'Zero Illegal Crossings' Is an Unattainable Goal for the Border
If House Speaker Mike Johnson really wants less chaos at the border, he should look for ways to make legal immigration more accessible—and more attractive—than illegal immigration.
For the past several months, congressional lawmakers have attempted to forge a bipartisan border security deal. By many indications, that deal is on shaky ground—but that hasn't stopped politicians from voicing some very unrealistic policy goals for the border.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) floated one such goal while discussing a deal reportedly struck by a group of senators. "It seems the authority to shut down the border would kick in only after as many as 5,000 illegal crossings happen a day. Why? Why would we do that?" he said on Tuesday. "That would be surrender. The goal should be zero illegal crossings a day."
(The deal would "automatically reject migrants and asylum seekers from crossing the border illegally once the daily average for border crossings surpasses 5,000 over a week or…8,500 on a single day," per Axios.)
President Joe Biden has vowed to "shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed" if Congress grants him that authority. "I would use it the day I sign" a bipartisan bill "into law," he said. (Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has claimed that Biden already has this authority and said that he should get on with using it.)
As good as those promises might sound to border hawks, they're not even remotely feasible. The U.S. government, for all the money and agents it's thrown at the border over the past several decades, has never been able to practically "shut down the border" or achieve zero illegal crossings (all the legal issues with those proposals aside).
Between the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 and January 2021, the U.S. has spent $333 billion to fund the agencies tasked with immigration enforcement, according to the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration nonprofit. The budgets for those agencies have been rising for years.
But more enforcement money hasn't necessarily led to lower illegal crossings. As budgets have gone up, apprehensions of people who crossed the border between authorized ports of entry have gone up, down, and remained static. In other words, they don't cleanly align: Though Customs and Border Protection reported 2.05 million apprehensions in FY 2023, it reported somewhat close to that number—over 1.5 million—in FY 2000. Annual apprehensions hovered below 500,000 from FY 2010 through FY 2018.
Tough enforcement doesn't bring illegal crossings down to zero either. Even the pandemic-era Title 42 border order that effectively "closed the border to unauthorized border crossers" and asylum applicants couldn't keep arrivals down, per a January report from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI). "Arrivals at the border increased dramatically through 2021 and 2022, despite the order remaining in place."
A policy brief last May from the National Foundation for American Policy, drawing on 100 years of Border Patrol apprehensions data, found that "none of the three U.S. periods with a significant decline in illegal immigration were due to enforcement policies." Rather, they were due to increased legal pathways as well as changing demographics and labor demand.
The U.S.-Mexico border stretches nearly 2,000 miles, much of it treacherous. No matter the funding and no matter the enforcement mandate, there's no way that agents could stop every illegal crosser traversing the deserts, mountains, and waters that make up the border region. That's proven impossible along much smaller and more surveilled borders, such as the boundaries of East Germany and North Korea.
All this suggests that it's time for some reflection from today's zero-illegal-crossings proponents.
"The contemporary challenge at the southwest border is one of border control rather [than] border security," suggests the MPI. "The national objective must be not to solve the border control challenge by apprehending and removing 100 percent of unauthorized migrants, but rather to manage it in a manner consistent with the law and reasonably satisfactory to the American people."
Any workable border deal should focus on ways to make legal immigration more accessible—and more attractive—than illegal immigration. That's a proven way to reduce illegal crossings and a promising way to ensure that border agents can focus on actual threats rather than the vulnerable migrants who are simply seeking a place to live and work in peace.
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The jeff/sarc argument.
If you can’t stop 100%, stop none.
Do farmers get angry at you when you steal their scarecrows?
Why, are you asking for more straw to build with?
God damn. Just went to the roundup.
InsaneTrollLogic 8 hours ago
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Just wait, Fiona will be along shortly to tell us how bad Texas is, why we should have totally open borders with a welfare state.
Great prediction lol.
Fiona’s like a clock. You can depend on her to write something for open borders about 95% of the time she writes, if not a higher percentage.
Let’s have a moratorium on immigration,NONE for 3 years except for real asylum seekers.
Did you think this clever?
Yet somehow, that never applies to other things from Jeffy, like masks. If they’re only 0.05% effective, they’re effective to him.
Sore-in-the-cunt cunt-sore-va-turds: “If ONLY we will get TOGETHER with one another, man, and crank UP the hatred of the illegal sub-humans to near-infinite levels… THEN we can reduce illegal sub-human border invasions to ZERO!!!! Then FINALLY life, for us GOOD Americans, will be PERFECT forever!”
Your comments are so hyperbolic and unfunny. Please stop.
Stopping 100% of migration is totally possible, just look at how well the government can stop 100% of drugs or 100% of prostitution!
How about stopping 100% of coronavirus, Jeffy?
It’s impossible to prevent 100% of kiddie rapists, but I still think it should be severely discouraged and harshly punished.
The tolerable number is closer to zero than 2 million.
much closer to zero
If all crossings are legalized, the number of illegal crossings will, in fact, be zero.
