The Border

Policy Solutions Abound, but Cowards Rule.

The Republicans are, once again, proving to be utterly useless in defending the vital interests and sovereignty of the United States.

Just today the GOP House passed a law to mandate e-verify, but with cutouts so broad that it the legislation, which will die in the Senate anyway, is practically useless. These cuts are mainly focused on agriculture workers, the vast majority of whom are foreign born.

But that does not mean there is nothing determined lawmakes could do to deal with this crisis. There are several policy options, some of which have been used in recent times, and it is those policy options which we will focus on in this brief piece.

First off, governors have the power to protect their individual states from various threats, up to and including closing state borders. This power has been upheld twice, first in Jacobsen v. Massachusetts, and for a second time in Zemel v. Rusk.

No states enacted hard border closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, but this power was always available to them. Tribal governments, however, did take advantage of this recognized power and several of them completely closed their borders to non-residents for the duration of the crisis.

Governors serious about protecting their states should invoke the spectre of COVID, Denge, Hemorrhagic fever and the plethora of serious and deadly diseases present in Central and South America, as recognized by the CDC. Borders could be closed using any excuse available, ranging from health concerns, to concerns about environmental harm, declarations of emergency, disaster or whatever it takes. Let the courts spend time litigating these actions while governors busy themselves protecting their residents.

There is also a second option, that of states sending their own police, national guard forces, and other armed law enforcement to the border. This has been done before, but only on a very small scale and only just for show.

Still, the Justice Department has acknowledged states are free to do this on as wide a scale as they please.

Republican states control tens of thousands of troops and even more police officers. Many state, like Georgia, have multi-billion dollar surpluses which could be used to fund these deployments.

Republican controlled states also have helicopters, intelligence units, drones, transport aircraft and even armoured vehicles at their disposal and on a much wider scale than the Department of Homeland Security. DHS would be unable to challenge this flood of equipment, and would become a second-rate actor on the border.

If you care about a place, if you are "patriotic", if you are the "American First" party, you defend that place with every tool at your disposal.

The GOP is just as culpable for the Great Replacement as any Democrat.