The Washington Post has a front page story this weekend about the Biden administration's tentative approach to border security and how it's prompted a huge surge of refugees and asylum seekers. It's getting a lot of pushback from progressives, who point out correctly that the surge started before the election and was partly the fault of new policies in Mexico, which we had no hand in.
Fine. If you don't like the Post story, read the LA Times story instead. It's better anyway—and, if anything, makes it even clearer that Biden's election and his shifting stance on the border is responsible for a big part of the current surge:
The belief that the end of the Trump administration has opened the border has spread throughout the region alongside another rumor: Young children are the ticket in.
....The increase is evident in the streams of families trudging north through the jungles of southern Mexico, in the crowded shelters of northern Mexican border cities and in southern Texas, where in recent days a constant flow of people has crossed the swiftly moving Rio Grande on rafts and turned themselves in to federal authorities.
....“The president helped us,” said Luis Enrique Rodriguez Villeda, a 31-year-old from Guatemala who crossed from Tamaulipas into Texas on a plastic raft this past week with his 2-year-old daughter, Ariana. “I’ve seen how he opened the border and gave people permission to come for a better life.” Rodriguez said he had traveled with his daughter because smugglers offered him a discount and told him it would help his chances of being allowed to stay.
This is not the first time there's been a surge of migrants on the southwest border. There was one in 2014 during the Obama administration, one in 2018 during the Trump administration, and now one in 2020-21, spanning the Trump and Biden administrations.
If you believe in more-or-less open borders, none of this will bother you. But if, like most people, you believe the border ought to be secured, this is a big problem and Biden isn't doing a good job of addressing it. Progressives shouldn't kid themselves about this.
" .... this is a big problem and Biden isn't doing a good job of addressing it. Progressives shouldn't kid themselves about this."
I am trying very hard to figure out how big a problem ~ 100,000 asylum seekers represent to 350 million of us living in the richest country in the world. To get some idea of what these people are fleeing a quick read of "American Dirt," mentioned in this blog in another context a couple days ago, would be edifying. Seriously, I sometimes wonder who is kidding whom.
Com'on Kevin wouldn't be complaining if they were 100,000 Norwegians...
True. But if they were Swedes, that would be another story 😉
As my stepfather, Polish (& prolly Hungarian) by birth but adopted into a Norwegian family, would concur.
Didn't mr. narcissist expel thousands "pending" study, basically creating a pool of potential immigrants living in boxes and begging for food across the border?
Yes, the surge will play itself out as those forced back into Mexico try again. Pretty sure the Trump policy violated both US and international law.
Only a small fraction of these people will actually be granted asylum -- the rest will be either deported back to Central America or wherever they came from, and many others will of course just disappear into the massive underground economy where millions of undocumented people already live. The point is that it is completely overwhelming the system, forcing CPB and HHS to scrape together housing and support while their cases work their way through the court and its not sustainable, particularly if we want to treat people fairly and humanely.
There is the issue that, during a pandemic, it is especially undesirable to have large number of potential covid carriers entering the country. But other than that, the main issue, of course, is politics. It gives the GOP an issue with which to beat up Democrats as we head toward midterms.
So, it's Biden's fault there's a surge now like there was in the middle of Trump's tenure?
It's Biden's fault that the Trump administration were such dicks that rumors started to spread that things weren't so dickish when that administration ended?
Precisely.
Spikes in immigration are tied into the reasons for emigration.
Or was Bill Climpton the sole responsible party for the Cuban & Haitian boat people of 1993-94?
Was James Earl R--... Carter the cause of Vietnamese boatpeople & refugees in Thailand?
Not fault but cause.
They rightly assumed Biden would be less cruel so their chances were better.
It doesn't matter if it's fault of Republicans unless the blame can successfully be pinned on them. That's hard to do now that they're out of power.
The whole issue is what is going on in the countries they're coming from, without the focus being on that the side effect, the refugees, will keep coming.