Biden/Harris 2024 !
As America has long extended citizenship to foreigners who serve in its armed forces, attention should turn to nations with outstandingly secure borders to recruit the cream of their border forces to come and patrol ours.
Tens of thousands might be recruited in North Korea alone, by offering modest compensation packages and citizenship after five years service.
What do you have against those countries, that you want to poach the best of their citizens? How about instead of enticing them to come here, leave him alone to help build their own countries.
It’s still a decent idea but only English speakers of the Christian persuasion.
Zero rapes is also an unattainable goal. I still want rapists arrested. How about you, Fiona?
Nope. If you cannot stop ALL of it, should not even try. It’s kinda bigoted to prevent rapists from doing what they were born to do or something.
What color rapists? The arrests can’t result in a racial disparity.
The crime of rape is a violent crime with an identifiable victim. The ‘crime’ of crossing a border without papers is a victimless crime with no identifiable victim. Totally the same!
Is it though? How about a woman who has rape fantasies, but fervently watches the TV show of the person she claimed raped her in a department store while she was wearing an outfit that wasn’t made until a couple decade after the supposed incident?
Oh, come on. That could never happen. Not even in a “Law and Order, SVU” episode.
Wait a minute—if trespassing is a victimless crime, then why is OK to murder trespassers?
It’s only victimless if not in Washington DC, obviously.
Zero illegal cunt penetrations is an unachievable goal. So we should just give up.
You would have to start by having Republicans conceded that rape does occurs. Many Republicans now believe that zero rapes occur. The Republican belief is that women lie about rape. Republicans don’t believe women get pregnant from rape, so a woman seeking an abortion for a pregnancy she said was from rape is lying. If a woman accuses Donald Trump of rape and even if a jury agrees, she is still lying.
Women do lie about rape. They lie about a lot of things. Like being right all the time. Women are humans, not angels, as such they have human faults, like dishonesty.
ensure that border agents can focus on actual threats rather than the vulnerable migrants who are simply seeking a place to live and work in peace.
If Hamas or the CCP get people across that kill Americans, the blood is on Fiona’s hands.
Dems just voted against deporting illegals who get DUIs. NYC just released 8 who beat up cops with no bail. Safety isn’t a concern.
Safety is a top concern, not yours or any other Americans but the invaders need to be safe from all consequences or repercussions.
If alcohol kills just one person, it justifies bringing back prohibition and if you disagree the blood is on your hands. The government needs even more power! Amirite?
I’m sorry that you reject self-determination.
I’m not sorry that people reject your rejection.
That’s a ridiculous analogy.
His signature move.
I’m more amused that the website copied the entire blurb and used that to credit the image.
Truly, there are no editors here.
I looked close at the image. The woman looks Asian. I wonder what border she is crossing.
The alt text says its the US / Mexican border.
Ours. Over 100 countries are sending their best and brightest in the invasion although to be representative of who is bum rushing the US the picture should have been of a military aged male as they are the majority coming in. The poor, haggard female clutching a kid is meant to invoke sympathy and compassion. The lady is breaking in and I’d immediately arrest her and deport. No one has any “right” to come into a sovereign nation especially those that will use our welfare state to live
Latest reporting is that the largest ethnic group coming across are Chinese. What a journey that is, huh?
That’s proven impossible along much smaller and more surveilled borders, such as the boundaries of East Germany and North Korea.
And how many defectors did cross?
If we are going to invoke the iron curtain, we should have the numbers.
Ask, and ye shall receive: (at least for East Germany)
After the border was fortified and the Berlin Wall was constructed, the number of illegal border crossings fell drastically. The numbers fell further as the border defenses were improved over the subsequent decades. In 1961, 8,507 people fled across the border, most of them through West Berlin. The construction of the Berlin Wall that year reduced the number of escapees by 75% to around 2,300 per annum for the rest of the decade. The Wall changed Berlin from being one of the easiest places to cross the border, from the East, to one of the most difficult.
During the 1980s, only about 1% of those who left East Germany did so by escaping across the border.
Well, I’ll be damned. A wall does work.
There is a large difference between keeping people in vs keeping them out.
That just depends on which side of the fence has the mines, and which way the guard towers face.
We have a saying in the design industry – ‘Don’t let Perfect become the enemy of Good’.
We need more engineers in journalism.
Unfortunately that would be like asking a brain surgeon to be a day care worker….
No one smart enough to be an engineer would enter journalism.
Yeah, as such journalism doesn’t get our best and brightest. It gets those who think math and chemistry are too hard and then proceed to tell us about how the math and the chemistry say the planet is doomed to burn up if we don’t all return to faux buffalo hide tents.
Fiona pointed to 24 hours on Martha’s Vineyard to “prove” that Democrats do, in fact, embrace the consequences of Biden’s border policy.
