New York Times: Trump’s Border Reforms Are Working

A New York Times‘ article on the migrant caravans shows President Donald Trump’s border security reforms are successfully curbing the northward flow of migrants.

One-third of the 6,000 migrants who reached the border just in the November caravan have given up their effort to cross the border, the Times says: “Data from Mexican officials suggested that harsh policies he has introduced to crack down on asylum seekers may already be achieving some of its intended effects.”

The article by the establishment outlet is important because it validates Trump’s analysis and proposed fixes for the growing problem of cheap-labor migration. For example, the article shows that Trump’s critics admit his policies are working: “It may look like it’s working in the short term,” Ms. [Michelle] Brané said, “But I don’t think it’s a long-term solution. It’s driving people further into the shadows and that’s exactly the opposite of what we [pro-migation groups] want.”

The New York Times article includes so much good news for Trump that he promoted it by retweeting via Twitter:

But Trump’s success is not enough to block all of the migrants. Their numbers are rising because U.S. employers will hire more illegal aliens in a good economy and also because many new migrants are hoping to follow the success of relatives and neighbors who got into the United States under the loose rules established by President Barack Obama.

The New York Times article admits that the migrants are not fleeing political or religious persecution but are seeking a decent life or temporary jobs, as Trump’ deputies repeatedly spotlight. Neither of those goals meets the legal test for getting asylum, especially by migrants who already can apply for asylum and jobs in Mexico.

In contrast, Democratic legislators encourage the migrants by describing them as humanitarian refugees who are fleeing crime and poverty, and who deserve U.S. sympathy and aid. In fact, Democrats used the 2019 budget process to fund aid and transportation assistance for the economic migrants.

The border protection fight will never end because the growing wave of migrants will rationally look for any legal loopholes in the border wall, such as the Flores judge-created loophole which provides a quick release and work permits to migrants who bring children.

Many loopholes have been cut in the wall by progressive legislators, business groups, and by judges — and many migrants happily use them to move themselves and their children into the United States. The New York Times admitted:

Ela Marina Rodriguez, 49, and her daughter, Duña Ventura, 16, arrived in Tijuana about three weeks ago and were taken to the small shelter by a man whom they had been traveling with. Ms. Rodriguez said she had heard on the news that bringing her daughter would guarantee them admission into the United States, and the two thought if they could make it through the journey they would have an opportunity for a better life.

“That’s why we came all this way,” she said. “I’ve dreamed of doing this my entire life but I was afraid. Hiding through the desert and the mountains, I never had the courage before, until we heard they were giving papers to families.”

In turn, Trump and his deputies are trying to patch the progressives’ legal loopholes faster than they are created by the pro-migration coalition of migrants, American lawyers, cartel-affiliated coyotes, and Democratic politicians.

For example, Trump’s deputies are now requiring some migrants to wait in Mexico until their claim for asylum can be heard by a judge in a year or two. That is a huge step because migrants will not pay the cost of moving up to the U.S. border if they cannot get jobs in the U.S. labor market.

[Rodriguez’s] eyes grew wide when she heard from a reporter that some asylum seekers are being made to wait in Mexico. She sighed heavily and replied: “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t want to be here [in Mexico].”

Ms. Rodriguez said that “honestly, yes” she would cross illegally if that is what it takes to get into the United States. But if she is unable to gain entry to the United States, she said, she would likely turn back to Honduras. “I mean, what else can you do in that case?”

In this move-and-countermove battle, Democrats and Republicans in Congress jointly expanded one migration route in the 2019 budget deal.

For years, migrants and the coyotes have moved children and teenagers up to the border so they can be transported by U.S. government officials to a family member living illegally in the United States. Trump has been trying to close that “Unaccompanied Alien Child” loophole by arresting illegal aliens who offer to pick up children and teenagers from the government-run shelters far from the border. But the new budget bars the child protection agencies from revealing the identities of illegal migrants to the immigration enforcement agencies.

The New York Times article notes that many migrants are successfully crossing the border, including the 4,000 from the November caravan. Many of those will hide in the huge population of illegal migrants once they are ordered home by judges over the next two years. Many more migrants are traveling north in organized convoys of several busses, and many of them will get through the border via the various catch and release loopholes.

But that rising northward flow will have to get around Trump’s expanding “Remain in Mexico” policy and past the slowly lengthening mileage of border walls.

Read the entire article here.

Business lobbies back the federal government’s economic policy of using both legal and illegal migration to boost economic growth. But that policy also shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors by flooding the market with cheap white-collar and blue-collar foreign labor.

That annual inflow of roughly one million legal immigrants — as well as the population of two million visa workers and eight million working illegal immigrants — floods the labor market. The flood spikes profits and Wall Street values by shrinking salaries for 150 million blue-collar and white-collar employees and especially wages for the four million young Americans who join the labor force each year.

The federal government’s cheap labor policy widens wealth gaps, reduces high tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.

Immigration also steers investment and wealth away from towns in Heartland states because coastal investors can more easily hire and supervise the large immigrant populations who prefer to live in coastal cities. In turn, that coastal investment flow drives up coastal real estate prices and pushes poor Americans, including Latinos and blacks, out of prosperous cities such as Berkeley and Oakland.