Discussion: Illegal Immigration, Immigration Reform, and Other Citizenship Issues II

[Black Narcissus]

Trump administration is filling folks with fear. Fear tactics towards a group of ppl. Now, where have we've seen that before? History tends to repeat it self and such. I never in my life thought we would ever see a bunch of children in cages, not in this country, not in this age of modern life, but here we are, there they are, still separated.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-st...irl-was-beheaded-after-seeing-grandmother-die

Woman ‘still in denial’ after husband allegedly dismembered by neighbor

Illegal immigrant killed 3 after 'sanctuary' release from custody, ICE says

If you still think we don't need a wall after all the evidence I've been giving you then honestly I don't know what to tell you. Your head is too far in the sand.

You've not given evidence. You've given a grab bag of tragic deaths and expect to base policy on the emotional response. You still haven't admitted that crossings are at a low not seen in a long time. Well... do you believe that or not? Answer the question. Is this a true statistic or not? And if you believe it's not true then you have to provide facts to back it up. So far... Nada. So... Whose head is in the sand?



The Murder of Mollie Tibbetts and Illegal Immigrant Crime: The Facts

I recently received new data from Texas on the number of convictions by crime and immigration status as well as the number of individuals convicted (they are slightly different). This Texas data is the best data that we have on the commission of murder by immigrants by specific legal status. In 2016, 746 native-born Texans, 32 illegal immigrants, and 28 legal immigrants were convicted of homicide. In that year, the homicide conviction rate for native-born Americans is Texas was 3.2 per 100,000 natives while it was 1.8 per 100,000 illegal immigrants and 0.9 per 100,000 legal immigrants (Figure 1). The illegal immigrant conviction rate for homicide was 44 percent below that of native-born Americans in 2016 in Texas.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1745-9125.12175

Despite substantial public, political, and scholarly attention to the issue of immigration and crime, we know little about the criminological consequences of undocumented immigration. As a result, fundamental questions about whether undocumented immigration increases violent crime remain unanswered. In an attempt to address this gap, we combine newly developed estimates of the unauthorized population with multiple data sources to capture the criminal, socioeconomic, and demographic context of all 50 states and Washington, DC, from 1990 to 2014 to provide the first longitudinal analysis of the macro‐level relationship between undocumented immigration and violence. The results from fixed‐effects regression models reveal that undocumented immigration does not increase violence. Rather, the relationship between undocumented immigration and violent crime is generally negative, although not significant in all specifications. Using supplemental models of victimization data and instrumental variable methods, we find little evidence that these results are due to decreased reporting or selective migration to avoid crime. We consider the theoretical and policy implications of these findings against the backdrop of the dramatic increase in immigration enforcement in recent decades.

Is Illegal Immigration Linked to More or Less Crime? - FactCheck.org

Research published in Social Science Quarterly in 2016 looked at rates of violent crime and drug arrests by state for 2012 to 2014 and compared them with statistics on the foreign‐born and Mexican nationals living in the United States, as well as estimates of the undocumented foreign and undocumented Mexican population by state. The study found no association between immigrant population size and increased violent crime, though it found a “small but significant association between undocumented immigrant populations and drug-related arrests.”

Oh... And... You do realize that any statement that Trump is the only president to do anything is a sham you choose to believe too, right?

Carefully calibrated revisions to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration enforcement priorities and practices achieved two goals: Increasing penalties against unauthorized border crossers by putting far larger shares into formal removal proceedings rather than voluntarily returning them across the border, as had been longstanding practice; and making noncitizens with criminal records the top enforcement target. While there were fewer removals and returns under the Obama administration than each of the two prior administrations (see Table 1), those declines must be understood against the backdrop of a significant reduction in border apprehensions that resulted from a sharp decrease in unauthorized inflows, in particular of Mexicans. Analysts have attributed this trend, which began under the Bush administration, to improved economic conditions in Mexico, reduced postrecession job demand in the United States, ramped-up enforcement, and the increased use of different enforcement tactics at the border.