Then the Democratic mayor of the ultimate blue city warned that unlimited immigration would “destroy” NYC.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
Know what I suspect? Part of me thinks Koch-funded libertarians have a clear financial incentive to slant everything in the most pro-open-borders way possible.
Just 3 articles ago there is Boehm pushing an article that has targeted legal migration and its benefits to seemingly buttress open borders.
Florida and Texas know better than to send them to the island next door.
The Nantucketers have harpoons.
May as well let everyone in then.
>’Zero Illegal Crossings’ Is an Unattainable Goal for the Border
Therefore we shouldnt’ try at all – Reason’s editorial stance?
We will likely never get the federal budget balanced….so we should just spend, spend, spend — Reason taken to its logical extreme
Not even remotely close but nice try. Here’s the actual argument: $333 billion over decades has not put even a small dent in illegal immigration and has caused unspeakable harm in the process. Legalizing immigration would stop almost all of the harm, cost a lot less money and improve the U.S. economy. There is no evidence that legalizing immigration would do any harm to U.S. society and lots of evidence that illegal immigration has caused lots of harm to U.S. society. Now go away, you’re irrelevant and silly.
1. It has put a dent in it. In 2018 (the middle of the Trump presidency) there were around 350,000 illegals coming in that year. The long-term average – except for spikes in the mid-80’s and around 2000 – has been about 700k/yr.
Since Biden took office it has skyrocketed. It was 1.7+ million every year since 2021 – the year Biden took office.
2. What ‘innumerable harms’ has enforcement caused? Then contrast that to the harms illegal immigration has caused. Such as in Chicago and NYC.
3. There is no ‘legalizing immigration’ (ignoring that its already legal). Not even the Democrats are asking for that. They’re just removing enforcement of illegal immigration at the border.
“The number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. remained mostly stable from 2017 to 2021” https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/16/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/
You anti-immigration nuts seem to just make stuff up that you think supports your idiotic position when there is no actual evidence to support it. Do you think I care whether the Democrats are just as nutty as you are?
What a coincidental year to stop counting.
We had 300k in December of 2023. That used to be closer to the yearly total. It’s up, a lot.
If you had actually followed the link, there is a very clear graph that goes back well before 2017 when the previously rising numbers stopped rising.
Of you believe that poll i can’t help your own ignorance. DHS has admitted to a known 3M who have crossed since 2019.
You repeating false numbers doesn’t make it factual.
I mean you didnt even read your own fucking link.
The new estimates do not reflect changes that have occurred since apprehensions and expulsions of migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border started increasing in March 2021. Migrant encounters at the border have since reached historic highs.
Lol.
Nice try. Anti illegal immigration yes, no one that I know who cares about this country is against legal immigration. I am all for legal, controlled immigration. That way we can screen for terrorists, disease and people that can not support themselves. There is nothing wrong with having immigration confined to people that add to the national well being. Importing millions of people who immediately jump on the welfare state is a sure road to bankruptcy.
Well, if you declare one immigrant to be “legal” and the other million who want to come here to live and work “illegal” then, of course, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. “Oh, gosh! Look at all the ILLEGALS crossing and living here peacefully and productively! We must put a stop to that IMMEDIATELY regardless of the cost!”
Mexicans deserve a great nation. Instead of running here they should be encouraged to overthrow the kleptocrats who run their government and break the power of the cartels.
Every Mexican that tries to cross illegaly and is caught should be handed a backpack of food, water and ammo along with a good rifle and sent back to Mexico.
First, I want to do that here in the United States. Then I’ll back your plan for Mexico.
First, what unspeakable harm?
Second, we have seen what promoting lax immigration does, it encourages more.
Third, the harm from illegal migration is hundreds of billions spent on illegals who come here.
The average household headed by an immigrant (legal or illegal) costs taxpayers $6,234 in federal welfare benefits, which is 41 percent higher than the $4,431 received by the average native household.
The average immigrant household consumes 33 percent more cash welfare, 57 percent more food assistance, and 44 percent more Medicaid dollars than the average native household. Housing costs are about the same for both groups.
https://cis.org/Report/Cost-Welfare-Use-Immigrant-and-Native-Households
So if you believe this current debt growth is sustainable, then sure your argument works. Otherwise it is an argument from ignorance.
I don’t know about “unspeakable” but there have been harms to citizenry from the fight against illegal immigration, mostly from the government response used to try and deal with it once it has occurred. Random border checkpoints on the freeway, for example.
I’d class those more as a problem due to “the horse has left the barn” than an argument against locking the barn door, though.
Simple solution: STOP GIVING IMMIGRANTS MONEY!
Your cherry picking makes you look stupid.
I’d love to have open borders, leaving all immigration control to the civilians who own border property. But that requires neutral governments, where the people who cross the border do so of their own free will, without one government pushing its scum to cross, and without the other government waving buckets of money, free housing, free food, and other incentives in their faces.
When governments beg refugees to flood in, handing out more incentives than Santy Claus and the Easter Bunny combined, and then let the refugees commit crimes which wouldn’t even be acceptable in their home countries, and which would send a citizen to prison, then something’s out of whack.
