Letters

The recently rejected bipartisan compromise bill that linked U.S. border security with funding to Ukraine has garnered the usual cries of partisan politics and Republican intransigence interfering with a fundamentally balanced and fair compromise of inter-party priorities.

John Neely echoed this refrain in his letter “Blatant Politics” [February 15] by citing the conservative Wall Street Journal regarding the bill’s merits. I, too, was lulled into thinking this was a worthy compromise until further examination found it fundamentally flawed.

First, why does the protection of our own border need to be tied to a $60 billion Ukraine aid package, a nation engulfed in a struggle to protect its own border? This is a war that was initially avoidable but for constant NATO pressure on Russia’s border and the West’s intransigence to compromise when withdrawal was in the offering from Russia only weeks into the beginning of fighting. You have President Joe Biden and former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to thank for scuttling treaty discussions. That is another topic entirely and requires knowledge of the history of the region.

The abject failure of Biden’s border policy is apparent to everyone, including the most die-hard liberal Democrat. This failure is directly attributed to our president’s direct abrogation of existing immigration policies, including the canceling of executive orders of his predecessor that stemmed the tide of immigration to a trickle. The differences in illegal inflows of immigration between the two administrations is stark and should be sobering to any casual observer.

Rather than stemming the flow of illegal immigrants by securing our border, the bill instead provided a threshold for allowable asylum seekers before the gates are closed. These immigrants are all taught to claim asylum for political or gang-related protection, but almost all are here because of financial distress and lack of opportunity in their homeland. Immigration laws are designed to prevent these poor folks from taking jobs away from American citizens and not be a burden on the state. The present burden on states throughout our nation is blatantly obvious, all politics aside.

The remedy here is to remove the loopholes in our immigration policy and enforce the law to the best of our ability. Yes, changes need to be made, but certainly not contingent on the border security of another nation halfway around the world.

In our bizarro world of Biden, he is ordering the U.S. Border Patrol to cut through and remove protective razor wire at the Texas border installed by the Texas National Guard to protect their common border. In effect, Biden is facilitating the border chaos, promoting lawlessness, and expediting the importation of drugs and human trafficking by the illegal cartels in exchange for conscripted future voting candidates.

John Porta

Westhampton