Immigration System May Have Reached a Breaking Point

[zenkai]

Source

SAN YSIDRO, Calif. — It was never like this before.

The migrants come now in the middle of the night or in the bright light of day. Men and women arrive by the hundreds, caked with dirt, with teens and toddlers in tow. They jump the small fences in remote parts of Texas, and they gather on the hot pavement at the main border crossing in California. Tired and fearful, they look for the one thing that they pray will allow them to stay in the United States, at least for a while: a Border Patrol agent.

Gone are the days when young, strong men waited on the Tijuana River levees for their chance to wade across the water, evade capture and find work for the summer. These days, thousands of people a day simply walk up to the border and surrender. Most of them are from Central America, seeking to escape from gang violence, sexual abuse, death threats and persistent poverty. The smugglers have told them they will be quickly released, as long as they bring a child, and that they will be allowed to remain in the United States for years while they pursue their asylum cases.

The very nature of immigration to America changed after 2014, when families first began showing up in large numbers. The resulting crisis has overwhelmed a system unable to detain, care for and quickly decide the fate of tens of thousands of people who claim to be fleeing for their lives. For years, both political parties have tried — and failed — to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, mindful that someday the government would reach a breaking point.

That moment has arrived. The country is now unable to provide either the necessary humanitarian relief for desperate migrants or even basic controls on the number and nature of who is entering the United States.


The immigration courts now have more than 800,000 pending cases; each one takes an average of 700 days to process. And because laws and court rulings aimed at protecting children prohibit jailing young people for more than 20 days, families are often simply released. They are dropped off at downtown bus stations in places like Brownsville, Tex., where dozens last week sat on gray metal benches, most without money or even laces on their shoes, heading for destinations across the United States.

At the current pace of nearly 100,000 migrants each month, officials say more than a million people will have tried to cross the border in a 12-month period. Some of those arriving today will have a strong legal case to stay under international refugee treaties and federal asylum laws, but most won’t have a formal asylum hearing until 2021.

The flow of migrant families has reached record levels, with February totals 560 percent above those for the same period last year. As many as 27,000 children are expected to cross the border and enter the immigration enforcement system in April alone. So crowded are border facilities that some of the nearly 3,500 migrants in custody in El Paso were herded earlier this month under a bridge, behind razor wire.

In recent days, officials have grasped for ever-more-dire ways to describe the situation: “operational emergency”; “unsustainable”; “systemwide meltdown.”


For President Trump, the situation at the border has generated red-hot fury. It erupted again on Sunday as he abruptly forced out Kirstjen Nielsen, his long-embattled homeland security secretary, for what he considered her failure to put an end to the surge of migrants.

In recent days, the president has landed on a dark new message that, if taken literally, could mean an end to all immigration — legal and illegal
(Lots more) Cont...

Looks like the immigration system is breaking down along the southern boarder.

[Vatrilian]

But CNN and the NYtimes told me there was no crisis.

[Rasulis]

Walls are not the answer since the majority turn themselves in to the nearest CBP. El Grill Prime Steakhouse in TJ is the best steakhouse anywhere in North America. So lets not close the border.

[Alkhan]

This will get much worse as things like climate change shift farming trends, which cause things like food shortages, and increase droughts, occurrences of contagious disease, and crime rates.

Climate migration in Latin America: a future ‘flood of refugees’ to the North?
https://www.preventionweb.net/publications/view/12929

This is from 2010...

The middle east running out of water in the foreseeable future will be the big one. Although I'm not sure if that will affect the US. Probably depends on who will be in charge by then.

[unbound]

Looks like the immigration system is breaking down along the southern boarder.

Self-inflicted wounds don't help (continued Republican approach of breaking the government to prove that it doesn't work), but it isn't exactly a huge wave beyond what we've had before.

Is there an unprecedented surge of unauthorized migration into the US?

Yes — or at least, probably. But of a specific kind.

Three things are simultaneously true:

- The total number of people coming into the US without papers is still lower than it was for most of the 20th century, and substantially lower than its turn-of-the-century peak.
- The total number of people coming into the US without papers is now higher than it’s been since early 2007 — before the Great Recession — with February and March 2019 levels exceeding the child migrant crisis of 2014.
- The number of people coming into the US without papers who can’t simply be detained and deported — children, families, and asylum seekers — is almost certainly unprecedented.

Have the Trump administration’s actions contributed to the crisis?

Trump and DHS officials say that “legitimate” asylum seekers ought to have no reason to enter illegally, and even attempted to ban people who crossed between ports of entry from seeking asylum. (The ban was quickly struck down in court). But since last summer, the administration has restricted asylum seekers trying to present themselves at ports of entry, allowing in only a fraction each day of the people who are waiting — a policy called “metering” or “queue management.”

Metering varies from port to port (see this article to read about the policy in depth), but at the most popular ports of entry, it’s forced migrants to wait weeks or months before they can step onto US soil and exercise their right to claim asylum. Faced with such a wait — sometimes in dangerous Mexican border towns — it’s logical that a migrant might choose to cross illegally to present their asylum claim instead.

https://www.vox.com/2019/4/11/182906...a-mexico-trump

The whole article is worth the read as they do dig pretty deeply into the whole issue. It's a lot more complicated than the NY Times piece makes it seem.

Is Trump right that Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries aren’t doing anything to stop migrants from reaching the US?

No.

Trump appears to be mad that Northern Triangle countries aren’t doing more to stop their citizens from leaving, which is not a thing that governments are supposed to do under general human rights principles, and also, more to the point, not a thing that governments can do without a massive investment of time, personnel, and infrastructure. Trump is asking governments that can’t even guarantee the safety and well-being of their citizens to monitor those citizens’ whereabouts perfectly

[Skroe]

Let them in. All of them. We got plenty of room. We could use the work force.

