Opinion | It’s a Trial a Minute Around Here

Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I know we’ll want to talk about the Hunter Biden trial. But I’d like to give kudos to The Times’s Edgar Sandoval for his terrific report last week from the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. The long and short of it is that Texan Latinos, once reliably Democratic, are turning against Joe Biden on account of the border chaos.

Do you think the president’s executive order all-but banning asylum applications will turn that around? Or does it merely confirm that the administration sat on its hands for more than three years while the crisis got worse?

Gail Collins: Bret, there are parts of Texas that are the natural first destinations for people crossing the border illegally. Whatever their ethnicity, residents are likely to feel unnerved by a flood of strangers with no homes and no jobs coming into their towns and hiding in terror from the government.

That’s a crisis, but I think you’ve agreed with me in the past that overall, the influx of immigrants has been terrific for the national economy. We desperately need them for jobs in agriculture, and if they had the legal right to work, they’d create a boom in places like New York that are stuck right now trying to house newcomers who often can’t even give their real names.

Bret: Not so sure. Between them, New York and Chicago are spending billions in tax dollars to handle the influx. San Diego has been hit by a wave of “burglary tourism” by crime groups coming across the border. Public schools are having to enroll thousands of migrant children when many of these schools face tight budgets. Unscrupulous employers are abusing migrant workers, many of them underage. And right-wing populists, from Brussels to Mar-a-Lago, are profiting from it politically.

I’m all for immigration, so long as it’s lawful and brings in people we know and want and doesn’t come at the expense of people already living here. What we have now is just another Biden own goal, kinda like his stalwart defense of his son Hunter. Or am I getting this one all wrong?