It’s you, bud. I don’t care whether you think the commenters here are xenophobes, bigots, racists, or even white supremacist Nazi simulacrums modeled by ChatGPT. They are right.
Simple solution: STOP GIVING IMMIGRANTS MONEY!
I still want to know how many live in Fiona’s spare room.
>(The deal would “automatically reject migrants and asylum seekers from crossing the border illegally once the daily average for border crossings surpasses 5,000 over a week or…8,500 on a single day,” per Axios.)
And only until the average drops back to under 5,000/dy. Then its opened back up again. That part is not mentioned.
The question I would have – why should we tolerate 5,000/dy? 1.8 million a year. At a historic low in 2018 we still got a third of a million – around 1k/dy. Since Biden took office that number has skyrocketed to 1.7 million last year – almost right to the 5k/dy cap. The administration is literally ‘compromising’ to achieve the current status quo. The ‘compromise’ here is ‘we won’t let it get worse than the total shitshow it already is – as long as we don’t get caught’.
We have a birthrate of around 3.6 million/yr. So we’re talking up to half as many illegal immigrants as new children.
Mexico also makes up only about 1/3 of current BP ‘interactions’. 2/3rds of these people traveled the length of Mexico – a fairly prosperous and safe country – in order to ‘seek asylum’ in the US.
We’re getting fucking Haitians – the Dominican Republic is never asked to pick up that check, are they? They’re literally right next door but its ok that they have a massively secure border with poor, poor, ‘unlucky’ Haiti.
‘Safe third country’ is a legal term and is only satisfied by Canada because they have a formal agreement with the US. Mexico is not a ‘safe third country’ legally.
Also, are migrants entitled to pursue their claim of oppression, or not? Just say that ‘due process’ only applies to citizens. I dare you.
You keep bringing up that Canada is the only “safe third country,” but keep leaving out that that is because the Biden admin cancelled that status agreement we had with other countries that were along the way that the “asylum seekers” travelled through. It’s almost as though the Biden administration is trying to game the system so we allow in as many “asylum seekers” as can walk across the border.
Due process doesn’t require releasing them into the wild with nothing but a pinky promise that they’ll show up to their date months or years from now.
I know I know, there’s nothing to be done about it, it’s just totally random that the numbers have doubled or tripled over normal years.
Safe Third Country is something you just made up.
There is no ‘safe third country’ rule – there is only the ‘safe *first* country*. And Mexico is not only a country that shares a language with these people, but is actually pretty safe compared to where they’re coming from.
And you can’t say the DR is in any way *unsafe* – so why are we granting asylum to Haitians instead of the DR? Its literally on the same island?
Is it because the Haitians can’t move to the DR? Because the DR has closed the border? And that’s ok with you? Not willing to pressure them to change? Isn’t it a ‘humanitarian’ duty to take in ‘refugees’ or not?
Can confirm. I just spent ten days in Mexico, and it’s actually rather weird, despite the fact that they have cops wandering around in full battle rattle with fun-switch M4s and M203s, those dude are all smiling and I honestly felt way less intimidated by those guys than the average American cop I encounter.
But that place felt way less sketchy than Albuquerque does these days, and I didn’t just stick to the tourist areas either. To be explicit, I felt significantly more comfortable walking with my girlfriend to some random restaurant half a mile from our literal “Dive Shop” Air BNB, with my cane (and thus signalling a weakness) than I would driving with her some places here in my home city. It’s bullshit.
No, migrants aren’t entitled. Its an informal international standard, not a law. So they can get their ‘due process’ in the first safe country they enter – which would be Mexico.
For the ones from Venezuela, it’s a lot sooner than that.
I would be perfectly happy if the US revoked its asylum laws, and ended birth-right citizenship. Doing away with those magnets would reduce the flow of illegals.
And let me tell you something fucking else.
My brother married a Mexican woman a couple years ago. We’re trying to get her citizenship. In order to even come over on a temp visa she needed the coronavirus vaccine (among others).
Illegals staying here on ‘probation’, awaiting a hearing in 20-fucking-30 don’t get a single vaccine. They’re not even checked. You go to the fucking airport and illegals can bypass ID requirements that the rest of us have to endure.
Black people in Chicago and NYC are being told – by their own Black elected officials – to go fuck themselves when they ask why millions are spent on housing illegals in their neighborhoods but not a cent *of their own tax money* is spent on them.
The solution is quite simple! STOP SUBSIDIZING EVERYONE! There is no justification for subsidizing “black people in Chicago” OR “illegals.”
Its their tax money. They’re not being subsidized.
But they are being subsidized moron. Pretending that isn’t happening doesn’t make your argument better.
Your intentionally missing the point
Migrants abuse the asylum process because the legal immigration system is such a nightmare.
Fix legal immigration and the asylum abuse will go way down.
Or we could just reject asylum.
