Ruben Gallego is proof that we've reached a tipping point in border politics

The message is clear in American politics today.

You ignore immigration at your peril.

And so, U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego has changed his tune on U.S.-Mexico border politics.

He acknowledges that the border has become a serious problem.

Democrats agree: There's a 'border crisis'

There was a time very recently when Democrats and Republicans were debating whether there is an actual “border crisis.”

Now, Democratic mayors in New York, Boston and Chicago are telling the Democratic White House their communities have been overwhelmed by migrants and their needs.

In Chicago, an African American alderman has started warning that an influx of some 13,000 migrants there has become “a source of increased anxiety and a potential threat to tear apart longstanding political and civic alliances between Black and Latino communities.”

The immigrant-friendly New York Times screamed on Oct. 21, “Crossings at the U.S. Southern Border Are Higher Than Ever.” In fact, for a third record-setting year in a row.

So yes, Ruben Gallego has pivoted as he attempts to move from Congress to one of Arizona’s U.S. Senate seats.

As described by The Arizona Republic’s Ronald J. Hansen, the same Ruben Gallego, who in 2018 was hurling bricks at then-President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies, is now upbraiding fellow Democrat Joe Biden for not appreciating how serious border conditions have become.

Immigration is at a global tipping point

The debate over the phrase “border crisis” is over.

Even Gallego, still a staunch supporter of Latin American immigration, refers to the “border crisis” in his own press releases.

But his approach is different from Republicans. He speaks of helping border communities with more federal aid for local law enforcement, Hansen reported.

Gallego is hardly alone in this shift.

The entire Western world appears to be at a tipping point.

The European Union “is facing massive waves of legal and illegal arrivals, an issue that has prompted Germany to announce new border controls with neighbors Poland and the Czech Republic," reports Reuters.

EU countries increased their deportation of immigrants by 29% in the second quarter of 2023, Reuters reports.

Israel has created new urgency in Europe

In the United Kingdom, the government is awaiting a ruling this week from that nation’s Supreme Court on the legality of a scheme to deport asylum seekers to the central African nation of Rwanda, reports Yahoo.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is hopeful the plan can reduce the number of small boats carrying migrants from North Africa and other locales.

“This year more than 27,000 people have arrived in Britain on small boats without permission, after a record 45,755 were detected in 2022,” Yahoo reports.

The border is a sieve: That's a recipe for disaster

All of this was happening before Hamas attacked Israel and murdered some 1,400 mostly Jewish civilians and soldiers.

The initial outpouring of sympathy for Israel quickly turned to backlash with massive rallies in major European cities — London, Paris, Berlin. These were largely organized by Muslim immigrants opposing Israel’s counterattack on Gaza.

A firing ramps up immigration anxiety

Already, those marches have led to the firing of a Cabinet member in the British government, after Home Secretary Suella Braverman called the protests in her country “hate marches,” because they produced antisemitic chants and placards.

Further, by choosing to stage a march on London on the same day the British celebrate their war dead, the march organizers were provoking a confrontation.

“Here we reach the heart of the matter. I do not believe that these marches are merely a cry for help for Gaza. They are an assertion of primacy by certain groups — particularly Islamists,” Braverman wrote Nov. 8 in The Times (of London).

Her frank assessment led to pressure on the prime minister to fire her. And this week he did. The British left and parts of the right celebrated.

But Nile Gardiner, an aide to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, called the firing “a dangerous move and a staggering act of folly.”

British conservatives such as Melanie Phillips and Douglas Murray have warned for years that Britain’s generous immigration policies are creating a parallel society that is hostile to the Enlightenment values that built the nation.

Following the Oct. 7 attack and the pro-Palestinian marches, immigration anxiety is amping up all across Europe.

United States has fared better than Europe

America does not face the kind of dire circumstances that confront Britain, France and Germany — where Islam is on the verge of changing the national characters of those places in the next half-century.

Our immigration is largely Latin American and Asian, two cultures that share many of the same values of the West. Further, U.S. Muslim immigrants are given greater opportunities than they enjoy in Europe and have thus integrated well.

After 9/11 there was concern that Muslim Americans could form a fifth column in America, a fear that was never realized even as the United States fought wars over two decades in Muslim nations.

But Oct. 7 is raising new fears that antisemitism is finding a foothold in the American left, and even festering in America’s elite universities. Many of the students spouting anti-Jewish slogans are immigrants.

A Gallup tracking poll shows that the percentage of Americans who want to reduce immigration is at its highest level since 2014 or 41%.

Donald Trump throws gas on the fire

Running to get in front of this parade, Donald Trump is turning to obnoxious, jingoistic rhetoric accusing undocumented immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country.”

In a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Trump said, “These people are very aggressive: They drink, they have drugs, a lot of things happening,” the Washington Post reports.

As Trump moves farther to the authoritarian right, Ruben Gallego moves closer to the political center — a more responsible place to be.

It’s a place that doesn’t ignore these realities:

The federal government has mismanaged the border.

And the alarm is sounding on our broken system.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Ruben Gallego is proof: Border politics have reached a tipping point