Tennessee senator mocked for saying residents want a wall on ‘our’ border

Republicans return to immigration fears ahead of midterms

Sen Marsha Blackburn (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

GOP Sen Marsha Blackburn amused more than a few of her Twitter followers on Tuesday when she insisted that residents of her state wanted a wall on “our” border, apparently referring to the US border with Mexico.

Ms Blackburn is one of many Republicans who have returned to the issue of immigration as a line of attack against the Biden administration, which recently announced the end of a CDC rule allowing DHS agents at the border to turn away migrants seeking asylum due to Covid fears.

The Republican lawmaker’s state is nowhere near the US’s southern border with Mexico; as such, her insistence that residents of the state supported the construction of a border wall resulted in users mockingly questioning what Ms Blackburn’s beef was with the state of Alabama, one of its southern neighbours.

One example was a response from left-leaning journalist Molly Jong-Fast, who tweeted in response: “But then people from Alabama won’t be able to come in.”

“[T}ennesseeans finally telling mississippi, alabama and georgia what’s what,” joked Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group.

Another user wrote, “[t]ell Tennesseans their southern border is with Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, and that neither of three states will pay for that wall.”

Others, like 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, did not go for a joke and instead questioned the senator’s priorities for federal spending.

“Will you take money from healthcare for Tennessee’s citizens, from feeding Tennessee’s hungry children and educating Tennessee’s uneducated children, in order to pay for for it? Is that what you and your pals call good governance?” asked Ms Williamson.

The White House has defended the CDC’s independence and denied any political considerations regarding the decision to rescind Title 42, the controversial directive that allowed the Department of Homeland Security to sharply curtail asylum requests during the Covid pandemic.

Progressives, conversely, have cheered the end of the rule and called on the White House to do more to rebuild the asylum system that Biden officials have repeatedly characterised as gutted by the previous administration.

Many experts agreed that the rule was being kept in place due to the convenience of its use to deter migration, and argued that it violated international law. In Congress, Hispanic Democrats furiously described the rule as a racist relic of the Trump administration.

“Today is a bright spot in our nation’s history with the end of the Trump-initiated Title 42 policy,” Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair Rep Raúl Ruiz said when the policy was lifted in early April.

“The CHC repeatedly called for the end of this policy, which was fueled by Trump’s anti-immigrant hate and fear agenda that used the pandemic as an excuse to deny asylum seekers their legal right to due process,” he continued at the time in a statement.