Immigration is completely out of control (1 Viewer)

[SystemShock]

A couple of days ago, one of the main US-MX border points of entry was blocked by 1000's of migrants demanding entry into the country, which caused chaos for those who lawfully cross the border on business, for work, or for delivery of goods, both ways.

Lawful border crossings are getting progressively worse across the border, and drug cartels are finding it easier to move product, as the CBP has to transfer personnel and efforts to the processing of migrants.

It's not different on MX's South border. Yesterday, ~5000 migrants stormed into Chiapas all the way to the INM building (INM is immigration) running over fences, barricades, and elements of the National Guard. They are now taking over an ecological park in Tapachula, Chiapas, which it's going to be severely affected, as it's been the case with just about everywhere migrants squat.

Unfortunately, Juan Trump (that's Donald Trump's pet name for the President of México) was bamboozled by his "friend" Donald into making MX a "lobby" for migrants trying to reach the U.S.

Many people would argue that migrants are "good for the economy", but that is not always the case. Billions of dollars leave the U.S. economy every year, because migrants send money from the U.S. to other countries to support families there. The biggest destinations are India and MX, to the tune of 100 billion dollars in 2023 alone, according to the Bank of México (kind of like the MX version of the Fed). These billions of dollars do not circulate in the U.S. economy.

Speaking of inflation, the past year, the U.S. dollar has lost ~20% of its value against the MX peso. One of the main reasons for it, is the amount of money being sent to MX from the U.S. And MX is the U.S. 2nd largest trading partner.

Gregg Abbott is a lot of things, but I don't blame him for his attempts at curbing the hordes of people demanding entry into the U.S., even the busing of migrants to other States, making some put their money where their mouth is, like the Mayor of NYC, who was so welcoming of migrants, until he he got a taste, then went crying to the federal government for more money, while the shelters were at full capacity; shelters which BTW serve the NYC poor as well.

And please, no one mention a wall. There is a wall. A wall can be climbed; a wall can be dug under.; holes can be punched through walls.

 

[efil4]

So how do we make life incrementally better for Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Mexico so that citizens of these countries desire to stay put and work/earn/live?

 

[coldseat]

Immigration and asylum is a mess everywhere in the world except for the countries that suck and nobody wants to live in. Nothing Abbott is doing is even having a dent, it's also nakedly being done for political reason. Republicans won't engage in trying to find any real solutions as it's better for them as a political issue to foment rage.

So what's the solution?

 

[Dragon]

Every developed country face this challenge, No one really want to leave their homes but when it is a question of survival and a future for your children - what would you do?

Powerty, exploitation, despotic regimes, global warming - there are lots of reasons for why people are migrating. The US and lots of European countries have had several waves of migrants - People fleeing religious or political persecution, famine or powerty. And it is going to get worse. When large parts of Africa and Asia is going to hit a liftthreatning wetbulb heat index - do you really think they are not going to try to find somewhere safe ? We are living on borrowed time in some ways. For the first time this summer we saw a lot of southern Europeans tourist for 2-3 months. Usually danes goes south for the sun and the heat - this summer people came from the south to get out of the deadly heat and wildfires in the south

Add Powerty and an increase in despotic regimes to the equation and it is going to be a LOT worse.

If you want people to stay put, you have to help them so that they dont need to run to survive. And the governments of the world need to understand that climate change will not only affect those in vulnerable areas but EVERYONE - one way or the other

 

[LA - L.A.]

Every developed country face this challenge, No one really want to leave their homes but when it is a question of survival and a future for your children - what would you do?

Powerty, exploitation, despotic regimes, global warming - there are lots of reasons for why people are migrating. The US and lots of European countries have had several waves of migrants - People fleeing religious or political persecution, famine or powerty. And it is going to get worse. When large parts of Africa and Asia is going to hit a liftthreatning wetbulb heat index - do you really think they are not going to try to find somewhere safe ? We are living on borrowed time in some ways. For the first time this summer we saw a lot of southern Europeans tourist for 2-3 months. Usually danes goes south for the sun and the heat - this summer people came from the south to get out of the deadly heat and wildfires in the south

Add Powerty and an increase in despotic regimes to the equation and it is going to be a LOT worse.