Hardly a deep thought, but the whole issue is in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, the refugees are a side effect, one that will keep happening until the problems causing it are eliminated.
Wouldn't the ability to edit this make it so much better? With editing we could have Nobel prize-level commentary.
Well, part of the reason is the United States as well. The better the economy is doing, the more migrants cross the border. That's why we used to have 2 million+ cross in the late 1990s, dropping to barely break even during the recessions.
So Republicans will eventually gain their goal of zero immigration (baring the odd trophy wife) when they complete their mission of turning America into a sh!thole country.
Point taken, but I really don't think anyone would put themselves through something like this unless they really had to.
Immigration from LatAm plummeted after 9/11. & really, starting from the dotcom bubble bursting.
So, another tech recession & mass casualty terror attack?
I'm at a loss to understand why Biden is to blame for rumors and misinformation being spread in Mexico and countries further south - some of it, it should be noted, by Trump Republicans who've spent years bellowing that Democrats are in favor of open borders. It's also not clear what he can do about it.
Having said that, Democrats still have no coherent immigration policy. If you doubt me, read the vague mish-mash of aspirations and motherhood statements that was adopted in the 2020 platform. Hundreds of thousands of people from the Hispanic countries want to come and live in the United States. Does America want them or not? Surely it's not a hard question. Trump Republicans at least have an answer: no, they don't want them.
When will Democrats provide an answer? Not change the subject to Dreamers or whatever - give Americans a plain answer to a simple question: should America accept hundreds of thousands of immigrants from countries south of the border every year? Once they can answer that clearly and provide a succinct argument supporting their position, everything else will follow. But while ever they stumble around trying to avoid the core issue, it will remain an albatross around their necks.
An Albatross? Democrats won both in 2018 and 2020 (not to mention 2012 and the pv in 2016) despite being attacked on the border. If their stance is an albatross for anyone, it's Republicans.
How soon we forget the shellacking the Democrat Party took for being coconspirators in the 2014 Mexican Ebola-ridden Child Homicide-Bombers ring?
I'd say the reason is that accepting hundreds of thousands is an albatross as bad as the one you describe.
The real problem of course is that millions have been allowed to live and work illegal (undocumented if you prefer to say it that way). for all practical purposes we have "accepted" them. Except that we are running a cruel deportation lottery on them.
Now, on the one hand this proves that the country has not gone to the dogs in spite of higher immigration than planned. We can relax and loosen the restrictions on legal immigration and nothing bad is going to happen. On the other hand this is one of those proofs that (almost) nobody cares to believe in.
"The real problem of course is that millions have been allowed to live and work illegal (undocumented if you prefer to say it that way)."
Cheap labor, a Republican staple.
The GQP should relent on the minimum wage hike... since their biggest dqnqrs don't pay it anyway.
"But if, like most people, you believe the border ought to be secured, this is a big problem"
Because people being apprehended and detained by border security isn't the border being secured?
+1
And the kids are turning themselves in and asking for asylum. We are treating them as international and US laws and norms prescribe, allowing them in until their cases are heard. The immediate problem is the numbers; we weren’t prepared to temporarily house so many properly; nor to place them with family or foster family while their cases are adjudicated.
The longer-term problem is correctly identified by cld: Central American countries with corrupt, incompetent governments that cannot provide safety, stability and opportunity for their citizens (some regions of Mexico as well).
Oh, now the lamestream media Sulzberger Advertiser pr department for the GQP doesn't care about restoring the Norms.
As I understand it the real crisis is in Florida where a state of emergency has been declared in Miami Beach. Unruly mobs of people who crossed the border to get into Florida are breaking laws and causing havoc. What will Biden do about that?
Manifestacion antiocasiocortez en la Calle Ocho no es ninguna sorpresa.
So, if the cause is a widespread belief that because Trump is gone the border is now open, a Republican is once again responsible for the very thing they're disingenuously blaming on a Democrat.
