Sun Quarter Pass

 

The Universal Solar Calendar calls January 5, Sun Quarter Pass. 

Down in Eagle Pass, Texas, along the sun-drenched border of the U.S. and Mexico, a surge of immigrants has hit what leaders called historic levels. In response, the U.S. Border Patrol has shifted its resources to processing migrants, delaying wait times for travelers looking to cross the international bridge. “People are used to doing three, four hours in line during the holidays,” an Eagle Pass merchant told the press, "But thirteen, fourteen hours? That’s ridiculous.” He said it’s hurting business. “My clients from over there did not get to come through" during the holidays, he said. “I did the numbers. I think I missed out on about 40% of my business.”

A massive delegation of about 60 House Republicans visited Eagle Pass in a gimmicky photo-op on Wednesday, but local business owners and city leaders said they hope the visit wasn’t just for show. However, instead of actually working to solve the problem, its obvious that the House Republicans are desperately trying to keep immigration as a hot-button issue to use against Democrats in 2024. 

To address the border issue, President Joe Biden has repeatedly asked Congress for additional funding for Customs and Border Patrol officers and for additional immigration courts. Despite Republican demands for exactly such funding, House speaker Mike Johnson wrote to Biden in December demanding that instead he impose stricter immigration rules and build a border wall through executive action. In essence, Johnson is saying that the White House, not Congress, should deal with the border.  

House Republicans are also preparing to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on the grounds that he has failed to meet the requirements of the Secure Fence Act, which defines operational control of the border as a status in which not a single person or piece of contraband improperly enters the country. Not a single secretary of Homeland Security has ever met that standard of perfection, yet articles of impeachment have reportedly already been written. 

House leaders have refused to provide funds to help Ukraine fight off the Russian invasion unless the measure also contains their own extreme immigration policies, patterned on Trump’s. Those policies include significantly narrowing asylum programs or even ending them altogether, outlawing the electronic application system the Biden administration put in place to require appointments to apply for asylum, ending parole programs for Afghan and Ukrainian refugees, and using eminent domain to take private property for construction of a border wall. Their plan has no provision for creating a pathway to citizenship for so-called Dreamers, those brought to the U.S. as children, although a strong majority of Americans support such a pathway.

Although Biden has said he will offer significant concessions in negotiations even though those concessions will anger progressive Democrats, House Republicans say they will reject any compromise and will insist on their own policies. That is to say, House Republicans, who currently have a majority of only two following the recent resignations of Bill Johnson of Ohio, George Santos of New York, and Kevin McCarthy of California, are bowing to their far-right members and insisting that until that faction’s policies are put in place over those of the Senate and the president, they will refuse to fund Ukraine, whose defense from Russian aggression is key to our own national security.  Also outstanding is supplemental funding for Israel, as well as humanitarian assistance for Palestinian civilians in Gaza. 

House Republicans surely know such extreme measures and policies have no chance of passing the Senate, much less of getting Presidential approval, but instead they are trying to maintain immigration as a polarizing issue for political purposes.  One Texas Republican even said the quiet part out loud, telling CNN, “Let me tell you, I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating.”