Lynn Smith: Appalling and amoral
At the behest of former President Trump, the House Republicans have killed a promising border security bill, while hypocritically describing the southern border as an “urgent crisis” that had to be solved. Now they’re telling supporters they intend to, “make the border a 2024 center-stage issue in other ways.” When they initiated impeachment proceedings against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, we learned exactly what “other ways” meant.
This is only the most recent example of GOP political antics replacing anything resembling serious governance, so Americans are left with more evidence that these folks are nothing more than cynical and transactional collaborators in Trump’s vulgar debasement of our politics. But, it’s not the first time Republicans have sabotaged immigration reform.
President George W. Bush’s efforts to overhaul the nation’s immigration policy, a cornerstone of his domestic agenda when taking office, collapsed in 2007 as members of his own party abandoned him in droves. The outcome was a bitter disappointment for Mr. Bush and other supporters of a comprehensive approach, including legislative co-sponsor Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). After only 12 of the 49 Senate Republicans approved the measure, an angry Graham said, “A majority of Americans supported it when told of provisions like increased money for border security, a new employee verification system, a guest worker program and a new merit-based system to select immigrants, but that was before Rush Limbaugh told them how to feel.”
President Barrack Obama didn’t fare much better despite the fact that his immigration policies were so strict, they often drew criticism from his own party. Under his administration, more than 2.4 million people were deported, nearly as many as his two predecessors combined. Ironically, he’s also remembered for protecting 730,000 young people, a generation of so-called Dreamers, who were brought to the U.S. as children. In late 2014, President Obama tried to expand that reprieve to include their parents, but Texas challenged the move, and a short-handed Supreme Court (because Garland’s nomination was withheld by the GOP), deadlocked in a 4-4 decision. A despondent Obama announced, “I always believed that Speaker Boehner wanted to pass an immigration bill, but last week he told me that Republicans will continue to block immigration reform for at least the remainder of my term.”
For months now, a bipartisan group of Senators has been working to craft a deal that would increase border security and at the same time, fund emergency military aid for Israel and Ukraine. At the end of January, as the White House and Senate were nearing completion of the most constructive piece of immigration policy in twenty years, Republicans began to once again, sabotage the proposed legislation. Even though President Biden has given major (and politically costly) concessions during the negotiations, it’s become clear that House Republicans will reject any proposed solutions that might resolve Trump’s favorite campaign issue.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) was the first to take a stand in opposition to fellow Republicans saying, “The fact that Trump would communicate to Republican Senators and Congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is … really appalling.” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told his colleagues, “I didn’t come here to have a president as a boss or a candidate as a boss. I came here to pass good, solid policy ... and it is amoral that you looked the other way because you think this is the linchpin for President Trump to win.” Several days later, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) went further in an interview with CNN saying, "It was the Republicans, I will remind you, that told the Democrats months ago that if you want to try to get your Ukraine funding, you're going to have to take up the border issue. This legislation is exactly what we asked them for.”
Political games expose us to grave and unnecessary new risks, and are the primary reason that our country may not remain the world’s only superpower. So, these questions beg answers now: Won’t you acknowledge that reneging selectively on our commitments — including those made to Ukraine — erodes confidence in all of America’s promises? If we were attacked today, would our NATO partners come to our defense like they did on 9/11? Will foreign entities continue to buy our bonds and finance our debt if they believe we’ve become deadbeats? Will the world’s reserve currency continue to be U.S. dollars, or will the Chinese Yuan be viewed as a more stable currency for global transactions?
And a watching world is simply asking this: “In 2024, will Americans regain their sanity and vote for serious leaders?”
— Community Columnist Lynn Smith is a retired wealth management executive who resides in Holland. Contact her at lynn.angleworks@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Lynn Smith: Appalling and amoral