Yup.
It would be like writing Pete Wilson out of the history of the swift Latinx voter transition to the Democrat Party in California, c. 1996.
"But if, like most people, you believe the border ought to be secured, this is a big problem and Biden isn't doing a good job of addressing it."
Europeans widely support and embrace the Schengen Area; why do Americans find it so necessary to block people from natural movement?
I'll tell you what it is: The enshrinement of wealth and power, reinforced by the conservative-driven propaganda that America will be invaded by Hispanics and other non-White people who will take jobs away from Americans.
To be fair: There is a good deal of push back against Schengen. It is responsible for a large part of the extreme right wing backlash we see in the EU. On the other hand: We in the US still have that backlash--even without Schengen.
Right Wingers don't need Schengan. They just pump them in no matter what. Anti-capitalism and anti-immigration to together.
I think of the exclusion of countries like Romania & Bulgaria from Schengen for the first x number of years of their otherwise full membership in the EU.
But, I mean, Bulgaria -- those people are basically Turks, anyway...
Depends what you consider ‘natural movement’, I suppose. Most European countries are reasonably well-governed (though Poland, Hungary and a couple of others are backsliding) and comparable living standards. People who cross our southern border are usually fleeing lawlessness and enforced poverty.
This strikes me as the kind of detached thinking that comes from one of our "woke" capitols like Portland, where hilariously the population is like 99% white.
The problem is that humans are tribal, and no amount of tsk tsking is likely to change that. In my northern city of 100k people, over the last two decades the hispanic population has gone from like 5% to almost 50%, creating a predictable cycle of non-hispanic people (MANY lefties I might add) leaving for other communities, or sticking their kids in private schools (which isn't great for those of us who love public school, where now about 70% are economically disadvantaged).
You can pretend this isn't a political problem, but then you're just inviting the election of more troglodytes like Trump, and pushing people toward idiot extremists willing to even acknowledge peoples' social anxieties.
Having lived here three years now, the Whitekanda I expected is, in many respects, on display, but it's not that Portland Metro is a White Homeland, it's not there are hardly any Blacks. The Asian, Polynesian, & Latinx population is comparable to other west coast metropolises, but there's one big thing missing that anywhere from Miami to Boston, & New Orleans to Milwaukee, & west to Los Angeles you would see a lot of.
Can't quite put my finger on it.
-1 Polish plumber in Leicester
Keheh. Euros have been dealing with neo-fascist surges since the Syrian migration. Schengen is not the comparison, ME Muslims are.
This surge was of course predictable. If you open the valve on a pressure cooker steam will come out. The steam might be dangerously hot but it is still a good idea to open the valve before shrapnel comes flying. Biden really had no choice but to change back to a reasonably humane treatment of asylum seekers after what the Trumpers did for four years. And it was inevitable that the change was misread across the border.
A second point: Everybody knows how to enforce immigration law: By cracking down on employers. Neither party has the political will to do so. So we try border security--even though we know it does not work. Hell, people even managed to cross the Berlin Wall.
For the GOP this has been a win win situation: They loudly take measures that violate any sense of decency and that they know perfectly well won't work. And that is just dandy: They can't risk doing something that does work; it would take their most important campaign issue away from them.
I don't agree. Trump ran a pretty loose immigration policy with Zionist religious trafficking and business associations help spur them in. Most of Trumps immigration con did not work, it was all show.
A win win??? Rand Paul's Jewish ancestry is never talked about. You attack the attackers. Simply say Republicans and the rich scum are flooding America with foreigners. Got it fool??
Shorter Midgard: "blah blah blah Zionist blah blah blah Jewish blah blah blah"
What is, is. The Republican party just stinks of zionism, no matter the "form".
Thanks Gruppenführer Midgard.
So, you're saying, Demento Joe & Kopala are the Tamerlane & Djhokhar Tsarnaev of immigration.
