Republicans are often cast as the villains of the immigration debate, and it’s a role they play to perfection. 

They’re seen as racist, nativist and anti-immigrant, both legal and illegal. They come across as punitive, cruel and heartless. They’re considered insensitive to the fact that not everyone in the world was lucky enough to be born in the United States. And some people have to get here on their own. Worse, Republicans are hypocrites who rail against illegal immigrants and then turn around and take campaign contributions from the same businesses that hire them. 

What part of illegal do Republicans not understand, or apparently care much about? This misbehavior by the GOP plays into the hands of Democrats, the liberal media and left-wing advocacy groups that claim to defend immigrants, but never seem to defend them against Democrats. Here’s the familiar pattern. Number one, Republicans implement some bonehead policy aimed at curbing immigration. Number two, Democrats, even if they secretly support the policy, see an opportunity to rally the support of Latinos and other pro-immigrant voters. So they rail against the policy and promise to end it. 

Number three, once they take power, nothing changes. Democrats preserve the same terrible policy they pretend to oppose, but secretly support, because if a policy is revoked, and the immigrants and refugees flood the border, the Democrats are going to catch hell for it and be labeled the quote, open border party. 

Number four, as Democrats do nothing, the liberal media and left-wing groups say nothing and thus cover up the crime. Number five, Republicans object and they try to insert themselves somehow. Number six, the Democrats, the liberal media and the left-wing groups all wake up and jump up and attack the Republicans as the real villains.

Put simply, every time Republicans act like big jerks on immigration, they let Democrats get away with being smaller jerks on immigration. What a great system. Right. That’s a telenovela that played out recently at the Supreme Court where a majority of the justices gave a temporary reprieve to Title 42, a section of US Code that former President Donald Trump used in 2020 to keep out migrants, supposedly to stop the spread of COVID-19. The High Court ruled that the policy, which had been ordered terminated by a federal judge in Washington, DC should remain in place for the time being. The Justices said they would hear arguments in the case in February, and that the state would remain in place until then. This was the wrong decision. 

But Justice Neil Gorsuch, who broke with his conservative colleagues to side with three liberals on the court, got it right. The Supreme Court, Gorsuch said in his dissent, is a court of law that should not go around making public policy. Good on him. The fact that Title 42 got spared is good news for the 19 Republican-led states that went to court to protect the measure, because they fear that once it’s gone, immigrants will flit across the US Mexican border, and they’ll have to deal with it. But it’s great news for the Biden administration, which refused to end the policy even though Joe Biden promised to do so because officials fear that once it’s gone, immigrants will flit across the US Mexico border, and they’ll catch the blame for it. 

The White House is running a scam. That’s how it looks to George Mason University Professor Justin Gust who studies the politics of immigration. Quote, the ruling brings a sense of relief that administration officials may not publicly acknowledge,” Gest told The New York Times. Whether they acknowledge it or not and whether the liberal media and left-wing advocacy groups call them out or not, that’s what’s happening. So who’s the bigger villain here? The Republicans who stab immigrants and those who defend them in the front, or the Democrats who prefer to stab them in the back?