Everybody else in the world outside the West does – but these people think that’s ok. Its ok when the Arabs do it. When the Asians do it. When the Africans do it.
Hell, its ok when the Mexicans do it – but for some reason we’re not allowed to.
We did that for Jews before WWII. How did that work out.
It’s not our obligation to save everyone in the world from any bad situation.
If it’s known they’re abusing the asylum system in large numbers, why do you get so bent out of shape with the secure borders crowd who complain about them doing so?
“Illegals staying here on ‘probation’, awaiting a hearing”
If they are awaiting an asylum hearing then they are not ‘illegals’. They are following the law by applying for asylum when they reach the border.
You calling then ‘illegal’ when they are not demonstrates YOUR contempt for the law.
You’re the one with “contempt for the law.” You keep saying that it’s because our laws don’t make it easy for enough legal immigrants to come here that we’re being flooded with migrants. So if the existing law doesn’t go far enough in your opinion, it’s okay to do it anyway?
Stop lecturing people about concern for rule of law.
You literally posted above that they’re abusing the asylum system because legal immigration is so onerous!
Why aren’t they going to regular border crossings?
My mother married a Mexican guy, a few years before I was born. But I get accused of being racist against Mexicans and other Latinos all the time when I talk about immigration policy.
We should not tolerate any illegal immigration. We should legalize immigration for all but a very few known criminals and then we could focus on catching those few criminals. There is no possible justification for making visiting the United States a crime. There is no possible excuse for limiting the number of visitors to the United States AT ALL! Your position seems to be: “I don’t like people from other places coming to the United States. I want our culture to remain at its current status of white descendants of western Europe, eastern Europe, muslims, jews, christians, atheists and descendants of African slaves, Chinese immigrants, Japanese immigrants, Polynesians and south Asians from before World War Two and Vietnamese and Koreans since World War Two. AND NO ONE ELSE because it would destroy the cultural purity of ‘MURICA!”
Wow. You got all that from the paragraph I wrote, eh?
Or perhaps you just hallucinated it since I didn’t make a single one of those arguments for tightly restricting legal immigration.
But the first thing you jumped to is ‘well, you’re a racists!’.
Because you don’t actually have an arguement for – you’re just repeating what the egregore has programmed you to.
I take notice that you did not DENY what I said about you. Res ipsa loquitur. QED.
It is amazing how quickly the ignorant open borders crowd has to resort to emotional yells of youre a racist since the evidence is not on their side. Lol.
Where did I call anyone a racist? Please deny that you are a “cultural purity” nut who thinks more immigration will destroy the social fabric of the United States despite over two hundred years of immigration from every part of the world and every other culture already here!
You’re acting like a moron, et cetera. STFU. (Look! I can use Latin and acronyms too!)
Woot! Someone else who knows what egregores are!
The only purity test I require is a burning hatred of Socialism in all of its many forms.
“Visiting” America isn’t a crime. Just like visiting Mexico isn’t. I know, I went two weeks ago.
When I arrived, I went through customs at the airport and they stamped my passport. They asked how long I was staying. They asked why I was visiting.
That’s a damned far sight from sneaking across the damned border and you know that. You’re just ignoring it to use loaded language.
There is no possible justification for making visiting the United States a crime. There is no possible excuse for limiting the number of visitors to the United States AT ALL!
This is actually objectively false, and indicates that you simply do not know what those arguments are.
You can disagree with those positions, of course, but the fact you simply handwave them away as not existing in the first place is such an obvious lie that it beggars belief that you could actually believe it.
So, which is it? Are you simply ignorant of actual arguments being made or are you aware of them and don’t want to answer any of them? If it’s the first point, well, you’re an idiot. If it’s the second point, one must conclude you aren’t able to refute those arguments and must therefore pretend they do not exist.
Smart people can disagree on the issues, but ignorant people don’t know what the actual issues are and simply turn in hyperbole and cry ‘racist’ as their homework.
From February 2009 (Obama’s first full month in office) to January 2021 (Trump’s last month in office), there were nearly 5.5 million migrant apprehensions by Border Patrol nationwide.
Since President Biden took office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has logged more than 5.4 million illegal border crossings, plus at least 1.5 million “gotaways” – that is, border crossers who were detected by CBP technology, but who were never apprehended.
In 3 years Biden has surpassed the number of crossings for the previous 12. “Legalizing” these immigrants would not change the basic fact that we do not have the wherewithal to absorb these people. CPB and the border states are overwhelmed and so are most of the nations large cities. Immigration now polls as the number one issue facing the country despite attempts by MSM to ignore it. Reason’s position is simply irrational.
“the basic fact that we do not have the wherewithal to absorb these people” This is not a fact. It’s not even a reasonable opinion. In addition, it seems to be based on the assumption that American taxpayers would have to provide welfare benefits to most or all of them which is demonstrably false. The number of illegal aliens living in the U.S. has hovered around twelve million for about a decade and almost NONE of them are receiving welfare benefits.
Bullshit.