If you want people to stay put, you have to help them so that they dont need to run to survive. And the governments of the world need to understand that climate change will not only affect those in vulnerable areas but EVERYONE - one way or the other

As you point out, most immigrants in the world today are refugees fleeing a threatening situation of some kind. For most of them, it's a matter of survival.

People fleeing threatening climate situations is just getting started. Over the next decade hundreds of millions of people will either have to move somewhere else do to sea level rise. That's according to current models. Over the past several decades, actual climate change has consistently been worse and more rapid than models have predicted.

We need to have compassion for people that have been forced to flee and welcome them, because the alternative is to callously let millions of people die.

 

[SystemShock]

So how do we make life incrementally better for Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Mexico so that citizens of these countries desire to stay put and work/earn/live?

The question is how do they make life incrementally better? Difficult question, very complicated answer, but it starts with them moving away from populism and pseudo-patriotism. The story repeats over and over again... a populist comes along, makes the middle-upper classes the enemies, blames the U.S. for every evil there is, gets elected, becomes a dictator. Rinse and repeat.
Castro in Cuba.
Chavez-Maduro in Venezuela.
Ortega in Nicaragua.
Noriega in Panama (it could've gone really bad for them if not for the canal and the U.S.'s refusal to lose control of it).
Honduras just replaces one populist with another: the current president is basically taking her playbook from the Mexican president, blaming "neoliberals" - which are the opposite of what you'd consider a neoliberal in the U.S. - and "foreign intervention" (read, U.S.) for "poverty, hunger, and misery" in a speech she gave recently.
México, it's taking a bad turn. The current president, I said years ago, he's a leftist Trump, and I can type a book about that, but I'm not going to bore you with it. I'll just say, the 2024 presidential election is going to be a doozy. Although, the conditions are different, given the history and commercial relations with the U.S.

But the answer cannot be "let's bring everyone to the U.S. and we give them stuff". The U.S. has its own problems, and as much as some people say migrants make things better, that's not always the case, especially nowadays with the current economic models. The days when Ellis Island was open to everyone are gone.

 

[coldseat]

The question is how do they make life incrementally better? Difficult question, very complicated answer, but it starts with them moving away from populism and pseudo-patriotism. The story repeats over and over again... a populist comes along, makes the middle-upper classes the enemies, blames the U.S. for every evil there is, gets elected, becomes a dictator. Rinse and repeat.
Castro in Cuba.
Chavez-Maduro in Venezuela.
Ortega in Nicaragua.
Noriega in Panama (it could've gone really bad for them if not for the canal and the U.S.'s refusal to lose control of it).
Honduras just replaces one populist with another: the current president is basically taking her playbook from the Mexican president, blaming "neoliberals" - which are the opposite of what you'd consider a neoliberal in the U.S. - and "foreign intervention" (read, U.S.) for "poverty, hunger, and misery" in a speech she gave recently.
México, it's taking a bad turn. The current president, I said years ago, he's a leftist Trump, and I can type a book about that, but I'm not going to bore you with it. I'll just say, the 2024 presidential election is going to be a doozy. Although, the conditions are different, given the history and commercial relations with the U.S.

We have no control over what the population of those countries vote for.

But the answer cannot be "let's bring everyone to the U.S. and we give them stuff". The U.S. has its own problems, and as much as some people say migrants make things better, that's not always the case, especially nowadays with the current economic models. The days when Ellis Island was open to everyone are gone.

Nobody here is in the US is proposing that as an answer outside of maybe some fringe group. I don't know exactly what migrants get if they're able to make it into the US and stay, but I doubt it's more than what is necessary for basic survival. It's not like they're being handed 50 acers and $10,000 to start their new life here.

