Republicans insist there's a crisis on the border. Progressives insist there's hardly anything worth mentioning going on down south. It's all just the usual seasonal variation.
I'm skeptical of that, but put it aside. The one thing everyone can agree on is that the number of unaccompanied children at the border is truly headed for record territory:
But even this understates what's happening. The fiscal year used by CBP starts in October, and for the first four months encounters with unaccompanied minors were steady at about 5,000 per month. That's high but hardly record shattering.
But in February that doubled to 9,000, and the Biden administration forecasts that it will rise to more than 20,000 by May. That's more than four times the normal rate.
This is obviously not just seasonal variation, nor is it merely making up for a slow 2020. The evidence suggests pretty convincingly that it's largely due to a belief among migrants that the Biden administration would be more tolerant of illegal immigration than the Trump administration, and that children were the key to getting in.
At this point, however, it really doesn't matter if Biden is responsible for the current state of affairs. What matters is that it's real and it's happening on his watch. Politically, that means Biden can't make excuses; he has to do something to rein in the surge of illegal immigration or suffer the consequences. That's just the reality of the thing.
Poverty and the risk of violent death will force human beings to migrate and seek better living conditions. They always have throughout human history. That too is the reality of things.
Otzi died for our sins!
Otzi died from a well placed arrow - possibly the end result of an old vendetta.
That doesn't really respond to Kevin's post. Sure. You're right. But no country can survive if it accepts every fleeing poverty and violence.
Strawman argument. Nobody is advocating accepting “every(one) fleeing poverty and violence” nor is everyone facing poverty or violence at America’s border right now clamoring to get in.
America used to admit millions of (mostly*) impoverished people every year from Europe. (*They don’t usually do things like lice checks on the wealthy, so I’m pretty sure most that passed through places like Ellis Island weren’t Europe’s upper classes.)
If we managed to survive accepting millions of “tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” “wretched refuse” and “homeless, tempest-tost” in the past**, I’m guessing we can handle accepting a few hundred thousand penniless kids now. Especially since we just sacrificed upwards of 500,000+ citizens to the virus and Freedom.
**Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus
Given the inflight behavior of KKKlay Travis & his lineage, lice checks on the wealthy should be a thing.
Actually, I was responding to a straw man argument.
Past status as a nation of immigrants means it must remain so today? And if indeed we aren’t going to keep accepting additional migrants when exactly will we stop? Are these few hundred thousand the last of those who would arrive? What will the metric(s) be to say we are “full?” Emissions? Potable water? Arable land? Median income?
Think globally AND act globally. That is the only way for the planet's biosphere to survive.
And if indeed we aren’t going to keep accepting additional migrants when exactly will we stop?
We aren't going to stop. Nor should we. The country's birth rate has plummeted to the lowest levels in its history. I for one would like to be able to collect a pension check or two when I'm old enough.
Children showing up at the border and asking for amnesty is not "illegal immigration". If you want to do a post on illegal immigration laying out the evidence that is spiking or that children are more involved, great, do so. But otherwise, your incorrectly using racist language.
+
Yup.
Illegal immigration is as loaded a term as partial birth abortion or death panels, & I am surprised a rare Orange County non-Republican like Drum is bowing to Luntzian framing.
...a rare Orange County non-Republican like Drum...
Is he still pretending to be a non-Republican? Should we?
Not really.
Indeed.
👍👍
Children don't simply show up at the border on their own. Try a little harder.
Thank you!
Because WordPress sucks, it may not be clear that I'm responding to ilili, not the fool directly above who doesn't know the difference between refugees who ask for amnesty and those who cross illegally....
And because WordPress sucks, I can't edit the post to fix the misuse of "amnesty" when I meant to say " asylum"
"Politically, that means Biden can't make excuses; he has to do something to rein in the surge of illegal immigration or suffer the consequences."
OK. So what do you suggest beyond what is already being done? In a previous post you seemed to imply the answer was obvious, but I certainly don't know what it is. Start abusing migrants like Trump admin? Which also wasn't effective in decreasing immigration flow.
