Thread: Op/Ed: As 'border crisis' continues, Indiana cities feel the burden of illegal immigr

Op/Ed: As 'border crisis' continues, Indiana cities feel the burden of illegal immigration



Scott R. Hammond
Fri, January 13, 2023 at 10:04 AM EST




Too little, too late: President Joe Biden on Jan. 5 announced several new policies to address the worst border crisis in United States history.

With irreparable damage done and untold generational consequences, a retrospective is offered, not years into the past, but mere days …

Their nightly campfires glow across the Rio Grande ― migrants arriving daily by the thousands from more than 160 countries, by busload and in “promised-land” caravans, waiting for the impending dissolution of Title 42.

Overwhelmed border towns in Texas and Arizona have declared states of emergency. In newly dystopian El Paso, Texas, overflowing processing centers resemble a somnambulist’s 2 a.m. fridge blitzkrieg: Men, women and children huddled in Mylar blankets are strewn across the floor like a scarfed and flung pile of Reynolds Wrapped leftovers.






Donations of children's clothes and shoes are among the items handed out from the Grassroot Projects nonprofit Monday, Nov. 7, 2022 in Carmel. The small organization helps children of immigrant and refugee families.

Spilling onto the city’s streets, some migrants wander, set cardboard to concrete or haul donated mattresses to parking garages; others doze against grilled entrances of an after-hours food court at El Paso International Airport, idly waiting for the next round of taxpayer-funded transportation.

In 2019, there was a collective stentorian outcry from Democrats in response to perceived inhumane conditions inside migrant facilities. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez compared migrant processing centers to concentration camps, which, intentionally or not, likened then-President Donald Trump to Adolph Hitler. However, during this unprecedented migrant surge under Biden, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s silence has been hypocritically deafening.

A December Harvard-Harris Poll would indicate that most of the country is clueless of the magnitude of our border crisis. A mere 6% of participants selected the correct range of illegal border crossings in the past year through September 2022.

When apprised of the actual number, 2.75 million, 67% believed stricter enforcement measures should be implemented.

Against a national debt backdrop of $31 trillion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently addressed Congress in an almsgiving carnival sideshow, a calculated distraction from southern border chaos.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris swooned, and $45 billion snowed upon this beloved Ukrainian leader.

To date, the disingenuous rallying cry “Democracy versus Tyranny” ― a contrivance of the military-industrial complex ― has bled United States taxpayers of approximately $100 billion.

The now Biden-signed $1.7 trillion bill, which allocated the $45 billion, was over 4,000 pages of dizzying legal speak and released at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday before a Friday vote. With lawmakers champing at the bit to race home for Christmas break, its unscrutinized passage was expeditiously achieved.

In addition to Ukraine’s border-war payout, $410 million is earmarked for Middle Eastern border security. Arguably, the bill prohibits the application of funds to our own southern border’s defense. Instead, the apparent emphasis is on illegal migrant housing, expedited processing and dispersed relocation within the United States.

Rejecting an amendment that would have extended Title 42, 18 Senate Republicans, with Sen. Mitch McConnell at the helm, voted a bewildering and indefensible “aye,” which ultimately sent the bill to Biden’s desk for signature, following his Caribbean holiday sojourn.

Amid chronic inflation and a grimly forecast recession, ubiquitous homelessness, the fentanyl plague, and an unsustainable disruption to immigration enforcement — McConnell has proclaimed Ukraine to be a "No. 1 priority.”

Out-of-touch statements like this one from McConnell, and legislation (or lack thereof) to match, portend America’s bleak trajectory.

We must recognize the undue burden illegal immigration places on local municipalities like Fort Wayne, South Bend, Bloomington and Indianapolis ― leading to housing shortages, packed classrooms, wage deflation, a fraught health care system and the hastened draining of our natural resources.

Unrestrained illegal immigration is an offense against national sovereignty. It will undermine every ethically minded, hard-working, culturally proud American’s quality of life.

It’s time America’s elected collective lives up to its constitutional obligation: to “insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”… and “protect ― every State in this Union ― against Invasion.”

Scott R. Hammond, Indianapolis

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana cities pay cost as U.S. neglects security at southern border




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