Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., said that he hopes Democrats know that it “isn’t xenophobic” to be worried about the southern border and argued that the Democratic Party should engage in debates about it.
“I hope Democrats can understand that it isn’t xenophobic to be concerned about the border,” Fetterman told Politico. “It’s a reasonable conversation, and Democrats should engage.”
Fetterman cited the near 270,000 border encounters in September, according to the outlet, and said it was “astonishing.”
“You essentially have Pittsburgh showing up there at the border,” he added.
Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked the advance of a $110 billion (£87 billion) package of wartime funding for Ukraine and Israel as they pressed their demands for tougher immigration measures at the Mexico border.
The vote, a 49-51 tally that fell short of the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for moving ahead, came just hours after President Joe Biden said it was “stunning” that Congress has not yet approved tens of billions of dollars in military and economic assistance for Ukraine.
The vote was along party lines, with every Senate Republican voting “no” along with Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who generally votes with Democrats but had expressed concerns about funding Israel’s “current inhumane military strategy” against Palestinians.
The bleating from Biden that the war in Ukraine is a “battle for freedom,” or something, has worn thin. He has not articulated what our pressing national interest is, and he has not articulated what the out strategy is. Meanwhile, Ukraine has suspended elections, suppressed speech, and generally turned into yet another dictatorship. Do we really care if a Ukrainian dictator or a Russian dictator lords over that part of the world? How much more American treasure and, potentially, American lives are worth it?
Furthermore, it is clear that the Ukrainian War has ground to a stalemate. Lines have not moved substantially for most of the year despite the big Ukrainian summer offensive. Russia will continue to push and has more resources than Ukraine. The only thing that will change the dynamic is a massive influx of arms and, probably, foreign soldiers to change the power balance. But there is no appetite in Europe or America to spend more, risk their lives, or widen the war with Russia.
Given that’s the case, America would best serve the world by using our power to bring the war to a close as quickly as possible in a negotiated settlement. It will mean that Russia “won” the war by seizing several large parts of Ukraine by force of arms. But Ukraine will survive as a smaller country. And the bloodletting of a generation of Ukrainians and Russians will stop. At this point, that is the best foreseeable outcome for Ukraine and the longer they wait, the less likely it will be.
by Owen | 1855, 27 Nov 2323 | Politics | 0 Comments
Why is this my problem? They are breaking into my fortified home and hurt themselves doing it. FAFO. They are lucky that we are spending untold thousands of dollars treating their injuries instead of just shoving them back over the border to find care in Mexico.
My colleague Miriam Jordan was reporting at the border this year when she noticed an unusual number of migrants in wheelchairs, bandages and casts at shelters. Jordan learned that while there was no comprehensive accounting of wall-related injuries and deaths, doctors at U.S. hospitals along the border have noticed a definite increase.
“Desperate people try to jump over, and they suffer much more severe traumatic injuries to the head,” Jordan said. “The falls also shatter their extremities, because of greater impact from falling farther.”
Problems continue even after they receive treatment. “Many migrants do not receive the follow-up care that they need after being released from the hospital,” she said, “and they may never regain the ability to work at physically arduous jobs, which they came to America to do, or lead a normal life.”
[…]
Last year, UC San Diego Health converted a postpartum unit into a ward for border-wall casualties. The sheer number has affected care for local people, too; waiting time for spinal procedures at the hospital has risen to nearly two weeks, from three days.
DENVER (AP) — As weary migrants arrive in Denver on buses from the U.S.-Mexico border city of El Paso, Texas, officials offer them two options: temporary shelter or a bus ticket out.
Nearly half of the 27,000 migrants who arrived in Denver since November 2022 have chosen the bus, plane or train tickets to other cities in the U.S., city data shows. In New York and Illinois, taxpayer dollars also are being spent on tickets, creating a shuffle of migrants in the interior U.S. who need shelter, food and medical assistance as they await rulings on asylum cases that can take years.
The transfer of migrants has gained momentum since Republican governors in Texas and Florida started chartering buses and planes to Democratic-led cities in what critics waved off as political stunts. More than a year later, some of those cities, their resources dwindling, are eager to help migrants move on to their final destinations.
A report released Monday by the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee says the influx of migrants across the country’s southern border could cost taxpayers $451 billion.
The fourth report released by the committee says that the tab includes housing, education, property damage done by migrants, law enforcement, and health care costs.
A report from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services showed that “emergency services for undocumented aliens” added up to $7 billion in fiscal 2021 and $5.4 billion in fiscal 2022, with migrants receiving at least $8 billion in improper Medicaid payouts (10% of the nation’s total of $80 billion).