Kevin, but Biden is blaming Trump as it started early in 2020. Deportations should rocket
I read the LA times, it was already near 100000 before the election. His story is a lame forced fraud. When numbers fall off, the lameness of the story will further erode the quality.
Kevin points out a rather apparent weakness that we all have:
"Fine. If you don't like the Post story, read the LA Times story instead"
And this:
"
If you believe in more-or-less open borders, none of this will bother you. But if, like most people, you believe the border ought to be secured, this is a big problem and Biden isn't doing a good job of addressing it."
We all suffer from confirmation bias even Kevin. We come here because we like the way Kevin writes, and his left lean to his articles and the comments - most of which are left leaning.
The HARDEST lesson I'm STILL learning in life is that the other person can be right - the other policy can be right. I've come to accept that being wrong is not a bad thing so long as you learn by it.
Immigration policy is hard. This country was built by immigrants. In the past MOST people would NEVER cross a border illegally - they would come right though Ellis Island. Very few of THEM were rejected and most of the rejected were done so because of disease not the fear of violence. We had no Interpol back then so how could a back ground check be done?
Today we have immigrants being enticed to come here by either the "thought" of a better life or outright recruitment by employers here who promise the American dream if you're willing to work hard. In either situation these folks are still here ILLEGALLY.
We cannot "control" the entire stretch of border between us and Mexico. A wall makes it harder to cross. Excessive penalties against employers using immigrant labor would also help, but not eliminate the problem. We also cannot control what happens at the SOUTHERN border in Mexico and immigrants are using Mexico as a pathway to the U.S.
No matter what we do some portion of the population here will get mad. Read the Washington Post, READ the LA Times but also read Fox News and the National Interest. Try NOT to limit your news sources to those that say what YOU want to hear
Why read Fox and its ilk when I can just read the bigoted rants of my neighbors on Next Door?
It's the same old same old bigots have always existed in the US, they simply switch the targets of their bigotry every so often. They were bigoted against my ancestors who came over on the coffin ships from Ireland in the early 19th Century, they were bigoted against my Bavarian ancestors who came over mid Century and they sneared mightily against my Swedish Grandfather in New Jersey in the Great Depression because he took away a good job from a hardworking American.
We have a demographic crisis in the US right now. We really, really need comprehensive immigration reform to better mange who comes into the US instead of this crappy under the table situation. Don't pander to the bigots, there's far more folks in favor of sensible reform than the bigots.
My Nextdoor feed is 100% liberals of the posturing sort. Spend a few hours there and you start to understand why people vote for Republicans...
My feed is pretty mixed between Democratic voting suburbanites, crusty old conservatives in horror that their county now is a bit squishy liberal and working class immigrants. The huge issue the other week was some mundane county board of supervisors review of county codes, the lone GOP member of the board decided to spread rumors that the county was going to outlaw flying the American flag. OMG that got the usual Qanon crowd deep into a frenzy and nothing seemed to calm them down.
The Democrat board members should have explained that, while the prohibition on the US flag was not on the agenda, had it been, it would have been done to honor the legacy of Robert E. Lee & Stonewall Jackson.
Annie
I get what you're saying but I don't use Next Door, or Twitter or Facebook
So for me it's the news.
I find it so bizarre on the conservative web sites that they preach the border wall and completely ignore the fact that a wall stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the pacific ocean in California will hurt the bastion of conservative thinking - Texas !! Put a wall up and they lose access to the Rio Grande for their cattle herds.
I had read on a blog that the barrier wall as designed had to have 400 yds of clear space on either side of it along with the 50 ft wide wall support area. That means 1200 feet on one side, the 50 foot wide wall structure (dirt - fencing and base) then another 1200 feet on the other side for a total of 2450 Ft across. The author if I remember correctly said that for every 20 linear feet of wall the government would have to seize, or buy 1 acre of land. Think about how many acres of land that would be from the Gulf tot he Pacific - and we can't seize Mexican land so it would have to come out of Texas. I can just imagine how they would feel if someone called their bluff on Trump's "wall", and started seizing huge swaths of Texas
We have a border that cannot be secured - an idea which the republicans just cannot grasp.
