Trump's Beautiful Wall

[_Chap]

As an observer, what would you advise the US to do in light of the 50-60 K apprehensions on our southern border?

I don't claim to have a cure-fire guaranteed policy that will satisfy everybody on this issue. For a start, it's certainly one of those problems where it is worth while reflecting how it came to be be that such a large proportion of the populations in central America - so close to the US and so much under its influence for so long - are such dreadful places to live that so many people want to leave them, and run terrible risks to do so.

But that's for the historians, mostly. The first thing is to define what the problem is. I suspect that it is not the problem defined by Trump at the start of his campaign, that the US is being flooded with criminals from over the border. It already seems that illegal immigrants break the law less often than citizens. Nor, if there are 50-60k apprehensions, does border security as currently constituted seem to be totally ineffective. They're catching a lot of people.

I'd want to find out, on the basis of objective evidence, not gut feeling, anecdotes, and bar-room talk, what the effect of immigration of all kinds on US society and economy really is. Then I'd try to get come cross-party political work done to hammer out a policy based on facts.

All that would take a while. But there is no future in what is happening at present, which is basically an elaborate form of yelling at one another. The US needs to take time to think, and it is big enough, rich enough and clever enough to take the time it needs.

[_moksha]

Will the Steel Slats be made from North Korean or Russian steel?

[_EAllusion]

60,000 illegal border crossings each month seems like a problem to me.

If you want to keep up your car thief analogy, then the people breaking into you car are virtually always just leaving some change in your cupholder. What you try to trade on in your analogy is that having your car broken into incurs a serious cost on you such that it justifies spending money on preventatives. One of the many ways your analogy breaks down is that spending billions on a ineffective border fence is a much greater cost than "remembering to lock your door" and the cost of illegal border crossings is much less than, "having your car stolen."

Hence we should be building freeways to factilitate and increase mass immigration rather than a wall in an effort to slow it down.

I said no such thing. If you think that this is the natural policy consequence of immigration being a net economic benefit to America, which it is, then apparently this is what you should think given the evidence. I'm not so beholden to your strawman logic though.

[_EAllusion]

In the end this would be far less expensive than the cost of doing nothing.

This is a false empirical claim. It's a net cost savings to not enforce immigration at all, so good luck justifying a cost savings of billions and billions to offset the initial expense and maintenance of a "wall" that is likely to prevent very little illegal immigration.

[_Jersey Girl]

This is a false empirical claim. It's a net cost savings to not enforce immigration at all, so good luck justifying a cost savings of billions and billions to offset the initial expense and maintenance of a "wall" that is likely to prevent very little illegal immigration.

What would your solution be to the current 50-60K apprehensions at the border that he mentioned or do you see this as a non-issue. Explain please.

[_Jersey Girl]

As an observer, what would you advise the US to do in light of the 50-60 K apprehensions on our southern border?

I don't claim to have a cure-fire guaranteed policy that will satisfy everybody on this issue. For a start, it's certainly one of those problems where it is worth while reflecting how it came to be be that such a large proportion of the populations in central America - so close to the US and so much under its influence for so long - are such dreadful places to live that so many people want to leave them, and run terrible risks to do so.

But that's for the historians, mostly. The first thing is to define what the problem is. I suspect that it is not the problem defined by Trump at the start of his campaign, that the US is being flooded with criminals from over the border. It already seems that illegal immigrants break the law less often than citizens. Nor, if there are 50-60k apprehensions, does border security as currently constituted seem to be totally ineffective. They're catching a lot of people.

I'd want to find out, on the basis of objective evidence, not gut feeling, anecdotes, and bar-room talk, what the effect of immigration of all kinds on US society and economy really is. Then I'd try to get come cross-party political work done to hammer out a policy based on facts.

All that would take a while. But there is no future in what is happening at present, which is basically an elaborate form of yelling at one another. The US needs to take time to think, and it is big enough, rich enough and clever enough to take the time it needs.

Chap I inquired months ago here as to why the US cannot do something to pressure the countries in question to improve the plight of their citizens. I don't recall getting an answer to that. I also later (and posted it here in Paradise) discovered Trump saying that we've been paying those countries for what I don't know.

If we are indeed paying them (again, I don't know what for) then why not withdraw the money?

I still don't know what Trump was talking about there and I guess I should have pursued researching it at the time, but I did not.

[_EAllusion]

What would your solution be to the current 50-60K apprehensions at the border that he mentioned or do you see this as a non-issue. Explain please.

If the basis for justifying spending money on restricting immigration is the cost to the American economy or native workers, then that's a failed argument. The evidence is pretty clear that there is no meaningful cost to immigration and it provides an overall boost to the economy. Fortunately, Ajax doesn't actually think this is and has stated explicitly on a white supremacist message board that he thinks America should be a white ethnostate where the first and most important step to achieving this is no non-white immigration. He has also stated explicitly that he feels the need to guard his real thoughts outside of safe spaces like Nazi message boards.

We don't have to think like Ajax though and there might be other reasons than simple economic costs to want to have control over who does and does not enter the country. I think the most important way we can achieve this is by making legal immigration or visitation a lot easier such that people outside the system are much more likely to be bad actors by their very nature. Illegal immigration is largely a paperwork crime more akin to jaywaking than grand theft auto. Treating it like draconian measures are necessary or justified to prevent it is absurdly overestimating the risks. That we are apprehending people at the border suggests that we have the capacity to apprehend people at the border. We should maintain border and visa enforcement via policing rather than boondoggles that are token symbols. In an environment where applying to enter and stay in the US or attempt to naturalize as citizens is relatively easy for people without red flags in their background, you could be more justified in treating people going outside the system as a more serious risk because who you are filtering would be different.

[_Jersey Girl]

ajax I'm looking at the charts on the CBP website (will link) and I don't see an increase since 2014. Rather, I see somewhat of a decrease in border apprehensions. Goes up and down, but decrease since 2014.

I didn't realize this. Did you?


https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Ajax doesn't actually think this is and has stated explicitly on a white supremacist message board that he thinks America should be a white ethnostate

- Doc

[_Jersey Girl]

Fortunately, Ajax doesn't actually think this is and has stated explicitly on a white supremacist message board that he thinks America should be a white ethnostate where the first and most important step to achieving this is no non-white immigration.

Listen I don't think those posts should've been left to stand on this board to start with. I disagree with mentioning it here.