The enforcement priorities and policies, which evolved over the years, represented a significant departure from those of the Bush and Clinton administrations. As detailed below, the Obama-era policies represented the culmination of a gradual but consistent effort to narrow its enforcement focus to two key groups: The deportation of criminals and recent unauthorized border crossers.

These figures demonstrate the Obama administration’s focus on formal removals instead of returns, with formal removals under Obama far outpacing those of the Bush and Clinton administrations even as returns were far lower. This policy to ensure that removals have a lasting legal consequence likely reduced the number of unauthorized immigrants attempting to cross the border multiple times: Overall, recidivism along the border fell from 29 percent in FY 2007 to 14 percent in FY 2014, and was much higher for migrants given voluntary return (31 percent) than for those subjected to formal removal (18 percent), according to CDS data.

Evolution of Enforcement: Prioritizing Criminals and Recent Border Crossers

Over the course of the Obama administration there was a pronounced shift in focus to the removal of recent border crossers and criminals rather than ordinary status violators apprehended in the U.S. interior. The underlying reasoning was to deter illegal border crossing and remove unauthorized immigrants before they become integrated into U.S. communities. As shown in Figure 1, interior removals decreased sharply from 181,798 in FY 2009 to 65,332 in FY 2016, while border removals stayed high and increased, from 207,525 to 279,022 over the same period.

I know it sucks... But read these quotes. Refute them if you can. You won't. You and yours' heels are too dug in on an emotional level. But... C'mon, you can't take a few minutes to just READ?


So... Can you refute these statistics? And do so without simply saying "It's all a lie, a conspiracy by the LEFT!!"


If I or someone else says "Trump is a ****ing liar" we aren't pulling it out of our anuses to make ourselves feel good. It's because he flagrantly says things that are untrue to a near categorical level. Please tell me how the fact that most illegal entry ISN'T done via the border? So, if that's the case... Why are you and others obsessed about the border? I think the answer is an outdated idea about how the actual modern world functions.

Think that the wall would stop drugs? Well... You have your head in the sand... Or elsewhere, but it's clear you and yours line of sight is being blocked somehow.

Trump Says Border Wall Will Stop Drugs. Here’s What a DEA Intel Report Says.

The DEA report does not address the wall but details how drugs enter the country, and many of the examples illustrate that it is not through land routes. “According to DEA reporting, the majority of the heroin available in New Jersey originates in Colombia and is primarily smuggled into the United States by Colombian and Dominican groups via human couriers on commercial flights to the Newark International Airport,” the document states.

The report, which focuses heavily on the growth of Dominican trafficking groups, outlines a variety of ways drugs enter the United States, including via couriers carrying cocaine-filled suitcases on commercial flights — sometimes with the help of airline employees — or via mail.

The drugs are often transported by boat from the Bahamas or Venezuela up through Miami. The main hubs for transport include the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

“Due to Puerto Rico’s proximity and status as a U.S. territory, Dominican Republic-based traffickers commonly direct drug shipments to Puerto Rico, where they are partitioned into small units and sent directly to the Northeast, mainly through the U.S. postal system, parcel mail service, and couriers on commercial flights,” the report states.

At the end of the intelligence report, the DEA makes a recommendation, but it doesn’t involve building a wall.

So once more... Trump's own government pretty much produces information that says he's full of ****. So... People that choose to believe him are choosing to believe BS.


To repeat though... Folk like you are lost causes since you won't even take the time to do something like, uh... Read.

Here's what would be refreshing... Prove me wrong. Show you can take this information and honestly analyze it. Just take time to read. It's so simple.

The problem is that what you will learn won't line up with how you "feel".

Too bad. That's life.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

Trump administration is filling folks with fear. Fear tactics towards a group of ppl. Now, where have we've seen that before? History tends to repeat it self and such. I never in my life thought we would ever see a bunch of children in cages, not in this country, not in this age of modern life, but here we are, there they are, still separated.

