Some Democrats, Trump agree on border

While Democrats continue to focus on undoing the last election, an obsession that may only ensure President Trump’s reelection, the southern border continues to fall apart.

Things have gotten so bad at the border that it’s no longer just Trump saying it’s an emergency. Even The New York Times agrees with him. The paper of record has been running front page stories detailing how badly the border is being overrun, with unsustainable strain on manpower and resources.

Naturally, the Times does not use Trump’s “national emergency” language. That would give the president a huge victory and lots of  Twitter material. Likewise, the Associated Press can only bring itself to refer to the chaos as a situation “that Trump calls a crisis.”

But whatever they call it, the long-festering problem is undeniably out of control.

Recently, Thomas Friedman, the Times’ foreign affairs columnist and dean of liberal pundits, went to the border to see for himself. Afterward he wrote a remarkable column in which he actually agreed with Trump’s two main points.

Friedman says he’s “more certain than ever that we have a real immigration crisis” on our hands, and that “the solution is a high wall with a big gate.”

Any agreement with Trump on any subject is usually considered treasonous by the left. Never mind whether it’s true or not. Give Friedman credit for honesty and courage in the face of left-wing rage and intolerance. He’s lucky he wasn’t tarred and feathered and run out of town by “woke” liberals.

The general unwillingness on both sides to agree on obvious facts is what causes gridlock. Rather than compromise, each side is just waiting until its own hold on power is sufficient to allow it to enact its own agenda complete. For the left, that means open borders and automatic citizenship for everyone. For the right, it means control of the border and selective immigration.

Some Democrats now realize we can’t always have millions of immigrants just pouring through. There has to be control. But even Democrats who agree in principle blame the entire border situation on Trump and try to make their own tweaked solutions sound more compassionate than anything Republicans would ever do.

Friedman, for example, envisions a wall with a really big smart gate. This presumably would be a compassionate wall, a welcoming wall. In other words, a Democratic wall, not an “immoral” Trump-Republican wall.

Many Democrats still insist walls don’t work, but they’re wrong. There are now technologically advanced walls on the border that are working remarkably well. Some of them were put in areas that were overrun with illegals, and the new walls stopped such entry cold. You don’t have to take Trump’s word for it. That’s the testimony of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Friedman.

Effective new walls allowed the permanent, law-abiding, homeowning residents on both sides — Mexicans and Americans alike — to live normal lives free from the crime and chaos they had endured for so long. It’s easy for others to pontificate from afar about “diversity” and “compassion” and “who we are as a nation” when they don’t live in the chaotic areas themselves.

The Pentagon is now moving $1.6 billion to wall construction at Trump’s order and plans to shift $6.1 billion altogether, funds that Democrats would not allocate through Congress. If Democrats don’t get on board with border control pretty soon, then untold migrant families will continue to suffer needlessly, and the Democrats themselves will face an even bigger hurdle in the next election than the roaring economy.

As David Frum, writing in The Atlantic, put it, “If liberals insist that only fascists will enforce borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals refuse to do.”

Fascists, of course, means Republicans. Such name-calling may gratify virtue-signaling Democrats, but Republicans aren’t fascists. They’re realists.

So is Trump. Get ready for four more years.

Mark Godburn is a bookseller in Norfolk and the author of “Nineteenth-Century Dust-Jackets” (2016).