Elon Musk: ‘Undeniable at this Point’ Biden Wants Open Borders in US
©AFP 2023 / VALERIE MACON
Partisan rhetoric around immigration in the United States has become heated as evidence suggests the politically-charged issue will prominently feature in November’s presidential election.
Tech mogul Elon Musk threw cold water on border legislation favored by US President Joe Biden late Friday as Republican opposition mounts to a proposed bipartisan Senate deal.
“No laws need to be passed,” wrote the outspoken CEO of Tesla and X, formerly known as Twitter. “All that is needed is an executive order to require proof before granting an asylum hearing. That is how it used to be.”
Musk also approvingly reposted commentary from venture capitalist David Sacks claiming “Biden’s policy is open borders. Everything else is noise.”
“That is undeniable at this point,” Musk wrote in response.
Biden has proposed a compromise on border issues with congressional Republicans in recent weeks in exchange for continued military aid to Ukraine. “For too long, we all know the border’s been broken,” the president said in a statement released Friday. “That’s why two months ago, I instructed my team to begin negotiations with a bipartisan group of Senators to seriously, and finally, address the border crisis.”
Biden’s willingness to compromise on the issue suggests the degree of importance he places on aid to Ukraine, which has stalled in Congress amidst increasing opposition.
“What’s been negotiated would – if passed into law – be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country,” Biden added.
Many Democrats have historically opposed increased immigration in the United States. “I think at a time when the middle class is shrinking, the last thing we need is to bring, over a period of years, millions of people into this country who are prepared to lower wages for American workers,” progressive Senator Bernie Sanders said in 2007.
Former Democratic President Barack Obama was dubbed the “deporter-in-chief” by immigrant rights activists angered by the high number of deportations that took place during his two terms.
But the issue has become intensely polarized since 2016 when former President Donald Trump unveiled controversial proposals to forcefully expel undocumented immigrants and separate family members at the border. Liberals claim Trump’s focus on the issue is part of a nativist agenda, while conservatives increasingly allege that undocumented immigration is a national security and criminal justice issue.
Republicans have also claimed Democrats are trying to reshape the US electorate under the guise of a surge of Latino immigration to the country. Earlier this month Musk wrote that the Biden administration sees migrants as “potential Dem voters.”
President Biden may be counting on continued Congressional dysfunction to derail border legislation given the issue is highly controversial with elements of the Democratic Party base. Indeed, some members of the Republican party have taken former President Trump’s lead in rejecting the Senate compromise.
“A bad border deal is far worse than no border deal,” wrote Trump on his Truth Social platform Saturday.
Trump’s posturing seems to suggest he plans to run on the issue once again in the 2024 election. Comprehensive immigration reform in the United States has been repeatedly derailed since being proposed by former President George W. Bush in 2004. Current rhetoric on the subject suggests the issue will remain a political football with the two major parties unable to see eye-to-eye on a compromise this year.
Texas Border Dispute Shows Entire US Constitutional System Collapsing in Multiple Ways
The escalating dispute between Texas and the Biden administration over Abbott's efforts to erect its own barriers to illegal immigration from Mexico show that the quarter of a millennium old federal US political system is collapsing along many different fault lines, constitutional and political experts told Sputnik.
©AFP 2023 / PATRICK T. FALLON
Twenty-five state governors have come out in support of Texas Governor Greg Abbott's declaration that he will defy the Biden administration in Washington, DC and go ahead with building barbed wire barriers along his state's land border with Mexico.
The Supreme Court ruled in a narrow 5-4 decision Monday authorizing federal Border Patrol agents to remove razor-wire fencing set up by Texas authorities on Abbott’s instructions. However, on Friday, Abbott said he was prepared for a conflict with federal authorities over the issue.
"We are prepared, in the event that that unlikely event does occur, just to make sure that we will be able to continue exactly what we’ve been doing over the past month, and that is building these barriers," the Texas governor told Tucker Carlson in an interview.
The crisis was real and serious, US constitutional historian and political commentator Dan Lazare warned on Friday.
US System Fracturing
"Sure, it's a crisis, a big one," Lazare said. "It's yet another sign of how the US constitutional system is fracturing along multiple fault lines."
The crisis had been developing in full public view over the past quarter century, Lazare pointed out.
"First it was the breakdown on Capitol Hill as gridlock took hold from the mid-1990s on. Then it was the Electoral College, which backfired in 2000 and again in 2016 by cancelling the popular vote," he said.
In 2022, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court overturned the overwhelmingly popular Roe vs. Wade decision of nearly half a century before that had legalized abortion on demand throughout the United States. And now the process of disintegration and the discrediting of ancient national institutions was accelerating, he observed.
"Now it [the US political system] is cracking along state and federal lines. I have no idea how far this will go," he said.