What I'm basically hearing from this response is that there isn't an answer to this question and nobody really has any real/workable solutions.

 

[efil4]

The question is how do they make life incrementally better? Difficult question, very complicated answer, but it starts with them moving away from populism and pseudo-patriotism. The story repeats over and over again... a populist comes along, makes the middle-upper classes the enemies, blames the U.S. for every evil there is, gets elected, becomes a dictator. Rinse and repeat.
Castro in Cuba.
Chavez-Maduro in Venezuela.
Ortega in Nicaragua.
Noriega in Panama (it could've gone really bad for them if not for the canal and the U.S.'s refusal to lose control of it).
Honduras just replaces one populist with another: the current president is basically taking her playbook from the Mexican president, blaming "neoliberals" - which are the opposite of what you'd consider a neoliberal in the U.S. - and "foreign intervention" (read, U.S.) for "poverty, hunger, and misery" in a speech she gave recently.
México, it's taking a bad turn. The current president, I said years ago, he's a leftist Trump, and I can type a book about that, but I'm not going to bore you with it. I'll just say, the 2024 presidential election is going to be a doozy. Although, the conditions are different, given the history and commercial relations with the U.S.

But the answer cannot be "let's bring everyone to the U.S. and we give them stuff". The U.S. has its own problems, and as much as some people say migrants make things better, that's not always the case, especially nowadays with the current economic models. The days when Ellis Island was open to everyone are gone.

So then lets just focus on Mexico, since that is your country.

What is the solution? not the laundry list of issues- how to you galvanize the citizenry to understand how important it is for everyone to move the country in a direction that will keep migrants from flowing north?

 

[SystemShock]

So then lets just focus on Mexico, since that is your country.

What is the solution? not the laundry list of issues- how to you galvanize the citizenry to understand how important it is for everyone to move the country in a direction that will keep migrants from flowing north?

Sorry for the late reply...

Well, without writing a manifesto, I think it boils down to 2 things:
1. the price of manual labor. Manual labor is extremely cheap in MX. Even if you get low balled in the U.S. for the manual labor you do, it is still 5x-10x more than what you get in MX.
2. The lure of the "American Dream" and "land of opportunity"; the idea that they cannot prosper in MX but the U.S. is very much a sure thing they'll succeed. And sure, many do succeed and even become rich, but many just trade the vecindad or ejido for the barrio or the projects, the cartels for gangs, and police abuse in MX for police abuse in the U.S.

 

[efil4]

Sorry for the late reply...

Well, without writing a manifesto, I think it boils down to 2 things:
1. the price of manual labor. Manual labor is extremely cheap in MX. Even if you get low balled in the U.S. for the manual labor you do, it is still 5x-10x more than what you get in MX.
2. The lure of the "American Dream" and "land of opportunity"; the idea that they cannot prosper in MX but the U.S. is very much a sure thing they'll succeed. And sure, many do succeed and even become rich, but many just trade the vecindad or ejido for the barrio or the projects, the cartels for gangs, and police abuse in MX for police abuse in the U.S.

Does MX have min wage?

 

[SystemShock]

Does MX have min wage?

There is a scale, depending on geographical location and job type... it's higher in the Northern border states, there it tops at $312 pesos a day. Rest of the country is $208 to $250, depending on job.

However, according to INEGI (the federal bureau of population statistics) 56% of the workforce works within the informal economy, and the scale doesn't count there (much like illegal immigrants getting low wages). Now, I don't know the scale they are using to measure it, so I don't know if it is practically 56% (sounds really high to me) but yes, a significant chunk of jobs happen within the informal economy. One of the idiosyncrasies of MX, unlike the U.S., is that you have to apply for an ID specifically for tax purposes and nothing else; you don't have one from your birthday that will follow you for the rest of your life and that you can use for everything legal... so many people just don't apply for it, and just work on a cash basis and avoid paying taxes. Cash basis is facilitated because most people in MX don't have or use credit in any way.

