Whose borders are more important?
The inability to address a crisis at home pauses our ventures abroad.
This week, Senate Republicans blocked a gargantuan aid payment to Ukraine to drive home a point about the government’s inability to address a surge of migrants flowing over the southern border.
Should a policy change on a domestic challenge be coupled into the same piece of legislation meant to fund an ally’s foreign war? If lawmakers can agree on sending $50 billion 4,800 miles away, how much is fair to allocate to a security issue in our own backyard? And will Republicans actually stand strong in denying a military expenditure or find an escape hatch?
These are some of the questions I attempted to answer in my reporting on the topic, which you can read in full HERE.
The debate, synthesized below in these pair of quotes >
“He knows that there’s no necessity to have new border policy paired with foreign aid. He also knows that supplemental funding does not have to have new policy in it – hasn’t ever had new policy in it.”
— Ronnate Asirwatham, who handles government relations on immigration for the NETWORK lobby of Catholic Social Justice
“There’s a common thread to all of them. Ukraine’s border, Israel’s border, our borders and the security of all of them. Whose borders are more important in this stage in the game?”
— Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform
