The Border Patrol released its September numbers today, and once again they're up:
Border encounters in September were up 19% from last year and up 16% (to 270,000) compared to last month. About 50,000 of these were legal asylum requests while the rest were illegal crossings between ports of entry.
Last month CBP said it had "removed or returned" 250,000 individuals since May. This month the number is 300,000, which means they removed about 50,000 individuals in September. Probably another 30,000 or so were deported via court proceedings. This suggests that the unauthorized immigrant population in the US increased by about 190,000 in September.
Ok, I’ll attribute it to my own ignorance, but I just don’t understand why the administration can’t get a handle on this before it kills them in the election booth?
Because economic conditions south of the US are getting worse and people keep coming North.
And it also shows the borders are not open. If the borders are open, why are "we" apprehending so many and returning them South?
Open is likely relative. For each one apprehended and sent back, how many are not?
The GOP does not say it is relative. It is open under Biden and TFG had it sealed shut. Everyone knows that!
So that's your argument and your defense of Biden? The GOP is semantically wrong?
Well, nowadays it is safe to assume the GOP is simply wrong about everything.
But on the particular issue of immigration, my own defense of Biden is that free movement of labor, like free movement of goods, services, capital, and information, is good for the economy.
Probably not that many--they want to claim asylum.
Say the magic word and win an immigration hearing …
I’d like to point out that I am pro immigration as a healthy thing for our economy and standing in the world, but it can’t be free for all . I have always felt that part of the reason for our inability to solve this issue is that both parties use it as a useful club on the other party
Don't "both sides" immigration. Democrats want to update & upgrade the system. Republicans want chaos & racist demagoguery.
👍👍👍👍👍
+1
And many democrats want to let everyone in.
Yeah, Biden needs to work with Mexico to stop what is happening.
I am for open borders really, but politically we need to close it up for now.
I've no evidence of this but it wouldn't surprise me: Right-wing "influencers" in Spanish telling people in Central and South America the border is open and you can just walk through it. The point is to cause such chaos as to hurt the Biden Administration. If they're not going to close the border, and they certainly haven't opened it wide, then muddling through is exactly what's going to happen.
Not that citizens there need any encouragement to head North, So long as the U.S is rich and everywhere else in the hemisphere is poor, that alone is a powerful magnet of movement regardless of whether the border is "open". And even if it was officially closed, human ingenuity alone would make many thousand would figure out a way to get across it anyways. They certainly did under Trump regardless what the numbers show.
Unless Congress reforms immigration policy, the end result is what you see on the border every day. And yet the reality is, both politically and economically, what we have going is what the stakeholders want, both in the GOP and for business needing new employees.
It isn't right-wing influencers, it's Coyotes, but all they have to do is point to Fox News. It's all about the money.
Obviously, the Biden administration is doing a better job of catching illegal crossers than the Trump administration.
I wonder what could have happened to the economies south of the border in the past few years... it's a tough one.
In so many comments I read about the immigration issue (here and elsewhere and everywhere), regardless of where one stands on the “it’s a terrible thing” “it’s a great thing” scale, there is either an implicit or explicit assumption that we CAN “close the border” if we really wanted to. Short of shooting to kill as many illegal crossers as possible, desperate people will find a way to get in. They always have, not only here in the US but across the globe. There is no easy solution to this, and there is no complete solution to this, either.
"This suggests that the unauthorized immigrant population in the US increased by about 190,000 in September."
That is not including unauthorized immigrants who leave on their own.
This suggests that the unauthorized immigrant population in the US increased by about 190,000 in September.
Does this number include people we will try to schedule a hearing for? What I'm getting at, is: do many (most? none?) of these folks have some kind of work authorization, or are we talking classic "illegal immigrant" people?
So many of these immigrants are going to turn out to be conservative Republicans if they ever get the right to vote. I am not looking forward to that.