cb25
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Post by cb25 on Jan 20, 2019 13:52:59 GMT
OK, US Democrats don't like Trump, but I fail to understand what they've got against a border wall/fence. I assume they don't want unlimited numbers to be able to just walk into the US and disappear into the black economy.
Can anybody tell me what the Democrats' main objection are to a border wall/fence?
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lara
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Post by lara on Jan 20, 2019 13:57:14 GMT
They don't want the US to have to pay for it?
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cb25
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Post by cb25 on Jan 20, 2019 14:00:54 GMT
They don't want the US to have to pay for it? If the US chooses to erect a wall, would seem natural that they pay for it. They pay for all the other US border security (buildings, staff, technology).
Anyway, if that was the case, presumably Democrats would say "we're OK with it conceptually, it's just a bit costly", but I haven't heard of them saying that.
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registerme
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Post by registerme on Jan 20, 2019 14:06:10 GMT
Mainly because it's political grandstanding by Trump. Far more illegal immigrants enter the US by way of airports than cross the southern border, and if he was actually concerned about saving US lives he'd spend the $5.7b on filling potholes and fixing bridges.
But that wouldn't get his base fired up.
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Post by captainconfident on Jan 20, 2019 14:16:59 GMT
And the drugs come in concealed in freight containers, not in the pockets of people trying to cross over a desert.
Trump had two years of an all Republican congress to get funding for this but didn't bother. So there is no emergency. Presumably presenting the demand to the Democrat controlled House was a way of embarrassing the new majority there but it has clearly fallen flat.
Most of the border states are Republican states who would have funded a barrier themselves if they thought it was needed but reportedly none of them are in favour.
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Post by charlata on Jan 20, 2019 14:38:41 GMT
I could bore on about how immigrants substantially come through legal entry points, as do pretty much all the drugs. Or that for anyone so inclined it's easy to go under or over walls. But such statements of the bleeding obvious are irrelevant. Because it's not about border security. It's a massive self-indulgent altar to hatred. Which is a problem.
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cb25
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Post by cb25 on Jan 20, 2019 14:45:02 GMT
Far more illegal immigrants enter the US by way of airports than cross the southern border.. Got a source for that?
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registerme
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Post by registerme on Jan 20, 2019 17:27:53 GMT
cb25 fair question, and no, I don't have one. I do know that it's been repeatedly attested to in the Economist but when I went a googling I couldn't find direct supporting evidence. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States#Illegal_entry is useful, and there is a hell of a lot of information here (and in other papers available on that MPI site), but nothing that explicitly says "more illegal immigrants arrive via routes other than the southern border". Unless you or anybody else can dig out anything more accurate / specific it might be wise to treat that claim in my post with some scepticism.
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cb25
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Post by cb25 on Jan 20, 2019 17:37:49 GMT
cb25 fair question, and no, I don't have one. I do know that it's been repeatedly attested to in the Economist but when I went a googling I couldn't find direct supporting evidence. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States#Illegal_entry is useful, and there is a hell of a lot of information here (and in other papers available on that MPI site), but nothing that explicitly says "more illegal immigrants arrive via routes other than the southern border". Unless you or anybody else can dig out anything more accurate / specific it might be wise to treat that claim in my post with some scepticism. Likewise, I couldn't find any stats on it. In the context of 'illegals', I assume those who arrive by air have a valid reason for their stay initially, e.g. vacation, but then go on to overstay and vanish. If they didn't have a valid reason originally, I assume they'd be put on the next outbound flight. Clearly, people who just walk over the border illegally don't give any reason.
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registerme
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Post by registerme on Jan 20, 2019 18:23:34 GMT
Yeah the understanding I was operating under was that "valid arrival then overstay visa" was the majority source of illegal immigration to the USA, but I can't find anything that backs that view up explicitly. I think my point about potholes stands though .
