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Notes -
There is a happening currently happening along the Texas/Mexico border which seems to be escalating in an interesting way.
The state of Texas has been taking measures to secure their border with Mexico. These measures include installing concertina wire (colloquially known as "razor wire") along the border.
A supreme court ruling said that US Border Patrol (the feds) are allowed to go into Texas against Texas's wishes and cut this wire. As /u/slowboy points out below, it is a bit more nuanced than that. There was an injunction preventing CBP from going to cut the wires, and the Supreme Court overruled it. Interesting culture war fodder: Amy Coney Barrett sided with the majority on this.
Yesterday, Greg Abbot signaled that he did not have any intention of complying with this.
Today, President Biden said that Texas has until tomorrow (Friday) to let them in. (Sorry for the low quality link here. If somebody has a better one please share it).
This does seem to be escalating rapidly. I don't see where the offramps are other than Abbot backing down. If he doesn't, what does that mean? Texas National Guard vs the Federal Government sounds awfully close to...I hate saying this, but a civil war? That's not right though since I can't imagine them shooting at each other.
This is also confusing to me politically. The border situation is not a political win for Biden. Even among liberals the cracks are starting to show. Morning Joe (msnbc show) this morning was talking about how there is a border crisis and it's the republicans causing all this illegal immigration by not doing a "Comprehensive Immigration Policy". That's obviously absurd, but it does show that liberals are willing to agree that completely open borders are suboptimal.
Edit: Trump weighs in
This, to my stupid non-lawyer brain, seems way more like an "incitement to insurrection" than anything he said on January 6th. Interesting.
The US feds seem to be backing down, apparently they're not going to clear away the barbed wire. Is this a tactical retreat or an operational pause?
On the one hand, they might try again in a couple of weeks when everyone has forgotten and the media's moved on. Or they could use other methods to facilitate illegal immigration that divert around barbed wire.
Alternately, it is a bad look in an election year, it might make sense to slow down now. As far as demographics are concerned, time is on their side - well over half of Under-15s are non-white and that number is still rising. Reducing inflow doesn't matter so much, as long as Republicans aren't able to execute a huge expulsion and re-emigration operation, Democrats/Progressives will enjoy permanent electoral/demographic dominance. In terms of voting, the key thing is race - whites tend to vote Republican, non-whites hugely favour Democrats. This is a perfectly rational strategic decision, Dems favour the expansion of social welfare, redistribution, multiculturalism and affirmative action, which usually favour non-whites over whites. Either the Republicans will move to join them, or they'll become irrelevant.
Is the idea here that the migrant flows at the border are a result of a deliberate strategy to stack the electoral deck in favor of the Democrats? Illegal immigrants can't vote. Hell, legal residents can't vote. I know lack of voter ID laws would make some amount of illegal voting possible, but the implication here that this is a big coordinated effort to gain and maintain federal power via illegal immigrants' votes strikes me as a bit far-fetched.
Probably what's more likely is the usual sclerosis of the federal administrative apparatus (favoring the status quo, whatever it may be), combined with the very strong negative political polarization we have (that leads to legislative deadlock - don't want to give the other guys a win on an important issue), plus a bit of an influence from the true believers, the multiculturalism and open borders people who probably do see the firm securing of the border as a moral failure. Is this not enough to explain what is happening?
Places are moving to allow illegals.
You can’t ask for pretty much any info. It would be relatively easy for illegals to vote.
Illegals kids will vote.
Illegals’ kids voting is something that can only be stopped by constitutional amendment re. birthright citizenship.
In general it seems unlikely that illegals vote. The American citizen underclass already very rarely votes, and illegal immigrants often believe enforcement is much, much harsher than it actually is. Why would a penniless Guatemalan illegal vote? To their mind it’s a risk for zero real benefit, they don’t know much or anything about American politics, and their sole goal is to stay under the radar to not get deported. They don’t conceive of any kind of civic duty, and their knowledge of American politics will be very minimal, they don’t know where their local polling place is, and they probably have neither the time nor the inclination to visit it.
Like most Americans I’ve met my fair share of likely-to-certainly illegal immigrants, and I find the suggestion they’d vote in elections pretty ridiculous, not out of principle but for many more practical reasons. There are maybe 15 million of them, so surely a few have, but I find it hard to believe it was many.
Enter VBM and activists getting illegals to sign things they don’t understand because the activist is…otherwise helpful
If you’re running an operation in which people show up at polling stations, declare they’re citizens under false identities and vote under false pretenses then you have no need for illegals and are in fact best served by using ideologically committed fellow activists who definitely won’t sell their story or give you up for nothing if caught.
If you wanted to use illegal migrants in a voting scheme, why would you ever bring them to a polling station?
Ballot harvesting has far fewer oversight and procedural control mechanisms.
If you're ballot harvesting the votes of illegal migrants, what's the difference between doing so and just making up names? Why do you need a real life illegal immigrant to register to vote illegally when, by definition, the illegal alien won't have a legitimate SSN, won't have a legitimate birth certificate and so won't have a legitimate (non AB60 or equivalent) license? Of course many have fakes of the above, but if you're just registering fake voters for such a ballot harvesting scheme the illegals themselves are unnecessary in that case. You might as well have your own citizen activists register or vote as dead people, vote multiple times, impersonate others etc. which hugely minimizes the risk of the plot getting out.
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