At the border

Photo ops aren’t just photo ops

It might do a body — or at least a U.S. representative — good to see things firsthand. Who knows, maybe congressmen have the same creative juices that journalists do, and seeing things in person adds to color in the copy.

Or maybe the whole trip to the southern border was a photo op. But that doesn’t mean it was wrong. Sometimes a photo op really is an opportunity — where “op” comes from — to call attention.

The new-ish Speaker of the House took a trip to the United States-Mexican border this week, specifically Eagle Pass, Texas, and brought along 60 or so of his friends, including a couple of U.S. representatives from Arkansas: French Hill and Rick Crawford.

In the news story for this paper, our reporters took in comments from both congressmen and explained the situation. (Stalemate in Congress. Budget talks linking Ukraine aid and border security. Or budget talks delinking them.) And got the other side’s point of view by getting a comment from the White House. Our J-school profs consider it poor form to not get the other side’s comments in such stories.

But the White House’s spokesperson sounded pert-near offended by the Speaker’s trip.

“In fact, right now, instead of joining the Biden administration and members of both parties in the Senate to find common ground,” the spokesperson said, “Speaker Johnson is continuing to block President Biden’s proposed funding to hire thousands of new Border Patrol agents, hire more asylum officers and immigration judges, provide local communities hosting migrants additional grant funding, and invest in cutting-edge technology that is critical to stopping deadly fentanyl from entering our country.”

That’s one way to put it. Another way: Many Republicans say they’d compromise with the administration if the administration would just compromise with them. They say they’d agree on more military aid to Ukraine and Israel if the administration would tighten security at the southern border — with real policy changes that end “catch-and-release” schemes, not just grants to host migrants.

Border security is one of those universal jobs of national governments. Like national security or maintaining a blue water navy. It’s not a local job.

And the papers say that the border security types saw a quarter-million “encounters” in December. That’s twice as many as Border Patrol is equipped to handle.

And those are just the ones that were caught. How many slipped by and aren’t included in that number?

Talk about national security. How many were bad guys?

Most Americans know that workers flow toward jobs like water flows downhill. And most Americans don’t want to pay $10 for a head of lettuce. So we know that alien workers will be a part of the national economy. But Americans also would like for those aliens to be legal.

There has got to be a better way to maintain the border. And allow for migrant workers. And keep lawbreakers from taking advantage of the situation.

If it was easy, the border problem would have been fixed by now. But it would help if the administration would negotiate in good faith.

And it might even help to have more of these photo ops to call attention.