24 hours on the Texas Mexico border

Texas Tribune does important writing without all the froth and foaming rhetoric we hear from some other outlets. This article is long, but worth a read for anyone concerned about matters at the border. Thanks for sharing, librarylady!

My son was on the border for 65 days this time last year with his National Guard unit. Unless things have changed that drastically in just 1 year, based on what I heard from him, this article glosses it over a bit in my opinion.

I think that was the point of the article - things have changed drastically. Measures put in place to stem immigration from the source and to limit the number of asylum seekers are doing their job.

It isn’t as widely reported as I think it should be, but after Trump killed the border bill, Biden implemented an executive order that has helped quite a bit.

Unfortunately our immigration policies and the border have been screwed up for decades.

Biden didn't wait too long. Many of the actions he took at the border are likely illegal and will ultimately be overturned. He knew this, the people advising him knew this, the people writing the policy knew this. But within the constraints of the laws and the budgets as they currently exist, there is literally nothing else he could do. So he waited and hoped that Congress would act and here we are. That executive order will eventually be thrown out and we will be right back where we started.

The Republicans like to joke about Kamala being the border czar but when she was tasked with working in Central America to try to address the root causes of immigration, that was basically the only legal thing this administration could try to do. We see the outcome of over a century of the United States interfering in the domestic politics of sovereign Latin American governments to score points in ridiculous geopolitical games and well, we're reaping what we've sown. I work in immigration law. I don't think there is a single American parent who would live in the conditions many of these families are living in who wouldn't do anything and everything in their power to try to escape. Poverty is one thing but living in places where there is no civil authority that isn't corrupt, ruled by gangs who will torture and murder you if you walk down the wrong street, no access to schooling, limited access to healthcare.

Our immigration laws are so complicated, byzantine and ineffective that I honestly don't think they could be harder to navigate if someone wrote them to deliberately try to make it next to impossible to come here legally. The wait time for some people who are LEGALLY allowed to immigrate to the United States is over 24 years. (And longer when you consider the time that ran prior to original applications.) Visa Bulletin

And don't underestimate the Trump administration's systematic destruction of the systems and structures that need to be in place to make our beleaguered immigration system function. Agents that weren't replaced, courts and processing centers closed, orders to stop processing applications that resulted in years long backlogs to be addressed by a shrinking workforce. None of that could be rebuilt overnight and much of it can't be rebuilt at all because of the utter lunacy of the budgets. Individual immigration courts are working at 10s of millions of dollars deficits each year. Multiply that across all of the systems across all over the world and you can begin to understand the magnitude of the mess Congress (over decades) and the Trump administration have wrought.

Things ARE getting better but not at a pace that makes it humanitarian for all of the people waiting. There are millions of people here legally now who are living in limbo because they can't get their work permits processed, they can't get their green cards processed, they can't get appointments to get their biometrics, they can't afford the required medical exam that has to be completed by a US Civil Surgeon, etc. etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. This system is utterly broken. So when I read things that say "Biden waited too long..." to do xyx, it makes me want to pull out my hair.

Illegal crossings are down all along the border. This was from a website that tracks migrants.

Last month, Border Patrol apprehended 58,038 people at the border. That is up slightly from July (56,399), but still the second-fewest migrant apprehensions since September 2020. Border Patrol’s fiscal year 2024 migrant apprehensions are on track to be 21 percent fewer than last year’s.
Of the nine sectors into which Border Patrol divides the border, San Diego, California (14,436) measured the most migrant apprehensions. El Paso, Texas-New Mexico (13,282) was in second place; it was last in the “top two” in April 2023. Tucson, Arizona (11,922) was third.
www.wola.org/2024/09/weekly-u-s-mexico-border-update-august-migration-2024-campaign-and-the-border-border-patrol-oversight-texas/

It was also interesting that up until about 2010 or so, most of the migrants came from Mexico. Now, they are coming from all over Central and South America.

A question about how TFG made such an issue about what ever auto company building a new plant in Mexico. Yes, jobs here first! But as noted above with having American companies in Columbia, why is it so very wrong to build and employ Mexicans in Mexico?... Making it easier for them to stay at home and work?

Certainly not my area of expertise!!!