1: Increase legal immigration by 50%, to about 1.6m per year.
2: Double temporary work visas
3: As part of #1, increase refugee admissions to 150,000 per year with a focus on Central America
4: Revamp the refugee process so that most current asylum seekers could apply in their own country or any on the way, with relatively fast decisions
5: Limit asylum admissions to 500 per month.
6: Deport, without fuss or hesitation, anyone here illegally after 12/31/21 outside the most pressing humanitarian cases
7: Give anyone here illegally today a choice of leaving by 12/31 and having their immigration record wiped clean, or staying in the US and either engaging in ten years of public service work, volunteering 2500 hours of community service over ten years, or paying a $5000 year fee for ten years, at which point they would become eligible for a green card.
Some of these are useful steps, some i think are terrible (such as an arbitrary asylum limit of 500/mo), but I don't think any of them solve the problem of managing the large numbers of migrants, particularly small children, coming to the border.
In the past year we've lost 560,000 people to a deadly disease. Seems to me we have plenty of vacancies. In fact, we could use more people.
What's the problem? Really, what is the problem?
Like!
Plenty of vacancies unless you feel the population needs to start decreasing. And one can hold that view while still not welcoming COVID deaths.
This nation is already one of the top emitters of greenhouse gases as both absolute and per-capita. It climate change is the existential threat to humanity it is presented as, we need to be lowering both our per-capita, and “capita.” Not watering down the former by increasing the latter.
Climate change is a threat to the planet but shrinking the population of the US as a way to solve it would be monumentally stupid. Would you argue we need to keep poor nations poor because as they develop they become more a threat to climate change?
Not to mention, keeping US population low would be economically and politically catastrophic. The solution for climate involves converting away from carbon-based energy, and that needs to happen anyway, and it needs to happen across all countries too. It has little to do with US immigration policy.
To address you point elsewhere ("when exactly will we stop? Are these few hundred thousand the last of those who would arrive? What will the metric(s) be to say we are 'full?'"): IOW, you're saying we might have "too many" people someday, so we need to say "no" to letting people in today. But people have been arguing that we have "too many" people for centuries and the only thing that history has proven is that they were wrong.
The population has exploded over time and the conditions of our lives have improved dramatically. Worldwide population growth is tapering off, and immigration may be the primary way for developed nations like the US to increase. Certainly, we have room to grow. We may occasionally feel crowded in our towns and cities, but the truth is that the country is mostly empty. There's no reason we couldn't grow smartly to double or triple the population and manage just fine. My guess is that the US will need to do that in this century or we'll become a once-great has-been like the one the UK is becoming.
Conservatives say they believe in freedom. They believed in the freedom of the Brits, the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, and so on, to come to this land and become Americans. But now that kids fleeing desperate circumstances are knocking at our door, we're supposed to tell them, "Sorry, we have too many people, or we will someday"? I say: Sorry, that's b.s.
If Bluto Barksalot weren't such a loud jackass his absence wouldn't have impressed anyone.
If we took in every one of 100,000 kids and their parents and siblings in a single year, I would bet that they would learn to be responsible citizens of a democracy before Republican state and national legislators do.
Yes, thank you! Just like some of our own forebears. We're all on stolen land.
Some of the children and adults seeking asylum actually are indigenous people, unlike most in the US.
Next thing you know, these Rigobertas Menchu* will want casinos to run.
*Surprised no one has ever done a Shattered Glass type film about that serial Nobelist fabulist.
The countries of origin have suffered through hurricanes and drought and....
Trump slashes aid to those countries--aid meant to mitigate the need for some to migrate.
Trump broke the system where new asylum seekers were cared for before their hearings.
Trump broke the organizations that were supposed to be caring for the children seeking asylum.
Trump demands Mexico keep migrants at border. Mexico finally has had enough
It's Biden's fault!
So, back to the "Green Lantern theory" of the presidency?