Of course Biden COULD declare a national emergency, seize the land by eminent domain, tell Texas the dead water starved cattle will help reduce carbon emissions in the fight against global warming. We could then watch the heads of Sen Cruz and Cornyn explode
NONE of the proposals will work the way the opposing parties want them to because at their core they "assume" the old days when people came in on boats to Ellis Island somehow still exists. Nice orderly lines of folks coming in from the old countries. Getting vaccinated and just being turned loose to go to Little Italy, China Town, or other enclave of people like them. In texas they wander across by the thousands across thousands of miles of un-monitored border area. We arrest SOME of them - send 'em back home and then they come back.
Progressive DEMs believe that every immigrant coming across has "struggled" or suffered in some way so we "have" to help them become good productive citizens of the United States. Conservative republicans believe the immigrants to be welfare seeking, dirty, vile criminals looking for a free ride courtesy of the U.S government.
Neither is correct - which is the problem
But to listen or read about just one side of this argument is also wrong.
If you believe in more-or-less open borders, none of this will bother you. But if, like most people, you believe the border ought to be secured,
Oh come on, this is just lazy. Nearly nobody believes in “open borders,” or believes a border should not be “secured,” or thinks laws should not be obeyed. Claiming otherwise, or fixating on “illegal” (undocumented crossing is a misdemeanor btw), is just lazy, or worse, disingenuous.
This is a difficult situation, made far worse by the disastrous mismanagement by the Trump administration, and inflamed by right-wingers out of xenophobia or manipulation and by media hungry for scandal. If you’re going to contribute, do so responsibly.
Very true. The Trump administration basically broke everything. Getting minors to caregivers in US? Well, the Trump administration targeted the caregivers. The "remain in Mexico" "agreement". That leaves a large desperate population at our border--no need for new "caravans" of migrants to cause problems.
Oh, and the lovely new roads Trump built for the smugglers.
Anybody ever uncover where the child migrants pimped out to de Vos family foster family placement affiliates ended up?
There's groups working on it. They've had some success but still too many kids not found yet.
There were so many Jefe regime scandals, but I think the biggest (& least covered) were the de Vos family's attempt to deepen the genepool of homeschooling fundamentalist families like their Michigan Dutch base; Kavanaugh's HELOC payoff; & the Teump DC hotel.
@bbleh
I'm one of those who longs for open borders -- actually, no borders. It is fear, hatred and greed that has caused us since the very beginning to draw lines around "our" territory, station armed guards there, and threaten or harm anyone who dares trespass. It is the creation of borders that causes "crises" at the borders.
Yeah my dream scenario is a free zone encompassing all of North America plus the Caribbean and maybe Central America eventually. We waste too many resources on border security.
CAFTA is a poison chalice for #OurRevolution.
Kevin is entirely correct...and I find the comment section to be...(I am actually at a loss for words).
Let me try again...we are Democrats, we would like to hold on to the Senate, House and maybe gain a few Governorship's in the 2022 elections so that we can continue to go on doing GOOD Democratic things.
Do we really want to give back power to the Republicans so soon, so quickly, so on a silver plate...that will then be smashed back into our faces...undoing whatever good a 2 YEAR TERM a Biden Presidency might have accomplished?
Worse, to not gain control of the border and seen to being in control is to destroy the slow consensus that has been building in favor of the DREAMERS and their liberation from Bondage.
I would rather be a winner capable of continuing to do good things, that to be a loser but I get to feel virtuous about myself.
Which is, as you think about it, very selfish.
