As you well know by now, Election Day is less than 50 days away. And that means that congressional and state office campaigns are on the home stretch to either victory or defeat. Subsequently, candidates are pulling out all of the stops to ensure the most votes possible on November 2.
Now, as you also likely know, it is expected that the Republican Party will make significant gains on that day.
Thanks to the abysmal approval ratings of both Democratic President Joe Biden and his inept party, it is even expected that the GOP will regain the majority in the House of Representatives by no small number. Additionally, even the US Senate is at risk of losing its Democratic leaders.
But as Election Day draws ever closer, nothing is quite so set in stone.
Naturally, this has a lot to do with where specific candidates and the American fall on certain big-ticket agenda items.
For Democrats today that means abortion, as the Supreme Court recently overturned the infamous Roe v. Wade, giving the legality of it over to the individual states and not the federal government.
For Republicans, however, one of the larger issues “on the ballot,” so to speak is immigration.
Now, to be clear, immigration has been an issue in the US for a good number of years now, thanks to an immigration and border system that is pretty much broken and in dire need of repair. But after years of it being all but ignored by Washington, DC, communities in border states are tired of it and demanding change.
And it seems the only ones who are listening are Republicans.
Republicans like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for example. If you hadn’t heard, DeSantis recently rounded up a number of illegal migrants and shipped them to Martha’s Vineyard, the upscale northeastern island off the coast of Massachusetts.
Now, this isn’t really any different than state governors from Arizona, New Mexico, or Texas sending bus loads of illegals to more liberally held cities like DC, Chicago, New York, etc. but seeing as how this is the first time DeSantis has made such a move and that he is up for re-election in less than two months, many are calling it a political move and not merely one for the greater good.
In any case, the immigration “crisis,” as is being called, is getting a lot more attention as a result. While Democrats in “sanctuary” cities don’t like the recent bombardment of illegals filling their streets and homeless shelters, it has brought about a national discussion on the topic.
The only question is if it is a discussion that will hurt or help the Republicans this close to the election.
Republican strategist Danny Diaz, who ran former Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign, says that “for about half the country, they entirely agree” with what those like DeSantis are trying to point out. That is, of course, that immigration, as it currently stands, needs some major reform, and more specifically, more strictly enforced laws.
According to US border data, Monday marked a rather serious milestone – and not a good one. On that day, over two million illegal migrants were known to have crossed or tried to cross the border and be arrested. It is noted that this number is not one that was accrued over a long period of time, but mere months.
That’s two million migrant arrests over the course of this year so far – and we are not even to the end of the third quarter yet. As the word “arrests” implies, these are also only the ones who have been caught. Thousands more go unchecked each day, according to data estimated by CBP.
But for what I would presume is the other half of the country, the approach to immigration that DeSantis and Abbott are taking, might not be the best one.
As Democratic Texas Representative Henry Cuellar says, “The migrants are human beings, and we’ve got to treat them like human beings. They are being used as political pawns to get publicity.”
Then again, so is declaring yourself a sanctuary city or state, promising jobs and security to migrants when there really is none.
