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View Full Version : Trump’s Border Crisis Is A Myth The federal government is shut down for basically no reason.




Schifference
01-09-2019, 05:51 AM
In a primetime televised address Tuesday, President Donald Trump repeated his demand for $5.7 billion in border wall money in order to end the nearly three-week federal government shutdown, offering the deal as the only solution to solve a major national security crisis.

“This barrier is absolutely critical to border security. It’s also what our professionals at the border want and need,” Trump said, describing the impasse as a “choice between right and wrong, between justice and injustice.”

But the only thing resembling a crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border isn’t an existential threat to national security ― it’s the question of how to handle a historically high number of Central American families and children coming into the country, many of whom are asking for asylum or some other humanitarian relief from deportation.

The White House position on the issue is clear: Trump wants to either indefinitely detain the Central American migrants or cast them back to Mexico. But the wall won’t achieve either of those aims. Instead, the ploy harkens back to the symbolic solution to a largely fabricated crisis that paved Trump’s way to the presidency back in 2016.

There was no border crisis when Trump launched his campaign in the summer of 2015, promising to wall off the Southern border. Instead, unauthorized crossings stood at their lowest levels since the 1970s. By the numbers, there’s still no crisis ― the unauthorized population of the United States has remained flat for more than a decade.

What has changed in recent years is that more of the migrants who do cross without authorization are Central American asylum seekers ― often traveling together as families or unaccompanied minors. That trend, which began in the summer of 2014, predates Trump. But since he took office, the number of Central American families crossing has risen to historic highs.

In 2010, just 10 percent of all migrants apprehended by Border Patrol were families and unaccompanied children ― instead, most were single men. As of November 2018, families and unaccompanied children make up 57 percent of those apprehended.

The Trump administration has constantly rehauled the immigration enforcement system to scare off the migrant families and children. But none of it ― “zero tolerance” prosecutions for petty immigration offenses, a six-week experiment with systematic family separation, the mobilization of the National Guard and U.S. military, a court-enjoined policy barring migrants from asking for asylum ― have stopped them from arriving.

That trend isn’t particularly surprising. The three countries sending by far the most migrants since 2014 ― Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras ― all face extreme poverty and some of the highest homicide rates in the world.

With legal ports of entry largely blocked, many migrants find smugglers to take them on dangerous journeys through mountains and deserts to remote Border Patrol stations far away from medical services.

Customs and Border Protection officers are only letting between 30 and 90 people a day through legal ports of entry. As a result of that “metering” policy, thousands of migrants are waiting for weeks or months in shelters near the border, which in some cases are outdoor camps with limited access to clean water or large enclosed facilities where disease can easily spread.

With legal ports of entry largely blocked, many migrants find smugglers to take them on dangerous journeys through mountains and deserts to remote Border Patrol stations far away from medical services. The number of parents and children traveling through the El Paso sector, which includes a large swath of the Chihuahuan Desert, has risen by more than 1,500 percent over the past year. The number of border deaths has likewise increased.

More at link https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-border-crisis-myth-shutdown_us_5c353669e4b0f5aba7d92f1b


How does this explanation debunk what Trump is saying that the immigration is a crisis? Why is it that if illegal immigration is flat or less over a ten year period that constitutes no problem? If the heroin epidemic that is so pushed does not increase does that mean there is no problem? If global temperatures are not rising does that debunk global warming? If violent crime has dropped does that mean there is no crime? Was it a major problem when single men came across the border illegally but not a problem when entire families come?

Schifference
01-09-2019, 05:54 AM
What impact will all these poor families have on this country? If a huge increase is happening as the left freely admits, how can that not be a crisis? Single men = crisis, Entire families = humanitarian effort.

phill4paul
01-09-2019, 06:13 AM
I was listening to an NPR piece where they were talking about the wall. There are places that the Border Patrol believe it is absolutely effective. The wall they referenced was made of steel pipe, cement filled, 12' high and 6' below ground. I forget the city but it was placed along it's border. This wall forced trespassers to go around to the edges. Instead of entering the city and disappearing it placed them in open areas where the border agents could apprehend them.

Schifference
01-09-2019, 06:16 AM
If this continent could have a redo, would American Indians defend the territory from all new comers or welcome them with Thanksgiving feasts?