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I thought we wanted to solve the crisis at the border? Isn't that what our national emergency is about? This administration conflates illegal border crossings with the caravan. One is not related to the other. Yet Trump cites this as a reason for building a wall. It would not solve the problem at the southern border and would potentially take resources from the things that would.
No, it wouldn’t. Because they’d be in the country, undocumented, even on the other side of the wall. Should we just go ahead and build a maternity hospital over there when we put up the wall?
I thought we wanted to stop illegal immigration - and the influx of drugs and criminals and human trafficking. At least I thought that was a primary goal of a structure on the border.
The influx of drugs and criminals and human trafficking would not be affected much if at all by building a wall.
Sorry, not quite following. I'm saying if we don't have a wall, people can just cross the border and do whatever the want - including not waiting for border security and thus be an illegal immigrant from day 1. Having a wall, either across the Rio Grande, or farther west where the river isn't - would potentially prevent that.
Then focus on the ports of entry - that's where the overwhelming majority of those occur. Illegal immigration is primarily people overstaying visas, not walking miles through the desert. Also, drugs are not pouring over our border. They are coming in through shipping ports and driven across at border crossings.
All of it? No drugs are crossing the boarder at the border and not a point of entry? No one is being smuggled/trafficked?
Thought that was only like 40-50% of it.
Wouldn't it be best to spend the money where its most effective?
I'm confused. Did you see the qualifier "much if at all" in there? I didn't say "no one." But very little of that activity, comparatively, happens between points of entry in a way that building a wall would substantially affect. Lots of tunnels. Lots of boats and subs. Very little "driving an 18 wheeler across the desert hoping drones and satellites don't catch them."
1. Unless it's an unbroken line from California to the Gulf, they still can, and
They have?! Not by much, apparently.....
See the bolded, and contrast it with your last sentence. You are conflating annual illegal immigration trends and totals with the total number of undocumented immigrants.
42% of the total undocumented population. That means everyone who is here, including people who came here 50 years ago. That can still technically be true if nobody illegally crossed ever again. This is the proverbial closing of the barn door after the horse is out.
There’s no official measure of how many people succeed in illegally crossing the border, but authorities use the number of apprehensions to gauge changes in illegal immigration. Apprehensions on the Southwest border peaked in 2000 at 1.64 million and have generally declined since, totaling 396,579 in 2018.
I guess I'm not following your continuation of 9 month pregnant women example here. If they wanted their child to be an American citizen today, they can just wad across the river (or walk across it farther west) and deliver - boom, kid is American. You're saying the same thing would happen if we had a wall. Are you saying we should change the law?
No, I'm not. Of the 11m or however many illegals that are in the country today, less than half are from visa overstays. That's what I was saying above, and that's what the 2017 report backs up. Now sure, that trend might be reversing now since on an annual basis more are from visa overstays than border crossings this year, but I was referring to what's here now.
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I hadn't even thought of that. Mexico could set up a hospital right on the border where women could give birth to U.S. citizens all day long without the border patrol being able to do much about it (since The Wall would be several miles inside the border).
I'll add that a lot of the aid doesn't go to government entities, rather local humanitarian groups, schools, regional law enforcement groups where civic law enforcement isn't sufficient etc. Cutting that aid takes education off the table for many kids, food out of their mouths and clothes off their backs. Same for adults who are learning a new trade/skill to better themselves in hopes they can get out of their current situation.
OK, but that's not what anyone else was saying. They were talking about immigration as an ongoing process, not immigrants. In fact it makes no sense to discuss aggregate immigrant numbers when talking about ongoing immigration issues and how to address them, particularly in the context of a wall, since a wall won't do anything about people that are already here (it won't do much about people who want to come here either, but that's a different discussion).
You only needed the first 6 words.
Yeah, except we have border patrol agents patrolling that area and labor doesn't happen in sixty seconds. If we have a 1,000 mile wall along the river, there won't be border patrol agents there patrolling constantly and we might as well build a maternity ward.
What possible relevance does the percentages of how undocumented immigration used to happen have when discussing what actions we should take to deal with stemming undocumented immigration?
Isn't the bolded what I said to begin with? Illegal immigration is primarily people overstaying visas, not walking miles through the desert.
Well, that's a number. But the key number in terms of a wall, if that's the context, would be ~467,000. That's the number of undocumented border crossers actually apprehended by Border Patrol officers in 2018, not counting a single one that got through which CMS estimated to be 190k. That's over 650k total. I fully understand that's down from the years when it was over a million each year apprehended alone, but it's still an issue.
I wasn't suggesting we stop having border patrol agents if we had a wall. I don't think anyone is suggesting that. As to my "suggestion" of building a wall 50' from river, it was about a single line from a linked article above saying that a wall would be "ineffective" because it couldn't be built on top of the river - I didn't catch that it meant "ineffective at eliminating people coming here seeking asylum", I read it as being "ineffective at stopping people from entering the US."
OK, but how does this declining issue compare with the larger issues at the ports of entry and visa overstays? How many billions do we spend on the minor issue and how many more billions do we commit to the larger problems? The problems being drugs, human trafficking, and undocumented immigrants. How does the increasing caravan crisis factor into the need for a wall, as Trump continues to cite as a reason for the wall?
So you'd like to build a multi-billion-dollar wall and have our border patrol agents patrol the other side of it?
First off, it did decline from the high in the 1990s to 2018 overall, but it also went up from 2017 to 2018. Can you still deem it be to "declining" when the trend is going up now? This past February had 76k total apprehensions or in-admissions - over twice the same time period last year.
What percentage of undocumented immigrants crossing the border illegally without using a boat, plane, or tunnel do you think are bringing drugs or human trafficking victims? And what are you basing those numbers on?
Depends on how you read it.
I'd like to have some additional structure to what's already in place, yes. I'd like it to be in the biggest problem areas. I think that's been in every single proposal, from both sides. It doesn't have to be from ocean to sea, no. Yes, still have border patrol agents - why wouldn't we? We have agents patrolling areas today that have a structure in place, don't we?
It doesn't depend on how you read it, today's primary source of undocumented immigration is visa overstays. We agree on that. Your own quote said that. Like I said at the beginning.
So if I'm understanding your math correctly, we're already capturing 72% of prospective unlawful border crossers using existing methods.
Democrats were in favor of 700 miles of border fencing in 2013. Democrats agreed that no illegal immigrants could get a path to citizenship until all 700 miles of border fencing had been fully completed. Only when Trump is president is it immoral and wasteful. Yep, we get it.
Might have something to do with the McConnell meeting to opposed "everything" Obama wanted to do, no matter what. Yes, this actually happened.
Democrats agreed to a bipartisan bill that had things they wanted and things Republicans wanted in 2013, and it passed the Senate. The Republican Speaker of the House refused to bring it to a vote. If the Republicans would like to revive that bill, I have no doubt that it would pass. Do you suppose they will?
It's not my math, it's the numbers given to us from government agencies. I'm assuming they are at least close. They captured 467k folks and estimate about 190k got in (to be able to then say that more than half of new illegal immigrants are from visa overstays).
From Wiki: In June 2013, the immigration bill passed the Senate with a strong majority—68–32, with 14 Republicans joining all Democrats. The United States House of Representatives under Speaker John Boehner did not act on the bill, however, and it expired at the end of the 113th Congress.[3] This bill would have created reform that would have resolved some of the issues that are currently being debated as a result of the government shutdown.[4]
And that would continue. I don't know where you're going with this "this side of the fence or the other". Today we have both fence/structure and border agents patrolling the border. Why wouldn't the latter continue if we improved upon the former?
So, uh, what exactly are you arguing for here?
