As someone born and living in Texas all my life I wouldn’t say an influx of immigrants is what $1 billion in state funded wall is “all” about. It has a lot to do with power and politics — in particular Governor Greg Abbott’s pandering to keep a base of extreme right wing fear and racist motivated active voters from bolting to an even more extreme farther right candidate. Greg Abbott and the far right Texas legislature (I wouldn’t categorize the group as “Republican Party”, the Republican Party is historically conservative and respects state and federal constitutions) has flipped the constitutional mandates. Specifically wasting $1 billion in Texas state taxes on a 14th century style border wall (border control is a U.S. Federal constitutional purview) and then just recently reallocating federal Covid relief funding to Texas public education (an area the Texas constitution says is a state responsibility). The motive for Abbott moving $123 million in Federal Covid funds to Texas public education was a disingenuous PR stunt to blunt the accurate criticism that Texas teachers are underpaid, under-resourced and overworked. Our education results are dismal.

Texas has made into law the most oppressive voter restriction laws in the country, has no permits or restrictions in simply buying and carrying guns in public, has a law that pays a bounty for spying on a reporting on any woman that gets an abortion, has moved $4 million from our criminal Justice system to do Donald Trump instigated auditing into the counties of Houston, Dallas and Ft. Worth and we have rejected Medicare in spite of the fact that we are the most underinsured state in America.

Immigrant influx issues, sure. I wish that was even in the top 5 of the absurd emotionalism fear based and religious extremism astonishingly dysfunctional problems occurring in Texas.