Jonah Goldberg writes at National Review Online that both political camps get the southern border story wrong.
When President Trump shut down the government in an attempt to force Congress to fund a border wall, Democrats and liberal journalists — including many mainstream reporters — responded by insisting there was no crisis. …
… They were all wrong. Of course we have a border crisis. It’s just not the one Trump keeps ranting about.
To listen to Trump, the border crisis is a national-security catastrophe. It’s like he found an old VHS copy of Chuck Norris’s 1985 classic Invasion USA, in which drug-peddling guerrillas swarm into Florida from the south and wage a bloody assault on suburban America (blowing up a lot of nice houses in the process). …
… [T]he immigrants swarming the border aren’t primarily Mexican anymore, but Central American. They aren’t single Mexican men looking for work but rather families, often with a dismayingly large number of children in tow. They’re bringing kids to take advantage of asylum laws. And because they are requesting asylum, they aren’t trying to sneak in; they’re seeking out border officials to file paperwork.
By definition, a wall would not stop any of that.
Last week, U.S. officials announced that the border system is at a “breaking point” because of an “unprecedented” wave of migrants, most of whom are families or unaccompanied children. Customs and Border Protection commissioner Kevin McAleenan anticipates the final number to be some 40,000 children to be taken into custody by the CBP in March. And, as the Los Angeles Times reported, a shortage of facilities has led to families being held in makeshift camps, including under a Texas bridge.
