Threat of shutdown is based on fake fears
Every single morning before the sun rises, Jorge Gonzalez is already hard at work in Mission, a border town. Gonzalez is a day laborer who focuses on home maintenance. He is also an undocumented immigrant. On the earnest savings that he and his wife have been able to put together, they have been able to afford a modest house in the Rio Grande Valley and assist both of their daughters financially when they went to college. Gonzalez is just one of an estimated 8 million undocumented immigrants who wake up each day and contribute to moving America forward by being a part of our labor force.
Recently, we have seen troops sent to the border. We have seen the children ripped from their mother’s arms at the border. We have seen our own government officials fire tear gas into a crowd of asylum seekers that had children in it. We have seen our president push for an incredibly expensive border wall that we absolutely do not need.
Now the president even seems willing to shut down the government and furlough workers in the middle of the holiday season if border wall funding is not included in the budget that Congress will propose at the end of December.
“If we don’t get what we want one way or another, whether it’s through you, through the military, through whatever you want to call it, I will shut down the government,” Trump told House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,D-Calif, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in the Oval Office on Tuesday.
Through all of this, we have heard the same justification for these progressively aggressive actions: The border is not safe and those trying to cross it are dangerous.
We have been bombarded with messages from our president about how much danger is emanating from the undocumented immigrants who reside within border communities. That just is not the reality of life on the border.
Rarely do we hear stories about the overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants who cross and are looking to make an honest living, like Jorge Gonzalez. Almost everyone who makes it to America from our southern border has longed for freedom, security and the chance to provide for themselves and their families. They risked everything to come here because they wanted to be a part of our great nation and built it up — not because they want to tear it down. These humble immigrants have transformed border communities into tightknit groups that look out and care for one another. Although they do not cross with many belongings, immigrants bring a wealth of character to the communities they settle in.
It is even rarer to hear about just how safe the border is in comparison to other cities in the United States. In Washington D.C., for example, approximately 12 residents out of every thousand will be the victim of a violent crime. Here are just a few cities on the border that you are significantly less likely to be a victim of violent crime in than our nation’s capital : El Paso, Hidalgo and Eagle Pass, all in Texas, and San Diego, Calif.
Looking at those statistics, you should be more worried about concentrations of Congress members living in your neighborhood than undocumented immigrants.
The false narrative behind the border being a dangerous place is harmful to those who live there. Not only does it wrongfully frighten people away from joining those communities, but it also invites the aggressive government behavior we have seen over the past couple of years. Americans should no longer stand idly by as the president and others demonize border regions for political and monetary gain. We must change the narrative to something that reflects the truth about life on the border. The fact of the matter is that the U.S.-Mexico border is home to some of the most robust economies in the United States, which are just as safe, if not safer, than cities within our interior. It is time for the president, and the nation, to understand that there are vastly more people like Jorge Gonzalez than those who are criminals, to understand that there is significantly less violence on the border than the media portrays, and to understand that border regions give much more to this country than they take.