A National Emergency? Of Course.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi introduced a bill to block President Trump’s national emergency declaration. That bill passed the House Tuesday. In fact, Pelosi went down to Laredo, Texas to declare there is no national emergency at the border.

Quick question: How big was her security detail?

Easy to say how wonderful things are when surrounded by your armed guards and a load of Texas’ finest.

On Monday, Pelosi preached, “This isn’t about the border, this is about the Constitution of the United States. This is not about politics, it’s not about partisanship. It’s about patriotism.”

Funny how allowing masses of people to flood over our border waving the flags of foreign nations is suddenly “patriotism.”

Trump’s Declaration of a National Emergency

Two weeks ago, the president issued his national emergency declaration. The purpose: to speed up the process of securing our sieve of a southern border.

Instantly came the weeping and gnashing of teeth. He’s abusing the constitution! He’s violating the separation of powers! He’s a dictator!

First off, yawn. Trump can brush his teeth and you hear the same things. Second, and more crucially, it’s not like he invented national emergency declarations. It is a specific tool given to presidents by Congress. Then Congress gave itself a tool to fight particular declarations it doesn’t like.

Of course, the president’s opponents know this. But that didn’t stop dozens of Obama and Clinton national security officials, with a few Trump-hating Bush left-overs from attacking the president’s move.

“We are aware of no emergency that remotely justifies such a step,” read a portion of the statement, released Monday. “[U]nder no plausible assessment of the evidence is there a national emergency today that entitles the President to tap into funds appropriated for other purposes to build a wall at the southern border.”

You know what I hear when I hear that? James Comey saying “no reasonable prosecutor” would have brought the case against Hillary Clinton. All the while knowing his own chief counsel James Baker had argued and argued for months for just such a prosecution.

No plausible assessment? Really?

Run through the list of 58 National Emergencies enacted since the new law went into effect. 31 still remain in effect. Then ask yourself which “emergencies” declared by Obama, Bush or Clinton have any of the impact illegal immigration has this very day.

I’m sure “blocking property of certain persons contributing to the situation in Burundi” has its worth. But compared to American police officers getting shot by people deported multiple times and set free by sanctuary cities? Same with “blocking the property of certain persons contributing to the conflict in the Central African Republic.” What about blocking people contributing to the evil of human trafficking?

Democratic Processes and Institutions

We’re still “blocking the property of certain persons undermining democratic processes or institutions in Belarus.” Belarus is 4,642 miles from Washington, DC and has a population of 9.5 million. We have more illegal immigrants than their entire population right here in this country. An increasing number are turning up voter rolls. Some cities are evenly gladly trying to give illegal immigrants a vote in local elections. This by definition undermines the democratic process.

Democrats want illegal immigrants counted in the U.S. census. This means millions of illegal immigrants are counted in certain state populations, like California and New York, which determines the distribution of members in Congress. Meaning, those illegal immigrants help those states get more representation in Congress. More power. Again, by definition of this gaming the numbers is an assault on our democratic processes.

Our education system spends about $40 billion a year on educating illegal immigrant children. With schools falling down and teachers begging for supplies, aren’t our educational institutions suffering?

How about one of our most cherished institutions: the rule of law? Forget crossing the border illegally, how many illegal immigrants are using false documents? Phony social security numbers? How many criminal acts per year are committed by illegal immigrants? The percentage of criminal illegal immigrants in federal prisons is three times the rate of the population as a whole. And each of those criminals has been accused of an average 12 crimes. Why are Belarus’ institutions more important than ours?

We had a national declaration emergency over the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic. That made sense. But what about the opioid epidemic made feasible by drugs flooding over the border? What about the health dangers cited by the CDC of cross-border illegal migration? Last week alone we were talking about a mumps outbreak at a Houston detention facility, typhus in L.A., chickenpox in Denver, measles. How well are poorer communities along the border with the added burden of illegal immigrants at their clinics?

What is an Emergency?

Part of the problem is the media and the open borders politicians are playing up the phrase “national emergency.” “This is not an national emergency.” They are using the phrase in a manner suggestive in the minds of the American people something like a 9/11 or a Katrina, or perhaps a major collapse of the power grid. (Or heaven forbid, Twitter crashes.)

Again, go through that list of the 31 still active national emergencies. Do any of them meet the standard the Democrats and their media partners have set for President Trump? No. Not in the slightest.

“There is no crisis!” they shout. One thing you’ll hear is, “There’s no crisis. Border apprehensions are down.” Even if that were true (it’s not. We’re on a pace for 600,000 this year.) it is meaningless. Imagine you have cancer. Your doctor tells you the rate of the cancer growth has slowed. Do you say, “I’m cured!” Of course not.

The Crisis

According to Conservative Review, there’s been a 1774% increase in asylum claims the past ten years. Claim a “credible fear” — as open border advocates are teaching people to do — and you have an open door to America. Sure, technically, you get a court date to validate your claim, but by the time that court date rolls around, you’re long gone.

That’s just one statistic. You can read our book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration for a whole mess of powerful statistics. We’ve got whole chapters on the assorted ways unfettered illegal immigration is a danger and disruptions. We lay out the history of how illegal immigrant and weak border security has been a festering wound for decades now. We quote Democrats who advocated for strong border security who swung 180 degrees in the political winds. As someone who worked for a counter-terrorism expert in the days after 9/11, and helped write two books on the dangers we face, I know how catastrophic an open border is. Is today the day we lose a city in the southwest?

Yet, perhaps that’s too macro a look.

At the corner of Balboa and Roscoe in Van Nuys, California sits a Home Depot. That was our Home Depot. We had a fixer-upper, meaning, we practically lived at that Home Depot.

In the front of the parking lot, along the side street off Balboa, rose a large permanent canopy. Inside were day laborers, sometimes dozens. Strong, Hispanic faces. To be inside that canopy one had to be cleared to legally work in the United States. One had to be a legal immigrant or citizen.

However, clumped along the sidewalk away from the canopy were other faces, other men, other day laborers. Others roamed the parking lot and would come to our car as we parked or as we finished our shopping. They were not under the covering. They were not cleared.

Often we’d see pick-up trucks roll past the canopy, swing close to the sidewalk, and summon a couple of the illegal immigrants to jump in the back. Off they would go.

That illegal immigrant would get paid for his day’s work. (At a lower rate, of course, than the men in the canopy. Suppressing wages.) The men in the canopy would not. The illegal immigrant put food on his table. The legal immigrant perhaps not. What is the legal immigrant thinking? What is he telling his wife? What’s he telling the people back home who want to come to this country? What’s the point of following the rules? What’s watching that pick-up truck pull out onto Roscoe do to the spirit?

We’ve created a crisis. It is not just a national emergency. It’s a national tragedy.