So, Trump’s (ok Stephen Miller’s) idea was to treat immigrants so brutally that they wouldn’t want to come here. I don’t know what Biden has in mind, but the Trumpians might have an idea that will work. Make the USA into a brutal totalitarian country that’s no different from the one they are fleeing. That way no one will try to come here. I see the Trumpians are well on their way with fulfilling their dream in the state of Georgia.
No, the idea was to flood the us for the rich and they did. Rod Rosenstein then used centers for his global trafficking network.
Shooter224Q has entered the chat.
Reality sucks for progtards. Ignoring immigration laws is the old school way of increasing illegal immigrants.
Yes, Rod Rosenstein, Ken Starr lieutenant diring the Clinton Wars, inside man on the Mueller investigation into Trump-Russia coordination, the true profile of a progtard.
If Rod Rosenstein is a paedo, there's a good chance he shares the predilection with his Starr Chamber homey Bart O'Kavanaugh.
Hey dipshit, people showing up at the border and presenting themselves to authorities to request asylum are following immigration laws.
The Q is silent, as in Fox.
Maybe the Q Drops are like farts, & the Bethany Family Services release was silent but deadly.
Farts in a bag cleverly hidden somewhere the enthusiast can hunt for and find and examine and wonder if it's the real thing or just an old bag that smells like it had something in it, like Pokemon Go for the serious people.
What? 20000 kids came in during 2020 at least. Kevin, what your seeing, is total that has been rounded up, or I should say, what they expect the total to be. It's probably wrong.
Your point is dead, I would remove this post.
So what is the problem? Largely political, but real. Do we really want a promising start to a Biden Administration to stall and strangle itself before the third month starts?
There are important things that need to be done...the Infrastructure Bill, most importantly HR1. Coupled with some necessary and appropriate tax raises, a Democratic ascendancy that will last for decades can be built....and Do Good in the World.
All of this will be lost unless something is done about our Southern border. These children will be weaponized against Democrats and especially against the millions of Dreamers that had some hope of being legalized...they will forever be cast back into the shadows, their lives and hopes ruined by these....Opportunist Young Men attempting to cross the border.
The majority of the unaccompanied minors at the border, some say 70%, other say 80% are young unaccompanied males....and how do you adjudicate an asylum claim for such a youth? How do you determine that they are 16 years old and not 20 years old?
Solution, set up 100 temporary courtrooms in trailers....appoint temporary Immigration Judges....and rocket these cases, the majority of which will rule that they return to their home country.
There, I've painted the problem for you and I have offered a solution.
This is much too important to frivolously not be serious about.
Best Wishes, Traveller (who once worked at immigration defense...I love these kids but I am not willing to give up my future, the future of the Dreamers, a bright future for the Democratic party for some temporary Feel Good...I am an adult willing to make adult decisions)
Best Wishes, Traveller
They're not illegal immigrants, they're asylum seekers and the parents are sending the kids across alone, because they're at least being allowed to stay here while their cases make their way -- glacially -- through the backlogged immigration court system. Very few of them will be granted asylum under current law, but by the time their appeals and everything are exhausted, that kid is going to be going to high school (if not college), speaking English, and largely assimilated to American life. What do you do with them then? Deport them from a country they may have spent more time in than the one in which they were born? Give them DREAMER status? They're not going to deport themselves; they'll just continue to live precariously as an undocumented resident. Either way, you have to explain to people how this is different from straight-up open borders.
I agree with those who say this is going to become a huge political albatross for the Biden administration unless they come up with a plan and soon. Think if we had taken even a fraction of the money we poured into Afghanistan and Iraq over the past 20 years and invested it in improving people's lives in Central America. We probably wouldn't be in this mess.
A plan??? My guess when numbers collapse this summer, you probably will be surprised. Guess what, numbers are already ebbing.....
Sorta OT metacomment. Kevin Drum's productivity as a blogger seems to have gone up since Mother Jones stopped giving him money. In fact, per wage dollar it's gone infinite. Please nobody tell Jeff Bezos.