In addition, it seems to be based on the assumption that American taxpayers would have to provide welfare benefits to most or all of them which is demonstrably false.
I see you live in a world of make believe and without facts. How much is currently spent on these benefits? I gave you the numbers above. You rely on ignorance.
“The number of illegal aliens living in the U.S. has hovered around twelve million for about a decade” because nobody has done a credible estimate in more than a decade.
Wasn’t the best estimate between 25-30 million 8 years ago? I know large numbers supposedly self-deported during covid, but claiming 12m at this point is silly especially with the current rates.
the basic fact that we do not have the wherewithal to absorb these people” This is not a fact.
Hey, look at that. Yet another person in the comments that is totally ignorant of Economics 101.
Say, did you go to college? If so, I’m assuming your major didn’t require this class because a simple supply and demand graph proves you to be shocking ignorant.
The United States, believe it or not, is not geared to clothe, feed, and house over 2 million additional citizens a year and that is actually a fact. And that isn’t talking about welfare, that’s simply talking about the amount of goods in each category that actually exist.
People talk about inflation driving up the cost of things, but they rarely talk about expanding the demand for a thing without expanding the supply by an equal measure.
You must be young or stupid, perhaps both, since this was well covered during the debates surrounding the ACA. Welcome to adulthood, kiddo. There are always trade off’s, and in this case the trade off is literally at the expense of natural born citizens one way or another.
If they aren’t qualified to fill jobs in Mexico what makes them qualified to fill jobs in the US?
This article seems like a willful missing of the point of Johnson’s statement. The point is that it’s idiotic to actively plan to let a bunch of illegal migrants through every day before you start trying to stop them. Of course nobody believes that you’re going to end up with absolutely zero migrants making it across, but having a quota of illegal border crossings to meet each day so that the border can be secured sounds like something Joseph Heller would come up with.
Simple solution: DON’T FREAKING STOP THEM! Legalize them all, check their ID at the border to make sure they are not known criminals, and turn them loose on our side of the border.
I put it at 100% odds you live nowhere near a border state and so are ignorant to the costs born for your wishes. Hope Abbot targets your city next.
I disagree with that “solution,” but that doesn’t really affect my point: if the author wanted to argue for a more welcoming immigration policy, fine, make that argument, but pretending to misunderstand Johnson in order to write an entire article that doesn’t speak to his point and refutes a claim that no one relevant is actually making just seems silly and makes them look clueless.
That really only solves the problem of them being in the country illegally and none of the 2nd or 3rd order problems completely open borders with a generous welfare state creates.
Of course they are.
Its the sophistry they’re taught in school nowadays – seize on something hyperbolic your opponent said and then treat it to a reductio ad absurdam as if that’s what they really meant.
Its meant to ‘win’ arguments not by providing a better case for your side but by being a form of ‘informational warfare’ designed to drain cognitive assets until you you’re trying to defend yourself against 50 irrelevant fronts and you forget what the fuck you were talking about in the first place.
They don’t care about not knowing what they’re talking about because they’re used to doublethink.
Illegal – but not criminal. From that bastion of conservatism, the Cato Institute: “The results are similar to our other work on illegal immigration and crime in Texas. In 2018, the illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 782 per 100,000 illegal immigrants, 535 per 100,000 legal immigrants, and 1,422 per 100,000 native‐born Americans. The illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 45 percent below that of native‐born Americans in Texas. The general pattern of native‐born Americans having the highest criminal conviction rates followed by illegal immigrants and then with legal immigrants having the lowest holds for all of other specific types of crimes such as violent crimes, property crimes, homicide, and sex crimes.
https://www.cato.org/blog/new-research-illegal-immigration-crime-0
Do they still skew their data by excluding those that are deported from the rate and ignore multiple types of crime?
Yeap. They have always done that. The Lott study in Arizona shows they are at a higher rate proportionally in prison. Those criminals are deported post sentence. These then count as not counting in the CATO statistic.
But it works on the ignorant.
Note that it’s a 2018 study that’s being cited.
Every illegal alien staying and working in the US commits numerous felonies: identity theft, forgery, etc. They have to: otherwise, they couldn’t exist in the country. It is simply that the powers that be have decided not to prosecute those felonies.
The statistics themselves are bullshit too. The rate of felonies among illegal aliens counts those who haven’t been deported; since many alien felons get deported (all of them should be!), the Cato numbers greatly underestimate rates. On top of that, illegal aliens suspected of felonies can easily flee abroad and never even get arrested.
Furthermore, if you come to the US illegally and work in a blue collar profession, you are defrauding US tax payers to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars per year. That should be a felony.
Finally, the Cato Institute is a shill for corporatists; they represent neither libertarian nor liberal nor rational policies.
Cato also includes legal immigration which pre screens against crimes through the vetting process.
