Watch: Marjorie Taylor Greene suggests immigrants coming to the US equal Russians invading Ukraine

17 November 2022

United States Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) on Thursday put forth a false equivalency between Russian President Vladimir Putin's genocidal invasion of Ukraine and migrants who attempt to enter the US for economic opportunity.

After declaring that the US is in a "proxy war" with Russia – a talking point that is frequently repeated by the Kremlin – Greene complained that "we had five million people cross our border illegally since Joe Biden took office. And let’s compare that to how many Russians invaded Ukraine. Eighty-two thousand Russians have invaded Ukraine."

Greene added that "I think the American people and the taxpayers of this country deserve to know why the Biden Administration and this Congress is so interested in funding the protection of Ukraine's border and not the protection of our border. That's a very good question."

Indeed, albeit one that has been debunked in depth.

In August, The Washington Post's Philip Bump delved into why many Americans – particularly those on the right – have clung to Greene's false parity.

An invasion "means that millions of people are trying to cross the border, of course. And in very broad strokes, that’s true. Since January 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has logged more than 3 million encounters at the border," Bump explained.

"But, already, perceptions come into play," he continued. "Is stopping 3 million people at the border actually a bad thing, if you’re worried about the number of migrants coming to the United States? It’s like the repeated and deeply odd complaints from (mostly Republican) legislators about the scale of drug enforcement at the border. When Donald Trump was president, the Republican Party touted drug seizures as a mark of border security. Under President Biden, it’s somehow a failure."

Bump pointed out that the narrative is being spun wildly out of sync with what is actually going on.

"The sense that politicians and media outlets often try to give is that millions of people arrive at the border, and then millions of people flood into the country. Those reports about migrants being shuttled around the country give a sense that those millions of arrivals are somehow translating into a steady stream of new migrants into various communities," he wrote. "In reality, relatively few of those stopped at the border are released into the country. If we split up the pool of encounters another way, we see that less than a quarter of those stopped at the border end up being released, either through a “notice to appear” for an immigration hearing or after being released on parole or other alternatives to detention."

Furthermore, Bump noted, "apprehensions are up — but few of those apprehended wind up released in the United States. Some people cross the border illegally and aren’t detected — but that happens much less frequently than it used to."

Thus, he asked, "So what’s the invasion? That more people are being released into the United States than in recent years? That more people are being kicked out of the United States than normally happens?"

Bump also stressed "that 'invasion' is an inherently subjective word, influenced by how people talk about the situation at the border. That’s the other finding from the NPR-Ipsos poll: Public sentiment on immigration has soured since Trump left office, in part because public opinion often moves in the opposite direction from public policy."

Bump's conclusion, therefore, was that when powerful individuals "call something an 'invasion' enough... people will begin to believe it."

Watch below or at this link.

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