Not willing to engage in insane thinking, Traveller
If they all took a 16 week course to learn programming they could get remote jobs and live anywhere they want. Comment moderation seems like a good business to be in.
The data does not support the assertion Kevin Drum is making here. The chart he posted tells a different story, as do the motivating factors that lead people to seek refuge in another country.
First the chart: when compared to the 2018-2019 surge, the 2020-2021 surge is clearly showing a similar pattern: a steep rise, pause and followed by another steep rise. Was Biden responsible for 2018-2019 too? Or were Trump's policies so attractive that they were influencing the decision of migrants to seek refuge in the United States then, like Biden's alleged "open borders" policies are now?
As for the current wave, it started under Trump. This fact cannot simply be dismissed. Waves have to follow their course, and this wave is doing so: following the same pattern as the 2018-2019 wave. To attribute this wave to Biden, one would have to argue that Biden was open borders during his campaign (he wasn't and isn't); that the mere prospect of a Biden presidency became a motivating factor when the wave began in 2020; and that the wave that we are seeing is unique to Biden or to Biden's policy permissiveness. None of this is true. The best one can argue is that Biden's policies have added some small percentage increase to the already occurring wave because those who were already motivated to migrate, felt this moment was more opportune than it was prior to the election. A marginal increase, however, is not full on responsibility.
Finally, migrants seeking refuge in another country do so because the economic, social and/or political factors of their homeland and not because of the policies of a foreign leader. That is, people who seek refuge in another country do so because the risks of misery caused by staying in their own country are considered to be greater than the risks of leaving. At best, one could argue that Biden's election somewhat lowered the misery index in this calculus.
The crisis at the border is real. It is legitimate to say that Biden and his administration were caught flat footed. And it would be legitimate to criticize that flat footedness as due to his commitment to treat migrants humanely when the infrastructure is not in place to do so. But arguing that we can in some quantifiable way attribute responsibility to Biden for either the numbers or the decisions of migrants to seek refuge in the United States is a fool's game.
Good critique.
I agree with most of what you said except " And it would be legitimate to criticize that flat footedness as due to his commitment to treat migrants humanely when the infrastructure is not in place to do so." Treating immigrants humanely is not a choice, it's a requirement from day 1. And building the infrastructure takes time. So I'm not sure what biden admin could realistically have done that they haven't this early in his term.
That is a fair point, and I would agree that treating migrants humanely is not a choice, but a requirement. I think the criticism of Biden regarding his executive order to recalibrate toward a greater humanity is this: Biden has changed the policy of treating children like adults and turning them away at the border. This has changed the strategy of migrants when crossing. Whereas under Trump, the cruelty of family separation had to be calculated into their crossing strategy, with Biden the rejection of this cruelty has lead families to rethink how they cross. Children (and there families) are more likely to be treated with humanity, therefore migrants are incorporating children into their crossing strategy. This has tested the limits of what is in place, and made the crisis worse. That said, I think we would agree, that starting with that change was an essential humanitarian step, and that trying to alleviate suffering as Biden is doing rather than inflict suffering as Trump did is a step forward, even if it has also developed into a crisis that is still being resolved.
A few things:
1. Biden recently urged immigrants "not to come" right now because we're not set up to process a huge influx. Seems reasonable.
2. It's heartbreaking that parents are sending their children unaccompanied to the US border seeking entry. This speaks to some real desperation to find better lives for their kids. We should prioritize processing and placing these minors.
3. There are some progressives who believe in open borders, but that's not most Democrats.
4. Those seeking asylum to escape violence in their home countries should be treated with respect and in accordance with our laws. This is a big, messy process, but it's the right thing to do.
5. A high level of deportations will occur under Biden, just as they did under Trump, Obama, and every other President.
6. Get E-verify to work.
Yes, and I would add, and Biden supports, policies to encourage good governance in Central American countries to provide safety, stability and opportunity to their citizens.
