The calls for Texas to defend itself and defy the federal government have set fire to a long-simmering fight over states’ rights, emboldening right-wing figures.
Daniel Miller felt encouraged last week, as fears of a new civil war trended online and a coalition of powerful Republicans coalesced behind Gov. Greg Abbott’s standoff with the Biden administration.
As the longtime leader of Texas’ unlikely secessionist movement, Miller has for decades argued that the state is in a stranglehold by the federal government that, eventually, would prompt enough popular support for a vote to leave the union. The past week only reinforced that belief.
"It validates and confirms the position we’ve had all along, which is that if Texas ever wants to truly secure its border … the only way we’re going to do it is as an independent and self-governing nation,” Miller said in an interview.
At issue is the 47-acre Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, where Texas has for months been laying concertina wire along the Rio Grande to prevent migrants from crossing. In a 5-4 decision early last week, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration, allowing U.S. Border Patrol agents to cut the wire to apprehend people who had crossed the river.
The narrowly written decision — which didn’t speak to whether the state had to stop laying new concertina wire — has emboldened Abbott, who vowed to continue his fight against the high court and federal government, citing Texas’ right to defend itself from what he claims is an “invasion” of migrants.
By week’s end — and as the Texas National Guard and state troopers continued to roll out wire and stifle federal agents’ access to much of the park — Abbott’s defiant calls were backed by 25 Republican governors, former President Donald Trump, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and nearly all of Texas’ congressional delegation.
If migrants working fields screwed over American workers, that implies the existence of Americans willing to do that work. In the absence of migrants it doesn’t get done by Americans, it just doesn’t get done. There aren’t Americans interested in doing that work.
Also, it’s pretty fucked up that you’re willing to equate people who were chained up and dragged here to be whipped in fields and watch their children be sold away, to people who want to be here doing this work badly enough to make the risky crossing that some assholes keep making riskier. Frankly, while I can’t speak to their characters in general aside from this one facet, on the matter of coming to America in search of a better life I’d say those people display more of the American spirit than the people trying to keep them out.
Not at those wages. That’s what “stole our jobs” means, they do jobs for less than what Americans will.
And why do you think slavery was so popular? It was cheap labor, just provide minimal food and shelter, and away you go. Same as illegals today.
They also won’t do them at higher wages, because when your crops are rotting in the fields you panic and offer at least minimum wage. Americans came, did it for a day, and were like nah that’s not my scene. Americans do not want those jobs. The migrants didn’t take anything away from Americans. “Stole our jobs” is rhetoric to get people who don’t understand the situation riled up. It’s a slogan, it’s not real. Nobody complaining about stolen jobs is clamoring to get out in those fields, not for migrant wages, not for minimum wage, not for any amount of money that is going to be offered.
Are you aware of the homestead act? If you offer enough compensation, you get farmers.
So what you’re saying is that we need to break up existing large farms and parcel them out to smaller individual farmers? Because I might be on board with that.
Yes, actually.
I mean the specifics of how we do it matters, but yeah I think redistributing the means of production would be pretty cool. “Enough land to make a profit farming” is an awfully big paycheck, though; nobody’s going to offer that to american workers, I’m almost certain.