printIt’s all in the definition of an emergency. To the progressive Demopublicans, an endless stream of uninvited migrants swamping the country is not an emergency. Open borders are a good thing, never an emergency.
They came in pairs, by the dozens, hundreds. In one group, as many as 400 immigrants crossed the border here in a single, massive group.
Many are families. And some would soon sleep for the first time on U.S. soil — but out in the open, under the stars, because federal agents are having a difficult time processing them and getting them to shelter.
“What we’re seeing is something I haven’t seen in at least 10 years,” said Joe Romero, a veteran U.S. Border Patrol agent.
And yet, when asked whether he was witnessing an emergency on the border, Romero paused and kept his eyes on the road. He and his partner drove slowly Wednesday in the shadow of a fence, long stretches of it lined with migrants waiting to be transported to begin the process of seeking asylum.
To The Economist, the fact that there are fewer individuals crossing unimpeded into the US than in years past implies that … there is no emergency.
If America has a border crisis, it comes not from any sort of invasion—in the year to September 2018, the authorities caught 396,579 people trying to cross the southern border, fewer than half as many as in 2007
Logic is not a strong suit, these days.
… as of September there was a backlog of 319,000 pending asylum cases. Between 2010 and 2017 the number of asylum claims filed annually rose from 28,000 to 143,000, with many coming from Venezuela, Guatemala and El Salvador. Political instability and violence in Central America pushes people north. But some are also drawn by America’s inefficient asylum system, which lets people stay and work while their claims are assessed.
The real problem is structural. America’s immigration-enforcement system was designed to cope with the sort of migration that historically came from Mexico—single men looking for work, eager to dodge immigration police. It is not suited to today’s flow, which consists largely of families and children eager to present themselves to police so they can claim asylum. Sadly, ambitious immigration reform has eluded Washington for years, and this administration is unlikely to take up that poisoned chalice (see Lexington).
See “The Master Builder.“
AND, coming in drives for all that free stuff.