Should clarify--parents are not sending children "unaccompanied". It is just that they are not traveling with a parent. Indeed, the parents might be in the US already, so they are traveling with an Aunt or other relative or family friend. After they are picked up by Border Patrol, they can be deported or the child can be left in in the custody of the Border Patrol. The children are not being separated from their parents as happened in the Trump administration.
Also nobody has mentioned the devastating hurricanes that hit the golden triangle area of Central America, things are very, very bad there right now, we need a Marshall plan to those countries but in a way that doesn't simply funnel $$$ to the same corrupt politicians.
@HokieAnnie
We've spent about $700 million per year in aid to the Northern Triangle over the past five years. The Biden Administration is looking to spend just a little more, about $4 billion/year over the coming four years. Assuming a skim rate of about half going to corrupt politicians down there, this is not enough. And as long as anyone in this country can say with a straight face that we should "help our own people" before spending anything on foreigners we'll probably never have the political will to do what's needed.
+1
The population of the US is roughly 330M. If we get 250,000 new immigrants a year during the Biden administration, it will be 331M. I don't know, I find it hard to get worked up about this. But then again, I live in California where pretty much all the hard work for low pay is done by Hispanic immigrants. It's the dirty, not at all secret of the border states.
The media have framed the movement of the migrants to the US from the overcrowded conditions on the South side of the border in Mexico for the past few years as a crisis. The pent up crowds just moved a few miles North and the media has excited the anti-immigrant cohort without including in their reporting Trump dismantled migrant processing, created the crowded conditions on the other side of the border with the wait in Mexico for processing (that never occurs) policy, and that Trump refused to work with the incoming Biden admin during the transition period between the election and inauguration. Biden's admin needs time to rebuild the bureaucracy. The conditions in the concentration camps of asylum seekers on the South side of the border have been available to the media to expose for years. Those people are probably better off in the US facilities despite also being overwhelmed and crowded. Perhaps progressives could extend some sympathy to these people fleeing from Central American states which Democrats and Republicans alike have prevented from democratizing.
If you are like most Americans, descendants of migrants, then you admire how the US processed the arrival of your ancestors on a daily basis at places like Ellis Island. Those institutions have been broken down ever since W. Bush closed the borders, which began the demagoguery about migrants used so successfully by fascists like Sheriff Arpaio and Trump.
Yes, and good point about US involvement in/culpability for the banana-republic governments of Central America.
Can't "blame" this latest surge on Biden, or Trump, for that matter. We're seeing the future: millions of destitute, hungry people, afraid for their lives in a homeland that is no longer a tenable home, migrating wherever they think life will be better for them. Blame overpopulation, climate change, political corruption, massive economic inequity, racism, whatever, it doesn't matter. The mass migrations -- here, out of Africa, in southeast Asia -- will continue, and the numbers will be too great for even the wealthiest countries to control or accommodate. Americans may think it's "unfair," that we have worked so hard to make good lives for ourselves, and Those People think they can just come and enjoy what we have created. Without addressing the high bullshit content of that sentiment, I'll just say "Get used to it, rich countries."
The only hope -- and it's a slim one -- is for the nations of the world to work together to identify the true causes and address them. This would require a level of trust and cooperation not seen since the dawn of the human race, but maybe when the pain gets too great, we'll try it.
This is really a shit post by Kevin because a surge that began long before Biden became president is now being blamed on Biden, who others are lying about as if the US now is open borders. Biden is not, the US is not, and I don't know any politician who is.
But I'm not a politician. I don't understand the moral argument against open borders. There may be legal and nationalistic reasons to keep out immigrants for now, even though many of those arguments are misguided. But I don't see the moral argument.
No one questions the right of a person born in San Ysidro, California, to move to Portland, Maine, or a person born in Paducah to move to Honolulu. But a person born in Tijuana has no right to move to San Diego, or a person born in Windsor, Ontario, to move to Detroit. In our current politics, these seem to be immutable, if not self-evident, truths.
