Crosstalk: The case for open borders — or not

Remove the demand for illegal drugs, and drug smuggling will end. By the same token, provide a legal way for temporary migrant workers to meet the needs of farmers and others in search of seasonal, inexpensive labor and the majority of illegal border crossings will end.

This is evident from the history of our southern border with Mexico, described in detail in the article, “A look at U.S. policy toward immigration and border security with Mexico over the past 60 years” by Andrew Becker, published on PBS.org.

The earliest efforts to restrict immigration to the U.S. came in the late 1800s, when inspection stations were set up at ports of entry along the Mexico border. Then controls were eased because of labor shortages in World War I.

Prohibition encouraged a brisk smuggling trade in the 1920s, and the U.S. Border Patrol was formed.

The first mass deportations of Mexicans came during the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 until the start of World War II. That was possible because during the Depression, American migrants were desperate for work in the fields.

During WWII, however, the U.S. again needed farm laborers and looked to Mexico. A guest-worker treaty, the Bracero Program, started in 1942.

Illegal immigration increased after the war ended, as the guest-worker program slowed and Mexicans still came for jobs. The U.S. response was “Operation Wetback” in 1954, deporting nearly 4 million immigrants.

I find it interesting how we use the language of immigration: The migrants we wanted we called Bracero, a word for laborer or literally, “one who swings his arms.” When we decided we didn't want them anymore, they become a “Wetback,” a derogatory term used to describe Mexicans who have immigrated illegally to the United States by swimming or wading across the Rio Grande. Today, “illegal alien” is commonly used.

These two policies, “let them come” and “let them leave,” continue.

In 1986, Congress passed legislation with the Immigration Reform and Control Act, aimed at stemming the flow by cracking down on U.S. employers who hire illegal immigrants. The act also granted an amnesty to illegal workers already in the United States.

This worked. As a result of the amnesty, illegal immigration plummeted before rebounding at the beginning of the 1990s.

Many blame the subsequent increase to the inability of Congress to provide for a legal guest worker program to supply migrant laborers.

In the mid-1990s, the focus was to prevent illegal immigration through deterrence. This called for more fencing, border patrol agents, technology, lighting and surveillance equipment to be implemented in four phases.

This policy worked at the busiest illegal crossing points by pushing migrants into more remote and difficult locations. Many of them die in the desert.

The emphasis on enforcement continued with President Clinton and intensified with the 9/11 terrorist attack.

President Bush proposed a guest-worker program, but that was met with strong opposition in Congress. So he built a fence.Today, Trump is again focusing on walls and mass deportation, vilifying immigrants and ignoring the U.S. need for labor that brought them here.

Yet the flow will continue: Enforcement works only to a point. A legal way to meet our need for migrant labor is required, or there will be forever be those willing to risk the crossing.

— Mark Gibson

Although, at first blush, one would think Hillary Clinton and other top-level Democrats who pursue open borders are hopelessly naïve, there is really a deeper purpose at play behind this philosophy.

Billionaire George Soros, who finances leftist causes, summed it up in 1998: “The sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions. We need some global system of political decision-making. In short, we need a global society to support our global economy.”

Clinton echoed those words in a 2013 speech to Brazilian bankers. “My dream,” she said, “is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.”

In other words, open borders not only with Canada and Mexico, our two closest neighbors, but with and among all the countries in Central America and South America.

Our economy would go into a freefall if Americans had to compete for jobs with 43 million people in the seven countries of Central America, 210 million people in North America outside the United States and 422 million people in South America – more than our entire population.

How do you get the people to trade the sovereignty of their nation for globalism? Cry “racist” or “hater” in shrill and hysterical tones every time someone dares to bring up the fact that controlled borders are necessary for national security. And then downplay the potential threat of opening our borders to a flood of illegal immigrants who will drain the economy, terrorists bent on our destruction and drug traffickers to fuel addictions.

Leftists disdain American exceptionalism and are working to undermine our ranking as the world’s sole superpower. Why? They believe the United States possesses an immoral amount of the world’s wealth that should be redistributed to the poor — and poured into the pockets of elitists who will be part of the power grab.

Former President Barack Obama fully supported the United Nations’ “Millennium Development Goals” that bind nations to the International Criminal Court treaty, control the sales of weapons and implements a bill of rights for children that requires their opinions to be given “due weight” in all matters that affect them (move over mom and dad).

Guess who is going to be the paternal organization overeeing the global community? You guessed it. The Millennium Declaration affirms the U.N. as the “indispensable common house of the entire human family, through which we will seek to realize our universal aspirations for peace, cooperation and development.”

How did the U.S. get to the point of giving away the freedoms that more than two million soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have defended for 241 years?

The answer is twofold: We allowed our government schools to be hijacked by leftist propogandists so lessons in patriotism fell by the wayside; and citizens quit fulfilling their “watchdog” role to hold public officials accountable.

Since the 1960s, socialists and Marxists have set up shop in our colleges and universities and poisoned the minds of our youth under the ruse of “education.”

For example, at one Pennsylvania school, fourth grade students were asked to sign a “Pledge of Allegiance to the Earth.”

As a result of this relentless agenda, a large number of Americans have lost their national identity.

What makes this situation even worse is that the minions of the left are supporting their own serfdom. Globalism has caused a never-ending parade of jobs, businesses and wealth to head out of our country.

How can the U.N. be trusted to fairly manage global affairs when it can’t even condemn Syria for deploying chemical weapons against its own citizens? Do you want an agency with dictators and despots sanctifying evil to determine America’s fate?

— RaeLynn Ricarte