Lies we tell on the border

The North American Leaders Summit in Mexico City came off with pledges of friendship and promises to address immigration, gangs, drug trafficking, economic cooperation, and  a nod to climate change.

“There can no longer be any question, none, in today’s interconnected world. We cannot wall ourselves off from shared problems,” President Biden said, in a news conference with his counterparts, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

But many questions and lies linger.

It's a question and a lie that NAFTA was a total failure. Real personal gross domestic product for Mexico more than doubled since 1993. Mexico moved from a Third World nation to a First World nation. Did NAFTA cause disruptions? Yes, and on both sides of the border. Mexican agriculture was swamped by U.S. imports, while many U.S. manufacturing jobs were lost. But the authoritative studies show they were scrambled to other manufacturers exporting to Mexico. The big job losses can be blamed on the "China Shock" when Beijing joined the World Trade Organization.

It's a lie that the flow of immigrants north can be easily stopped. The reason: The United States has an insatiable appetite for low-cost immigrant labor, first from Mexico and increasingly from Central America and Latin America as Mexico has ascended to a developed nation.

It's a lie that the same can happen with drugs. It's not only driven by our appetites but the power of the cartels — read Don Winslow's novels . Then we face the corruption of the Mexican government (and the cartels' ability to bribe, coerce, and threaten American officials).

Finally, it's a lie that human-caused climate change is not becoming a prime mover of refugees north. Republicans deny it exists. We're not at all prepared. We have no plan.

When I was at the Arizona Republic in 2001, I was part of a team that produced a series called "Dying to Work." The title came from the hundreds of migrant deaths every summer in the Arizona desert. But it touched on many of these other topics, except for climate change. Not much has changed since then.

But the event horizon is approaching. Donald Trump was an authoritarian, a criminal, a threat to our experiment in self-government. But we may look back and say he was right about a wall, if not on our southern borden then on Mexico's. If not a physical structure, then policies to assist keeping migrants safe in their home countries.

Otherwise, what? Do nothing? That's a lie.

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Cal Lash]

More later but for now.
History says physical walls are bs.
Trump was wrong.
US politicians has been wrong about migration for 60 years
Migration started day one and will continue. Its called survival.

Drug Demand is the Driver.
Make Coffee Illegal and the Cartels of the world will deliver.
Must satisfy your Starbucks addictions.

Don Winslow is a good wealthy NOVELIST. Particulary books to movies.
Winslows research is good but he missed the fact that "Mexico is a Cartel."
I met Don. He signed and old novel in praise of Reporters Gary Webb and Charles Bowden. If Drug Smuggling intrests you, research Webbs reporting on the fact that President Ronald Reagan and ex Marine Ollie North were giving Guns to Nicaragua Sandinistas in return for smuggling illegal drugs into the US. Now many years later Noriega and his wife have installed themselves as dictators in Nicaragua.
Nothing new here. US politicians like dictators enough to have the CIA murder lots of folks.
NAFTA destroyed Mexican farmers sending them back to the fields to grow drugs for US consumption. "Authoritative" studies are probably some what accurate in that while the peasants died daily,
NAFTA made the Wealthy, Wealthier.

Of course Climate change is a migration factor, world wide.
Of course current kooks claiming to be Republicans oppose most anything that makes sense.

I seem to have lost what else i was going to scribble. Ill sign off and look for Jon to rebut my opinions.

[Cal Lash]

Oh yeah! I forgot.
Came to me as i drifted off.
The 100 year War on Drugs?
The Feds arrest a Chapo.
And
The drugs get more plentiful and cheaper

[Mariam Cheshire]

Cal -You didn't mention Charles Bowden's books that report on the murder and crimes in Mexico involving much of what we don't want to talk about. They're well written books that are hard to read.
Mariam

[Cal Lash]

"Hard to read"
Yep facts make for headaches.
Charles Bowden and Ed Abbey readership is dwindling as a result of wokism and cancerous consumerism.
Retired professor and journalist and podcaster, Scott Carrier mentioned to me that Bowdens work is being ignored as a result of academic swamp influence.

Moving on, economic cleansing of Mexican Land owners continues.(limpedia social)
Big world corporations and the Mexican wealthy using the Mexican Federal troops and assisted by cartels "eliminating" peasants that have owned their land for a 100 years. These murderous campaigns are to aquire resources and create big agricultural companies

[Cal Lash]

Thats should read Limpieza

[Blue Desert]

All sound points, Jon. Two more for you:

It is a lie that these people are legitimate asylum claimants. They are economic migrants. U.S. law is being abused so that people can enter and then disappear before their asylum claim can be adjudicated.

