The Border Crisis Won't Be Solved at the Border

This is actually a decent article but it misses a few things.

People need to understand that undocumented migrants are nothing more than a political football. The article (correctly) points out that nobody really wants to "solve" the problem. I'd go even further and say there is no problem. It's completely made up.

The article points out that if you really wanted to address this (made up) problem, you'd go after the employers. Nobody does that. It has been tried, however. For example, the Alabama agriculture sector collapsed when they tried [1].

Chicken farms are notorious for bad practices. Underpay undocumented migrants. When they start demanding safer working conditions and more pay, you simply call ICE for a sweep, pay a token fine and then start with a new batch.

Undocumented migrants, from the perspective of employers, are about cheap labor and suppressing wages. The easiest solution for this is to document them. We used to do this. It was called the Bracero program [2].

Top of this political theater is the "migrant crime" panic. For example, in a country with >20,000 homicides per year, so far this year 27 of them have been committed by noncitizens [3] and that includes documented and undocumented people.

Construction and agriculture are utterly dependent on undocumented migrant labor.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/14/alabama-immigr...

[2]: https://guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/bracero-program

[3]: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistic...

>Top of this political theater is the "migrant crime" panic. For example, in a country with >20,000 homicides per year, so far this year 27 of them have been committed by noncitizens [3] and that includes documented and undocumented people.

Illegal immigrants would have to be really stupid to commit crimes; after all, they jumped through huge hoops just to get into the country, so of course they're going to keep a low profile.

What I'm curious about, however, is how many crimes are committed by their kids? One thing I've noticed about immigrants in many countries is that, while the actual immigrants (the "first generation") went through hell to immigrate (illegally or legally), and generally are extremely hard-working and want a new life, their kids aren't the same. The kids didn't grow up in the old country and don't know what it's like there, and don't understand their parents' sacrifice. But in the new country, they frequently don't fit into the society (particular if they come from an extremely different culture and ethnic background), and then this can lead to big problems later, like joining criminal gangs.

My niece is the child of an "illegal" immigrant. She graduated from University of Oregon last year, works in HR, is starting law school next fall. She was nationally ranked as a cheerleader in high school. As far as I'm aware, she's never committed any crimes. Her dad, whose mom brought him here as a 2 year-old or something, went to school with me and my sister, and he was a bit of a punk back then, skateboarding kid who hung with guys that liked to put firecrackers in lockers and throw bottles of piss at pep rallies, but he's actually a good guy now in his 40s. Didn't marry my sister, but married, three other kids. Never got that citizenship for whatever reason, but living a normal life.

I'm really not sure where these impressions come from. They're just people, humans being humans. They're not any different than me. They're not any different than you.

For what it's worth, Mexican culture is not an "extremely different culture" from California and Texas, which were both part of Mexico and are majority ethnic Mexican. I'm ethnically Mexican, born in California, currently living in Texas.

>For what it's worth, Mexican culture is not an "extremely different culture" from California and Texas

For what it's worth, MNEA cultures are "extremely different cultures" from France and Germany.