Say Yes to Securing Border, No to Hating Migrants

I have never been an immigration hardliner. While not excusing lawlessness, I viewed those coming across our southern border to find work and support their families as an asset to our country — even when they came illegally.

Economically, they were filling essential jobs — particularly in the all-important agricultural sector — that most Americans didn’t want or couldn’t do. And living here, they also became consumers, whose need for goods and services would create more demand, and more jobs for others.

And I adamantly rejected the notion that they were undermining America’s moral and cultural values. Most Hispanic immigrants brought with them a strong religious faith, solid family values and an admirable work ethic. They were not the ones driving attacks on faith, family, moral values, the sanctity of life; that was and is being done by America’s homegrown cultural elite.

I’ve had to adjust my outlook over the years, as new realities added to the complexity of the issue. First, of course, was 9/11, and the ever-present threat of foreign terrorists easily entering our country to perpetrate destruction and mass murder.

Then there is the violent criminal element. I was working in the Nassau County District Attorney’s office in the early 2000s when MS-13 and other gangs from Central America were just beginning to terrorize Long Island communities.

It has grown far worse, and more dangerous, in the years since. Drug smuggling, always part of that criminal influx, has also grown worse and more dangerous, with illegal border crossers now serving as the conduit through which Mexican drug cartels facilitate China’s murderous fentanyl assault on American youth.

And of course, there are the sheer numbers now overwhelming the resources of our border communities and states. This is creating untold dangers and suffering, for Americans living in those communities, for border patrol agents, and for the migrants themselves, many of whom — including children — are being trafficked, to be exploited in the sex trade, or as drug smugglers, or otherwise sold into modern enslavement.

That’s if they survive the journey, without drowning trying to cross the Rio Grande or suffocating in locked metal trucks.

Add to this that the gangs and criminal element prey primarily on their own immigrant communities, where they can best camouflage themselves, and where the population — particularly those here illegally — is reluctant to go to the authorities. For this reason alone — protection of the migrant families and communities they are working to help — pro-immigration activists should be at the forefront in supporting strong border security.

I now firmly support strong border controls, as the just and compassionate first step toward developing an orderly immigration process that is mutually beneficial to our nation and to aspiring immigrants.

What of those border state governors who have been sending relatively small numbers of migrants to self-proclaimed “sanctuary” cities and communities far removed from points of entry?

I know this is in part politically motivated. Both parties have been politically exploiting the immigration issue for years.

But are these governors really at fault for insisting that the burdens of a national open borders policy be equally shared by the entire nation — not thrust solely onto the shoulders of border state inhabitants?

Shouldn’t those who have been virtue signaling from afar be invited to deliver on the “sanctuary” they have been promising? And called on their hypocrisy when they object — or, as with Martha’s Vineyard, when they quickly ship out the 50-100 immigrants who arrived in their wealthy enclave?

Or, as with New York City Mayor Eric Adams, when he rails against Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott dispatching busloads of migrants to the Big Apple, while quietly accepting thousands sent by the mayor of El Paso, Texas — who just happens, like Adams, to be a Democrat?

Yet even as I support stronger border controls, I cannot abide the vitriol being constantly hurled against those who come here simply seeking a better life for themselves and their families.

Yes, there is justified anger toward that violent criminal element wreaking havoc across our country. But that no more characterizes every immigrant than does anti-Hispanic bigotry characterize every proponent of border security.

When my children were young I would ask myself: If my family were going hungry and the only way I could find to feed them was to sneak across a border to find work, would I do it?

And if not, what kind of a father would that make me?

Again, that does not mean we must accept an uncontrolled border, and all the danger, suffering and injustice it is causing.

But it should mean we can respond with compassion and understanding, not hatred and vitriol, to those struggling, suffering peoples just trying to give their families a better life.

We may not be able to welcome them, certainly not all of them.

But we don’t have to hate them.