The indefatigable Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) \u2013 a New York Democrat and a proud member of the ultra-left \u201cSquad\u201d \u2013 is at it again, denying that the border crisis is a serious problem while simultaneously blaming America for it. While not that long ago, her comments might have been dismissed as the crackpot theorizing of someone on the far-left fringes of society, the reality is that AOC sadly represents an anti-immigration-enforcement radicalism increasingly becoming mainstream in the current Democratic Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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In a March 30 Instagram Live session, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez asserted<\/a> that the disaster at the southwestern border is \u201cnot a border crisis.\u201d Rather, \u201cit\u2019s an Imperialism crisis, it\u2019s a climate crisis, it\u2019s a trade crisis. And also it\u2019s a carceral [imprisonment]crisis.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n AOC then took issue with the term \u201csurge,\u201d claiming that \u201canyone who\u2019s using the term \u2018surge\u2019 around you, consciously, is trying to invoke a militaristic frame. And that\u2019s a problem, because this is not a surge. These are children and they are not insurgents and we are not being invaded. Which, by the way, is a white supremacist philosophy. The idea that if an \u2018other\u2019 is coming in the population that this is an invasion of who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a NY-14 Virtual Town Hall<\/a> the following day, the left-wing politician repeated many of these claims, including blaming decades of U.S. foreign policy vis-\u00e0-vis Central America. While criticizing the overcrowded conditions under which migrants are being held under Biden, AOC attacked the Trump administration\u2019s attempts to stem mass illegal migration as much worse (back in 2019, she even referred<\/a> to immigration detention facilities as \u201cconcentration camps\u201d). In fact, she declared that families \u201cseparated\u201d at the border under Trump are \u201cowed reparations.\u201d In other words, she wants hard-working American taxpayers to compensate foreign nationals for breaking our laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Semantic games <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the most striking things about AOC\u2019s recent comments is her obsession with the word \u201csurge,\u201d and her attempts to tie it to militarism and white supremacism. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary<\/em>, the word \u201csurge\u201d<\/a> can mean \u201cto rise and move in waves or billows,\u201d or \u201cto rise suddenly to an excessive or abnormal value.\u201d That most certainly describes the sharp increase in illegal migration<\/a> at the southwestern border. The word \u201cinsurgent\u201d<\/a> is defined as \u201ca person who revolts against civil authority or an established government.\u201d While \u201cinsurgent\u201d is certainly derived from the word \u201csurge,\u201d no one has actually referred to the growing influx of illegal migrants \u2013 especially unaccompanied minors \u2013 as insurgents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps AOC\u2019s quarrel with the word \u201csurge\u201d is a (rather\ninept) way to distract attention from a real-world problem by engaging in\npolitically correct semantic games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blaming America <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n What is even worse, is that for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez what is happening on our southwestern border is basically a crisis of everything (\u201cimperialism,\u201d climate, trade, or prisons) other than what it actually is: the inevitable outcome of the Biden-Harris administration\u2019s anti-immigration-enforcement, anti-border-security policies (which AOC, of course, supports), which are benefiting smugglers and cartels, encouraging migrants to undertake dangerous journeys, and creating potential openings for criminals and terror<\/a>i<\/a>sts<\/a> to enter the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than offering serious <\/em>solutions, she seizes an opportunity to take a swipe at her own country and society, accusing it of \u201cimperialism\u201d and other horrible sins. The congresswoman uses the \u201cimperialism\u201d label \u2013 which Soviet propagandists hurled at the U.S. for decades \u2013 to describe American foreign policy in Latin America, and in particular Washington\u2019s attempts to keep radical, revolutionary Marxist forces in the region from taking their countries down the abyss of communism<\/a> (a system that killed 100 million people worldwide) in the tense, adversarial context of the Cold War. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Accusations of xenophobia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n And, finally, there is AOC\u2019s suggestion that concerns over the border \u201csurge\u201d are somehow driven by xenophobia and racism, rather than any legitimate concerns, such as preserving the rule of law, protecting our sovereign national borders and jobs, keeping out drugs, criminals, and terrorists, etc. This is frequently<\/a> the open-borders left\u2019s go-to argument, mainly because it allows the apologists for illegal migration to avoid having to defend the indefensible \u2013 while forcing the other side onto the defensive. Debunking the baseless charge of border-security-is-xenophobia is fairly easy: a little over half of Border Patrol agents are Hispanic<\/a> (as of the end of Fiscal Year 2016), and light-skinned illegal border crossers are not given preferential treatment or simply waved through. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But the problem is that radical leftists like AOC continue to repeat their anti-American canards \u2013 seemingly unphased by any evidence to the contrary \u2013 and that this blame-America-first mentality appears to be driving the current administration\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The indefatigable Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) \u2013 a New York Democrat and a proud member of the ultra-left \u201cSquad\u201d \u2013 is at it again, denying that the border crisis is a serious problem while simultaneously blaming America for it. While not that long ago, her comments might have been dismissed as the crackpot theorizing of<\/p>\n