Would MAGA even listen to border solutions?
In last Sunday's column Ed Palm offers up sensible solutions to the border crisis along with a rational assessment of the wall proposal. His take is that a 2,000-mile border wall is a fool's quest that will never be effective for the reasons he cites. It would be "effective" for the wall-building contractors.
Ed provides a workable vision to identified and register immigrants, and allow them to do the work that needs to be done all over America. But we still need some kind of border "control" through which they must pass. I'd suggest a technology component in which a "virtual wall" could be constructed of wireless networks, cameras, sensors, drones and AI software that assist agents on patrol. Leveraging human assets with technology will cost a fraction of what a wall, and actually work.
MAGA Republicans insist that we must control the border, claiming the nation's security is in tremendous jeopardy. Most of us agree. Yet these are the same people who then argue there is no jeopardy in the epidemic of guns, or climate change, or Vladimir Putin's reign of terror.
They offer nothing in the way of ideas other than more screaming, more insults and hate for the people trying to manage the border crisis with decency, human rights, the laws of our nation and the constraints of executive authority. MAGA world demands "fix it!" and in the next breath demands massive spending cuts.
Ed offers a vision of a sensible solution, the kind of rational thinking more of our leaders should embrace. MAGA wants none of it. They want chaos and dysfunction, embellished with lies and hate. They get elected on the claim that government does not work and then set out to prove the point.
The jeopardy to this nation from the border crisis is certainly real. But the greater jeopardy is the cult of MAGA and its obsession with Donald Trump.
Mike Nicosia, South Kitsap
This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Would MAGA even listen to border solutions?
