US Border Control is a Joke

Post Reply New Topic

^Is that the real reason? I was thought that illegal immigration was so simple because of the high human rights protection in Western countries.

I live on Texas border to Mexico. It is very intense here. There's helicopters and patrolling trucks and atvs. They use all kinds of cameras at night to see. I have family that work in this field and they have insane tools. Many in border patrol are ex-military as well.

I see border patrol everywhere. There are regular raids where I see people being taken. I see the bus station and airport get bus after bus of immigrants being deported. And I sometimes see hotels or offices being turned into detention centers. I seen some bad stuff, too.

There are checkpoints for people that get several hours drive north of the border. And there are people that patrol the boonies there. Some people end up dying in the brush or desert as they cross so some nice people put out water barrels. I have gone to an old ranch of a family member's and seen that the abandoned stables had food wrappers, Mexican music tapes, and an old fire pit.

It is dangerous to cross the border, dangerous to travel illegally on foot, and dangerous to get a job since most hiring illegal immigrants are exploitative. But is is also dangerous to stay in Central America.There is a lot of violence.I hear the helicopters and fire fights sometimes when I go visit family in Mexico. There is a whole war all over. There's unofficial curfews because it is so bad. Pieces of people being found in the street and stuff.

So I am conflicted on the whole topic. I see the horrors on both sides of the border regularly.

^The reasons for the visa and asylum in that case are really obvious, I hold the same attitude to that as you and we don't need to waste time analyzing them.

There's a lot of anti-Chinese propaganda around. I don't know how credible that video is, but you can ask the young lady in Texas, the vast bulk of people crossing aren't Chinese, and the US isn't being overwhelmed by a flood of illegal Chinese (there has always been a fair number of those for decades). Nowadays it's mostly Cubans and Venezuelans. A while back it was Hondurans and other Central Americans. Cuba and Venezuela are undergoing economic crises now. You have no idea how desperate you have to be to make that trip. I don't think there's any real solution. The US has very few constructive relations with either the Cuban or Venezuelan governments. I'm sure the young woman in Texas, and her family, will vote for Trump as he would probably promise to physically seal the border and would probably look the other way if people shot illegals trespassing on their property. I won't judge as I don't have this problem where I live.

Within 48 hours of the release of a long-awaited immigration and foreign aid bill he had championed, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Republican conference rejected his pitch to support it, knifed the deal and left it for dead.

Just four Republicans voted for it. In the end, even McConnell backtracked and voted against the package that he had helped develop.

It was a jarring moment on Capitol Hill that pointed to a changed landscape: The Kentucky Republican, a one-man power center for more than a decade, is seeing his influence with fellow senators wane as his party continues to transform into the right-wing populist mold of Donald Trump. The former president, who fiercely opposed the border deal and has long pushed fellow Republicans to turn away from McConnell, is cruising to a third consecutive GOP presidential nomination.

“It looks to me, and to most of our members, as if we have no real chance here to make a law,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday, effectively declaring the deal dead after talking to his conference.

The collapse of the package leaves U.S. aid to Ukraine at risk of ending completely. McConnell, who is accustomed to having GOP senators follow his strategic guidance, has been pleading with them for months not to let Russian strongman Vladimir Putin make incursions into Europe, lest it upend the global order the U.S. has led since World War II. Those pleas have fallen on deaf ears with conservative lawmakers and voters, who align with a Trump wing that has turned against giving Ukraine money and weapons to defend itself.

The Senate is still trying to pass a supplemental aid bill by itself that would include aid to Ukraine and Israel, but it’s far from clear that can pass Congress, despite McConnell's support.

“We had 10 of us to vote against him at the start of this Congress. There may be a few more people questioning him,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said Wednesday. “I hope a lot of my colleagues are asking themselves: How did we get ourselves in a situation where we’re being blamed for Biden’s open border policy? How could that be possible? The answer is McConnell made that possible.”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., called McConnell’s moves to reach a border and Ukraine deal a “big tactical error.”

The Senate is still trying to pass a supplemental aid bill by itself that would include aid to Ukraine and Israel, but it’s far from clear that can pass Congress, despite McConnell's support.

“We had 10 of us to vote against him at the start of this Congress. There may be a few more people questioning him,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said Wednesday. “I hope a lot of my colleagues are asking themselves: How did we get ourselves in a situation where we’re being blamed for Biden’s open border policy? How could that be possible? The answer is McConnell made that possible.”

’It surprises me'
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said he was shocked that McConnell was not able to get more Republicans to coalesce around the bill.

“He didn’t just bless the deal. He wrote the deal,” Murphy, the lead Democrat in those negotiations, said. “I have a ton of respect for his commitment to Ukraine. I genuinely enjoyed working with his team. They were in the room every single day. But it’s really worrying that a deal that was written and endorsed by the minority leader gets four votes from his caucus.”

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who was elected in 2010 to replace Joe Biden, said that in those nearly 14 years he has never seen a McConnell-backed deal collapse so quickly with the GOP.

“It surprises me,” he said.

But Trump’s hammering of the deal, while he uses immigration as a campaign issue, and his demands that Republicans reject it won the day. On Tuesday, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., a member of McConnell’s leadership team and one of several prospects to replace him as leader, rejected the border bil, saying, “Americans will turn to the upcoming election to end the border crisis.”

