A Californian’s apology for the Texas immigration crisis

Texas, Texas, Texas, bless your heart. I have mixed feelings about you through the current immigrant crisis on the border, the epicenter of which is the West Texas town of El Paso. Are you the victim you claim to be, or an accomplice after the fact. Because my mom was raised in the Rio Grande Valley and my oldest daughter was born in Dallas, I’m in your debt. I can say to you my second home after my native California. As such, I’ve always tried to shoot you straight. So now Texas, I owe you an apology. Not 100% It was all me and none of it was you type of MIA culpa. You’re not innocent, and bring it about the current crisis. As I’ve said before, and other commentaries for straight arrow news. Among Texas employers in the average household, illegal immigrant labor, it’s as common in the Lone Star State as blue bonnets and yellow roses. And just as popular, you can’t very well hold up a no trespassing sign in one hand, and a help wanted sign in another. People see through that kind of hypocrisy. But I too, I also have to step up and accept responsibility for being glib and not taking seriously the effect that having 10,000 to 12,000 migrants and refugees show up every single day is having on Texas border towns and cities. After all, I’m way over here in California, and El Paso or el chico as the locals call it. The shelters are full and 1000s of people many from South American countries such as Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador are sleeping on frigid streets. God bless the good folks who are bringing their visitors blankets, clothing, food and water in 2023. This drama is playing out in El Paso. But in 2014 and 2018. Something similar happened downriver in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, where 10s of 1000s of migrants and refugees streamed in from Central American countries like Honduras and El Salvador. Once again, much of the country didn’t pay close enough attention to what was happening and ask why. As a native of Central California, I’m emotionally wedded to the Rio Grande Valley. The two valleys San Joaquin and Rio Grande are sister regions with similar demographics and social economic profiles. In both cases, we’re talking about foreign country with a big population of Mexican Americans who were discriminated against and disenfranchised by a minority of white people. In the 1950s. It was with heavy hearts that my grandfather Sunwell and my grandmother Aurora left their native Texas and the family home they had built and Edinburg and migrated 1500 miles to Central California to make new lives for themselves and their five kids, including their oldest child, my mom. And so in honor of my mother, and all the terminal branches in my family tree, I owe the state of Texas and apology. But I’m not the only one. As the second most populous state in the country after California, the economic growth in Texas doesn’t stay in Texas, thanks in large part to the sweat and hard work of the same immigrants that Texans love to complain about. The state has an annual gross domestic product of more than $2 trillion. That’s a lot of cabbage. And it goes everywhere, not least of all to Washington in the form of tax dollars and the other 49 states in the form of what Texans spend on trade and travel. The point is, as Texas goes, so goes much of the country, the country can’t afford to forget that. And for the last decade, at least Texans at least those who live on the border with Mexico have sounded the alarm that something new and different was happening. There was an unprecedented surge in immigrant crossings. They said it wasn’t just Mexicans anymore. They said the United Nations was coming to Texas, they said from my comfortable perch many miles away in California. I ignored all that. I have argued that things weren’t really that bad. Well, I was wrong. And Texas I’m sorry.