RATS!!!: Abbott's Busing Of Migrants Is Working...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas | Just when you thought you were dog-tired of using damning words against heartless Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, along comes word that his kinda-devious plan of sending migrants to New York and California is...working.

And now, Paul Revere's Massachusetts has joined the howling chorus asking President Joe Biden to, well, do something about the southern border.

Oddly, as Abbott and fellow GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis continue chartering overland buses to hustle migrants off to Democratic Party-governed cities and states, the number of apprehended migrants keeps dropping, according to officials with the U.S. Border Patrol. How to reconcile that?

It's a flawed plan Abbott and DeSantis spin sillily in that, well, we're not either alleviating or ridding ourselves of the problem when we shuffle it to one of our own other 50 states. 

But as an effective political wedge issue, the darned thing is doing what Abbott and DeSantis want it to do - pressure Democrats. The president, a Democrat, hasn't taken the bait, however.

Yesterday, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat (shown in photo at right), did implore Biden to come to the aid of the cities being forced to absorb the thousands of arriving migrants. She joined New York City Mayor Eric Adams, another Democrat but one who has of late taken a harsher approach to the situation in The Big Apple, more and more mouthing Republican platitudes about the southern border.

This excerpt from politico.com: [ "Democratic governors and mayors, mayors in Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, here in New York, El Paso, Brownsville, all of the mayors have been saying that this is a national problem, and we need national leadership," Adams said at a press conference in Manhattan.

"We all should be talking about this in a very real way. And there was a moment that I felt, as though, was I the only one that was seeing this? ... I was asking myself, are we the only ones that are seeing what’s happening to human beings?"

Gov. Healey and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul have made private entreaties and public pleas to Biden administration officials for faster work authorization. Massachusetts’ all-Democratic federal delegation sent a letter to top Biden immigration officials last week urging them to expedite processing employment authorization documents for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

In New York City, where asylum-seekers are sleeping on sidewalks outside a makeshift intake center, Adams is again blaming the White House for not sending enough federal aid to the city that’s seen more than 93,000 newcomers since last spring.

So far, the Biden administration has barely budged on the politically thorny issue, saying the national immigration problem requires a congressional solution. ]

It may, although there has to be a way other than strapping ourselves with cheap, hardly-eclectic gamesmanship of the sort Abbott and DeSantis offer.

Immigration is and always has been a responsibility of the federal government. Southern Border states run by Republicans such as Texas and Arizona (California and New Mexico governed by Democrats not so much) are now using the issue for political gain. Fair or honest or not, the game is being played. Americans have come to care, is our feeling at this point.

And crafty Republicans are making points with the overall citizenry. No question about that. Shallow, often-wrong issues tend to do that with an otherwise-busy population. Buses not branded Greyhound rolling down the highway draw attention, as they do when they pull into a city's downtown sidewalk and unload poor-looking passengers.

The issue needs to be resolved.

Showman Abbott likes to crow endlessly about "Biden's Open Border" policy, but he governs Texas and, so far, Texas itself has failed to stop the flow of however-fewer number of immigrants still coming...

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