In the 247 year story of the United States, some of the most recurring themes of our polarization are disputes over the powers of state governments versus that of the federal government. The greatest conflicts of American history, including the Civil Rights Movement and the Civil War, turned upon this question in one way or another. The current showdown between President Biden and Texas governor Gregg Abbott is one more installment of this controversy. But for a country that may feel as if it is teetering on the edge of institutional collapse and social dissolution, this current impasse seems like one more shocking step into the breach.
With illegal crossings at our southern border having reached new highs, the federal government has taken an approach to this problem that has left Republicans in particular feeling as if the administration has no interest in solving this problem at all. Asylum seekers are allowed to cross over the border and participate in a process of legal review, during which they are able to stay in the United States.
Dissatisfied that such crossings are allowed to take place in the first place, and having little confidence that these processes will actually lead to meaningful deportations of undocumented/illegal immigrants, Governor Abbott, cheered on by fellow Republican governors, has taken matters into his own hands, summoning the Texas National Guard to erect razor wire along key parts of the border. Though the Supreme Court has overturned a lower court ruling prohibiting federal agents from removing the wire the state of Texas stands undeterred, with Abbot arguing that Texas has the constitutional right to defend its own border from “invasion.” A battle in the Supreme Court over the actual merits of the case is pending, even while efforts at bipartisan legislation appear to be waning in congress.
The federal government and the Texas state government are at odds, but more importantly, so are the American people. To infer from the tone and caliber of our popular conversation on cable news, Twitter and talk radio, this is a battle forced by open-borders leftists who despise the rule of law and care nothing about native-born Americans, or alternatively, by xenophobic rightwingers who want nothing more than to drag brown people and their children kicking and screaming back into Latin America rather than share an ounce of this country’s wealth and opportunity with the people whose ancestors we stole it from.
There is a more accurate story to tell however, and it is a moral imperative that we begin to tell it this way. It is a story of Americans who, on the one hand, have legitimate concerns about our national sovereignty, about the economic opportunities of poor people already living in this country, and who are heartbroken over the deadly influx of substances like fentanyl into the the United States, locked in hard disagreement with Americans who have humanitarian concerns for the welfare of struggling families fleeing violence and poverty beyond our borders, who believe that America is enriched culturally and economically by the contributions of immigrants not so different than our ancestors before us, and who feel we must err on the side of compassion even as we strive to establish a responsible plan for border security and immigration reform.
At Braver Angels we seek to provide a haven for discourse on this issue as with so many others. As a part of this I invite you to join our upcoming national debate on immigration featuring Braver Angels members and leaders from across the country. For even as the hard work of advocacy persists on either side what will empower the pillars of American democracy to remain standing in the aftermath of our debates will be the integrity with which we have them. Let us therefore set an example in how we treat each other on this topic that America can follow.
