GOP debate didn’t pay enough attention to immigration — but you can bet voters will | Opinion
Let’s hope you didn’t sneeze during the first segment of the Republican president debate Wednesday night. If so, you might have missed the entire segment on one of the nation’s most urgent issues.
Tens of thousands of people are overwhelming the southern border, far beyond any capacity to deal with it. Even Democrats who have advocated generous “sanctuary” policies are realizing that it can’t go on. President Joe Biden, for reasons only he could explain, just encourages more of it, granting nearly half a million Venezuelans work permits.
You might think Republican voters, who have always prioritized the issue and do so even more now, deserved a detailed segment on it. Fox News gave it about 4 minutes.
Only two candidates, Chris Christie and Nikki Haley, had a chance to offer comprehensive answers. Both did well. Christie parried the premise of the question, that he should support a path to citizenship now as he did years ago. He argued that the current situation is an urgent crisis that demands a tough approach. And he effectively pivoted to a fact that can’t get lost — while we have an illegal immigration nightmare, we still need a sensible way to import workers.
Haley’s answer was strong, too, as she pledged to crack down on the border with new Border Patrol and immigration enforcement agents and a return to Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.
But Vivek Ramaswamy? He got an appropriate question about his ridiculous idea to revoke citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants born here, but that was it.
Tim Scott? He dismissed Ramaswamy’s idea but pivoted to an attack based on his rival’s business issue.
Ron DeSantis? We have no idea what he’d do on immigration, but he got to unleash a tirade about China thanks to an oddly worded question about that country’s outreach to Latin America.
Mike Pence? Doug Burgum? Who knows. Apparently it was already time to move on.
Unchecked illegal immigration will redefine Americans’ sense of the entire country’s well-being. Haley understands this — she deftly connected the shocking looting by hundreds of teenagers in Philadelphia on Tuesday night to the issue. It’s not that the looters were immigrants; it’s that Americans are watching order break down live on their television.
And voters will do whatever it takes to restore order.
“If liberals insist that only fascists will enforce borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals refuse to do,” conservative commentator David Frum wrote. While that’s an unfair shot at people who advocate toughness on immigration, it drives home the point — this is an issue that, whatever voters think in the abstract, will cause them to vote for a solution.
So, it might have been worth giving them a good long look at the candidates who might provide one.
This story was originally published September 27, 2023 at 8:17 PM with the headline "GOP debate didn’t pay enough attention to immigration — but you can bet voters will | Opinion."
