It's been blamed for everything from bad acne to bad beer, so it makes sense that if the White House needs a scapegoat on immigration, global warming would fit the bill! America's supposed border czar, Vice President Kamala Harris (who's supposed to be addressing the crisis they won't call a crisis) pulled a Barack Obama this week when she was squeezed on the administration's non-action. According to Harris, the cause of the surge isn't Joe Biden's ridiculous open-borders policy, it's the environment. Apparently, the thermometer -- not Democrats -- are to blame for this mess along our southern front! If it's weren't so absurd, we'd all be laughing as hard as she was when a reporter asked if she was visiting the border.
This week, though, her climate change fall guy was too much for most Americans to take. There's "the need for economic development," Harris insisted, and "a need for resilience around extreme climate" because "severe climate experiences" have been "dampening" agriculture in the Northern Triangle nations where most of the border-crossers come from." Joe Biden started this climate con earlier this week -- a trick he learned from the 44th president when Obama redirected every question from the Syrian civil war to the refugee crisis to the planet's temperature.
Of course, as the New York Post editorial board points out, that's a pretty convenient dodge. There wasn't "a mention of the corrupt governments that prevent economic progress -- and are sure to pocket the bulk of any foreign aid meant to develop those economies or make their farms more 'resilient.' Nor did she touch on the gangs that terrorize the common people there, giving them more urgent reason to flee." And that doesn't begin to touch on the whole "come-to-our-country-illegally-and-we-won't-punish-you" posture that's been beaming out of this White House like a bat signal ever since Joe Biden moved in.
Senator John Boozman (R-Ark.), who was the chair of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, can't believe the president still isn't taking the catastrophe seriously. "It's absolutely crazy," he shook his head. "I spent a lot of time on the border," he explained on "Washington Watch." "Our border agents are... trying to do all they can. But they're getting just besieged. And I think that's the correct word. To say that this isn't a crisis is so hypocritical. When I was having to deal on a weekly basis regarding the border, [it] was considered a crisis at that point. And now it's beyond imagination."
He talked about children showing up at the U.S. facilities with a postcard taped to their chest or the phone number of a supposed relative. They were just dropped off, Boozman said. The only way the border is secure, he insisted, is as a source of income for coyotes and criminals. "It's secure in the sense that the cartels know everybody is crossing and they're getting a cut out of everyone that crosses. They're enriching themselves. But it is truly a huge, huge, huge problem." Back when he was chairing the subcommittee, Boozman couldn't believe the backlog for adjudicating all of these cases. It was a little over a half-million people then. "We thought that that was unimaginably large. Truly, a crisis. Now it's swelled up to 1.3 million or something like that..." And frankly, he explained, even the organizations trying to help on the humanitarian side -- like NGOs -- can't keep up.
So for the vice president to flippantly dismiss this as some sort of environmental problem isn't just wrong, it's outrageous. Real people are exploited, preyed upon, and killed. And the biggest irony of all is that most of these men and women are trying to flee the oppressive governments that Democrats want to institute here! Larry Taunton, an expert on Marxism, wonders why no one is pointing that out. "We keep talking about a border crisis... but no one seems to be asking, why are they coming to our border? I mean, if cattle were stampeding across you or your property, you would want to know what is going on... I went to the other side of the border," he said. "I crossed South America. And in talking to refugees, what you discover is that they are fleeing socialism and unreasonable lockdowns in search of freedom."
Frankly, if these illegal immigrants understood what the Democratic Party stands for now, they might stay put -- because it will be no better in America if the Left gets its way than where they came from. There's an environmental problem, to be sure -- but it's the climate of the extremism that's making it worse for everyone.