 

[Lapaz]

I was listening to a panel discussion where one of the panelists said that Biden has deported more people than Trump, but is quiet about it, since that isn’t popular among Democrats. So I was looking for good statistics on immigration, and I’m confused. I see terms like “returns”, expulsions, deportations, encounters. Here are a couple of sites, but they aren’t government sites, so I don’t trust them as much, nor know their sourcing.

Topic: Immigration/migration in the United States

Find the most up-to-date statistics and facts about immigration and migration to the U.S.

www.statista.com

What can the data tell us about unauthorized immigration to the US?

The US has reported nearly 10 million unauthorized border encounters between October 2019 and January 2024.

usafacts.org

Then this NPR article said that half of the 2.3 million encounters in fiscal 2021 resulted in expulsions, but only 72k were deported.

ICE arrests and deportations started to pick up in 2022, a federal report shows

Immigration arrests doubled this past fiscal year, largely as a result of assisting Border Patrol agents with the surge of migrants on the southern border.

www.npr.org

It’s very confusing. Do one of you have a good primer and authorized unambiguous source to help me understand this?

 

[samiam5211]

I was listening to a panel discussion where one of the panelists said that Biden has deported more people than Trump, but is quiet about it, since that isn’t popular among Democrats. So I was looking for good statistics on immigration, and I’m confused. I see terms like “returns”, expulsions, deportations, encounters. Here are a couple of sites, but they aren’t government sites, so I don’t trust them as much, nor know their sourcing.

Topic: Immigration/migration in the United States

Find the most up-to-date statistics and facts about immigration and migration to the U.S.

www.statista.com

What can the data tell us about unauthorized immigration to the US?

The US has reported nearly 10 million unauthorized border encounters between October 2019 and January 2024.

usafacts.org

Then this NPR article said that half of the 2.3 million encounters in fiscal 2021 resulted in expulsions, but only 72k were deported.

ICE arrests and deportations started to pick up in 2022, a federal report shows

Immigration arrests doubled this past fiscal year, largely as a result of assisting Border Patrol agents with the surge of migrants on the southern border.

www.npr.org

It’s very confusing. Do one of you have a good primer and authorized unambiguous source to help me understand this?

Returns are when someone is encountered at a port of entry and immediately sent back to their country. This can happen at the border or an airport. If a woman comes on a visitor visa, has quit her job in her home country, and says she's coming to visit her boyfriend or fiancé, they will send her back, because she is on a nonimmigrant visa and appears to be an intending immigrant. That's just one of many examples of what a return looks like. It just means that someone who has attempted to enter the US at a port of entry, but either doesn't have a visa, or appears to be entering for some reason not covered by their visa.

Expulsions are mainly something that happened while Title 42 was in effect. That is where we encounter someone who isn't at a port of entry, usually the southern border, and we just immediately send them back across the border that they crossed. Without title 42 in place we can really only do that with Mexican or Canadian citizens, so that would not be something that happens very often now, since the people crossing illegally aren't usually Mexican or Canadian citizens.

Deportations are when someone is here, and gets placed into removal proceedings and is formally ordered to be deported by a judge.

Expulsions and Returns aren't barred from entering the US once they have a valid visa.

Deportations are barred from entering the US usually for 10 years.

 

[Saint by the Bay]

Fix the asylum laws to only allow true asylum. Most people coming here are not entering illegaly, they are declaring asylum and have overwhelmed the system.

Set up a guest worker program so that corporate America, agriculture, and middle class suburbia can keep their affordable labor. It helps keep inflation down and provides wanted labor we wouldn't be able to find without immigrants.

Controversial opinion: build a wall, on Mexicos southern border, and America should pay for it. Most asylum seekers aren't from Mexico. That border is much shorter than ours and if we can curb migrant crossings there we will greatly slow it here for a much smaller cost.

Finally, work to improve life in those countries. Hard to do and really a long term play, but worth the time and investment from an economic and humanitarin paerspetive.

