The Cost of Inaction on Immigration

[LymphocyteLover]

pretty good overview of the situation by the NYT editorial board

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/07/opinion/new-york-migrant-crisis.html

In the past year, more than a million people have entered the United States through the southern border, overflowing shelters and straining public services. Most of the newcomers claim asylum, a status that allows them to be in the country legally but leaves them in limbo. They often must wait years for their cases to be heard, and it can be a lengthy process to obtain legal permission to work.

This nation has long drawn strength from immigration, and providing asylum is an important expression of America’s national values. But Congress has failed to provide the necessary resources to welcome those who are eligible and to turn away those who are not. Instead, overwhelmed immigration officials allow nearly everyone to stay temporarily, imposing enormous short-term costs on states and cities that the federal government hasn’t done enough to mitigate.

Vice President Kamala Harris and others have correctly identified corruption and instability in Central and South America as reasons many people continue to flee their homes, and the United States should do what it can to help countries with these challenges. But that is not an answer to the disruption that this recent wave of people is causing in American communities right now.
...

Neither party has come up with a solution that is both practical and compassionate. Many in the Republican Party want to return to the Trump-era policies of strictly curtailing refugee and asylum admissions and requiring many people to stay in Mexico while their asylum cases are heard. Some Republicans still embrace the fiction that building a huge wall would solve everything, despite abundant evidence that it would be ineffective in stopping people from coming to the border. On Thursday the Biden administration moved to expand that wall as well.

The rest is well worth a read

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Well, those Countries in the south of the U.S. are usually ruled by upper-tier individuals (the

upper 1%) who doesn't care about the rest of the poorer population...maybe in a few cases there are exceptions, but when I visited Peru, and other places, I was amazed and shocked at the disparity between those w/ the wealth and those w/ no wealth. It was an eye opener. The difference was vast (my visit happened in the early 1980s).

[dalton99a]

2. Kick

https://archive.ph/MtWSC


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Something has got to be done.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2023/10/06/border-families-migrants-biden-chicago/
https://archive.ph/IWSFu

Biden border plan faces breakdown amid record influx of families
By Maria Sacchetti and Nick Miroff
October 6, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

CHICAGO — The border plan President Biden put in place nearly five months ago is at risk of collapse amid a new wave of illegal crossings, intensifying strains on U.S. cities and leaving authorities struggling to care for record numbers of families arriving with children.

U.S. agents along the southern border are making more than 9,000 arrests a day, a near record, including a fast-rising number of families, a group that is far more difficult for the government to manage than adults traveling solo.

More than 103,000 parents traveling with children crossed the southern border illegally in September, the highest number ever, according to preliminary government data obtained by The Washington Post.

The influx has left some migrant families sleeping on the streets, turning them into a landscape of the nation’s policy failures.

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Border Patrol data on illegal crossings at U.S.-Mexico border: