Ruminations on the House Hearings

Although the Senate hearings on a Guest Worker program seemed to provide something of a forum for interesting, competing views, the House hearings on “Border Vulnerabilities and International Terrorism” seemed less about learning facts than about publically conflating immigration issues with security issues to the exclusion of sensible discussion.  Today’s NYTimes editorial page opines:

The hearing was useful only if the problem of illegal immigration consists mainly of narco-traffickers who decapitate police officers in Tijuana and send drugs in 18-wheelers across the border at Laredo, or Islamic fundamentalists who sneak into the United States disguised as Mexicans. “It’s probably already happened,” said Sheriff Rick Flores of Webb County, Texas, one of several witnesses who obliged the Republicans by depicting life on the southern border as something out of a “Mad Max” movie.

There are, of course, very serious concerns about border violence and drug trafficking. But they can never be dealt with effectively without the other pillars of sensible immigration reform, the ones that House Republicans are trying to undermine by stage-managing a specter of border chaos.

The full editorial is here.

-jmc