Mexico's President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, recently tried to commit an act of extortion on the United States of America, demanding the United States fork over $20 billion a year — yes, a year — or else the flow of illegal aliens across our southern border will continue. Fox News took to the streets to find out what some random Americans thought about that, and the answers were revealing — not all in a good way.
"I don't think we should pay their demands," Andy told Fox News on Music City's famous Broadway street. "It's our issue they're coming over, but it's their issue for letting them come over. It would be like we are submitting to them."
But a Nashville local, Chris, disagreed. He said the U.S. and Mexico need to work together to solve the immigration crisis.
"It helps us, too. It benefits us, too," he said. "We spend money everywhere else, so why not?"
Consider that second response for a moment. That blasé acceptance that the United States just has an endless wellspring of money to spend things on is, frankly, a horrifying notion. The nation is coming up on $34 trillion in debt. We can't just "spend money everywhere else," and we have to be more pragmatic about where we do spend money.
Closing the southern border — really closing it — is one of those places where, yes, we should be spending some money.
$20 billion would, of course, build and maintain a lot of border wall. It would enable us to hire some more enforcement agents. We could even spend some of it to bring home our military people that we have, for some reason, still stationed in Europe, and place them along the border. After all, it's unlikely that we'll see 10,000 Soviet tanks charging through the Fulda Gap anytime soon, so much of our reason for keeping forces in Europe has, at least, greatly diminished.
Here are the details of President Obrador's demand:
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said during a "60 Minutes" interview Sunday that the surge of migrants crossing into the U.S. will continue unless President Biden and his administration comply with his demands. Obrador had called on the U.S. to send $20 billion a year to Latin American countries, lift sanctions on Venezuela, end the Cuban embargo and legalize millions of Hispanics who have worked and lived in the U.S. for at least a decade.
The proper response from the United States to this bit of proposed extortion should rightly end with the phrase, "...and the horse you rode in on."
It's unlikely that the Biden administration will respond appropriately. They are, in fact, far more likely to cave. That seems to be old Joe Biden's modus operandum when dealing with other nations unless they are Israel.
The fact is that Mexico needs us more than we need them. Much of the illegal immigration coming into the U.S. now isn't from Mexico, at least not directly. Many are coming from elsewhere in Latin America, and more are coming from everywhere else, including China, Africa, and, somewhat inexplicably, the Middle East. Illegal immigration from Mexico has dropped as a percentage of the whole because many Mexicans are finding employment in American manufacturing facilities set up to take advantage of Mexico's cheaper labor — and who are dependent on shipping those goods north of the border.
President Biden and his administration, in this case, really need to tell el Presidente Obrador where to head in. Sadly, they are far more likely to get out the checkbook.