Migrants are also putting a strain on the nation’s criminal justice infrastructure, with the cost adding up to $8.95 billion in fiscal 2022.
The Democratic mayors of Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles and New York say they are ready to travel to meet President Joe Biden next week as they press for $5 billion in funding to help cope with the surge in migrants arriving in their cities.
In a letter released Wednesday, they say they are having to get by with little help from his administration.
Such is the urgency, that they are proposing to travel to Washington, D.C., for a crisis meeting within days.
Staggering figures have revealed that over 1.2million US-born workers lost their jobs last month while the foreign-born workforce increased by 668,000 – as migrants continue to flood across the border under Biden’s administration.
Data from US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that between July and August, there was a staggering decrease of 1.223million native-born people in the workforce – which is a low that has not been seen since April 2020.
Figures, buried in the data published on September 1, laid bare how many US citizens are losing their livelihoods and emphasized the effects Trump and Biden’s respective border policies have had on the US job market.
[…]
What the figures suggest is there has been nearly a net-zero increase in native-born jobs created since the Covid economic crash. The job market is only just about reaching the highs seen in October 2019, where employment was 131.72million.
Comparing figures from the first three years of each of their tenures, the Republican president’s foreign-born workforce expanded by 752,000 between August 2017 to 2019.
By contrast, Democrat Biden’s figure from August 2021 to 2023 was 3.943million.
During Trump’s presidency, between July and August of 2017, foreign-born employment rose by just 82,000.
The 668,000 foreign workforce figure in 2023 is a staggering eight times more – set on the backdrop of the Biden administration’s control of the movement across the US-Mexico border since the end of pandemic-era Title 42 in May.
Between July and August of 2018, foreign-born employment increased by 168,000, and 2019’s corresponding figure was 132,000.
by Owen | 0638, 24 May 2323 | Politics | 2 Comments
Two comments… first, note the hypocrisy of the Democrats who run NYC. Second, I don’t care about Mohamed’s plight. He shouldn’t be here. The fact that he managed to go from Africa to Mexico and then illegally cross our border and make his way to New York does not make his problems America’s problems. Also note that, once again, we have a single man of military age illegally crossing our border. Millions of them are now saturating our society. There are consequences for allowing that.
NEWBURGH, N.Y. (AP) — Before he left Mauritania, the West African nation of his birth, Mohamed thought of New York as a place of “open arms,” a refuge for immigrants fleeing dire circumstances.
Now that he’s here, seeking political asylum from a government he feared would kill him, he doesn’t feel welcome. The 19-year-old has become a pawn in an escalating stand-off between New York City and suburban and upstate communities, which are using lawsuits, emergency orders and political pressure to keep people like him out.
[…]
After a journey that took him across the U.S. border with Mexico, he landed in a shelter system in New York City he found frightening and overcrowded. In one Brooklyn shelter, a room with 40 beds, someone stole his few remaining possessions as he slept.
So when outreach workers offered him the chance to relocate earlier this month, promising more space and chances to work, Mohamed took it. He joined other asylum seekers at two hotels a few miles outside the small Hudson River Valley city of Newburgh, about two hours north of the city.
‘His plan is obviously intentionally to just allow everybody into this country and try to track down that many millions of people years down the road.
‘It’s a false narrative that this administration is pushing to the American people.’
On Thursday morning, the extent of the surge was evident in Yuma even before the sun came up. More than 300 people waited in line to register with Border Patrol officers as buses pulled up and departed filled with migrants.
Many were from Peru. But the arrivals included people from China, Georgia, Uzbekistan, and the African nation of Mauritania.
Late on Monday night, U.S. Customs and Border Protection together with the Department for Homeland Security announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would be conducting a targeted enforcement operation in El Paso, Texas.
The operation would see officers with the federal authorities look to track down migrants who came across the U.S. border illegally and who escaped any sort of processing by immigration authorities.
But the union representing the Border Patrol agents stated the ‘entire operation is a sad joke’ and ‘another pandering PR stunt.’
[…]
‘Nothing like publicly announcing that dangerous people will be arrested, while warning them ahead of time exactly where to run and hide to avoid arrest. This entire operation is a sad joke – another pandering PR stunt. Serious law enforcement leaders don’t behave this way,’ the Border Patrol Union – NBPC tweeted on Monday night.
Strategically speaking, the announcing of such information makes little sense with those seeking to evade capture by the authorities now given advance warning.
BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Shelters in a Texas city struggled to find space Saturday for migrants who authorities say have abruptly begun crossing by the thousands from Mexico, testing a stretch of the U.S. border that is typically equipped to handle large groups of people fleeing poverty and violence.
