EDITORIAL: Immigration chaos reaches far north of the border

The words of a small-town Wisconsin police chief express a clearer understanding of America’s immigration crisis than those of the politicians who inflame the issue with their aggravated rhetoric.

In a letter to President Joe Biden asking for federal help to deal with the impact on his community from the surge of immigrants crossing the southern border, Whitewater Police Chief Dan Meyer wrote:

“Each individual has a different reason for coming here; some are fleeing from a corrupt government, others are simply looking for a better opportunity to prosper. Regardless of the individual situations, these people need resources like anyone else, and their arrival has put great strain on our existing resources.”

While national political figures such as Donald Trump, who famously declared that immigrants “are poisoning our blood,” demonize those seeking better lives in the U.S., Meyer’s letter points out that the problem is not who these people are, but rather the huge number of them entering the country legally or illegally.

The exact number of people, mostly from Columbia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba, who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in 2023 is not known, but the Border Patrol recorded 2 million encounters with illegal border crossers during the year.

Cities along the border are overwhelmed, and even places far north are stressed by the need to provide services for the many immigrant arrivals. The fact that Whitewater, a college town not much larger than Port Washington, Grafton or Cedarburg, is seriously affected is a telling indication of the reach of the border crisis.

According to the police chief, 800 to 1,000 immigrants have taken up residency in the city in the last two years. Many are desperately poor,  adding to the burden on municipal services.

It’s likely that most of those immigrants are undocumented foreign-born people also known as illegal aliens. In the debate over immigration, they are characterized by some of those favoring harsh measures as criminals of one sort or another.

All but a few of them, however, are classified as illegal aliens only because they entered the country at a location not designated by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as a place for those seeking asylum to cross the border. Other crossing places, well known by immigrants and authorities, are monitored by Border Patrol agents, who are tasked with processing endless lines of asylum seekers.

The consequences of the failure of Congress and the Biden and Trump administrations to agree on policies to establish an orderly immigration process are wearing on the country, the border states and now faraway cities large and small.

Even diehard open-border advocates must see that measures have to be taken to slow the human tidal wave overwhelming the southern border, while still honoring America’s commitment to offering, to the best of its ability, its freedom and opportunity to immigrants who will sustain a diverse population.

The Whitewater police chief’s compelling letter is getting a lot of attention, including some from anti-immigration forces claiming it supports their cause.

Chief Meyer cleared the air about that, telling the media the letter was not written “to take a political angle. The letter was not written to give people political ammunition. The letter was written to describe the situation that we’re facing here in Whitewater and attempt to secure the resources to address it.”

The federal government should provide financial assistance for cities stressed by the immigrant surge. But the most meaningful help it could give would be a coherent, effective immigration system to replace the current chaos.