As we enter our second decade of continuous zero-to-subzero net illegal immigration from Mexico, Trump is celebrating by sending the National Guard to the southern border.
Presumably while there, they can pick up some litter and rescue some cats from trees, as they contemplate their fate as a sentient but equally pointless wall.
Maybe they’re going to stop the massive caravan of people that are currently traveling through Mexico with the intention of entering the US.
Good point, just because existing border security stops the Spring caravan every year doesn’t mean we can’t stop it biglier this year. Or maybe maintaining net-zero illegal immigration for ten years has made our border security so sleepy that the National Guard can take over while they nap.
There are dangerous people. Period. Whether or not a few of them exist in a group that crosses the border has little point. We already have lots of dangerous people in this country who were born in this country to people who were also born in this country. It’s paranoia to single out illegal immigrants as some sort of significant threat worthy of mobilizing armed forces. As though there isn’t something better the Guard could be doing.
This dismissal, while attractive, ignores more interesting crime-and-immigration-related data though. Percentage-wise, illegal immigrants (and immigrants in general) are less likely to commit crimes than their native-born counterparts. This makes sense because illegal immigrants go to great lengths to avoid contact with law enforcement (such as not reporting when they are victims of crime, which is why sanctuary city/state laws improve public safety). So, theoretically, more immigrants means less crime per capita. That’s overall crime rates, though – there might be per-crime exceptions. For example, I suspect hate crimes may go up in areas experiencing increased immigration rates, but again that says less about the immigrants than the native-born citizens.