By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — A San Diego woman told The Wanderer how she had seen life change since she moved to the southern California ocean-side hub just north of Mexico decades ago.
When obeying lawful border regulations had been regarded as more important, there was less need to emphasize physical border security, said “Sally,” a woman who asked that her real name not be used.
However, with drug cartels turning more active and unauthorized crossings northward as a problem, an evening jaunt to Tijuana by Americans wasn’t thought of so lightly.
San Diego used to be regarded as a quiet Navy town, and its residents would cross southward for dinner and drinks and some sporting events, Sally said.
“It was more common to do. You didn’t think there might be danger involved, or big problems,” Sally said. “As the years went on, you would hear that people would get mugged, or people started getting the feeling it wasn’t as safe down there — or assaulted and harassed for money, and it wasn’t considered fun outings anymore.
“You had to be more careful where you went, or how late you stayed,” she added.
And now, with entire “caravans” of unauthorized migrants arriving on the U.S. doorstep, “people didn’t even want to be near there,” Sally said. “. . . I think of it as being more problematic,” no longer a place where San Diegans show off Tijuana to their visiting grandparents.
And San Diego wasn’t a rarity in undergoing this change.
When there was no big border barrier on the land, little kids along the international line in Arizona would cross over to join their Mexican playmates then run back home for dinner. There was little need for barricades and sensors when people internalized the importance of respecting each nation’s sovereignty, even though kids probably wouldn’t phrase it in such technical terms.
But when the law became broken so lightly, the need to have get-tough regulations hardened. A trusting family doesn’t ask for locks on every cabinet and drawer inside the home. However, with little sneak thieves under the roof, chains and keys sprout.
Leftists know that more than ever south of the international line, the idea is propagated that anyone who manages to get a foot into the U.S. can stay here indefinitely, with U.S. government assistance. Yet the left dares claim there’s no national emergency, and that in fact not only should there be no new walls, but that existing walls should be torn down.
Imprisoned as usual in their own ideology, they actually dare claim that President Trump just made up the idea there’s a border crisis.
When Ronald Reagan told Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, that was because East Berlin’s Communist slaves wanted to get out but the regime didn’t want them set loose. It wasn’t because Westerners were being thwarted from stampeding into massive Communist prison territory.
Reagan certainly didn’t suggest that his own White House should do away with its security fencing, nor that all of Washington, D.C.’s, politicians should stop locking their home and office doors and gates and tell D.C. police to go look for a different line of work.
I recall one congressman wanting to be sure I was out of his Capitol Hill office by closing time one day in the 1970s, even though I was just visiting with a young friend of mine who happened to work on his staff.
And if some security consciousness was appropriate in the 1980s, in Reagan’s day — Reagan, who barely survived a bullet on a D.C. hotel’s sidewalk — it’s far more proper now.
National radio host Rush Limbaugh told his listeners on February 15 that Trump increased the incentives for illegal immigration with the federal budget bill he had just signed because, among its provisions, it had funding to build more reception centers for unauthorized immigrants, more for bus transportation and for ankle bracelets instead of incarceration, as well as more food and medical care.
In Congress, Limbaugh said, there’s only one political party, not two, on immigration, and it’s united on the goal of frustrating voters into giving up on supporting Trump when they see he signs such a bill.
Phoenix radio talk host James T. Harris (KFYI, 550 AM) told listeners on February 15 that the funding measure “puts out the welcome wagon for illegal aliens.”
As for the nature of the radicals pushing to submerge the U.S. under illegal entry, some news outlets reported on February 18 that rowdy masked demonstrators invaded the privately run National Border Patrol Museum in El Paso and plastered disrespectful stickers on pictures of deceased border agents.
The Washington Examiner reported that protesters used strong, damaging adhesive as they “plastered dozens of images on pictures, glass, painted walls, mannequins, and vehicles throughout the building. They also posted the pictures on the faces of Border Patrol agents who died in the line of duty.”
The El Paso Times reported: “‘We feel this act was a disgrace, and the protest is misplaced against the men and women of the Border Patrol,’ said Carlos Favela, spokesman and executive vice president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 1929, the agents’ union in El Paso. Protesters crossed the line when they defaced exhibits and the memorial to fallen agents and should be prosecuted, Favela said.”
The Blaze conservative site reported on February 19 that outside the museum, “the activists remained, chanting, “F*** your walls, f*** your borders, we won’t take your f***ing orders.”
An Army Of Trumps
Conservative Republican political consultant Constantin Querard told The Wanderer on February 19 that the new federal budget law is depressing.
Querard, an Arizona resident, said in an email: “The budget bill demonstrated that there are no Democrats who are serious about border security or stopping illegal immigration, and that less than half of Republicans are serious about either topic as well. Given the threat represented by the lawlessness on our southern border, this is a very depressing fact.
“For most Democrats, the topic of border security is now one in the same as ‘Trump,’ and to support the rule of law or stopping the flow of drugs, weapons, and violence is the same as supporting Trump, so they will not do it for fear of their party’s primary voters,” Querard said.
“Voters will have one more chance, perhaps one final chance, to send a message in the 2020 elections, when they will get to re-elect Trump and defeat open-border politicians, or to do the opposite and likely end any real chance at an effective solution,” he said.
As for countries south of the border, “our neighbors to the south have long used the United States as a pressure-relief valve to avoid having to deal with the consequences of their own corruption and mismanagement,” Querard said.
“Ironically, our open borders has allowed these countries to delay improving the lives of their own citizens and has allowed them to extend their corruption and mismanagement.”
Rob Haney, a retired chairman of the Phoenix-based Maricopa County Republican Party, told The Wanderer that Trump truly sees the massive influx as a threat to this nation’s survival as a constitutional republic.
In a February 19 email, Haney said: “Speaking softly and carrying a big stick is not a diplomatic tactic President Trump uses. His style is more finesse with a sledgehammer in reserve. He tried finesse with a government shutdown in a vain attempt to get the border barrier. He now is employing his sledgehammer by approving the continuing resolution and declaring the Emergency Powers Act to build the wall.
“He clearly sees the illegal-alien invasion as an existential threat to our country’s survival as a constitutional republic,” Haney said.
“The nations south of us for the most part are governed by leftist ideologues who are morally and financially corrupt. They are about a generation ahead of us in their demise of Western civilization. Their ordinary citizens have lost the ability to affect the political destiny of their country,” he said, and added:
“The political rulers of these governments are pleased to encourage their underclasses to invade the United States. They thereby diminish the problems they would present to these rulers if they remained.
“The same leftist ideologues who populate the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union also dominate our justice system as well as our news media, education establishment, entertainment industry, and government institutions,” Haney said.
”Because of this corrupt dominance, we have also lost the ability to affect our political destiny.
“If anyone dares to oppose this dominance, they will be destroyed through the combined and coordinated attacks from these establishment powerbrokers. Hence, the continual attacks on Trump. The country needs an army of Trumps,” he said.
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