Peak two month apprehensions at the southwest border:
2000 Feb/Mar - 431,391
2001 Feb/Mar - 322,809
2002 Mar/Apr - 248,913
2003 Feb/Mar - 195,268
2004 Mar/Apr - 290,449
2005 Mar/Apr - 283,110
2006 Mar/Apr - 287,234
Did the country's economy collapse in this period? Did conservatives blow their stack at the lack of border control under Clinton then Bush?
Just asking, because I apparently did a Rip van Winkle during those years because I can't remember the national outrage of an out of control border during these years.
Perspective? How dare you!!!
😉
That said, "unaccompanied children" is probably higher now then then. In some cases, it's parents at the border sending their child across alone with the hope that they'll be allowed in. It will take some more time for everything to get ramped up to deal with the issues at hand. Cleaning up the "remain in Mexico" "program" will be a Herculean task.
Remain in Mexico was the biggest flop in years
In many cases it's parents already in the US urging their kids to come over and join them.
If anything, Pete Wilson's Prop 187 victory, but subsequent loss of Republican hegemony in California, chastened all sides, & was a key driver of Dubya's compassionate conservatism.
Johnny WALNUTS! was really the first GQPer since Pete Wilson to weaponize immigration, with his 2007-08 calls to finish the dang fence.
In that light, the GQP rejecting the 2012 autopsy & carrying on to the El Jefe era makes sense.
Progressives insist there's hardly anything worth mentioning going on down south. It's all just the usual seasonal variation.
Well now wait a minute. Many progressives DO say that a LOT of what's going on is "the usual seasonal variation," and most also say that there are other causes, including the backlog from Trump's "remain in Mexico" nonsense. But it really is not fair to say that they "insist there's hardly anything worth mentioning going on." Quite the contrary, no progressives *I* know of are not rightfully distressed -- even appalled -- at the conditions prevailing at the border and at the scale of obvious human misery, and just as insistent as anyone that something humane and just be done quickly about it.
If anyone "insist[ed] there's hardly anything worth mentioning going on," it was Republicans during the time that the Trump administration was turning a blind eye to human misery, or even making it worse, eg by separating children from their parents and locking them for days and even weeks in cages with little more than foil blankets, or by or by underfunding and disempowered\\ing the agencies who were supposed to carry out asylum laws, or by ignoring the laws completely.
This comment is almost NYTimes level bothsiderism. Tsk tsk.
so much for liberal bias...
"Progressives insist there's hardly anything worth mentioning going on down south. It's all just the usual seasonal variation."
I think Joe Biden said it best when asked, after a long angry harangue by the reporter, "Do you consider this acceptable???" and he replied "Is this a real question?"
Also, how did you get the italics? I'm trying "the usual", so if weird characters appear, that's why.
It worked!
Over the past year Kevin has truly turned himself into a version Fox News lite (no matter how much he wishes their demise).
Putting aside that he is at master at picking and choosing which numbers to use and which to ignore depending on the convenience to the point he wants tonmake, he's made some truly bonker, claims, some more than once.
Some of the most appaling examples:
-Defining Trump as not so bad a President and not an authoritarian.
-Criticising progressives for not allowing or tolerating some levels of racism, and making too much fuzz about racism in the USA
-General disdain for social issues, since in his view, things are actually pretty great
-Calling the USA covid response spectacular and among the best in the world
-Fully using rightwing talking points in his blogs, like in this one calling asylum seekers illegal immigrants despite the fact that they are literally following what the law says.
Drum called himself a Warren Democrat in 2020, but he's been a Bernie Bro in hiding all along.
