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I find it bizarre that so little is being talked about the US border crisis right now. The numbers are shooting up like crazy.
Most of these "encounters" are essentially catch-and-release. The illegal immigrants are then given a court date to show up and naturally the vast majority never do.
Are Americans just tired of this subject? Trump running on this issue during the 2016 campaign and then essentially doing nothing to prevent it perhaps jaded people. I mean, would-be illegal migrants respond to signals. If more and more folks are allowed to flood in without a meaningful response then each new "caravan" will only get bigger. Perhaps Biden is trying to emulate Trudeau's hyperliberal immigration policies through purposeful inaction rather than Trudeau's open immigration targets.
The secretary of the department of homeland security is facing impeachment: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dhs-secretary-alejandro-mayorkas-travels-southern-border-republicans-call-impeachment
In any case, I favor charter cities as a solution. America has a labor shortage. Surely there's a way to pair up immigrants with greedy capitalists in a way that doesn't harm public safety, and also generates enough tax revenue to pay off uninvolved parties.
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Source on that catch and release claim?
DHS says that they’re expelling/turning back most encounters. Maybe more than were encountered this year, depending on how you count Title 42 expulsions. Sources further downthread.
The issue remains very salient in Texas politics. Not out of motte-style racial handwringing; more a sentiment that border towns are less safe. It makes a great talking point for state Republicans to blame Biden.
Personally, I haven’t noticed any change. Maybe an increase in Hispanic groceries and restaurants, maybe I’m just spending more time in that part of town. I’m up in north Texas a good distance from the border. There’s not as much unskilled labor up here and the cost of living is relatively high, so I could believe fewer illegals are stopping in DFW. Or maybe it’s overblown. Can’t say for sure.
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As someone who really cared about this issue in 2016, I have given up on the idea that the region of land known as America will have secure borders and am investing my hope in the idea that Westerners form a kind of Hasidic or ultra-Mormon power structure.
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Americans are quietly preparing for Brazilification. Half think it's a good thing—believing we'll pull it off in a way that Brazil mysteriously couldn't figure out, and the other half are worried and angry.
What's to say that hasn't been said?
What does "Brazilification" mean, exactly? Decrease of state capacity, most keenly felt in reduction of service quality, but without a corresponding reduction in state authority or tax levels?
Seems like illegal immigration won't affect state capacity since non-citizens can't vote?
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I think it mostly implies an extreme economic bifurcation wherein the elites get to live in luxurious towers or gated neighborhoods with private guards and robust social services and get to enjoy the benefits of cosmopolitan globalism by jetting around to whichever major international hub they feel like visiting. And don't have to think much if at all about the state of the rest of the nation.
Whilst the poor end up living in densely packed favelas/apartment blocks/ghettos and while they are generally able to get by their chances at economic mobility are virtually nil so a large criminal element ends up taking root and providing an alternate, highly risky means of achieving the opulent lifestyle that simply cannot be ignored, and as violence becomes prevalent policing becomes more dangerous and cops end up becoming more violent which further sours the relationship between the underclass and the ruling class.
The middle class (such as it exists) probably end up having to put up tall fences and heavy security efforts to protect themselves from the criminal element that cannot be contained and are desperate to prey on the wealth that trickles down from on high. There are no trusted, effective, and non-corrupt public institutions to speak of.
Property crime, drug-fueled violence, and kidnappings shoot through the roof as policing becomes extremely hard outside of the few pockets of civilization that can be maintained against the rising tide of (relative) poverty.
And of course we get maximum 'diversity' which really just means that everyone hates everyone to for varying reasons. EXTREME low trust society as the social fabric that previously kept citizens together frays and decays, even as by many metrics society is finally achieving the demographic ideals that progressives aimed for all along.
Think of an ideal version of America with relatively large middle class, a persistent but small underclass, high economic mobility, a class of elites that are responsive to the needs of the citizenry and thus maintain some level of trust and accountability, and that generally enables every citizen to feel they're safe from violence and have a strong affinity for their neighbors regardless of race, class, religion, culture, etc.
Then imagine whatever the exact opposite of that ideal looks like in your head. THAT is Brazilification.
I'm skeptical that illegal immigration will lead to Brazilification.
Illegal immigrants can't vote and thus won't affect institutions much? They're incentivized to keep their head down to avoid deportation.
See The Myth of Hispanic Crime https://www.unz.com/runz/the-myth-of-hispanic-crime/ by noted leftist Ron Unz
A Brazilian I know claims that Brazil is one of the least racist countries he's been to, and he's traveled a lot. (He's not a Brazil booster, either -- I remember him being very cynical about Brazil's prospects, but it seemed like more of an underdevelopment thing -- poor education system etc.)
