RIGHT SPEAK: The VERY Real Border Crisis

Jonathan Tobin, a man with whom I sometimes agree and sometimes don't, has written an opinion piece for National Review captioned "The Nonexistent Border Crisis", with which I sharply disagree.

The gist of Tobin's piece can be summed up quickly but fairly this way: 1) it's as wrong for the right as it is for the left to portray border and immigration events histrionically when circumstances don't support the melodrama; 2) President Trump has done that in recent days with his tweet storm over the border crisis (or non-crisis in Tobin's view); and 3) doing so puts the lie to the president's achievements in securing the border.

On the first point, pretty much anyone can agree that it's wrong for anyone to unnecessarily hyperventilate over events, whether they pertain to immigration or any other matter. The problem, of course, is that necessity (or its lack) is like beauty — it's in the eye of the beholder. Are the events so out of the ordinary or alarming as to require a sharp reaction? Depends on your point of view. I happen to think Tobin is completely wrong in assessing the crisis as "nonexistent", for reasons I'll shortly get into.

As to the second point, the president may have been reacting politically with his tweets, given the self-inflicted damage from his signing of the comprehensive budget bill into law, which was distinctly unfriendly to immigration enforcement and border control efforts. I said as much in a recent blog, but the follow-on to that is, "So what?" What president doesn't act and react politically? The real question is whether or not there is an emerging crisis at the border and how the president and his administration respond.

To make his claim, Tobin points to Trump's reaction to the so-called "caravan" of Central Americans traveling brazenly and illegally through Mexico en route to the United States to cross illegally and/or make asylum claims. He clearly feels it was an overreaction given the small number of people involved: somewhere between a 1,000 and 1,400. He also points to the fact that under Trump, illegal crossings (at least as evidenced by apprehensions) have slowed.