The border has always been the border. It is open, and always has been open due to trade/travel, basically MONEY, what is less spoken of, is the fact of how much money is generated from migrant labor/legal and illegal/ and goods made in Mexico. So many people in the US use that labor to see higher returns on their investment. So many businesses use those products, made cheaply in Mexico, to make a profit.
The part about immigration has never really changed much. The US is also a closed border for migrants. Go down to San Ysidro crossing and tell me if it looks open. Go see the migrant camps in Tijuana and tell me the borders open. it's not.
it's an empty rhetoric based fight. The US has a demand and a need for cheap labor and goods. That isn't stopping. Congress doesn't want that, neither do Biden or Trump. Most citizens don't really want that either. Do you know what cost of goods looks like without China and Mexico? Inflation hit people hard. Imagine if we lost cheap goods from our biggest trade partners. People can talk about NAFTA but that's 25 plus years ago.
so they both rant and rave, but the demand on the US is so high, there is no "solving the border issue". Calling for open borders is absurd, and a nonstarter. So is a lot of the right's rhetoric about walls and zero tolerance and all this. it's Kabuki theater and a lot of things, but no one really has a real solution, because there is none. It's porous, you can't close the border without hundreds of millions in losses. You can't keep out all immigrants, legal or illegal. Part of the issue is insecurity in South American, and then you have the vast profits realized by human trafficking/smuggling networks, who pay plaza to the cartels, who in turn pay off Mexican politicians.
it's like 5-15k per person to cross into the US from Tijuana. They send pangas every day with like 20 people. Probably 5 a day at minimum. Do the math on that.
all the rhetoric is simplistic bullshyt from people who either don't know better or pretend they don't.
it's the same as the drug war.