My understanding is that this is the way refugees have taken to traveling, to avoid the various predators that prey on them. But
- It does not represent an increase in refugees, just a concentration of them for safety.
- It is not going to reach the US border.
- If it did reach the US border, it would not be allowed into the country. That, in any rational world, such a caravan is less of a threat to border security than widely dispersed little groups sneaking over the border by stealth. After all, our problem is not the inability to repel unarmed groups of a few thousand!
Rather, this is the right wing’s wet dream come true. Video to dramatize the size of the illegal immigrant problem, and to present it in the most visually dramatic and threatening form.
The problem, in my mind, is that liberals (and I generally count myself as one) have way overplayed their hand, when it comes to immigration. It’s fine to be pro-immigration. It’s fine to object when longtime productive citizens are deported because their parents came here in violation of law (or are suspected of thus.) It is fine to point out our immigrant heritage, and to predict that continued immigration will help us a lot more than it harms us.
What is not fine, at least as I am seeing it, is to pretend that is not even a legitimate political viewpoint to want to limit immigration. It is human nature to object to rapid cultural change, and that is what results when you get very rapid immigration into an area. Many of us, for one reason or another, may not be threatened by this particular cultural change – often because of our location or social station or whatever – but that does not make the concerns of other Americans in any way evil. (Think how differently a lot of us would react if the incoming were all strict fundamentalists, for example.)
Furthermore, the portion of America that is unhappy with immigration has a legitimate gripe: in recent decades, they followed small d democratic process, elected people (Republicans) to represent their views… and got double crossed. Mainstream business Republicans until recently ran the party and routinely presented themselves as champions of the anti-immigrant forces, but actually saw to it that business Republicans always had plenty of illegal immigrants to hire… because they are not only cheap, but also extremely compliant. This was a deliberate double cross – I have Republican friends who run local agricultural operations, and they were never worried that Reagan and his sort actually intended to deprive them of their labor pool.
The problem for all of us now is that this double crossed anti-immigration wing is furious beyond rational thought. They followed the rules of a democratic society, got their legislation passed, and now can’t get the laws enforced. Which is a recipe for turning against the rule of law.
However, and this is the important thing, we liberals have consistently played right into Republican hands on this issue. You would think that anti-immigration forces would hate the Republican Party for the double cross – and to some extent they do. During the primary season of '16, many expressed serious doubts about Trump’s competitors because they did not trust them on immigration. Trump’s hateful rhetoric appealed largely because of this.
But meanwhile, by speaking out in favor of illegal immigration and dramatizing the slow-walking of law enforcement, liberals protected the Republican leadership by sounding so much more antagonistic to these people. And, above all, this video evidence of an alleged invading army of illegal immigrants is meant to bait liberals into saying it is all okay. Reminding all sorts of voters that even if President Trump does break laws, his liberal opponents openly condone breaking laws, in this case welcoming an invading army.
So… although that caravan poses no physical threat to us at all, it poses an enormous political threat, if you are left of center or a centrist.
