids are without a parent and someones employer and co-workers must fill the void.

So where are all these people supposedly streaming across the border?

The Associated Press reported that immigration tapered off during the Trump administration and nearly stopped for 18 months during the pandemic, exacerbating the current labor shortage. This isnt news to farmers and employers.

Title 42 is a finger in the dike, but its no solution. That would require our congresspersons to sit down, hear each other, hear the public, compromise, and produce new law, as we elected them to do.

The rest is here:
To debate immigration reform, let's start with the truth - Carlsbad Current Argus