“Part of the problem is there are people in Washington, D.C. in positions of power to whom the border is just a nuisance, and I think some of them believe that illegal immigration is a moral good. It is not. It undermines legal immigration.”

–Senator John Kennedy (R, Louisiana)

Well, now I know why our government shut down travel and commerce. It wasn’t Covid 19. They needed buses, planes, convention centers, and hotels to transport and house the U.S.’s newest immigrants.

Actually, what’s happening at our southern border is no laughing matter. It’s a disaster that Team Biden created–a self-inflicted wound. It begs the question: what did they think would happen when they advertised in advance that the border would be open, and then lived up to their word?

Central Americans at the border stated they’d heard during the presidential campaign that a President Biden would open the border. They were probably packing before the election even took place.

One explanation for the mess has been that Team Biden wasn’t prepared with a plan to respond to a surge of this size. They have no plausible answer for that charge: if they were prepared, they just don’t care; if they weren’t prepared, it begs the question: “why?” So, Team Biden’s response is to deny there’s a mess down there.

There’s been limited media coverage of the border crisis due to an order from Team Biden. The president even stated in his recent press conference that he’d allow the media in once his team fixed the problem. This from the president who promised the most transparent administration possible. To use one of his favorite responses: “malarkey.”

Listen, we’re not exactly asking for the codes to the nuclear football here. This is our border, our border patrol officers, our tax dollars, and our country. We have a right to see what’s going on, ugly as it might be.

I would wager that no one reading this post would even dream of trying to enter another country without their passport in hand. Why should entry into our country be any different?

President Biden recently appointed VP Harris to be in charge at the border. Her Democrat primary platform included open borders–likely one of the reasons she failed to make the presidential timber cut before a single primary vote was cast.

Thus far, the vice president hasn’t gone to the border. In fact, her job assignment has been re-defined: she’s not in charge of the border; rather, she’s to be our point person for negotiations with the Northern Triangle to engage them in finding solutions.

This is a re-invention of the wheel, as the last administration had already negotiated with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador on handling asylum requests in their citizens’ home countries, rather than have them trek through Mexico to reach the border.

The U.S.’s border policy fell victim to one of many Biden executive orders, seemingly written to undo whatever the Trump Administration had accomplished. This has proved to be ill-advised.

Would it not have been wiser to focus on helping our own homeless citizens and improving legal immigration rather than encouraging a surge of illegal immigration we aren’t equipped to handle?

Whoever is in charge, if anyone, of whatever needs taking charge of, needs to get on the ball. A “head in the sand” approach will not work. President Biden, not Team Biden, would have to follow his conscience and reverse his team’s policies.

Did you see the video of the ten-year-old, alone and crying, who was saved by our border agents? My heart and thoughts went to my granddaughter, just a year younger than this boy. Would we want any of our children to land in such a dire predicament?

In what universe does a policy make sense that entices parents to abandon their children to the care of strangers so they can trek across Central America?

We can secure the border in a way that discourages illegal immigration. Both parties need to stop using the immigration crisis for political posturing. Even when they had control of both houses in Congress, President Bush and President Obama failed to enact significant immigration reform.

There is hope for solving this problem. Reasonable Democrats and Republicans in Congress–yes, there are some!–should unite to formulate an agreement whereby the border is secured, wall and all, in exchange for a path to citizenship for our dreamers, who were brought here not by their own choosing, and have been raised as Americans.

Both political parties could claim victory, but our country would be the real winner. Trump offered this deal to Congress; they declined. Remember?

We need a serious discussion about the merits of a rigorous path to citizenship for those who are here illegally but have blended into our way of life without committing any other crime. For that to be granted, the insistence on border control must be honored, or we’ll never get ahead of this problem.

Only when fair-minded people come together to form reasonable legislation will the longstanding problem of illegal immigration be solved. It won’t be easy and not all will agree with the outcome, but it can be done, and as citizens and voters we should insist on it.