The pace of arrivals in Brownsville appeared to catch the city on the southernmost tip of Texas off guard, stretching social services and putting an overnight shelter in an uncommon position of turning people away. Officials say more than 15,000 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, have illegally crossed the river near Brownsville since last week.
That is a sharp rise from the 1,700 migrants that Border Patrol agents encountered in the first two weeks of April, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.
“It’s a quite concerning because the logistical challenge that we encounter is massive for us,” said Gloria Chavez, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol Rio Grande Valley Sector.
WASHINGTON — A surge in Cuban and Nicaraguan arrivals at the U.S. border with Mexico in December led to the highest number of illegal border crossings recorded during any month of Joe Biden’s presidency, authorities said Friday.
The extraordinary influx came shortly before Biden introduced measures on Jan. 5 to deter Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.
U.S. authorities stopped migrants 251,487 times along the Mexican border in December, up 7% from 234,896 times in November and up 40% from 179,253 times in December 2021, Customs and Border Protection said.
Cubans were stopped nearly 43,000 times in December, up 23% from November and more than quintuple the same period a year earlier. Nicaraguans were stopped more than 35,000 times, up 3% from November and more than double from December 2021.
More migrants were also stopped from Ecuador and Peru.
TAPACHULA/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Thousands of migrants have flocked to government offices in southern Mexico seeking asylum since the United States said it would keep restrictions used to quickly expel hundreds of thousands of migrants who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.
[…]
Ramirez said many migrants seek asylum to obtain documents they believe are necessary to traverse Mexico so they can then go to the U.S.-Mexico border later. Mexico has sought to contain mass movement of migrants toward the U.S. border by breaking up caravans and setting up checkpoints throughout the country.
Ramirez believed the mass of recent arrivals could be migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti seeking to reach the United States before rules change.
TAPACHULA, Mexico (AP) — When migrants arrive to the main crossing point into southern Mexico — a steamy city with no job opportunities, a place packed with foreigners eager to keep moving north — they soon learn the only way to cut through the red tape and expedite what can be a monthslong process is to pay someone.
With soaring numbers of people entering Mexico, a sprawling network of lawyers, fixers and middlemen has exploded in the country. At every step in a complicated process, opportunists are ready to provide documents or counsel to migrants who can afford to speed up the system — and who don’t want to risk their lives packed in a truck for a dangerous border crossing.
In nearly two dozen interviews with The Associated Press, migrants, officials and those in the business described a network operating at the limit of legality, cooperating with — and sometimes bribing — bureaucrats in Mexico’s immigration sector, where corruption is deeply ingrained, and at times working directly with smugglers.
Fixers have always found business with those passing through the country. But the increasing numbers over the last year and Mexico’s renewed efforts to control migration by accelerating document processing without clear criteria have made the work more prominent and profitable. The result is a booming business that often preys on a population of migrants who are largely poor, desperate and unable to turn elsewhere.
Legal papers, freedom from detention, transit permits, temporary visas: All are available for a price via the network. But even though the documents are legal and the cost can be several hundred dollars or more, migrants are at risk of arrest or return to their entry point as they make their way through the country, thanks to inconsistent policy enforcement and corrupt officials at checkpoints.
Word that the U.S. Supreme Court had effectively extended a nearly two-year health policy that has all but closed the border to many migrants swept through the camp, leaving dashed hopes and deep disappointment. Roodline Pierre, 28, among a large number of Haitians gathered around their phones, shook his head as he described how he had escaped a long list of hardships in Haiti with his wife and 14-month-old daughter. “We can’t go back,” Pierre said. “We left everything behind to be here.”
[…]
Pierre pointed to the squalid conditions around him. People were cooking meat on rusty grills and piles of wood. Children walked in and out of tents along the street. Trash and used toiletries were scattered around on an empty dirt lot.
“These are no conditions for children,” he said. “No person should live like this. We want a better life, and now we are stuck here for much longer.”
Remember that all of these people came to our border with the intention of crossing into our nation illegally. Their asylum claims are mostly bunk but they were counting on being released into the interior to disappear – if they were even caught. Many of them have already crossed through multiple countries where they could build a better life if their home countries are oppressive. I don’t doubt their hardships, but I also don’t think that their hardships impose an obligation on American taxpayers to alleviate them. We are a kind people, but we are not a bottomless pit of money and resources.
by Owen | 2100, 22 Dec 2222 | Politics | 1 Comment
This is a lie. Look at actions – not rumors of backroom tirades.