It is a lie that the illegal migration process is not aided and abetted every step of the way, from Southern Mexico to the interior of the U.S., by nonprofit cutouts funded by our own tax dollars, the rich, or both.

[john tally]

Noriega died in '17. Ortega lives on-

[Cal Lash]

Correct

[Joe Schallan]

Blue Desert -- my ancestors were economic migrants. (OK, one of them hated Prussian militarism and didn't want his four little boys to become cannon fodder.)

But the others wanted land and farms, which they could not have in 19th-century Germany. When they arrived at the Castle Garden Immigration Station on the tip of Manhattan, once it was determined they had a pulse and weren't covered with pox, they were in. It didn't hurt that they looked like the longer-established Anglo-Saxons.

Pay attention: The migrants are coming to us because we offer a safer way of life (for now) and jobs.

[Cal Lash]

Blue Desert:
Is a good Read by Charles Bowden

Good point Joe.
My paternal ancestors were located in Prussia in the 1400's.
In 1745 A distant Grandfather, Abraham (Loesch) managed to slip by HLS and entered America as Abraham Lash.

[Blue Desert]

Joe:

I don't care. The fact is that economic migration is not a basis for asylum under our current laws. If you want to change the law, fine, do it, but don't pretend it's a lawful basis for asylum (much less entry or permanent residence -- the asylum claim is what permits the end run of both of those) and keep perpetuating the fraud that has been going on for far too long.

It's also not wrong to apply a different standard to the past. The reality is some people got here sooner. The standards couldn't remain loose forever. If there is a racial component to that, so be it, the fact is unassimilated multiculturalism is extremely unstable anyhow. But none of that armchair wishing that we could somehow have a morally perfect immigration system that is all things to all people changes the laws re: asylum that simply aren't being enforced today.

A society that invites such contempt for its laws gets what it deserves in the end, which history shows typically ends up rendering concepts such as owning land and personal safety trite and irrelevant.

[My Blue Heaven]

Maybe the whole country should go into the Witless Protection Program.

[Cal Lash]

Yep us Europeans got here "First" but in the process murdered the "savages" that were all ready here, first?
And we continue to murder are way to Extinction.

[Cal Lash]

My Blue Heaven in Payson
I cant wait till Elon dressed in a Tux with a Walther P99 knocks off all them Martins. So us Manifest Destiny dudes can keep on moving.

[Blue Desert]

Libertarians want open borders for economic migrants. It's section 3.4 of their party platform. Mass migration changes a country. That’s why I’m not LOLbertarian.

[Cal Lash]

Hmm. I know a couple of folks that claim to be libertarians that dont agree with section 3.4
And
I find the words "open borders" to misused alot.

But i must admit i prefer solutions that do not include physical walls.

Migration is forever.

A good read is Moving Millions
by Jeffery Kaye

[B. Franklin]

If you are truly concerned about "economic migration" then you should support a much higher minimum wage, and the prosecution of any employer who hires the migrants.

These people do the jobs that Americans won't do, either because of the difficulty or the low wages or both.

If you could magically get rid of all of the migrants, Arizona, and many other states, would cease to function.

As far as people seeking asylum, our meddling in Latin America, primarily to stop communism or socialism, or indeed any "ism" that isn't pure, unbridled capitalism, has caused much of the need for asylum.

[Joe Schallan]

Blue Desert -- A valid point: Conditions in the past necessitated a looser immigration policy.

My ancestors benefited. The people of the Sac and Fox Nation had lost the Black Hawk War and were cleared off their lands in the upper Mississippi valley, and the economic development of the new territories required able agricultural hands from Germany. The authorities weren't going to get overly picky at the Castle Garden Immigration Station.

If an economic migrant from Central America said to me "So it just comes down to your people getting here first?" I would have to respond "yes," while feeling pretty bad about that answer.

But it would be an honest one.

Cal noted that historically walls don't have a very good track record. The Roman one in Scotland had to be abandoned (though Hadrian's Wall farther south seemed to work for a while), and one of the best and most extensive ones was breached by the Mongols. And even the very best, with its regularly spaced guard towers, barbed wired, and death strips, was occasionally subverted and ultimately turned out to be politically nonviable.

As long as we remain a magnet, the influx is going to be hard to stop. How to stop being a magnet?

And it is hard to generalize: There are legitimate asylum seekers who face death from the gangs if they stay home. How to sort them out?