 

[Lapaz]

Fix the asylum laws to only allow true asylum. Most people coming here are not entering illegaly, they are declaring asylum and have overwhelmed the system.

Set up a guest worker program so that corporate America, agriculture, and middle class suburbia can keep their affordable labor. It helps keep inflation down and provides wanted labor we wouldn't be able to find without immigrants.

Controversial opinion: build a wall, on Mexicos southern border, and America should pay for it. Most asylum seekers aren't from Mexico. That border is much shorter than ours and if we can curb migrant crossings there we will greatly slow it here for a much smaller cost.

Finally, work to improve life in those countries. Hard to do and really a long term play, but worth the time and investment from an economic and humanitarin paerspetive.

I've heard the idea of building a wall along Mexico's southern border, and I think I like it, but I haven't heard much discussion of the ramifications. I think we can get past the construction cost, but then there would also be a maintenance cost of not just the wall, but any other associated equipment or infrastructure. Also, even with a wall, it will require monitoring. I would want some type of U.S. presence at that wall. All of this may save money, compared to what it would cost for something comparable at the U.S./Mexican border, but it will be politically difficult, and we would need a friendly Mexican administration. It would almost have to be a treaty with Mexico such that different Mexican and U.S. administrations can't willy/nilly pull support.

 

[Lapaz]

Returns are when someone is encountered at a port of entry and immediately sent back to their country. This can happen at the border or an airport. If a woman comes on a visitor visa, has quit her job in her home country, and says she's coming to visit her boyfriend or fiancé, they will send her back, because she is on a nonimmigrant visa and appears to be an intending immigrant. That's just one of many examples of what a return looks like. It just means that someone who has attempted to enter the US at a port of entry, but either doesn't have a visa, or appears to be entering for some reason not covered by their visa.

Expulsions are mainly something that happened while Title 42 was in effect. That is where we encounter someone who isn't at a port of entry, usually the southern border, and we just immediately send them back across the border that they crossed. Without title 42 in place we can really only do that with Mexican or Canadian citizens, so that would not be something that happens very often now, since the people crossing illegally aren't usually Mexican or Canadian citizens.

Deportations are when someone is here, and gets placed into removal proceedings and is formally ordered to be deported by a judge.

Expulsions and Returns aren't barred from entering the US once they have a valid visa.

Deportations are barred from entering the US usually for 10 years.

So removals and deportations are synonymous? Do you know if it is true that Biden has deported more people than Trump? Do you have a good site with the statistics? I have found sites that seem to stop at 2020, but I'm having trouble finding good sites that go through at least 2022.

 

[samiam5211]

So removals and deportations are synonymous? Do you know if it is true that Biden has deported more people than Trump? Do you have a good site with the statistics? I have found sites that seem to stop at 2020, but I'm having trouble finding good sites that go through at least 2022.

So if we are using the words removal and deportations in their legal sense. A deportation is when the judge orders someone to be removed, and a removal is when that person actually leaves.

They aren't exactly synonymous, because there are many people here who have been ordered deported, but haven't left yet. That may be for a number of reasons. Sometimes they are from a country were we don't actually send people back to, like Cuba or Mauritania. Other times it is because we just have no idea where that person is, and they were ordered removed because they didn't show up for their hearing.

Biden has returned to Obama's policy of prioritizing deportation hearings for people who have serious criminal records. These people are usually already in custody, their hearings go quick, because there aren't any forms of relief available to them that the court needs to work out, and they are easy to get removed from the country, because they are already in custody.

Under Obama this did result in him deporting/removing more people than any other president, because it was super efficient. Sure, it meant that a grandma who had been here illegally for 20 years would not have to worry much about being deported, but it put the worst cases at the front and gave courts cases that were easier to determine.

I am not sure that even with Biden returning to that system has really resulted in more deportations though, because the courts are currently clogged up with Asylum cases, which can't be pushed to the back of the line, and take longer to work out than deporting a drug dealer.

I am not sure of a good place to get accurate numbers, sorry.

 

[zztop]

lol