An interesting post from a comment on a WP article on immigration: [View all]

[JohnSJ]

"The charts are fundamentally flawed since the article doesn't mention the impact of covid at all. Or the fact the more Americans are not willing to do physical labor that requires them to leave the comfort of their couch. We need the people who will do the hard physical jobs.

Few points:
1. The US had a functional seasonal workers program for decades. Workers were allowed to come in on a temp workers card for seasonal work or household work. The catch was that they could not bring their spouses or children with them. That meant the mostly male farm workers would rotate home to spend time with their families. This was ended sometime around 40+ years ago because of terrible working conditions, low pay of the seasonal workers and growing unemployment of US workers in the Rust Belt.
Then immigration became a political football.
2. Political instability in central America in the 1980's led to a flood of families fleeing murder squads.
3. NAFTA was passed in the 1990's to spur industrial growth in Central and South America. It worked for a while. Immigration to the US dropped, people had good jobs with good pay in Central America and could stay with their families.
5. Those NAFTA jobs then moved to Asia 10 years later, leaving large numbers of unemployed workers south of the border. The economies of those countries were shaken when the jobs left, and many became unable to stem the drug lords, the violence, the poverty, the dictatorships.
6. Many of the current illegal immigrants are coming from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. They are flown by smuggling cartels to Central America and then dropped off to make it over on their own. Whose is funding those flights?
7. If the border was totally shut down it would create a crisis in Mexico that could destabilize their government. It would also make it extremely problematic for legitimate green card holders to cross the border to see their families.

This is a pin hole look at a huge international problem."

This was the article the comment was based on:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2024/02/11/trump-biden-immigration-border-compared/