A little border chaos makes 'The View' sound less Manhattan and more Phoenix

The beauty of ABC TV’s “The View” is that it is pure candy, a guilty diversion from the everyday gruel of American politics.

Barbara Walters invented the format to give heft and broader exposure to the viewpoints of American women, but it has evolved into a confectioner that churns out caramels and bonbons and ribbons of taffy that can be chopped and diced and whisked across America’s social networks.

True to its name, “The View” (singular) isn’t really a cross-section of U.S. female opinion. American women are a lot smarter than that. And more diverse.

'The View' is full of urban snobbery

Americans watch “The View” for THE view — the view from Park Avenue.

We watch to hear the patter and chit-chat from the commanding heights of American culture — the urban metropolises of the Atlantic northeast.

We watch because we are suckers for a format that pits four urbane snobs against one token conservative and lets them pummel her until her face and eyes are blank with Stockholm Syndrome.

There once was true entertainment and comedic value to all that.

Until now.

Until the snobs started sounding and acting like us — the unwashed and unwoke rabble who occupy the rest of the country.

New York City can't handle immigrants

It all came crashing down in ABC studios in New York last week when co-host Ana Navarro let the mask slip.

This daughter of upper-crust Nicaraguans revealed that she is none too fond of the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” — the latest wave of working-class Latin Americans who have rolled in on buses from the desert Southwest.

The migrants are pouring into Gotham at 10,000 per month, according to New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and they’re creating a problem with no end in sight: “This issue will destroy New York City. Destroy New York City.” (Emphasis his.)

Bill Melugin, border reporter for Fox News — the network for other Americans, low-brow Americans — reminded Adams that “Border Patrol’s Tucson, AZ sector just had almost 11,000 in one *week*. And that’s just one of nine sectors along the southern border. Sanctuary cities get a tiny fraction of what’s coming across border.”

Well, whatever. New York is New York. And this won’t do.

It creates 'tremendous stress,' Navarro says

Like the Mariel boat lift that in 1980 gave us 100,000-plus Cuban immigrants in south Florida (not to mention Tony Montana and his “little friend”) this wave of new immigrants creates a “tremendous stress on a city,” Navarro said.

“They need to be resettled elsewhere,” she said. Pointedly.

“They need to spread out,” agreed her co-host Sara Haines, who came to “The View” from Iowa by way of Smith College. “This is a massive country.”

Mexico's first woman president: How she could impact Arizona

Yes, these are merely the opinions of two people, but they represent a serious break from the East Coast catechism. For Navarro especially, they are an unhelpful diversion from plumping Joe Biden’s reelection.

If she’s not careful, people could begin to notice Biden’s immigration policy is essentially “turn on the spigots and let the rest sort itself out.”

Isn't this part of the Biden border plan?

The results of the Biden Border Plan are well described by John Modlin, chief patrol agent for the Tucson Sector:

“In 2020, our total encounters were 66,000. That figure nearly tripled in 2021, and then quadrupled last year. We closed last year, 2022, with over 250,000 encounters in Tucson, Arizona. That is a 257% increase in just two years.”

With an election on the horizon, Biden is working to turn off the spigot, but apparently not in time to spare New York and Boston and Chicago the burden felt for decades in El Paso, Tucson, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

My guess is that Navarro and her co-hosts will find a graceful way to walk this all back. Because you can’t sound like the rabble when your job is to lift your nose to them and call out their xenophobia.

You can’t call them all “racist” when you sound, by your own standards, just a little bit racist.

It ruins the format.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with the Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: 'The View' suddenly adopts the rabble's view of immigration