“Avocado price spike illustrates danger to U.S. economy of Mexican border closure” ran a headline from MarketWatch. “So is this what it’s come to?,” I thought to myself. Here we are in the midst of an historic migrant surge along the southern border, the latest battle in a long running immigration war which the American people are losing badly, and all MarketWatch seems to care about is the price of avocados going up.
That’s bad but not surprising.
But what really concerns me is that it’s not clear that Donald Trump differs in any substantial way on immigration from the editors of MarketWatch.
When he ran for president in 2016 under the slogan “Make America Great Again,” Trump resonated with ordinary American voters as no presidential candidate ever has, at least no one in my experience.
Hated by the bi-coastal elites, the New York real estate developer showed a remarkable ability to connect with average Americans in “flyover country” who felt, with good reason, that their concerns were being ignored by the nation’s business, academic and political leaders.
For my part, I’ve never in my life had more fun in politics than watching elitist Republican heads – I mean you Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, George Will, et. al. – explode in rage as Trump rhetorically slaughtered their sacred globalist cows. MAGA, Make America Great Again, will surely go down as among the most memorable of all campaign slogans.
And nothing said MAGA like that favorite chant of those on the Trump Train, “Build that wall!”
But now, over two years into the Trump administration, it’s fair to wonder whether that wall ever will be built.
It was just last Friday that Trump threatened to close the border with Mexico if Mexico didn’t do something on their side about the migrant surge into the US.
That promise didn’t even last a week, with Trump reversing himself today and saying he’d give Mexico a year to stop the flow of drugs and migrants across the US Mexico border.
Now one could make an economic argument against closing the border. as Reason does, by pointing out the costs of such a move. Doubtless there would be costs, at least in the short term, involved in any border closure.
But nowhere in the article does it seem to occur to Reason that there are remarkable costs involved by continuing our current immigration, migration, refugee resettlement, anchor baby and asylum scams.
Donald Trump was criticized last year for putting the cost of illegal immigration at $250 billion. The fact checkers are AP tut-tutted the president, saying that his figures were based on a 2017 paper by FAIR which put the cost at $115,894,597,664 per year. Naturally, AP cast doubt on the methodology of the study.
For my part, I can’t vouch for the methodology of the study, so for arguments sake let’s cut FAIR’s number in half. That still comes to over $57 billion annually. Hardly chump change. If you want to oppose Trump’s threat to close the border on economic grounds, it’s important to look at both the costs and the benefits. This Reason does not do.
But for a moment let’s forget about Trump’s promise to close the border if the current migrant surge continues. Instead, let’s ask this question: What alternative plan does Trump have? Perhaps one could argue that closing the border, even temporarily, is a bad idea. But if not that, then what?
According to a March 27 article in the Washington Post, “The U.S. has hit a ‘breaking point’ at [the] border amid immigration surge.” If you’re a Trump supporter, ask yourself, Is this what you voted for? If I wanted a border surge, I’d have voted for Hillary Clinton. She all but promised to give the country away during her campaign. But Trump promised us something better.
Trump promised to do something about nonsense like this…and like this…and like this.
This border surge has been going on now for several months. Has Trump done anything but tweet about it? Oh, I forgot, earlier this week he sent his son-in-law Jared Kushner out to talk about, among other things, immigration on Laura Ingrahm’s show on Fox, so there’s that.
So let’s see, so Trump, on his signature issue, during the most severe migrant surge ever seen on the southern border, has managed to 1) make empty promises to close the border in a press conference, 2) make Tweets about closing the border, and 3) send Jared Kushner – quite possibly the least credible member of the Trump administration – on Fox to talk about closing the border.
But the border still isn’t closed.
If that weren’t enough, he’s now giving Mexico an entire year to keep sending us more welfare migrants before closing the border.
Apparently, this is the plan.
Underwhelmed?
I thought so.
We have a five alarm fire on the border, and our president appears to be asleep at the wheel. Perhaps he’ll prove me wrong. Maybe there’s a method to all this madness. Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe Trump will reverse himself tomorrow and take decisive action. He’s a man given to sudden changes. I hope so. But hope, as someone once said, is not a strategy.
But let’s not be overly pessimistic. All is lost. The country may be burning down, but at least the cost of avocados will remain low for the foreseeable future. So there’s that.
Doubtless, the fine folks at MarketWatch will be pleased.
Amazing way to take over a country without firing a shot – just threaten to block the avocado supply!
The FED are also going to be hard pressed to install a new printing machine each day to make sure the crisp paper bills keep flowing to the 800 new daily “citizens”.
It is amazing. It appeases that America’s determines to keep doing the wrong thing until nothing is left. I just listened to Paul Elliott and a sermon he preached, apparently, just after the Supreme Court legalized same sex marriage. He spoke of God’s judgment on nations. Perhaps this is ours.