[Cal Lash]

I have eaten out alot for the last 60 years. Since about 1970 most the staff cooking and waiting on me were not white folks that only spoke English but minorities of one sort another that were bilingual. Recently at Ukrainian restaurants i have been waited on by
young and older Ukrainians who are in the US on a visa.

Based on recent news the declining Population in China will probably encourage migration of young folks to China. And the wall there will be of no hindrance.

I wonder how the Chinese will take to Menudo and Pozole?

[Michael]

Joe, when your/our ancestors arrived in mid 19th century, hard work awaited them to build their farm. Most were still dirt poor 2 or 3 generations after immigrating as well.

Today, the Department of Health and Human Services awaits majority of them.

Blue Desert is correct on flouting the AsYlUm laws. I know a few people personally who came here on tourist visa, found a lawyer who coached them on what to say (I fear for my life if I return home) at their court hearing, and here you go, stay as long as you want!

A wall has worked pretty well for the Israelis on their SW border.

The Indians were basically non-stop murder scalping each other before the Europeans arrived. They just ran into a tougher opponent. Although plenty of European individuals coexisted peacefully with them, it's when the government got involved that it fell apart, cuz the government is full of evil people.

Goodish news for the MiGrAnTs (lol yeah cool NLP language, they're just like migrating birds heading north for the summer) I guess is when the ponzi fiat "dollar" scam implodes soon, a lot of them will head home, or maybe try to carve out their own niche?

[Michael]

For solutions, getting back to voluntary only charity, rather than coercive state-based wealth redistribution would be good start. Then only the ones ready to provide value would want to come, the moochers would stay home.

Chinese still have a work-or-starve mentality, no gov welfare there, so they can pick their own strawberries or whatever, plus they're still in control of their own country, plus they're super racist against everyone besides white Europeans & Americans so they wouldn't tolerate what is going on here with the immivasion.

I know plenty of Chinese and they think Mexican food looks like a pile of crap on a plate, tastes like fried oil with all the natural flavors fried out. Overcooked, nothing special. They like their food better.

And they're super confused why we don't just kick them all out, like, on the bus now, too bad you shouldn't have come, why would you bring your little kids what is wrong with you and don't come back.

[Cal Lash]

"Wailing"
The patly constructed Israel SW wall, construction ceased some time ago.
Likely somewhat due to its effectiveness.
Like the filthy American savages its easier to murder Palestinians.
Justified by the Christian and Jewish gods. As so many recent American Presidents have said,
"God Bless America."
And of course screw the rest.

Food: I long ago moved from Chinese food to Vietnamese. And never the Oriental all you can eat buffets. Working los Campos in Arizona i became addicted to those great flavors digested by my fellow Braceros y Mojados. Who came to call me the Gringo with Salty Feet.

Regarding China migration there is at 70 percent.

Michael your points are of course valid opinions. Regardless of ones positions on migration, its been here since day one for most all species. And will continue until it dosent.

Will Elon build a Wailing Wall on Mars to thank himself for saving the human species?

[NormW]

A few points that seem obvious to me: a.) Many corn & wheat farmers had to turn to another crop (guess which one) after the US agricartel dumped product on the Mexican market. b.) It is difficult for migrants and refugees to feel safe in their countries of origin when the political and economic systems there were disrupted by you-know-who. c.) Governments just about everywhere are corrupt to some degree. Some of them just have better suits. d.) The history of humanity is a history of migration. Get over it, already...

[Sal Monella]

A certain party, a certain demographic of the population can't "get over it" because the color of the migration isn't the right color.

The republican bastion, the christian bastion of the population, which prays on Sunday then hates the other six days, wants white rice, not fried rice.

[Cal Lash]

Good comment
Dick Tracy

[Cal Lash]

The late Edward Abbey, Author of number of books incuding his best selling, Desert Solitaire and his,
in my opinion most infamous book,
The Monkey Wrench Gang,
that will never be made into a movie
got in trouble with a number of folks when he was asked about illegal migration. He said when you catch an illegal imigrant you should give them a gun and send them back.
Ed was known for a number of what some would call outlandish statements but its rather obvious i think,
his statement had a logical point.

[Jeff Johnson]

Those immigrants who flee poverty and joblessness can rightly be called “economic migrants.” But not if they’re fleeing repression and gang violence, which many are.

[AzRebel]

Since Nikki Haley wanted to deport American born Senator Warnock, it's payback time for her run for president.

DEPORT NIKKI HALEY
TO PAKISTAN OR INDIA