Also, and NOYB touched on this, the CATO stat is for criminal CONVICTIONS. Besides not counting as a conviction the ones that are deported, it’s also only taking into account the ones who committed a crime, were identified, arrested, and convicted. I could be wrong, but it seems to me it might be easier to avoid identification and arrest (much less the final step of conviction) if you don’t have a home address listed in the database, and possibly don’t have fingerprints on file (those who come in without detection aren’t stopping to be fingerprinted), etc.
It would be difficult, but not impossible, to determine how many crimes are roughly committed by all illegal aliens. If someone is murdered and the police don’t have a suspect, the murderer could have been a natural born citizen or an illegal. We wouldn’t know. Some portion of the unsolved murders (and rapes, robberies, etc) were committed by illegals, but going by convictions treats it as though they don’t exist.
It’s worse than that: it’s for convicted felons who are still in the country and can be identified in statistics. Most convicted felons who are also illegal aliens are removed from the country, so they don’t show up in statistics anymore.
If Biden did his job on deportations, the rate of felonies by illegal aliens would drop to zero because they would all get deported. But obviously that doesn’t mean illegal aliens commit no felonies.
The argument that if you can’t stop them all, we shouldn’t stop any is childish and ridiclous. No wonder no one takes Fiona seriously on immigration. It might be the worst thing I have ever seen written in Reason.
Have you forgotten Shiksa or whatever her name was?
How many illegal border crossings take place between North and South Korea?
All of them, from what I understand.
If zero illegal crossings is an unattainable goal, the status quo of allowing 2+ million annually is a pipe dream. Even after numerous instances of even sanctuary cities not having the capability to deal with a small fraction of illegal immigrants, resorting to hotels, schools and recreational centres, you still refuse to give acknowledge the faults of your pie-in-the-sky beliefs.
It’s impossible to stop all corruption in government so we should allow elected officials to steal an unlimited amount of money without consequence.
Several billion people in the world want to immigrate to the US. You cannot reduce that demand for immigration meaningfully by increasing supply by a few million. All you are doing is making an already bad problem worse.
‘Zero Illegal Crossings’ Is an Unattainable Goal for the Border
It is a reasonable ideal to strive for. And we can get pretty close to it. With the right policies, the US could have less than a few thousand illegal border crossings per year.
What are the right policies? Stiff penalties for people caught crossing the border illegally, stiff penalties for people living in the US illegally, elimination of all government services for illegals, and stiff penalties for companies that knowingly employ or do business with illegals. Those are, in fact, already the laws on the books, we just need to enforce them.
Legal immigration is numerically at about the right level (1 million per year), but should be refocused from family-based immigration to skill based immigration.
What are the right policies? Stiff penalties for people caught crossing the border illegally, stiff penalties for people living in the US illegally, elimination of all government services for illegals, and stiff penalties for companies that knowingly employ or do business with illegals. Those are, in fact, already the laws on the books, we just need to enforce them.
Tut tut. The Biden administration, through NPR, assures me that its hands are tied, at least until the Ukraine gets another hundred billion or so more in funding.
Deport all the illegals to the Ukraine?
There are a bunch of military aged males among them…
“Welcome to America. Here’s your M4, there’s the troop carrier to Ukraine. Ammo issued on arrival.”
1 all assets for all ngo’s assisting the illegal invaders get seized.
2. All central and south American invades get sent back.
3. All invaders that had to fly to central America to then come in get executed.
No legal immigration is not just fine at the current level.
I think even if we achieved a perfect zero government anarchy we’d have a problem with immigration. Some cultures just don’t play well with others. It’s not a matter of skin tone or anything like that. Some of the groups that immigrated into the US in the past, even with their pasty white skin, didn’t mix well with the people who were here before them. It took a few generations for the new group to meld with the old.
We can take in Hispanic people, previous influxes of Hispanic people worked fine so we can take in more, just not all of them and not all at once. We need controlled immigration from our southern border and Mexico doesn’t want to play along. They want the US to be their pressure valve. As such a wall seems a good idea. We don’t need one with Canada, yet. They are willing to play fair with immigration. Mostly.
If governments stayed entirely out of the picture — neither pushing their unwanted to cross nor waving money at everybody — immigrants would have to stay with friends or relatives and get a job, or become the easiest criminals to catch because they don’t know the culture, language, or laws, and have no one to help them fight Johnny Law.
But until that day when governments butt out, the pipe dream of harmless immigrants remains a pipe dream.
Agreed.
LOL “Border Hawks”
Catchier than emptytheprisons though, to be sure
A reasonable and beneficial immigration and visiting worker policy depends on greatly improved border security and enforcement. We can’t have one without the other. We need to admit foreigners selectively, choosing those likely to benefit our country, in numbers we can realistically accommodate. We can’t do that as long as the border is so wide open that anyone can literally walk around our rules and policies.
And as others have already pointed out, insisting on zero or nothing is retarded.
Hey cunt, how many illegals are you housing?
It is already illegal to be here without the right papers.
It I’d already illegal to hire a person without the right papers.
And yet migrants come here because despite that America is still a land of opportunity. And thankfully so!