The crisis goes far beyond a local dispute between Texas and the federal government: it threatens the very existence and survival of the United States, Lazare stated.
"It is nearly 10 months to the presidential elections, yet already civil war is erupting. The 248-year-old American republic is crumbling before our very eyes," he said.
Secession Measure
University of Houston Professor of African American History Gerald Horne agreed that the crisis was alarming.
"It is quite serious. The ultra-right in the Lone Star state is seeking to place on the ballot a measure that would allow for secession from the United States," he said.
The principle of secession is not unimaginable in Texas but, on the contrary, it is deeply rooted in the origins and history of the state, Horne explained. "Recall that Texas seceded from Mexico in 1836, formed an independent state - then joined the United States in 1845... then sought to secede again in 1861," he said.
Abbott has actually been traveling the world already to assess what support he might be able to gather for any move to secede from the United States, Horne noted. "As we speak the governor is touring abroad - ostensibly on a commercial mission but likely seeking to gauge international support," he said.
Texas is the second largest state in the Union in terms of both territory (after Alaska) and population (after California).
Horne acknowledged that Abbott had not yet made any hard or irrevocable decision to break with Washington. "To be fair, he has not endorsed officially 'Texit' or Texas exiting the United States, [comparable to] the United Kingdom exiting the European Union (EU) or 'Brexit,'" he said.
However, the possibility of a Texas secession followed by a wider disintegration of the United States remained very possible, Horne advised. "A question is this: does all this portend a breakup of the United States, especially if there is a controversy concerning the November presidential election: Stay tuned," he said.
Not Serious Threat
Nevertheless, the crisis still had plenty of time to be peacefully resolved and there has been similar false alarms throughout US history, George Mason University Professor of Law Francis Buckley advised.
"The crisis is Not (Serious). It’s called interposition and (US Founding Father and early president James) Madison proposed it in 1798. (It) happens often," he said.
Abbott has issued a "Statement on Texas’ Constitutional Right to Self-Defense" in which he stressed the state’s right to defend itself against an "invasion" of illegal immigrants, and he also accused Biden of violating and refusing to enforce immigration
'Extremely Dangerous': Texas Border Battle Portends Growing US Dysfunction, Civil War?
The fight over states’ rights versus the power of the US federal government hearkens back to the country’s 19th-century Civil War.
©AFP 2023 / PATRICK T. FALLON
Activist Anthony Rogers-Wright joined Sputnik’s Political Misfits program Friday to discuss the escalating border standoff between Texas and the US federal government, a dispute that strikes at long standing controversies at the core of the country’s system of governance.
“Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has said he's just not going to comply with the order from the Biden administration to let federal Border Patrol agents access this state park, Shelby Park, on the Rio Grande,” noted host Michelle Witte, “where Texas is undertaking its own efforts to block migrants from crossing in defiance of federal law.”
Witte noted that Texas officials have apparently chosen to ignore Supreme Court orders governing the conduct of Texas National Guardsmen, employing highly emotional language claiming the state is defending against an “invasion” of migrants at the border.
“This is extremely dangerous,” said Rogers-Wright, a spokesman for the coalition Movement for Black Lives, adding that US President Joe Biden is “showing a very craven approach to this.”
“We already have a dysfunctional Supreme Court,” said Rogers-Wright, a view shared by most Americans as voters’ approval of the institution sinks to just 41%. “It seems like governmental trickle down dysfunction is working just fine here.” The activist slammed Biden’s response to the crisis, suggesting Republican candidate Donald Trump is more effectively “demonstrating leadership” through his unyielding stance on the issue.
“Joe Biden is blowing it right now with a constituency that he's not polling very well with and essentially what he's doing is kicking the can down the road,” he added, decrying the consequences of “macho men with guns getting into a heated debate in a country that already has a gun violence problem.”
Texas is often seen as among the most independent-minded states in the US, previously existing as a self-governing republic from 1836 until 1846. Texan politicians occasionally raise the prospect of seceding from the United States. Similar efforts are sometimes proposed in California, and the former husband of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin previously held membership in the local Alaskan Independence Party.
Secession efforts in the US have never gained widespread support in modern times but the issue reverberates on a deep level as states often chafe at orders from the federal government.
“Biden has to get control of it, not just because of the humanitarian aspect of it, but this is a constitutional crisis right in front of us right now,” said Rogers-Wright. “We haven't really seen anything like this since the era of Jim Crow where governors were just saying… ‘I don't care what you're saying.’ Even Eisenhower, with Little Rock, tapped into the National Guard to protect these young Black students.”
Political polarization remains at an all-time high in the United States, a reality perhaps best demonstrated by the controversy over riots at the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021. As controversy remains over the disputed role of federal and state authorities in Texas observers fear tensions could boil over into a violent event, particularly if federal and state troops are forced to interact.
