Democrats and Republicans have been fighting over what to label the situation at the Mexican border. The Republicans are calling it a crisis, while the Democrats are dismissing it as a challenge.

I think the word they’re searching for is calamity.

Both sides see a political advantage in their positions. Democrats, with their open-door policy, are pretending to be compassionate and hoping to convince Latinos that they are the party of the humanitarians. The Republicans want to be seen as the responsible ones, the grown-ups who want to assure everybody that we’re a nation of immigrants, but immigrants who come here legally.

The fact is we’re no longer a nation of immigrants. Most of us were born here. Most of those who weren’t born here snuck in illegally and have no right to be here, although nobody is ever supposed to profit from the commission of a crime.

Even when both parties start talking about comprehensive immigration reform, they’re blowing smoke up your behind.

Other nations don’t have to come up with a thousand-page piece of legislation. They keep it simple. If you don’t have a passport, you’re not allowed to enter. And if you enter without one, they toss you in the clink or they kick you out. And, unlike in the U.S., where people are allowed to keep coming back after being deported, you try to sneak into other countries a second time, you’re going to face serious consequences.

There has been a tremendous change in the sort of immigrants we’re attracting. In the distant past, people used to come here from all over the world because they wanted to become real Americans. They wanted to make money, sure, but they also took seriously the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Whether they hailed from Ireland, Poland, Uganda, India, the Philippines, China, Japan, Australia, Sweden, Brazil, El Salvador, Russia or Korea, they stood for the National Anthem, saluted the flag and were proud when their sons signed up to wear a uniform, whether as a soldier, a fireman or a cop.

Today, I’m sure there are isolated cases where the newcomers share the feelings of those earlier settlers.

But these days, I have to ask if they haven’t come here to get rich or at least richer than where they came from, why are they coming?

For years, I have said that if I lived in most other countries, I would try to get here as quickly as I could, legally or otherwise. I wasn’t defending the practice of sneaking in; I was merely acknowledging that I would probably be one of those interlopers.

But what sort of country are we today? So long as you weren’t trying to survive in a war zone, what is it about the once shiny city on the hill that would reach out to you?

If you take a clear-eyed look at America in 2021, it’s not a very pretty sight to behold.

We allow petty dictators calling themselves governors and mayors to tell us how to live. They mandate masks, social distancing and vaccinations, while at the same time the President insists that the border be kept open so that Covid-infected aliens can enter and travel freely to all corners of the country.

A few goofy troublemakers break into a house of Congress and the Democrats turn the nation’s capital into an armed camp surrounded by barbed wire.

We claim to be a moral nation, but the Supreme Court supports abortions up to the time of delivery, and Congress provides half a billion dollars a year to the world’s biggest abortion mill.

And yet this is a nation that has all but out-lawed capital punishment even for the vilest of monsters.

We talk about providing humanitarian assistance to children whose parents have sent them off with the same people who usually traffic in heroin and fentanyl. But once the children arrive at our border, probably having been sexually abused along the way, we put them on buses and send them God knows where. Most likely into the hands of pedophiles.

If we wanted to do something for the kids, we’d pull our military out of the Middle East and Germany and send them to Mexico and Central America to wipe out the drug cartels that keep the people captive while their governments, which are nearly as bad as our own, do nothing.

At least for the first time in several decades, our soldiers would know who they’re shooting at and why.

It would help if we had folks at the Pentagon who were warriors who understood their primary mission and not social workers out to provide career opportunities for women, homosexuals, trannies, albinos and midgets.

The job of the military is to fight and win wars. Period. It’s not to provide sex change operations or come up with maternity wear for combat pilots.

We provide one and all with free schooling, but what are they being taught? Mainly to hate the country they’ve traveled thousands of miles to enter. They are taught that we are a nation with a racist past, a racist present and a racist future.

Furthermore, they are indoctrinated with the claim that Capitalism is inferior to the very same Socialism that so many of them are escaping from.

America used to be the place where Lady Justice was blindfolded so that she couldn’t put her thumb on the scales. Our legal system was one of the things that made us superior to other nations and made us such a desirable destination for people who were accustomed to seeing one set of laws for themselves and a separate set for those with money and influence.

Today, because the odious George Soros continues to elect district attorneys who believe all laws are racist and, therefore, should not be enforced, we have a legal system that isn’t even the envy of Russians.

Where we were once blessed with cops who were honest, brave and, for the most part, incorruptible, today, because they were whipsawed by Barack Obama and are now being neutered by left-wing mayors, they might as well be department store mannequins in places like Portland, Seattle. Kenosha, Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, Oakland and Minneapolis. So long as there are enough black people or hooded white punks in a mob, they can burn, pillage and kill, with impunity.

Even those who hunger for free speech and freedom of religion should reconsider a move, legal or otherwise, to the United States.

After all, even though it is enshrined in the First Amendment, freedom of speech has been sent packing, the victim of a corrupt press and a cancel-culture that dominates social media.

As for freedom of religion, it is just a rumor these days. For an entire year, our churches and synagogues have been shut down, with nary a peep from ministers, rabbis and priests. I guess they’ve all been too busy walking into bars with parrots.

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Writer-director Nicholas Meyer, the man responsible for “The Seven-Percent Solution,” “Time After Time” and “Star Trek II, IV and VI,” once defined the difference between an actor and a star: “An actor is someone who pretends to be somebody else. A movie star is someone who pretends that somebody else is them. An actor will change his face, will change his hair, will change his voice, will disappear into the role. A movie star doesn’t ever disappear.”

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Recently, even while apparently armed with a Teleprompter, Joe Biden pulled off a trifecta. He not only couldn’t recall the name of his Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, but he also couldn’t recall the Department of Defense or the Pentagon.

When you realize this man is our Commander in Chief, you begin to understand why some people would feel a lot better about it if the nuclear football was in the hands of Wile E. Coyote.

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You can email Burt directly at [email protected].