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dApps
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Post by dApps on Jan 20, 2019 18:48:31 GMT
cb25 fair question, and no, I don't have one. I do know that it's been repeatedly attested to in the Economist but when I went a googling I couldn't find direct supporting evidence. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States#Illegal_entry is useful, and there is a hell of a lot of information here (and in other papers available on that MPI site), but nothing that explicitly says "more illegal immigrants arrive via routes other than the southern border". Unless you or anybody else can dig out anything more accurate / specific it might be wise to treat that claim in my post with some scepticism. Whilst not supporting the airport route per se, this BBC article from earlier this month does say that (illicit) cross-border entry isn't the main problem (along with other interesting info). " While cross-border migrants often make headlines, the largest number of illegal migrants settling in the US each year is those who stay in the country after their visas expire."
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Post by charlata on Jan 20, 2019 18:54:11 GMT
Yeah the understanding I was operating under was that "valid arrival then overstay visa" was the majority source of illegal immigration to the USA, but I can't find anything that backs that view up explicitly. I think my point about potholes stands though . Like I said above, I don't think wall-advocates care one way or the other about it's efficacy. For the evidence this is a good enough place to start
- 2/3 of illegal immigrants are overstays
- Crossings continue in abundance where the wall already exists
- There are many more cost effective ways to manage immigration
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Post by samford71 on Jan 20, 2019 19:53:30 GMT
Being nice I would say it's about 50 years too late and a poor use of government funds; at worst it's simply Trump trying to create an "other", a target to stir up hate and racism.
1. Immigration into the US is falling. Based on 2016 data, there were 10.7mm unauthorized immigrants in the US in 2016, 3.3% of the total population. That is a 13% decline from the peak of 12.2mm in 2007, when this group was 4% of the US population 2. Most of this fall can be explained by immigration from Mexico falling. Mexicans made up half of all unauthorized immigrants in 2016, compared with 57% in 2007. Their numbers have been declining in recent years. There were 5.4 million Mexican unauthorized immigrants living in the US in 2016, down from 6.9 million in 2007. 3. A report from the Center for Migration Studies estimated that about two-thirds of those who join the undocumented population each year are people overstaying visas and the number attempting to get across the Southern border is probably the lowest it’s been since at least the 1970s. US government data suggest that in 2016 there were about 170,000 successful illegal border crossings. That same year, the Department of Homeland Security estimates, 630,000 people overstayed visas. 4. Under Presidents Bush and Obama, deportations rose strongly, reaching record highs of over 400,000 annually. The problem of crushing caseloads persists. In 2016, the backlog of cases reached 474,000, climbing to 533,000 in 2017. Wait time for a court hearing now averages three years. The billions used to build a wall would be better spent building courts and hiring judges.
5. Trump has attempted to link immigration to crime. Unfortunately, there is no established correlation between immigrants and crime; in fact, undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native citizens. 6. Trump has attempted to link terrorism to Mexican immigrants. The US State Department last year offered a sharply different assessment of the threat: There is “no credible information that any member of a terrorist group has traveled through Mexico to gain access to the United States.”
7. Huge stretches of the US-Mexico border aren’t practical corridors for smuggling or illegal immigration. A wall through the national park there could cause substantial environmental damage for little upside.
8. A wall with damage communities on both sides of the border as these communities rely on relatively free trade across to border. Support for The Wall is low in border communities.
9. 95% of the Texas-Mexico border is privately owned; building a wall will involve compulsory purchase orders and possible cause property values to fall.
The best argument for a wall is probably to reduce drugs trafficking across the border. Building a wall could create a small number of 'chokepoints' that might make it easier to detect smuggling. Even here, however, US Customs and Border Protection have themselves argued that no wall — or anything else — would substantially curtail drug trafficking since smuggling over the land border tends to occur via vehicles rather than on foot and most of these vehicles are already passing through these border controls. The money would be better spent on more enforcement officers and more technology.
As an aside. Every fortnight that the US government is shutdown costs the US economy around US$6-8bn in lost GDP, similar to the cost of the wall. How stupid is that.
Luckily our politicians would never be so stupid that they might to put silly ideology before pragmatism ...
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agent69
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Post by agent69 on Jan 20, 2019 20:37:13 GMT
Suprised the fat boy hasn't approached Lendy or FS for the cash.
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sarahcount
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Post by sarahcount on Jan 20, 2019 20:50:37 GMT
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