Trouble on the Border - With Quebec

By New Hampshire Bureau Chief and Media Coordinator Pam Smart

New Hampshire, that pointy little state not far from here, is generally thought of in these parts as a placid place, possibly because the locals are thwacked out on fentanyl, and a handy destination for skiing and buying cheap tequila, thanks to its stout embrace of liquor Socialism.

Apparently we were wrong.  New Hampshire is besieged on its borders, North and South.

First, let's head North, where New Hampshire shares a 40 mile or so international border with Canada.  It looks pretty placid to us:

GoogleEarth

But appearances can deceive, according to moderate mainstream Republican hope for the future Gov. Chris “My Struggle” Sununu, the latest member of the fatuous [Surely, fabled? – Ed.] New Hampshire Sununu political dynasty.

Not content to be shoved out of the political frame by 91-count Don, Sununu last week sent a crank letter to his two (Democratic) House members complaining that New Hampshire was under siege from those Mexican rapists and assassins now supposedly rampaging through the street of New Hampshire after successfully sneaking across the border from Quebec:

CONCORD, N.H. — New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu has been calling for more security and funding to go to New Hampshire's border with Canada, for months, and on Friday, he doubled down on his calls, writing in a letter to the state's congressional delegation that there has been a "surge of activity" at the border.

"Illegal border crossings, drug trafficking, and other crimes are increasing in frequency, and a stronger response from the federal government is necessary to keep Granite Staters from becoming victims to these bad actors," Sununu wrote.

Bad actors in New Hampshire? Didn't Adam Sandler move away decades ago?

Huge if true.  

But is it? WMUR-TV, a source of real news and the only network TV station in the state had the temerity to ask:

Despite Sununu's continued efforts, representatives from ACLU have publicly voiced their concern about the fact that some of the data relating to the Northern border have not been made public.

"The public is entitled to know what that data is and whether it supports or doesn't support, those type of resources being spent. But right now, we haven't seen any," Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, told News 9. 

Imagine the nerve of asking the Governor of a State to provide facts that support his alarming tale. It would be like asking a former President who has been indicted four times on 91 separate felony counts to tell us his weight.

What Sununu is really after, in addition to cheap publicity and the chance to burnish his credentials as an immigrant-bashing Republican in good standing is “an "adequate ICE Delegation Agreement,"” by which he means deputizing the New Hampshire smokies to act as adjunct body snatchers for ICE.  This would mean, for example, that after pulling someone over for the proverbial broken taillight, they could apprehend them on civil federal immigration charges, something that their counterparts in Massachusetts cannot do.

What this has to do with the chaos at the Quebec border is not clear, nor is it clear why the Governors of Vermont and Maine, with far longer and equally porous borders, failed to recognize the clear and present danger of ISIS operatives strolling down the streets of Pittsburg, NH ready to proclaim a caliphate covering all of Coos County.

As for the effect that this border chaos has on crime in border towns, the statistics are sobering.  For 2021, the last year for which the State of New Hampshire has released data, the percentage of violent crimes that remain unsolved in the border town of Pittsburg, NH was 100%.  100 per cent, people.

On a brighter note, though, here's the full violent crime data for that year:

We're not statistics experts, but we think we can round 1.0 violent crimes to, um, one.  So the NH border is not exactly Al Capone's Chicago.

At least not the northern border.

Massachusetts: high-tax drug-selling hellhole

But New Hampshire has other borders as well.

And to hear thirsty Republicans tell it, the real problem is at the Southern border.  That's the one next to that high-tax woke unlivable hellhole that is...Massachusetts.  Retread Republican Kelly Ayotte, running for Governor up there, sounded the alarm:

Former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte is running for governor of New Hampshire, but Massachusetts seems to be the focus of her nascent gubernatorial campaign. Since she announced her candidacy late last month, Ayotte has warned repeatedly that her state is just “one election away” from becoming ours, and cited a number of ways in which she thinks that catastrophic convergence could occur. Is this a winning strategy in a swing state where plenty of residents work and recreate in Massachusetts?

What a nightmare!

It can't be the Dunkin' Donuts or the Red Sox.  Those are all over New Hampshire.  So what is it?  Her campaign website gives us a hint:

On day one, Kelly will work to strengthen penalties for heroin and fentanyl dealers. In particular, Kelly will work with law enforcement to prosecute dealers who come over the NH-MA border from the drug hubs of Lowell and Lawrence to the fullest extent of the law. 

Ah yes, it's those Tijuanas on the Merrimack, Lowell and Lawrence, two old mill towns now reinventing themselves as diverse mixed-income communities that welcome all comers.

But to Kelly Ayotte and her fellow white reactionary Republicans, they're cesspools of vice whose sole function is to lure the innocent youths of New Hampshire over the border and inject them with fentanyl, which even Ayotte admits is a problem in her drug-addled state [Surely, State? – Ed.]:

New Hampshire: where you want to be

The fight to end the drug crisis in New Hampshire must include care and support for those struggling with addiction. In the United States Senate, Kelly led the effort to pass the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, which provided grant funding for drug prevention, education, and treatment programs. In New Hampshire, we must continue to improve our model while expanding coverage and outreach to those struggling.

So the white people who buy fentanyl, whether in Lawrence or anywhere else deserve our tender loving care.  The problem is the alleged drug supermarkets luring them to their doom just across the border.

Maybe New Hampshire should build a wall not on its northern border, but on its southern, to keep their honest yeomen safe from the hordes to the south?  The upside for the Bay State: no more New Hampshire hicks flooding across the border bearing Bruins tickets and vomiting on Causeway Street.  The downside: how do we get to Maine?

The two border hysterias are linked.  In Republican mythology, New Hampshire's problems aren't of its own making.  They're the fault of the Other, usually brown, flooding across one border or another.  

The solution is to foment fear and bigotry.  That will solve the problem. 

If the problem is how you elect mediocre Republicans to office, that is.