Song of the Day 9/20: Freddy Fender, “Across the Borderline”

Operation Immigrant Dump needed Donald Trump to steal the idea from ’60s Southern racists, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to put it into practice, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to fuck it up before it captured the news cycle. My question is, now that they’re turned the “immigrant caravans” of their imagination into real ones, are they in favor of them?

This song was written by Jim Dickinson, John Hiatt and Ry Cooder for the 1982 Jack Nicholson film “The Border.” Cooder did the music for the film and plays on the tune. That a bad situation 40 years ago has become so much worse today doesn’t say much for the theory of social progress.

The song has been performed live by a lot of big-name artists, among them Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne and Willie Nelson, who titled an LP for it. Bob Dylan sang it at the second Farm Aid concert in 1986. BTW, this year’s Farm Aid concert is this Saturday in Raleigh, N.C.