Terrible immigration policy is a slap in the face for who they are.

The Republican Party continues to establish itself as an anti-immigrant organization with a group of extremists led by Donald Trump at the CPAC’s annual meeting over the weekend. On the other hand, you have Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is set to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, armed with a platform in which anti-immigrant measures take center stage.

These are two political aspects with the same goal: to show who is more anti-immigrant, racist and biased in order to win the votes of the part of the US population that believed this lie about “replacement” and feeds on rhetoric. , a hatred that has unfortunately led to massacres such as in El Paso in 2019 and Buffalo in 2022, among many others.

It is enough to see that Trump and DeSantis are the two leading figures in the race for the Republican presidential nomination to understand that extremism is here to stay in this party. Of course, one should not lose sight of Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, who also showed how brutal immigration enforcement at the border can be.

Now, while some Republican leaders, including DeSantis, feel that their failure to go to CPAC somehow differentiates them from Trump fans, who now even chair important House committees, the reality is that they are one and the same. Because the lack of condemnation of the extremism of their peers makes them complicit in the same prejudices. And DeSantis, in particular, has a long list of atrocities against immigrants, from his refugee flights to Democratic-led cities to his proposal to arrest and jail the mothers of undocumented children if they take them to school.

However, in another sign that the 2024 presidential election is near, Joe Biden’s Democratic administration is once again putting migrants and those who protect them on edge with the news that once again a revival of anti-immigrant measures will be considered. Trump measures that Biden himself condemned as a candidate in 2020.

This political paradox leads thousands or millions of migrants, who have lived for decades in hope of a settlement of their situation, into a state of stagnation, confusion and disappointment, which, whether they like it or not, directly affects the lack of interest in political life. class of any party. . Because it is not enough to use the pro-immigrant struggle for the party to be able to create a defensive image of migrants, if in the end, after coming to power, it forgets about them and concentrates only on staying in office at the cost of anything, including acceptance anti-immigrant measures, which he had previously denounced.

Such is the case with the proposal to detain families of migrants who enter undocumented across the border as a deterrent until Section 42 ends soon. The White House has neither denied nor confirmed the rumors. What is known is that there are those who believe that an increase in the flow of migrants before the end of Section 42 will cost Biden political plans in his re-election plans, although in 2020 he promised a more humane immigration policy, different from that implemented by Trump.

In fact, there are steps that could be taken without resorting to cruelty towards people, including children, who have already experienced horrors on their way to escape from repressive governments, fight against traffickers and all elements of evil with which migrants collide at any cost. hour. Then the United States, the self-proclaimed protectors of the vulnerable, comes in to icing on the cake with arrests and measures more punitive than helpful. Because we must not forget that all these measures are taken against potential asylum seekers.

And we are back to the same. Faced with criticism from the extremist-controlled Republican Party, the Democratic president chooses to remain silent and succumb to Republican pressure; no matter what Biden does, his opponents will never agree, let alone cooperate, to come up with reasonable legislative solutions to the problem. Worst of all, he does this knowing that he is breaking campaign promises to the electoral sector that supported his party in the post-election elections despite those broken promises.

Just by trying to mask Trump’s anti-immigrant measures and thinking it’s not the same because they’re being carried out by a Democrat, you don’t hide the fact that they’re repeating what they denounced when Trump did it. And here the equation does not add up, because it is obvious that both Republicans and Democrats use the issue of immigration only for political purposes – some attack, others supposedly protect – but at the moment of truth they leave millions of people to fend for themselves. people who are already part of a society that they have strengthened through their efforts and dedication over several generations.

So we already have enough of the Republican Party, which is synonymous with extremism and prejudice, which does not offer any plan for solving the migration dilemma, other than appealing to the darkest feelings of man, an attack even on the democracy they claim. to defend so much with his feverish allegations of electoral fraud.

Add to this a Democratic administration and a Democratic congressional sector that believes that what they are proposing is less burdensome than a Democrat is doing, then this will be a slap in the face not only to migrants seeking asylum in this country, but also to voters who believed in the promises of change. on the immigration front, were met with similar brutality disguised as sheep.

This migration dilemma not only threatens the immigrant nature of a country like the United States, but also reveals the hypocrisy with which immigration has been handled lately, leaving another paradox in the air: With friends like that, you don’t need enemies.