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I've not followed this closely, but are the tickets offered on a voluntary basis?
It seems like if they were and food and water were provided, it would sharpen the critique against the target cities with the exact same effect. Arguably that might make the posturing seem less "tough," but I would guess that's not nearly as important when it comes to Republican primaries as is embarrassing Democrats.
Then again, who knows if those details would actually even be reported. I don't know if I can trust ABC to fact check someone saying the migrants were sent without food and water.
The Texas state government claims that migrants boarding busses volunteered to go wherever they were being sent(and my prior is that setting foot in a refugee camp on the border and asking "Quieres una boleta gratis a Nueva York?" would result in very many takers, so this isn't implausible, and the Texas government has produced waivers signed by migrants before) and that food and water are stocked on the busses(I believe this, if only because you don't do anything to move groups of people in south Texas in the summer without laying in water) and migrants are offered a medical exam before boarding(I am more skeptical of this one, at least if the medical exam is more extensive than a national guard soldier checking to make sure no passengers have open wounds or are in labor before departure).
I was on one of these busses that was filled with migrants sometime around the beginning of the year. The bus was traveling from San Antonio to Dallas. It was a normal Greyhound bus, and I had purchased a ticket. When I got to the bus station, there was some kind of (possibly Christian) charity group distributing boxed lunches. Most passenger wore stickers on their chests listing their names and final destinations.
I talked a bit to the guy sitting next to me (I speak Spanish). I'll call him L. L was from Venezuela, but had been living the past few years in Ecuador. He had a wife and 2 kids remaining in South America. He'd crossed north through Central America and then Mexico through some combination of foot, car, and rail. Finally, he'd arrived at the US border a few days prior. He proceeded to cross-over around Laredo, TX, then surrendered himself to American immigration agents. L was detained for a few days in some kind of immigration facility, then discharged to the streets with an (online) court date for a year in the future. Someone told L he should proceed to some kind of homeless shelter, so that's what he did. He stayed there for a few days, and then someone came and offered him (and other migrants) a free, 1-way bus ticket to the American city of their choosing. L chose Indianapolis, because he had some relatives living there. Some days later, he was escorted into a shuttle with other migrants, transported by shuttle to the Laredo bus station, handed a stack of bus tickets (there's no direct route from Laredo to Indianapolis!), and encouraged to board the bus. His first stop was San Antonio. L told me he'd worked as an auto mechanic before, and that he hoped to find similar work in Indianapolis, but that he was willing to work at any kind of job.
A few points:
Reading this I wish L the best of luck in making a successful life in the USA. Economic migrants (of all stripes) are one of the few groups for whom their version of the American Dream is still a possibility.
That's the equivalent of "I met a poor person who genuinely needed a car, and the US budget is obviously able to handle giving out a car, so we should buy cars for every poor person who needs a car."
Even if the immigrant isn't a criminal and can get a job at a reasonable salary, the problem is the country only has resources for a limited number of immigrants. Because the drain on resources is distributed as a zillion dust specks, if you peer at any specific example it will always seem like that particular example couldn't possibly drain enough resources to matter, no matter where you put the limit. But cumulatively, doing that ends up meaning completely open borders and no limit at all.
Or in other words, the sympathy for the individual immigrant is a concentrated benefit, while the drain on resources is a distributed harm, so it's always going to look like we should add just one more immigrant because we don't balance concentrated benefits and distributed harms very well.
I fail to see how this type of immigrant is a resource drain at almost any scale. He's hungry and eager to work, has a skill, is willing to learn english (which I'll take as signaling the desire to assimilate). The job market is tight. Where's the downside? Yes at some point we don't need more workers but we're several million workers short of that at the moment.
Perhaps in a more perfect world we'd have an elaborate visa system like Canada to only let in the immigrants like this. But in some respects the journey he made was the elaborate filter, and seems to be doing a somewhat decent job. I trust the government to do almost nothing properly, so maybe a difficult journey works just as well in practice as letting the government pick immigrants.
He's so willing to work he's undercutting the wages of natives.
Fuck him, send him back where he came from along with the rest of the foreigners.
This is a good thing. It means that I, as a consumer of labor in the USA, can get the same product at a cheaper price.
Protectionism in trade, which is what your argument amounts to, tends to benefit the few at the expense of the many and are negative sum over all. If skilled mechanics come to the USA from Central and South America mechanics in the USA will be econimically worse off but everyone who needs their car fixed will be economically better off
This is a bad thing. It means that I, as a seller of labor in the USA, am getting undercut by foreigners who have no business being in this country. It means that my wages will no longer reflect my productivity, but rather the supply of labor.
Probably, but I'm not the all, and I don't care about the sums of all. I'm one person, and I care about myself. The US is in a position to weather any trade wars better than the places where this guy is coming from, and I will benefit from a reduction in the supply of labor.
Unless you sell goods or services to mechanics, then your customers are getting poorer.
I want protectionism, I've taken economics classes, I understand the globohomo propaganda, and I'm not buying what you're selling.
Deport the foreigners with great prejudice. Throw up protectionist tariffs. Replace the income tax with tariffs and fund the federal government the way it was meant to be funded.
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