By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Various aspects of life that were affected by the record-setting length of high temperatures here drew prominent attention in the news, but its impact on illegal immigration through blazing deserts in July didn’t seem to be one of them.
Were illegal entrants being deterred by the heat? A report tweeted on July 21 by the conservative RAV-TV News, which isn’t a major network, showed a large group of illegal immigrants being processed for entry at a remote location on the Arizona border.
As for the weather itself, one report said people were being burned by stepping outside. Well, no, that injury was caused by making contact with a hot surface. Prolonged exposure to a fierce sun could cause burns, but just going out the door didn’t do it.
A different story said it was “unlivable” here. Any harsh weather condition needs to be mitigated, but diminished livability also applies to heavy snowfall or rain, high winds, and so on. However, millions of people continued living here.
A third story said people were being evacuated. If the implication was that Phoenix was being shut down by mass departures, no. But true where some rural areas contended with wildfires.
A southern Arizona report by the French news service Agence France-Presse described “a hard-to-fathom 110F.” Well now, France happens to be on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea from north Africa, which includes a place called the Sahara Desert. Is a 110-degree temperature as hard to fathom when it’s closer to France?
A travel article that wasn’t addressing the temperature records claimed that Flagstaff, Ariz., is located in the desert. It is not. Flagstaff is nearly 7,000 feet high among pine trees in Arizona’s mountains.
On July 21 Ben Bergquam, a reporter for Real America’s Voice (RAV-TV) News, tweeted a video of a large group of male illegal immigrants on the border near little Lukeville, Ariz., intentionally being processed at that bleak-looking location, Bergquam said, because it was out in the middle of the desert, away from public attention.
“Hundreds, hundreds” of “mostly fighting-age men” were lined up around large white tents, Bergquam showed. “They’re trying to hide it from you, [Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas is trying to hide it from you. They’ve moved it out here into the middle of nowhere in Arizona.”
Bergquam said open-borders Democrats were responsible for keeping border-protecting Republicans out of office.
“Thanks to [Arizona Democrat Gov.] Katie Hobbs, the cartel governor, this is what you get,” Bergquam said. “That’s why they didn’t want Kari Lake in here. That’s why they stole it from President Trump in 2020. They stole it from Kari Lake in 2022. This is what you get under open-borders, leftist Democrats. Everything Mayorkas is telling you is a lie…. “And they’re profiting the cartels. Because all of these people take Border Patrol resources away so Border Patrol can’t cover out in the desert,” Bergquam said, pointing to the barren surroundings. Border agents were kept busy processing the illegal aliens at the tents rather than being on patrol.
“And this is the area that the cartels send the worst of the worst. That’s what open-borders Democrats are doing,” he said.
On July 21 conservative commentator Emerald Robinson tweeted a Washington Times report that illegal-immigrant children with infectious tuberculosis were being released into 44 U.S. states.
Articles from other locations reported on the stresses that the unlimited numbers of illegal immigrants — which Joe Biden is rushing into the U.S. — are putting on this nation and demanding resources that U.S. citizens should have.
A report from Chicago said illegal immigrants there demanded paid job training and housing.
The Elites’ Virtue Signaling
Columnist Douglas Murray posted at the New York Post on July 20 that the “luxury beliefs” of the remote elite — their virtue signaling that makes them feel good and causes them no personal problems — invite all the poor and dispossessed of the entire world to come to the U.S. to cure their problems.
Murray’s opinion article was headlined, “Elites love open borders, because lawless immigration doesn’t hit them.”
Illegal immigrants are allowed to stay here to await official consideration of their cases a decade from now, Murray wrote, “So naturally everybody stays. Which means everybody else in the world who wants to come will continue to come, until we break… And they evidently have zero concern about the deterioration which you can already see in cities across America.”
Many politicians understand the problem, he wrote. “They know that this country cannot absorb all the world’s poor. Yet they do not dare to say so. Instead, they preen and pretend they we can. They promote ideas like ‘sanctuary cities’” and condemn people who would protect the U.S. southern border.
The Wanderer spoke with three sources about illegal immigration currently, and also the weather situation. One of the three was a southern Arizona woman we’ve spoken with before who has historic cross-border ties, with family members in both Arizona and Sonora.
She asked that her name not be used because of her safety concerns.
On July 24 she said that illegal immigration “is worse every day. The news today had a piece about the cartels building roads within Yuma County to facilitate the invasion at the border. And the Border Patrol helps, according to some reports. The destruction of this invasion is growing worse every day.”
Yuma County is in southwestern Arizona, just above Mexico.
“A few weeks ago,” the woman said, “some of the family’s Mexican nationals came to Arizona for a short reunion after years of pandemic isolation. Sadly, the happy fun visit was cut short by new rules of the road imposed by the border crisis.
“For years the back-and-forth visits of Sonoran/Arizonan families lasted as long as energy and the need to get back to work were respected. That meant often driving at night both back and forth. Not now!
