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I think the only reason the US doesn't do what it needs to do about the border is because doing what it takes to actually solve the border crisis would make America look bad in international affairs. Russia and China would have tons of propaganda pictures and stories about how horrible the US is, and the left wing press in the US would be happy to help. The empire and securing global markets is what is most important to American elites, and illegal migration just isn't a huge issue to people who can afford to live in nice areas and send their kids to good schools. The only way to stop illegal immigration would be to replace the entire US government with people that don't give a shit if securing the border makes them look bad and hurts the US's standing abroad. They'd just tell other government to fuck off if they tried criticizing them about it and jail leftists who try to stir up shit domestically. But we don't live in that world so nothing can reasonably be done about it.
This seems a correct take, and generalizes to quite a bit of the everyday grumbling we hear about other "unsolvable" problems like homelessness, uninsured drivers, and street crime. Not that the solutions that look bad are always effective, but they are probably moreso than current inaction.
It's not that they would make the US look bad abroad. It's that they'd look bad in the US. There are plenty of people who like the idea of not having to see, e.g., homeless people or immigrants but who aren't going to support actually rounding them up en masse. In many cases weeding them out from the general population would require invasive enforcement policies that would anger voters who support Doing Something. (This is a pervasive element of politics - people like the idea of a problem being fixed or a certain outcome being achieved, but balk at the tradeoffs involved in actually doing it).
Why not? Isn't that exactly what happened with the homeless problem when Xi came to visit California?
No, that was more or less a continuation of standard practice, i.e. disperse homeless encampments when they become too noticeable, but don't actually do anything to address homelessness. It nicely illustrates the point: people don't want to see homeless people or have to deal with them, but they're also not willing to support throwing thousands of people in prison for vagrancy or spend money to build sufficient shelters.
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