A new change at TSA. Kristi Noem is gone. She was elected Governor of South Dakota in 2018, ran again in 2022 and received a record number of votes to win again.
What I have read is that she was deeply committed to President Trump and was a well-respected Governor. Then came Washington and her brutal downfall.
Now it is another even stranger character, Senator Markwayne Mullin from Oklahoma. He was running a plumbing company in Oklahoma with red vans that said “The Red Rooster” on their sides and decided to run for Congress in 2012. He is also a mixed-martial arts fighter and met President Trump at a fighting event in Tulsa in 2023. In fact, he was inducted into the Oklahoma Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2016.
One odd characteristic. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he has made numerous comments about the danger of serving in the war but there is no record that he did serve.
During a hearing in 2023 he challenged the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to a fight. Senator Bernie Sanders tried to discourage him, telling him “You are now a United States Senator.”
What will happen now? Will it be a continuation of ICE with its record of brutal assaults around the country? Could there be another way?
Listening to Colorado Public Radio, we heard that the City of Denver is asking for funds to pay Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers at Denver International Airport. There are not enough workers to handle the passengers. The same has been true for Border Patrol agents in El Paso. TSA is a component of the Department of Homeland Security.
Could a sympathetic case move Markwayne Mullin? A case like the Purple Heart winner Sae Joon Park’s case in a recent New York Times article?
Much of the immigration work has been done.
Why not, therefore, take a further step and enable those who are here illegally to pay a fine and show their “good citizenship” by demonstrating that they are taxpayers, workers or owners of business, have homes and families. Why not focus on these positives instead of the negatives that have given ICE such a bad name.
Remember that immigration is only one piece of a much larger puzzle called demographics. What are the demographics of our country, and of the world at large?
You need a population with a birthrate of at least 2.1 to maintain your population. Otherwise, your country becomes focused more and more to the elderly with their high medical costs and less and less on those that are working. All of what we would call the “developed countries” have this problem. For example:
United Kingdom – 1.53
France – 1.64
Germany –1.46
United States – 1.63
Look at the some of the countries with exceptional growth:
Nigeria – 4.21
Pakistan – 3.44
We are headed towards internal shifts in countries like the U.S., eventually leading us towards too many elderly citizens who need medical care and too few workers to care for them.
What is the answer? What do you say to a young family that looks at the cost of raising a child to be anywhere between $200,000 and $500,000? It seems like immigration is the only logical answer. Will this new director, Senator Markwayne Mullin pay any attention?
Editor’s Note: The above guest column was penned by New Mexico-based writer Morgan Smith. Smith writes on border issues and can be reached at Morgan-smith@comcast.net