“The Mexican contingent [of her family] here recently, traveling in their car with Mexican license plates, no longer feels safe at night on the highways in northern Mexico which are often also used by cartels,” she said.
“This is just a bit more of the destruction excessive legal and illegal immigration confers on both sending and receiving countries and their families.
“There are better ways to help people in other countries and such ways should be the focus of our government and our Church,” she said. “Where are the missionaries who go forth with all the gifts of the Gospel and of our culture established under God and the natural law? Fr. Eusebio Kino brought both Gospel and European culture to Mexico and the Pimeria Alta of Arizona. And he is loved by all.”
Kino was a major Jesuit missionary from Europe who traveled around the Southwest in time spanning the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
“He spread the Gospel, knowledge of cattle raising, building churches and housing, and seeds of all kinds for food,” the southern Arizona woman said. “There are no toppled or defaced murals of Fr. Kino as there are of Fr. Junipero Serra. He is universally loved on both sides of the border.
“Ahem, bishops. Andale,” she said, using a Spanish word than can mean “Hurry along” or “Hurry up.”
As for the current heat wave, the woman said: “It is obvious that humans have created microclimates which can be altered for the better to a degree. But the role of human-caused global changes in climate is still controversial, especially as knowledge about radical climate changes which occurred when the world’s population and industry were much smaller seems to suggest causation other than humans.
“Of course, the huge currents in the Pacific, El Niño and La Niña are now doing their dance, as they have been doing for centuries,” she said. “Although their existence and their effect on the entire Pacific coast was well known in the Americas for centuries, the understanding of their dance and the effect on the climate worldwide is still not completely understood.
“Perhaps they have an effect on the whole of the world, which some experts are now beginning to study,” she said.
“What is said by some is that the position of these intriguing currents predicts hotter weather in the U.S. for at least the rest of 2023,” the woman said. “This phenomenon is worth watching. It is probably something young people should know about. Lots of information and controversy about the pair.”
On July 24 conservative Republican political consultant Constantin Querard told The Wanderer: “The crisis on the border is almost always ignored on CNN, MSNBC, and the rest, and it gets fairly steady coverage on Fox News and stations further to the right.
“I’m not sure that will change much in the near future,” Querard said. “But the impact that border security or other critical issues like the national debt, inflation, health-care freedoms, etc. will have on electoral prospects are still of lesser importance than the identity of the GOP nominee for president.
“If it is Trump, then issues will again take a back seat to personalities in a Biden vs. Trump rematch, with perilous prospects for Republicans,” he said. “We shake our heads at the number of voters who voted against $2 gas, a strong economy, and their own personal economic interests, but not relating to people who would do that doesn’t change the fact that those people exist in large numbers and help to decide close elections.
“If the GOP picks a nominee who can help take personalities out of the equation, then national issues like a porous border will greatly benefit GOP candidates and electoral prospects,” said Querard, who supports Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president.
The Wanderer asked Querard, considering DeSantis’ decline in the polls, if he still considered DeSantis the major GOP alternative to Trump.
“Still a two-man race,” Querard replied. “I’m not sure anyone else in the race is seriously running against Trump. A few are running against Trump (Chris Christie, Mike Pence) but aren’t serious. Most of the rest are largely auditioning for roles other than president. They’re serious, but many are auditioning FOR Trump, so they’re not running against him.
“I know the media wants it to be Trump, but I don’t think efforts at talking down DeSantis’ chances are having much effect,” Querard said. “Debates will matter, early states will matter a lot.”
As regards current weather, Querard said: “If your thesis is that the combined activity of eight billion people on the planet is having an effect on the planet’s climate, then that’s a reasonable enough claim that I’d be willing to listen to the science behind it, then compare it to the science that purports to refute it.
“The problem is that like every major issue,” he said, “especially one so tied into control over the planet’s economic and often personal freedoms, politicians have taken over, and you can’t make out legitimate scientific voices over the cacophony of politicians trying to spin everything their way.”
The Coming Backlash
On July 25 northern California conservative commentator Barbara Simpson told The Wanderer regarding illegal immigration: “I think that one of these days, the backlash will happen as people grow tired of the invasion of illegals helped by the policies of Biden.
“Border towns and counties are inundated with the needs of these people and there is no assistance from Washington, not to say what it is costing in terms of dollars,” Simpson said. “When push comes to shove, this aspect is what will affect the election and the GOP will either be helped or hurt by it. Depends on how they handle it. At this point they’re on thin ice.”
“As for the climate,” Simpson said: “Blaming the worldwide heat wave on climate change because of our use of fossil fuels is laughable, to say the least. They simply illustrate their shallow thinking.”
On that note, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was slammed on July 25 for blaming MAGA Republicans for the heat wave. Critics noted that China and India as well as other countries are much greater polluters.
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