Expanding the work force + tax base = win.

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Oh and @zenkai you're still never getting your fucking wall.

[zenkai]

Let them in. All of them. We got plenty of room. We could use the work force.

Expanding the work force + tax base = win.

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Oh and @zenkai you're still never getting your fucking wall.

My whole posting history is against the wall, please stop baiting me or I will report you.

[Skroe]

My whole posting history is against the wall, please stop baiting me or I will report you.

Well I'll make it more general then. Trump ain't getting shit more for immigration. Wall or no wall. Nothing!

He's going to sign another 2 year deal, followed by two budgets, that Ds and Rs in Congress are already cooking, that awards none of his priorities and just ups the last 5 budgets by 3-4%.

He will cry like the bitch he is and sign it anyway. Because he has no choice. He does not have a seat at the budget table.

So I hope he enjoys his existential political crisis. Zero relief is coming and it's exactly what he and his supporters deserve. Now pardon me while I enjoy the weenie roast that ensues.

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Oh, and wouldn't it be a cryin shame if the "border crisis" reached a head during the 2020 election and Mister 4 More Years looked like a complete and utter failure at addressing it.

Too bad, so sad Trumphadis.

[zenkai]

Well I'll make it more general then. Trump ain't getting shit more for immigration. Wall or no wall. Nothing!

He's going to sign another 2 year deal, followed by two budgets, that Ds and Rs in Congress are already cooking, that awards none of his priorities and just ups the last 5 budgets by 3-4%.

He will cry like the bitch he is and sign it anyway. Because he has no choice. He does not have a seat at the budget table.

So I hope he enjoys his existential political crisis. Zero relief is coming and it's exactly what he and his supporters deserve. Now pardon me while I enjoy the weenie roast that ensues.

Lets talk about the subject and not about your Trump derangement syndrome, shall we? Please and Thank you.

[Skroe]

Lets talk about the subject and not about your Trump derangement syndrome, shall we? Please and Thank you.

We are talking about the subject. You're avoiding it. You're avoiding it because it's inconvenient to you.

And the subject is the border crisis and responses to it. And the response is going to be 3% more money than last year and President Cuckly McSniffles crying how he needs a wall, or maybe a larger border patrol, or how our laws are the worst anywhere... basically just crying, and not getting one iota more for it.

So you can /thread this discussion, because no matter what happens at the border, there is not a single thing that is going to change on it because Trump spent three years asking what he'll never (and should never) get and Democrats are rightfully inclined to make him pay a political price over his border stunts.

560% more might as well be 0%. Because it does not matter. Nothing will change. Because in America, budget's make things happen, and the budget isn't going to change. The only relevant question is, can it be weaponized against Individual-1.

[Noxx79]

Lets talk about the subject and not about your Trump derangement syndrome, shall we? Please and Thank you.

I think we need to talk about your aocds.

[NED funded]

Irreversibly changing the demographics of the country to trigger the conservatives Trumphadis.

This smells like white replacement bullshit to me.

[sircaw]

100k a month, that's an astonishing number of people.

[Skroe]

Irreversibly changing the demographics of the country to trigger the conservatives Trumphadis.

I'm heartened by a Romanian's concern for America's demographics. Truly, we are a global village.

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This smells like white replacement bullshit to me.

It's simple math. White Americans don't have enough kids to keep their percentage of society stable. Without Latin American immigration, we'd be in the exact same population spiral as Europe.

[vilememory]

Cross the border, you are an America citizen.

[Draco-Onis]

Looks like the immigration system is breaking down along the southern boarder.

But that is factually incorrect we have handled far more people at the border historically this is just failure in logistics on the Trump administration.

[zenkai]

We are talking about the subject. You're avoiding it. You're avoiding it because it's inconvenient to you.

And the subject is the border crisis and responses to it. And the response is going to be 3% more money than last year and President Cuckly McSniffles crying how he needs a wall, or maybe a larger border patrol, or how our laws are the worst anywhere... basically just crying, and not getting one iota more for it.

So you can /thread this discussion, because no matter what happens at the border, there is not a single thing that is going to change on it because Trump spent three years asking what he'll never (and should never) get and Democrats are rightfully inclined to make him pay a political price over his border stunts.

560% more might as well be 0%. Because it does not matter. Nothing will change. Because in America, budget's make things happen, and the budget isn't going to change. The only relevant question is, can it be weaponized against Individual-1.

What do you think should be done about it, what would you do to fix the problem?

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But that is factually incorrect we have handled far more people at the border historically this is just failure in logistics on the Trump administration.

So everyone interviewed saying the system in trouble is lying? You know more than the people who actually deal with the situation?

[Yadryonych]

How exactly mass immigration is a problem when Alaska is so underpopulated?

[Draco-Onis]

So everyone interviewed saying the system in trouble is lying? You know more than the people who actually deal with the situation?

Yes they are lying for their boss you might be familiar with that, Trump already knows what he has to do hire more administrative people at the border to speed up the process. Trump made a choice to invest in things that don't work such as stalling people in Mexico, closing ports of entry and pulling money from countries where people are leaving.

[zenkai]

Yes they are lying for their boss you might be familiar with that, Trump already knows what he has to do hire more administrative people at the border to speed up the process. Trump made a choice to invest in things that don't work such as stalling people in Mexico, closing ports of entry and pulling money from countries where people are leaving.

That sounds rather tin foil hat.