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The Republican Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, assures that the anticipated increase in the flow of migrants at the border when the so-called Title 22 is an “invasion” and therefore provides for the possibility that state military intervention may be justified without violating federal law. But, according to the dictionary, invading is defined as “entering by force in a place to occupy it” or “introducing oneself without right or justification in other people’s affairs or functions”.
With that simplicity that characterizes Abbott’s anti-immigrant statements, it can be easily inferred that the governor does not have the slightest idea of geopolitics, and above all that he does not know how to differentiate categories of analysis to address a specific regional problem, as in this case the Mexico-United States border; but above all, the Texan president fails to discern that, by irresponsibly invoking “war powers”, he must justify before the law that the “invader” has a military strategy -read, with weapons-, which, of course, is a falsehood, because the only thing immigrants want is to apply for asylum, using their own hope as their only weapon.
The fact is that, if this It will happen or not, it remains to be seen, since such an action has all the characteristics of culminating in a court battle. But beyond that, the intentions of Abbott and other Republicans is to exploit the perception that the growing presence of migrants in the border area – many of them awaiting the elimination of the Title 42 to apply for asylum in the United States—constitutes an “invasion”, in order to influence public opinion and stir up its most anti-immigrant base.
And of course this is not new . Over the years, there have been reports of the existence of paramilitary groups that have taken on the task of “monitoring” the southern border, dressed in protective military vests, carrying heavy weapons, driving off-road vehicles and, above all, with that stern look Hollywood style to intimidate anyone who approaches. Groups like the Minutemen a few years ago jumped into the news arena for their unofficially regulated actions on the southern border.
That is, what it seems What Abbott does not care about is the influence his words may have on those anti-immigrants who do not hesitate to literally take up arms to “defend” the border. We already witnessed it in 2019 when an unbalanced man, driven by the hateful rhetoric that Abbott and other anti-immigrants outline, shot up a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, killing to 22 people and injuring dozens more. The victims were mostly Hispanic. The attacker, a white man, was accused, among other things, of committing hate crimes.
That is to say, it is a fact that the rhetoric Incendiary generates violence, but that matters little to Republican figures like Abbott. They only have their sights set on exploiting the migration issue; not in looking for solutions to what does not work in said migratory system.
But if you want to talk about real invasions, let’s mention a very recent one: the bloody takeover of the federal Capitol on January 6, 2021 by fans of Donald Trump, who had the intention of preventing the victory of Joe Biden as president of the United States from being certified Joined. That did constitute a violent invasion that resulted in deaths and injuries. And it was sparked by the incendiary rhetoric of Trump himself and his lieutenants who, in today’s sun, continue to downplay what the entire world witnessed: an angry racist mob seeking a coup, convinced that Trump had been “robbed ” the election, something that the former president continues to affirm.
More invasions?: Grenada, Panama, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Central America, Haiti and a very long etcetera. Sound familiar?
Therefore, it is unheard of that the same Republicans who speak of an “invasion” of undocumented immigrants are the ones who have obstructed all attempts to regularize millions of human beings who are already among us, because in this way they continue to exploit their labor in essential areas of our economy without providing them with labor protections. Capitalism at its best, supply and demand that doesn’t bother them until election season arrives. So they are more papist than the Pope, as “defenders” of law and order.
Speaking of law and order, the Republicans also complain about drug trafficking on the border and in the interior of the country, and blame only Mexico. But we all know that drug trafficking that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in Mexico is driven by drug use in the United States.
Given this reality that bursts in their faces all the time, they only use excuses revictimizing the society that consumes drugs, because in no way would it occur to them to end an international multimillion-dollar business, whose profits also extend their tentacles into US territory, because as the saying “it takes two to tango”.
In short, the word “invasion” is used by anti-immigrants very easily. Immigrants do not leave their countries for the love of art. They make the journey to the North looking for a better life. Their weapon is their work that is exploited with starvation wages and without benefits or protections. And the immigration reform that would regularize those who already live among us and that would establish mechanisms so that those who want to come to work do so without having to cross without documents is ironically blocked by the same Republicans who accuse migrants of “invading us.”
Are those Republicans those who have really “invaded” their party, turning it into a community dominated by xenophobes and racists engaged in a war against diversity, which has been the letter of introduction of this experiment that we call the United States.