Smugglers Send First Caravan of African Migrants to U.S.

The first caravan of African migrants arrived at the U.S. border on May 31, spotlighting the risk that millions of Asians and Africans will follow the Central Americans’ catch-and-release pathway into the U.S. labor market.

“This is the first large group apprehended in the Del Rio Sector and the first large group of people from Africa – including nationals from Angola, Cameroon and Congo – apprehended on the Southwest border this year,” said a press statement from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. “Agents performing line watch operations apprehended the group after they illegally crossed the Rio Grande into the U.S. around 10:30 p.m.”

Officials need to detain and deport the African caravan or else many more will follow them to the United States, warned Jessica Vaughan, the policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies.

“Once the word gets out that the system is so broken that we will not even detain people from [Africa], then we will see an onslaught of arrivals from all over the world that we have never had before,” she said. 

The main loophole consists of the Flores court regulation, which prevents border agencies from holding a person for more than 20 days if he or she brings a child and also claims asylum. Once released, the economic migrants are entitled to job permits — and can easily hide in the large illegal population of at least 12 million people when they eventually lose their asylum cases. 

If released — and nearly all adults who arrive with children are released — the migrants can get jobs to pay their smuggling debts. Subsequently, many migrants rehire their smugglers to send over their family members, creating an illegal chain-migration process.

“There are just so many people in the world who want to take advantage of the situation,” Vaughan said. “We’ve already emptied out a big part of Central America … Imagine the number of people from African and Asia who would try to take advantage of this.”

In December, Breitbart reported:

The Gallup World Poll survey, which interviewed 453,122 adults in 152 countries between 2015 and 2017, found that 15 per cent of the world’s adult population would like to move to another country if they had the chance.

Noting this proportion had risen from 13 per cent between 2010 and 2012, and 14 per cent between 2013 and 2016, the pollster commented that rising populism and a backlash to mass immigration seen in many Western electorates has apparently not deterred would-be migrants from wanting to seek a better standard of living elsewhere.

Regionally, the desire to migrate was found to be highest in sub-Saharan Africa, where 33 per cent of adults wanted to migrate permanently, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (27 per cent), European nations outside of the EU (26 per cent), and the Middle East and North Africa (24 per cent).

…

The U.S. remains by far the most popular country for people wanting to move abroad, with 21 per cent of potential migrants selecting it as their top destination, with Canada, Germany, France, Australia, and the UK each also ranking highly.

Smugglers have already created the networks to import many more Africans to the United States, she said. 

“There has always been Africans using the route from though South America to Central America, through Mexico, to ask for asylum … That is a well-beaten path. But what’s new is that they came in a group, like a mini caravan, where before they came in as onesies and twosies,” she said.

But the huge volume of Central American migrants means the border agencies have fewer detention spaces to hold people while they consider the migrants’ pleas for asylum. That means there is more pressure on agency officials to release the Africans — which would signal an open door for the next wave of Africans, Vaughan warned.

The smugglers “have seen the great biz opportunities, and they can really do volume … [now] they can bring them all over in a huge group and dump them on the border officers [to claim asylum]… I’m surprised it took them so long to recognize this,” she added. 

U.S. immigration policy is constantly creating new incentives and pressures on foreigners to migrate into the United States, said Vaughan.

For example, the diversity lottery provides green cards to people from countries that have few people living in the United States. Once the lottery moves those people into the United States, they summon their relatives and create a legal and illegal pipeline of migrants. And when a country is removed from the lottery because so many of its people have moved into the United States, the left-behind people step up their efforts to migrate illegally, via such mechanisms as marriage fraud, she said.

Border officials are already seeing more illegal migrants from India who hope to live and work amid the growing number of legal Indian immigrants into the United States, she said. Legal immigration, she said, “creates pathways and demand where none existed before.”

India has a population of 1.35 billion, and a per-capita income of roughly $2,000. That population includes roughly 486 million people aged between ten and 30, many of whom can use their cell phones to learn about the catch-and-release loopholes in the U.S. border.

For comparison, the U.S.-born population is just 280 million, including 87 million people aged between ten and 30. That ratio is roughly five young Indians for every one American.

Africa’s population is huge and is growing very fast. For example, the African population of people aged ten to 30 is roughly 489 million, or five Africans for every one similarly-aged American. But the number of African children under age 11 is 380 million, compared to 40 million American children under age 11.

Many young Africans are already making their way into Europe, drawn by proximity, smugglers, a pro-migration political class, and the promise of rewards, which are made visible by the cell phones of their peers already in Europe.

Asia’s population growth is expected to stop in 2050 at around 5.25 billion, according to U.N. predictions.

Africa’s population, however, is expected to hit 2.75 billion by 2060 and four billion by 2100.

In contrast, Europe population is expected to fall from its current peak of almost 750 million to 650 million by 2010. The United States’ population is roughly 325 million now and is expected to grow to 450 million in 2100.

The forecasts predict a combined U.S.-Europe population of 1.2 billion Americans and Europeans in 2100, facing nine billion African and Asians.

The huge difference in populations and wealth on each side of these regional and national borders is expected to create huge business and political pressure for massive population movements that could completely transform the receiving countries, such as the U.K., Germany, Sweden, and the United States. For example, the movement of 100 million Africans into Europe could create a huge windfall for real estate investors.

Nonetheless, journalists in the established media ignored the first African caravan. Washington Post editor Kevin Sieff, however, posted his sympathy for the migrants:

Immigration Numbers

Each year, roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after graduating from high school or university.

But the federal government then imports about 1.1 million legal immigrants and refreshes a resident population of roughly 1.5 million white-collar visa workers — including approximately one million H-1B workers — and approximately 500,000 blue-collar visa workers.

The government also prints out more than one million work permits for foreigners, tolerates about eight million illegal workers, and does not punish companies for employing the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants who sneak across the border or overstay their legal visas each year.

This policy of inflating the labor supply boosts economic growth for investors because it ensures that employers do not have to compete for American workers by offering higher wages and better working conditions.

This policy of flooding the market with cheap, foreign, white-collar graduates and blue-collar labor also shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors, even as it also widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and hurts children’s schools and college educations. It also pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions. The labor policy also moves business investment and wealth from the heartland to the coastal cities, explodes rents and housing costs, shrivels real estate values in the Midwest, and rewards investors for creating low-tech, labor-intensive workplaces.