I think they're bunk. I think the history of our 21st century will prove them to be bunk. And I think people will look back on our time and see the people who defend those so-called legal pillars of our current immigration policy to be nothing more than Trumpist America-Firsters.
In the past there were legal arguments against things like universal suffrage, universal healthcare, gay marriage, etc. But over time the moral case has won the day, and even if not fully realized yet we have moved to broaden rights where needed.
The moral argument is paramount because of what is happening at the southern border. People are fleeing poverty, famine, war and other violence just as families of in the past fled poverty, famine, war and other violence. They came to an America with virtually an open-borders policy, made a new home, made this country great, then forget their heritage. In the past at least, America was hardly responsible for the troubles in Europe that caused so many people to flee. Yet the US let them in. Today our hands are hardly clean, and the political instability and climate devastation that afflicts people south of our border are closely tied to the actions of our own country. Their problem very much is the problem we helped create, and yet when they come to our border desperate for a better life, we tell them to get lost. Shame on us.
What should we do about people coming to the border? Long-term, we could promote stability and prosperity south of the border. People aren't coming here because they want a free ride. They come because they are desperate. And for most, we ought to let them in. Yes, we have room. Yes, in fact, we need them. Yes, there are challenges in managing immigration, but those are management issues we can solve.
If you think we should say no to new immigrants, you're on the wrong side of history, and on the wrong side of the moral argument.
(I expect politicians will do what they think they should do to get reelected. But unless you're running for office, you have no excuse.)
@Joseph Harbin
👍🏽
Does the ampersand construct actually work in this comment system?
@rick_jones
If you're referring to the "at" symbol as a way to direct a comment to another commenter and also alert that commenter that you have done so...no. I use it because this comment system is also weak on threading, making it hard for people to know who I am answering or what I'm responding to. And when I'm not too lazy (as I am right now), I'll also quote the comment I'm responding to. Just trying to be courteous.
+1
Kevin, Kevin, Kevin... While past performance may not guarantee future results in "the markets" the US having been a nation of immigrants in the past means it must be a nation of immigrants today and in the future. And that the nation will never be "full" by any measure, be it emissions, arable land, potable water or anything else. When it comes to population, grow baby, grow...
Births in the US are below replacement rate. https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2020-05-20/us-births-continue-to-fall-fertility-rate-hits-record-low
The US is the 145th least-densely populated land on earth (Wikipedia). Close to home, we used to have hundreds of dairy farms in Connecticut; now there are a few score. The government paid farmers to get out of the business, because milk supply so exceeded demand. We are far from being unable to sustain a larger population; that in itself is not an argument against immigration. The best strategy for keeping the world population at a sustainable level is to ensure that everyone, everywhere is well-fed, well-sheltered, healthy, and has opportunities to prosper. Wealthy countries have stable or declining populations.
"This is not the first time there's been a surge of migrants on the southwest border. There was one in 2014 during the Obama administration, one in 2018 during the Trump administration, and now one in 2020-21, spanning the Trump and Biden administrations."
Mk I eyeballs can agree to disagree, but was the "Obama Surge" (or the "Surge of 2014" if one prefers) really a surge? Looks more like year to year variation.
Taking the chart back (well) before 2012 would be a good thing.
Meanwhile, at Kevin's old blogging-grounds: https://www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/2021/03/biden-mayorkas-trump-border-unaccompanied-minors/ A rather different take on the matter. Leaving one wondering if there were perhaps irreconcilable differences.
Kevin just posted a chart that disproves his thesis. I know Kevin sometimes likes to troll the conventional wisdom and other times likes to troll his readers, but… I don’t think he is doing that this time. Or is he?
This doesn’t make sense. His own chart says you had the same problem in 2019 and 2020. Here is another chart that also shows this is not a new problem:
https://twitter.com/JesseRodriguez/status/1373997599980666888
Me no understand.
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