The War on the American Border

The War on the American Border by Newt Gingrich
Originally published at Fox News

The struggle along America’s southern border is a war.
It is largely a psychological war. Foreigners are taunting the American government and trying to get the news media to focus on American law enforcement rather than the people trying to break into our country.

This struggle is historic. It is the tip of a wave of law breaking foreigners, who would love to move into the United States and dictate to law abiding Americans the terms under which the law breakers will be accepted, supported, and subsidized.

Ultimately, this war is a function of will power and cleverness.
The foreign invaders have a huge advantage. Most of the American news media and the American Left is on their side.

The news media does not want to explore the aggressiveness – and in some cases criminality – of those seeking to come into the United States. Nor do news outlets want to report on the total number of people who will illegally enter the United States over the next few years if the American border control system collapses.

The news media does not want to examine how many billions of dollars the Mexican cartels have made from human trafficking and assisting people to break American laws. Nor does it want to widely report stories about law-abiding Americans who are killed or harmed by people who are in the country illegally – such as the story of the 28-year-old 6th grade school teacher in Texas who was killed in a hit-and-run on Thanksgiving Day by an illegal immigrant who was on bond from an assault charge.

For the last several decades, the Left has tried to change the terms of the entire debate. The Left hates the term illegal immigrant. They prefer the softer (and less accurate) term undocumented worker. After all illegal immigrant implies that the person is doing something illegal. On the Left, that is an unthinkably negative description.

On the Left, everyone becomes a refugee seeking asylum. It doesn't matter if they come from middle-class families and live in safe towns. On the Left, they are transmuted into frightened, endangered people who should receive sympathy without scrutiny.

There is an entire network of left-wing organizations dedicated to recruiting and helping people break American immigration laws.
Additionally, there are very smart left-wing activists who fully understand how to manipulate the American news media.

Many of the illegal migrants are taught to memorize key phrases, so they will meet technical requirements the Border Patrol has to follow – even if the migrants are lying.

The American people love children and value families. This leads to the creation of rules which assume that any male with a young child must be the father. Yet, as the Secretary of Homeland Security has pointed out, “[I]n the last five months, we have a 314 percent increase in adults and children arriving at the border fraudulently, claiming to be a family unit.” Many of the adult male-and-child groups crossing the border are not family. In a number of cases, the child is being trafficked and brought to the United States to be sold into slavery or forced into prostitution.

The Left’s own emotional commitment to blaming the American government and siding with foreigners makes it impossible for them to deal with the reality of child exploitation by traffickers who are simply lying to the border authorities.

Further, the news media’s bias makes it virtually impossible for reporters to thoroughly investigate the role of human trafficking, slavery, and prostitution in funding and incentivizing the illegal flow of humans into the United States.

As you watch the struggle along the border remember two things:

First, this is an ongoing evolutionary conflict. Every day is a snapshot. You can’t look at it in isolation. Everyone is learning from everyone else. The leftist advisers are studying the Trump Administration and advising the would-be illegal immigrants what their next steps should be.

The government is watching the illegal immigrants and is modifying tactics to try to keep smothering their efforts, keep them off balance, and block them from getting into the United States.

The news media is constantly looking for new ways to embarrass the American government and put the illegal immigrants in the best possible light to build sympathy for them.

Second, there is a huge worldwide audience watching. Every estimate of foreigners who would like to move to the United States runs into the tens of millions – and many estimates run well over 100 million. All these people are watching and assessing their own chances of breaking the law and sneaking into the United States.

If the American government succeeds in closing down the caravan and blocking it from entering the United States, then these would-be immigrants may conclude they have to wait and follow the legal rules for coming to America.

The future is going to be very different depending on who wins the current war on our southern border.