Why are we looking at this as a problem because it’s children. In terms of number of people attempting to come to this country are we talking about more or fewer people?:
“according to new research from Robert Warren, a demographer and senior visiting fellow at the Center for Migration Studies. “From 2010 to 2019, the undocumented population from Mexico declined by about 1.9 million, and the undocumented population from the rest of the world increased by about 500,000.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2021/03/10/illegal-immigration-in-america-has-continued-to-decline/?sh=29c74e44e14f
I’m just not sure we are facing a “crisis” unless what we mean by crisis is yet another ginned up right wing boogeynan of the election cycle.
Of course there's a crisis. Things are so bad, US senators have to man machine guns on boats while they patrol the Rio Grande to stop the hordes of criminals trying to cross.
Based on HAMBISCUITS! & Rafealito, Meal Team 6 seems to be an official unit of the federal military response team.
The spectacle of the wealthiest nation in the world - a nation of more than 320 million people - panicking at the challenge of having to accommodate 100,000 children at the Mexican border is, well, not edifying. Especially when 40% of the kids are seeking to rejoin one or both parents, and most of the rest have family already in the US.
Half a million American children are in foster care now. I'm sure the system can cope with a few thousand more, if indeed any of the border crossers turn out not to have family willing to care for them.
The crisis is so bad that Ted Cruz tried to flee TO Mexico.
They wouldn't have him
Last resort cell therapy for Multiple Myeloma: https://bityl.co/6A6a
They genetically re-engineer a person's own T-cells to attack MM, but, it doesn't seem to cause complete remission that cures people. One day, scientists will understand the full mechanics of cancer and reverse-engineer your own cells to fix it.
In the background of all this we have: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/28/mexico-covid-death-toll-rise-60-percent. And: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/us-waives-fbi-checks-caregivers-migrant-facilities-76724675
OK, I don't get it. I'm not American and not particularly interested by the migrant issue but here is what I don't get and would like pointers for.
If young children are the ticket in (see the link to Drum's previous post with the story from a Guatemalan), then these children aren't unaccompanied?
If they are sent by their parents unaccompanied, how are they supposed to help their parents get in?
If they are essentially given up by their parents, for, essentially "adoption by the US authorities" then it'd be interesting to know.
Very good questions. I too am baffled by numbers of unaccompanied minors. What are their parents thinking? A friend suggests that many of them might have relatives of friends of the family already present -- legally or not -- in the US; so if they can get by La Migra, they can crash with Tio Paco in Tucson. Maybe.
As you suggest, maybe the idea is, once in, they can in some way help get their family in -- but is there any legal mechanism like that?
Maybe a significant number are late-teens who simply want to try to make it as adults in the US, knowing and accepting they will not see their families again for years, if ever.
In any case I can think of, the conditions they leave behind must be really bad, to make such dire, risky, uncertain choices the best ones.
I would love to know more about the detailed demographics of these "children" and where they come from and how. Kevin, please publish on this.
Big Knauss Family energy.
Sigh...another view on Immigration...
The Freedom Swimmers
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-03-28/hong-kong-freedom-swimmers-china-cultural-revolution
Best Wishes, Traveller
PS the 20~30% of cases that are actual children, have actual parents in the US, have verifiable Asylum claim...of course are admitted but in an orderly way.
I need 4 years of a radically progressive Biden Administration....(which he really seems to be turning out to be)
If there's a silver political lining to this situation, it's the fact that's it's occurring early in Biden's first term, and therefore may have lost some of its salience eighteen months from now. It also buys time for a solution, though I don't have a lot of hope on that score; it seems clear that some of Trump's "success" in controlling the border flowed from his administration's inhumane treatment of migrants and refugees.
Kevin, you have fallen into the Republican's trap. The unaccompanied minors arriving at the border are NOT "illegal immigrants!" They are people who are lawfully exercising their right to apply for asylum. We can ylhave a debate on the rules for actually granting asylum, but in my understanding they are extremely strict.
I think one of the best options for Biden is to set up the infrastructure to screen or adjudicate asylum applications in Central America, so that when the answer is "no" the person or family can avoid a fruitless and dangerous trip north. There is precedent for this, with screening of asylum seekers in southeast Asia.