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Immigration is one of those things that both sides don't care much about, turn a blind eye to. But also, enormous legal and legislative inertia . It's the opposite of Jan 6th, which was/is treated as a crisis, and each trespasser hunted to the edge of the earth to be brought to justice. It's like let the next adminstration do something about it.
For someone who doesn't care much about it, fighting inertia and all that, Governor Abbott seems to be doing a lot about the border with the 21month long and ongoing Operation Lone Star.
It’s worth noting Abbott won re-election with oddly large majorities on the strength of the border security issue and is now under pressure from his right to directly deport illegal migrants.
It’s also worth noting he coerced Mexican states along the border into a security agreement that would oblige them to interrupt migrant caravans; this appears to have worked briefly but isn’t at the moment.
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No, most of them are immediate expulsions, not "catch and release."
Your own link literally says that huge majority of illegals is processed under Title 8, which is not immediate expulsion.
Title 8 is not always immediate expulsion. It was in fact the only processing prior to COVID in 2020. But it does include detention, release for hearings, and the various forms of repatriation.
Alright, so DHS historically seems to boot most noncitizens immediately. 2019 was apparently an enormous surge where they didn't keep up, and 2020 may have been a poor showing compared to other years...but DHS gets really defensive about this.
They're suggesting a repatriation rate of 119% despite a footnote acknowledging that the Title 42 expulsions had lots of repeat offenders. Regardless of how they count those, Title 42ers were explicitly included in the 519,000 total--meaning they definitely didn't get released into the country. That'd bring the percentage up to an even sillier 130%. I assume what's going on here is more catch-up from the abysmal 2019 performance.
More importantly, I don't expect that they're playing much catch-and-release. At least 78% were definitely sent back even if you only count the Title 8s.
Source (Table 1) for encounters and quote, source (Table 39) for repatriations. If you want to go through and HTML format the rest of the rows, you'd have my eternal gratitude.
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I believe that the Title 8 "inadmissibles" listed there are people who have been removed. That total for FY2022 was 230,000. Total for Title 42 is 1,100,000 (1,054,000 by CPB and 49,000 by OBO). That is a total of just over 1.3 million of the 2.5 million total in the linked document.
How you calculated that a "huge majority of illegals is processed under Title 8," when even including inadmissibles the Title 8 total is under 1.4 million, is beyond me.
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No, I think this more an issue of Progressive media bubbles than anything else. EG. This is on the front page of Fox News right now.. What I suspect is that CNN, MSNBC, Et Al realized that calling the GOP racist for wanting to building a wall out of shipping containers, calling out the national guard etc... was helping guys like Abbott, DeSantis, and Trump more than it was hurting them and decided to quietly drop the issue.
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This is a major political issue, actually. Why Biden is doing nothing about it is baffling, but it does fit in with the general pattern of his administration of just not doing anything about active problems.
Pulling out of Afghanistan, BBB, student loan relief, CHIPS Act, etc. He's doing things, even if they aren't things you agree are problems.
Those all sound like _un_doing things that previous Presidents did.
Not quite the same as proactivity.
How do you mean?
Afghanistan - sure
BBB - what’s it undoing?
loan relief - not seeing how student loans are associated with any previous President
CHIPS - new appropriations, from what I can see
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Already a quarter of people from El Salvador moved to the US, iirc
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Unless things were improved in Central America. Mexico has improved enough that many fewer Mexicans are desperately trying to relocate northward.
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To be clear, Mexico doesn’t have the state capacity for a serious effort to stop it. The Texas security agreements appear conclusively to have failed(and there was, for a time, serious attempts by Mexican state governments to make strong efforts at stopping illegal migration through their territory).
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What is there to talk about, the side in power supports the status quo, and the other side has little to no power to stop it.
If you’re suggesting Democrats have a stranglehold, that doesn’t really reflect the stats by year. Illegal encounters surged while Trump was in office. Further, there are still plenty of red states making lots of noise about the border. What should the feds be doing that Abbott and DeSantis cannot?
If you’re referring to a more nebulous deep state...care to elaborate?
Nothing meaningful has been done about illegal immigration since Reagan's amnesty (in what 1986?) after 36 years, it's pretty clear the problem is not getting solved.
The red states make noise because they aren't allowed to solve the problem and I'm not sure they have the stomach anyway.
What can the feds do? A good start would be deploying multiple apache wings, serious prosecution of anyone employing any non-citizen without a green card, and ending birthright citizenship.
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