To truly stop migration then America has to no longer be a land of opportunity *for them*. Laws alone won’t do that.
Do people bitch and moan and yell xenophobia/racism when those laws are enforced?
Why yes, yes they do.
And the Democrats are working hard to make that (America not being a land of opportunity) come to fruition.
“‘Zero Illegal Crossings’ Is an Unattainable Goal for the Border”
—
Therefore, according to Democrats and open border supporters, everyone and anyone should be able to cross the border without questions. It’s only fair!
Crossing the border illegally is a victimless crime….says those who are not the victims.
“ICE arrests 171 people in country illegally and wanted for serious crimes”
https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/immigration/2024/02/01/ice-operation-171-arrested-migrants-serious-crimes
Having border security DOES make it less attractable.
You know you’re getting sold pure BS when the premise doesn’t even line up.
Any workable border deal should focus on ways to make legal immigration more accessible—and more attractive—than illegal immigration.
Uh, no, it should focus on taking away the things that illegal immigrants want to abuse – healthcare, housing, welfare, food, education, consequence-free crime, etc – and remove their incentive to come here illegally. Make it so that the only people interested in immigrating to America are the ones who truly want to be Americans.
You can set traps and patch the holes in your wall, and you absolutely should – but if you really want to stop the rats from getting in, take the cheese off the table.
This is something that neither Republicans/Trumpublicans OR Democrats ever want to consider.
Employers who currently hire illegal persons (and they are persons**, not animals) should start paying double or triple-minimum wage with full benefits. We might be amazed at the numbers of citizens who will suddenly want these jobs.
** People who think an embryo is a person really ought to stand up and show up for this fact, yes?
Why would they pay double or triple with benefits? The whole point is that by hiring illegals, they can operate under the table without a minimum wage at all.
I mean, if there’s one upside to this whole illegals thing – it’s getting around labor laws.
Nobody denies their humanity…
They open borders crowd does seem to love that particular strawman, though.
We don’t need to make legal immigration more attractive. We need to make criminal illegal immigration repulsive.
‘Zero Illegal Crossings’ Is an Unattainable Goal for the Border
I was told $15 Now! was an unattainable goal for progressives. I’m remembering back when the minimum wage was $15 an hour. Simpler times… simpler times.
“‘Zero Illegal Crossings’ Is an Unattainable Goal for the Border”
Zero emergency room deaths is an unattainable goal also. Should we just give up on emergency rooms?
Should we just give up on emergency rooms?
For the most part, yes, but for other reasons.
I used to ape the “the wall won’t stop illegal immigration and only cost billions.” line, too. And spout platitudes about needing “immigration reform” instead. Whatever that meant. I was convinced that “open borders”, whether spouted by ancaps and socialists, or by minute men and Trumpers was a canard and a red herring. It would never happen and nobody’s that stupid.
Well, I’ve Had to rethink some things in recent years. The value of having an administration who loudly declared they didn’t want illegals suddenly seems a simple and priceless solution to keeping numbers of migrants swarming the gates relatively low.
When it comes to so many of the libertarian planks, corporatist Neo-commies have snatched the ball from them and run it into the retard zone. And the reason the Reason/Cato bunch are so completely worthless in their prescriptions (post 2020), is that they still haven’t noticed this simple reality. Or they’re being payed not to notice.
The fact is that the Biden administration has been as loud as any in saying stay away. The fact is if you’re a person thinking about coming to the US and you watch Fox news or listen to any of a number of Republican Congress people what you hear is the border is open.
Lol. This is what we in the Royal Navy call “a lie”.
This is a ludicrous article. Calling for zero illegal crossings is just rhetoric. Everybody knows that you can never successfully achieve either all or nothing of something that involves human behavior by any means. However, it is aspirational rhetoric and totally reasonable from a political perspective. We know the dying branch of the libertarian party represented by the Reason website is all in on open borders, so good luck with that.
If it is rhetorical then say it in a way that makes sense. Such as ” I would like the number of illegal border crossing to be zero, I understand that is not possible but I think we can do much better and get the number down significantly.” The fact is the “zero” is put out there because Mike Johnson thinks that what people want to hear.
In any other context the argument would just sound stupid.
“We’re not against legal gun ownership. We’re only against illegal gun ownership. And oh, by the way, all private gun ownership is hereby illegal except with a permit granted by the Sheriff and the Sheriff is not issuing any permits!”
But keep pretending that banning almost all immigration and then claiming that you’re not against legal immigration doesn’t sound just that stupid!
Right. We can’t get to zero, so let’s leave the border wide open and let ten million a year come into the U.S. Typical logic from the wildly misnamed “Reason” website.
It does seem like a strange claim to say that the president currently doesn’t have the authority to shut down illegal crossings of the border. Isn’t the law that people need to cross as official border stations and are not allowed to cross elsewhere? Seems like plenty to give the executive the authority to do whatever is possible legally to stop illegal crossings.