A furious Joe Biden was ‘dropping f-bombs’ throughout the White House as his team scrambled to find answers to the migration crisis, according to a new book on his presidency.
Biden’s aides told author Chris Whipple that the situation on the U.S.-Mexico border ‘made his blood boil’.
Migrants’ haste to cross with Title 42 in place may seem contradictory, because the policy makes it easier for the U.S. to expel undocumented migrants. But many anticipated that the lifting of it will make crossing more difficult, at least temporarily, due to increased migrant numbers and military presence at the border.
Images of migrants wrapped in blankets and sleeping on the streets of El Paso in freezing temperatures have raised welfare concerns as they circulated online this week amid a surge of people arriving in the west Texan city.
Over the last few days, thousands of migrants, including many hailing from Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela, huddled along the waters of the Rio Grande, while others waded across the river from El Paso’s sister city on the Mexican side of the border, Ciudad Juarez, to cross into the US.
Videos posted online show many migrants lying on the ground at the El Paso section of the border as they await entry to the US. Some have started fires to stay warm in makeshift camps on the riverbank as temperatures dropped below freezing this week.
More than 1,000 migrants streamed across the southern border into Texas on Sunday night in a dire indication of the chaos to come when Title 42 comes to an end in just nine days.
The group from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua – possibly the largest in history – ran across the Rio Grande into El Paso, where local officials are releasing hundreds of migrants back onto the streets and border officials are bracing for a surge in crossers.
Footage shows the migrants wading through the water carrying belongings and then waiting in line on the river’s bank to be processed by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials.
The asylum seekers howed Stallings cell phone video taken during the journey across a remote Central American jungle, pointing out migrants who died along the way.
“It was like she was showing me cat videos but it was actually their journey and what they endured to get here,” said Stallings, a member of the Martha’s Vineyard Community Services nonprofit. “There were bodies and moms with babies trying to get through mud that was like clay.”
“The heartbreaking part is seeing these beautiful young ladies become desensitized,” said her husband, Larkin Stallings, 66, an Oak Bluffs bar owner who sits on the nonprofit’s board. “For them, they just flip and show you a picture.”
Indeed. It is heartbreaking. And it’s been happening for years. Thanks for waking up and realizing that this is a human travesty.
Martha’s Vineyard had not been expecting them but a small army of activists mobilized to help people who had become pawns in the contentious debate over America’s broken immigration system.
Notice how they paint themselves as heroes? Saviors? Another way to read this is that they mobilized law enforcement and military forces to get the illegals off their island as soon as possible. They were a 44-hour intrusion on the residents’ otherwise idyllic lives.
“I want them to have a good life,” she said. “I want the journey they experienced and the hardships they experienced to have been worth it for them and their families. I want them to come to America and be embraced. They all want to work. And I just I want their journey to have a happy ending.”
She wants that for them… just not on Martha’s Vinyard. She wants them to have all of that as long as it’s somewhere else. That’s easy, unintrusive, sentimentalism. It is not as easy when they actually stay in your community for months or years and your entire infrastructure sags under the weight of their need.
In Mexico, Torrealba said, the couple and other migrants were briefly abducted by members of the Zetas cartel, a violent drug trafficking organization. When he told them he could not make the extortion payment to allow them to continue, he said, a cartel member used pliers to pull out his two gold teeth.
Again. The is pervasive. Biden’s border policies are fueling the cartels and making casual cruelty the norm.
“We’ve got their backs and they are not alone. And to that end, I would like to specifically thank Trader Fred for donating underwear because Martha’s Vineyard doesn’t have a Walmart down the street,” she said, referring to the migrants and a local retailer who stepped up to help them.
Again with the privilege. As if they are ill-equipped to supply 50 illegals because they don’t have a Walmart. But those scratchy border towns have Walmarts, so they are fine.
“The governor of Florida got it wrong,” he said. “I think he thought we wouldn’t know what to do. And actually people here really give a damn. They really care.”
Did he get it wrong? The residents of Martha’s Vinyard gave a damn for all of 44 hours before whisking the illegals off the island. Meanwhile they pat themselves on the back for their compassion. Compassion is easy when you only have to maintain it for less than two days.
The migrants “will be housed in dormitory-style spaces … with separate spaces accommodating both individuals and families,” and families will not be separated, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s office said in a news release. They will have access to services including legal, health care, food, hygiene kits, and crisis counseling.
“I kept telling them it was like a dormitory. I didn’t want to say you’re going to a military base,” she said. “We want to go make sure they’re OK.”
So you lied to them. It’s not a dorm. It’s a military base.
And in the end, DeSantis and Abbot were right. The illegals have access to services in northern states too.
