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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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The distance between California and Texas seems to be at least 500km, and more like perhaps 1500km between the big cities.

An illegal in California can likely not just take a plane from LA to Houston for a weekend of murder, mayhem and pet-eating. (If he can, then the federal government could fix that.) Nor can he likely afford it. Perhaps he can take the bus (which would also be preventable through legislation), or drive there by car. He can certainly hike through Nevada and New Mexico.

The costs of going from CA to Texas are high in terms of time, money and deportation risk. Assuming that Texas is fully cooperating with ICE, the cost of staying any substantial amount of time in Texas are high in terms of deportation risk, likewise.

If I were an illegal, having perhaps paid most of what I own and risked my life to get into the US, and CA was safe and Texas was not, then there would be nothing in Texas which would be worth the risk of deportation. As much as people like to dunk on California, it is likely still a hell of a lot better than whatever country the illegal came from.

If you model illegals as rational actors, then having states which do not enforce immigration law is a great boon to everyone other state, because the net migration will be towards these safe states.

If you model illegals as particles undergoing Brownian motion, then sure, a few will diffuse into Texas. But new illegals will also get in from abroad, so you need to keep up your deportation effort indefinitely either way.

Things would be different if California had the power to let new illegals in, or if immigrants had a generation length of a year, with their population rising exponentially. Or if there was nothing worth stealing in the illegal-friendly zone, but plenty worth stealing in the MAGA-zone 200m over.

I guess an argument can also be made that if the illegals are not deported now, some bleeding heart liberal (like me) will naturalize them in a decade, at which point they can come to Texas and nobody can do anything about it.