Senate GOP becomes Trumpier
Conservatives in the House have now become accustomed to throwing rhetorical grenades at McConnell, accusing him and others who work with Democrats of being part of a “uni-party.”

Usually, when Mitch McConnell stitches together a bill with disparate issues that he wants, he achieves his objective,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., told reporters. “And for the first time we prevailed, so there’s a celebratory mood.”

When it was reported last month that McConnell was anticipating a vote on a Ukraine aid bill, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, responded: “I anticipate telling McConnell to pound sand.”

During Trump’s presidency, the Senate GOP was filled with staunch McConnell allies who enabled the Republican leader to approach legislative conflicts with the then-president from a position of strength. But many of them have since been replaced by Trump loyalists or they’ve changed to become more Trump-aligned themselves. McConnell’s once-functional relationship with Trump broke down after Jan. 6, 2021. Although he voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial, McConnell gave a blistering floor speech holding Trump “practically and morally responsible” for the “failed insurrection.”

Asked about Trump’s role in sinking the immigration bill, McConnell said, “I’ve said repeatedly every month that I’m not going to get into comments about the race for the presidency among Republicans. I think, in the end, even though the product is approved by the Border Council that endorsed President Trump, most of my members feel that we’re not going to be able to make a law here.”

Even among right-wing Senate Republicans, attacks on McConnell were unusual for the vast majority of his tenure as leader. Today, they’ve become common. On Tuesday, six Republicans held a news conference and took turns bashing McConnell and his leadership team: Sens. Rick Scott, of Florida; Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin; Mike Lee, of Utah; Ted Cruz, of Texas; JD Vance, of Ohio; Eric Schmitt, of Missouri; and Roger Marshall, of Kansas.

Many of them openly questioned whether McConnell, the longest-serving Senate leader, should stay in his job.

Cruz said it’s time for McConnell to step down. “I think it is,” he said. “Look, everyone here also supported a leadership challenge to Mitch McConnell in November. I think a Republican leader should actually lead this conference and should advance the priorities of Republicans.”

McConnell grinned when asked to respond.

“I think we can all agree that Sen. Cruz is not a fan,” he said.

'Mitch's driving force was pretty clear'
Among right-wing Republicans in both chambers, McConnell has become such a flashpoint that on Tuesday evening, when the House failed to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in an embarrassing vote, a Senate GOP aide texted in jest: “Will be interesting to see how they blame McConnell for this failed vote.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said he doesn’t blame McConnell for the way the border bill turned out, saying, “On this one, Mitch’s driving force was pretty clear for a long time — was Ukraine.”

“Even leaders have political capital, and he spent a lot of political capital on Ukraine,” Cramer said, adding that he doesn’t think McConnell misread the conference.

He attributed the shifting landscape to a more independent-minded Republican Party and “the ability to be a celebrity senator nowadays.” Cramer said his colleagues make a name for themselves “simply by saying ‘no’ to everything and demonizing things before you’ve seen them,” adding, “It’s become way too easy to do that, there’s too much of an audience for it.”

“It’s a lot easier than doing the hard work of legislating,” he said

In case you were talking about me at the end of your post:
Me and my family here on the Texas side did not and would not vote Trump. Most people in my area think that the walls would be ineffective and that the floating border is inhumane. There is no real solution that wouldn't anger a lot of taxpayers or leave many immigrants in poverty. I am definitely not anti-immigration as my family is mexican-american and my grandparents and parents were the first to immigrate to the US. Most of my family in the US came here legally. A couple family members that didn't were deported a couple years ago. It was horrific for everyone involved because they were raised here in Texas and now they cannot visit their children or family in the US.

Seeing the effects of deportation on my family and families around me and hearing from my family in Mexico about what is going on there makes me very sympathetic for immigrants coming to the US for a safer and more prosperous life.

The government is focused on stopping illegal boat arrivals from countries experiencing civil war, famine and other catastrophes in Africa and South Asia.

I can recall seeing a discussion on Reddit about Hispanic people near the border hating illegals because they make Hispanic people look bad. They seem to think Biden doesn't care about the security of the border. I believe they also had a lot of anger towards Obama. Also many are Christians and don't feel that Biden is sufficiently pro-life despite being Catholic. Those people support Trump, although I couldn't say that they admire him per se.

The real takeaway from the discussion was that progressive intellectuals on the East Coast are foolish to assume that any Hispanics are a natural constituency for the Democrats, and Democrats are taking them for granted rather than listening to what they actually want.

I'm not quite sure about the current situation.
Will the governments of these countries still accept deported refugees while they are busy fighting wars?
What's the harm in Australia turning these people directly into taxpayers?
Of course, I know it is difficult for these people to have money to pay taxes. Why can Chinese immigrants have money to pay taxes?

I heard Sunak dumped all the migrants in Rwanda, it looks like just putting the ones from China on that boat too. Why don't the United States and Australia adopt this simple solution? Is it out of human rights considerations?

All good points. I don't have an immediate answer. But one thing is for sure. Chinese government always plans long term - 100 years ahead. Western governments plan for the duration a political party is in office. Rishi Sunak will be gone and forgotten like his policies.