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Tag: mexican border
Migrant Crisis? What’s Really Happening At Mexican Border

Migrant Crisis? What’s Really Happening At Mexican Border

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

In right-wing media, one often hears the bogus claim that President Joe Biden, like former President Barack Obama before him, favors an open-borders policy to immigration. But proponents of comprehensive immigration reform are quick to respond that Biden doesn't favor opens borders any more than Obama did when he was president. And MSNBC reporter Jacob Soboroff, speaking to activists on the Mexican side of the U.S./Mexico border, found that none of the people he interviewed believed that Biden had adopted an ultra-liberal immigration policy.

Soboroff, reporting for MSNBC, entered Tijuana, Mexico from California and found an abundance of "refugees from all over the world" who were hoping to enter the U.S. and finding it to be a major uphill climb. The reporter explained that that they were "trying to find out how, if at all, the policies under the Biden administration are different than under the Trump administration."

Some of the refugees Soboroff encountered were Haitians who were still in dire straights because of a massive earthquake that hit the country in 2010. Others were refugees from countries in Central America who have been facing harsh economic circumstances because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Erika Pinheiro, an immigration activist with the group Al Otro Lado (which means "To the Other Side" in Spanish), told Soboroff that in terms of immigration policies, "Not much has changed since Trump. They've only processed a handful of people each day."

Pinheiro said of the refugees, "The vast majority of people have been in Tijuana for at least a year, sometimes two."

Cartoon: Trump At The Border

Cartoon: Trump At The Border

What Will Be Tom Cotton’s Next Big Lie?

What Will Be Tom Cotton’s Next Big Lie?

For a candidate whose résumé lists such distinguished institutions as Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and the United States Army – which are supposed to inculcate such values as truth and honor – Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR) seems perfectly comfortable uttering big, fat lies. I noticed this aspect of the Arkansas Senate candidate’s character when, seeking to escape responsibility for his vote against the farm bill, he accused President Obama of “hijacking” the legislation and turning it into a “food stamp bill.”

In that ad, he gratuitously bashed the poor (meaning more than 500,000 Arkansans, or roughly 17 percent of the population). The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as the well-educated Cotton must know, has been included in federal agriculture legislation for more than 40 years.

So we already know he’s not just an ordinary liar but an appalling, mean-spirited liar.

Now Cotton wants to frighten Arkansas voters with the spectre of ISIS terrorists pouring over the southern border to behead them, in collusion with Mexican drug gangs. At a town hall meeting, he stated a Fox News fabrication as a plain fact: “Groups like the Islamic State collaborate with drug cartels in Mexico who have clearly shown they’re willing to expand outside the drug trade into human trafficking and potentially even terrorism. They could infiltrate our defenseless border and attack us right here in places like Arkansas.”

And for that fresh prevarication, he earned four Pinocchios – do I need to spell out what that means? – from the Washington Post’s entirely nonpartisan fact checker Glenn Kessler. His column, placing Cotton’s lie in wingnut context, is well worth reading.