President Biden Said He'd Close The Border. Three Border Lawmakers Aren't So Sure.
Buenas tardes!
This is our 18th edition of Capitol.press, a Latino newsletter on Congress by Arturo and Pablo.
Today, we bring you the perspectives of a bipartisan trio of actual border lawmakers, all Latino. In a Congress rife with elected fear-mongers and border crisis actors from interior districts, Tony Gonzales, Raul Grijalva, and Gabe Vasquez represent constituents living along vast stretches of our southern border.
Because immigration is an emotional topic rife with bad actors, we post the lawmaker quotes below without comment. If there are follow-up questions you think are important, please let us know by email or on social media.
Ya listo, a la chamba pues, cabrones —
Congressman, President Biden has repeatedly said that if authorized by Congress, he'd close the border. Can Biden — or any president — actually close the border?
Rep. Raul Gríjalva (D-AZ)
It's an impossibility, unless you’re a follower of the thinking of Chip Roy. Then a shutdown is a shutdown: you seal the border, you don't shut it down — you seal it. The devastation that would cause economically, socially, and humanely would be unbelievable.
If you look at the workforce of Arizona, 31% of the generated wealth is by a population of primarily Latino working class. And they're at the medium — some good paying jobs and a lot in low paying jobs. But that's the impetus for our economy in Arizona.
These are workforce issues and Arizona is in a position to be badly hurt by the political theater on the issue of immigration and the border. That's a fact.
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX)
Look, I think people just want to feel safe and what’s happening is people don’t feel safe. And when you don’t feel safe, you lash out and you want to blame someone for why you don’t feel safe. This is the part the administration is missing. You gotta go to the issue and how do you change the way people view why they don’t feel safe? First, you gotta acknowledge that - it’s taken them this long to acknowledge that the problem is real.
Most people have never been to the border. Most people don’t know what border communities are like. And even if you do go for a day or two, living on the border is completely different. In many cases, it’s one community — Juarez and El Paso is one community, Piedras Negras and Eagle Pass is one community — and you go back and forth and you go shopping, maybe you go to school there, or you visit family members. So, this is the part no one is really talking about.
All these people that are coming over are culturally different so they’re not Mexicanos. My district is predominantly Mexican-American. So they’re not Mexican-Americans that are coming over per se. You’re seeing people from all over the world. Even Central and South America - that’s a culture that’s different.
So what’s happening is they’re saying ‘These aren’t my grandparents, these people are different.’ So you don’t have that same empathy because all of a sudden your community is turned upside down and you’re seeing people from Turkey and China, you name it. I mean, pick a country — literally every single country. In many cases that has undermined legal immigration.
Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-NM)
I think the conversation has to change to help Americans understand truly the benefits immigrants provide to this country but also, that Mexico is our largest trading partner. And so, there’s no real definition to closing the border. We have to make sure that we keep it open for international trade but also, in binational communities where families cross and where businesses depend on each other. I think that’s just a false statement to make.
It’s my job to represent my district in the interest of my district, and that includes international trade. The county that I live in is the largest net exporter of goods in the entire state of New Mexico. That is because of our international trade with Mexico and that represents thousands of jobs.”
When you think about refrigerators, dishwashers, laptops, cell phones, the components that go into those electronics and that drive those costs down, come because of nearshoring in places like San Geronimo. That means our borders have to be open for international trade. And that's really critically important. And the folks who actually go work at these production facilities that are engineers that are plant managers are American, and they live on our side of the border. So they have to cross every day. So the dynamic is much more complicated than saying ‘close the border’.
That's one of the things I'm hoping to do while I'm here. To make sure that I bring that perspective to the rest of my colleagues so that when they go on a Congressional Delegation and want to pay Crocodile Dundee and go out to a photo op, that's not really how the border operates. It's much more complicated than that.
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