Editor's Note: Bad Takes is a column of opinion and analysis.
Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." — The Gospel According to Matthew
San Antonio's Migrant Resource Center has been full up for weeks now. Every day, around 1,000 weary travelers find shelter there or in a hangar at the airport, according to the city's online "Migrant Dashboard."
Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of San Antonio runs the locations with assistance from the Interfaith Welcome Coalition, and the facilities are in dire need of volunteers and donations, including children's toys.
However, some greet asylum seekers in a less-than-Christlike manner. Demonstrators intermittently line the streets around the Migrant Resource Center, adding to the congestion they claim to protest.
Others, like George Rodriguez, a commentator on San Antonio talk radio station KLUP-AM, spin conspiracy theories.
"There is an effort by the Biden government, by Mayor [Ron] Nirenberg's government, to hide from the public what is going on regarding this whole invasion," Rodriguez said in an Indigenous Peoples Day "report" carried on his YouTube channel.
However, Rodriguez's own video included a screenshot of the city's online dashboard, which tracks how many migrants arrive daily, where they're sheltered, their countries of origin and their means of transportation. So, what exactly is being "hidden from the public?"
As a Spanish speaker, Rodriguez could interview some of the "invaders" milling around the Migrant Resource Center on San Pedro Avenue to discover what devious plans they're hatching to end our way of life. Instead, he'd rather spin conspiratorial yarns out of whole cloth to frighten his Christian suburbanite listeners. After all, if Republicans helped fix our broken immigration system, what would they campaign on?
Thankfully, real journalism on the subject isn't hard to find.
Local TV station KENS 5 reports that some migrants sleep in surrounding parking lots as the Migrant Resource Center's funds dwindle. At the same time, more than $1 billion dollars of taxpayer money continues to go toward completing an absolutely useless border "wall."
Last month, migrants from kleptocratic Venezuela accounted for the largest share of those encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the Associated Press. That South American country was "plunged into a political, economic and humanitarian crisis over the last decade, pushing at least 7.3 million people to migrate and making food and other necessities unaffordable for those who remain," the wire service reports.
Tough-talking Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has wasted more than the entire annual budget of Oklahoma on Operation Lone Star, a constitutionally dubious effort to make the lives of migrants a living hell by arresting them on minor property crimes.
In an Express-News commentary, Geoff Burkhart, executive director of the Texas Fair Defense Project, calculated the cost at about $400,000 per migrant arrest for trespassing. Imagine if we allocated that money to humanitarian assistance instead, or on an ambitious foreign aid program to wipe out poverty in our hemisphere instead.
To many on the extreme Right, Abbott's miles of razor wire and serrated blade-equipped buoys in the Rio Grande are insufficiently cruel. U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican whose district includes both Austin and San Antonio, has proposed legislation to detain all asylum-seekers for the crime of asking us for help. Millions of desperate people crammed into massive detention camps — what could go wrong?
Not to be outdone, ignominiously fired former Fox News blowhard Tucker Carlson called Abbott a "betrayer of your own people" for not shooting on sight anyone who crosses the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry.
"Abbott's got a National Guard," Carlson told a cheering crowd of supporters in Michigan last month. "He's the commander-in-chief of the National Guard, and it's Texas, so they have double-stacked magazines in their sidearms. You think they couldn't stop illegal border crossings in a week? Just assemble along the border. He refuses to do that. I've suggested it to him three times, including in private at a cocktail party in Dallas last year. 'Why don't you seal the border, man?' It's not complicated. If someone's trying to break into my house, it's not complicated to repel the person. Do you have a firearm or don't you? Are you willing to defend your house and your children or aren't you?"
Except most criminals committing B&E of houses aren't actively fleeing violent persecution or looking for work to feed their families. Also worth mentioning: the United States is far bigger than a typical residence — even Carlson's $5.5 million mansion.
To borrow his analogy, though, isn't prioritizing the issue of immigration above genuine civilizational threats such as climate change a bit like worrying about uninvited guests while your house burns down?
Disgraced pundits aside, the two frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination have engaged in a similarly atrocious rhetorical arms race. Former President Donald Trump has promised his voters "the largest deportation operation in the history of our country," citing the 1950s-era "Operation Wetback" as a model to emulate. Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has promised, on his first day in office, to invade Mexico.
Appearing on the Left Reckoning podcast, Mexican journalist Kurt Hackbarth detailed what DeSantis' threat would mean if executed.
"Cartels don't have places that say, 'Hi, we're cartels here,' right? The U.S. military would be bombing populated areas ... they'd be bombing hospitals, schools, neighborhoods. They'd be bombing and killing and maiming thousands upon thousands of innocent people. They'd create migration flows 50 to 100 times anything that's ever been seen up till now. This has not been well thought out at all."
Nativists evidently need reminding that refugees are not an invading army. And if we seek a militarized solution to every border crisis, the gruesome and horrific events transpiring in Gaza could foreshadow the rest of this century.
It's up to the Americas to write an alternative.
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