Meanwhile Republicans/Libertarians/Evangelicals for over forty ****ing years have painted themselves as the proud warriors of humanity against the overreach of the state. Their heads are so far up their own asses they can't even begin to see the irony in what they do. What could be a bigger overreach of the state to not only en masse separate parents from children based on bad policy and not criminal behavior BUT the kicker is, while that would be bad for a nation's own citizens, this is being done to people who aren't even from said nation.

 

[CJ]

A 2017 cost analysis by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) puts the figure of illegal immigration costs to U.S. taxpayers at $155 billion annually. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, however, that cost is much higher: $338.3 billion.

Costs of illegal immigration demand significant reform measures

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

Costs of illegal immigration demand significant reform measures

First...

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) - Media Bias/Fact Check

According the right leaning Cato Institute, FAIR has published questionable research that is “fatally flawed.” Cato reports: “Its recent report, ‘The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers (2017)’ by Matthew O’Brien, Spencer Raley, and Jack Martin, estimates that the net fiscal costs of illegal immigration to U.S. taxpayers is $116 billion. FAIR’s report reaches that conclusion by vastly overstating the costs of illegal immigration, undercounting the tax revenue they generate, inflating the number of illegal immigrants, counting millions of U.S. citizens as illegal immigrants, and by concocting a method of estimating the fiscal costs that is rejected by all economists who work on this subject.

A factual search reveals a poor track record with fact checkers.

You and yours don't have facts. You just don't.

Once more... Are illegal crossings lower now than say 20 years ago, yes or no?

Do more illegals come her via transit hubs than via the Southern Border, yes or no?

Do more drugs come in via ports of entry than across the Southern Border, yes or no? Answer the questions. CAN YOU answer the question? I mean... You do realize that if this were a court case that I would have won a long time ago and you would have been given a contempt charge, right?

Read the links and refute them or answer the question. At this point frankly, what you are doing is the equivalent of a monkey throwing it's poo.

 

[CJ]

Do more illegals come her via transit hubs than via the Southern Border, yes or no?

Do more drugs come in via ports of entry than across the Southern Border, yes or no? Answer the questions. CAN YOU answer the question? I mean... You do realize that if this were a court case that I would have won a long time ago and you would have been given a contempt charge, right?

Read the links and refute them or answer the question. At this point frankly, what you are doing is the equivalent of a monkey throwing it's poo.

EL PASO, Texas — Special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and agents with U.S. Border Patrol arrested 18 alien smugglers and seized cash, vehicles and more than 1,000 lbs. of marijuana last month in a joint effort.

Special agents assigned to HSI El Paso’s human smuggling group and Border Patrol agents, who are part of HSI’s Border Enforcement Security Task Force (BEST), worked together to identify, locate and arrest smugglers operating alien smuggling organizations in southern New Mexico and the El Paso area.

HSI El Paso, Border Patrol agents arrest 18 alien smugglers, 117 illegal aliens; seize cash, vehicles, drugs

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

HSI El Paso, Border Patrol agents arrest 18 alien smugglers, 117 illegal aliens; seize cash, vehicles, drugs

And? At what point did I even come close to implying that there is no illegal activity along the border? You're acting as though this refutes anything.

Answer the bloody question directly. Am I and literally everyone else right about:

The illegal crossings being at a decades long low?
That Illegals are LESS likely to take part in or be arrested for crimes?
That far more of our drugs are NOT backpacked across the border?

Can you answer any of those? Because at this point you are acting like a petulant child. Don't obfuscate, answer these questions.

If you want to understand why Trump's supporters are thought of the way they are by everyone your inability to:

Read something presented to you.

And

Answer direct questions without resorting to "Whataboutism"?

Yeah... Those are on display and why the character, beliefs and yes general intellect are always looked down upon by the other side.

Seriously... You can't be bothered to READ anything I posted can you? I've read your links. I've easily refuted what you think that information indicated but you can't answer three questions directly. Funny that.

But you expect to have automatic respect for your opinions? Sorry... That's not how it works in the world. It's certainly not how policy within a Democratic Republic should be debated and decided, that's for sure.

Some might even agree that the countries biggest issues are a direct result of humoring the willfully ignorant for too long. The only consolation prize is that the willfully ignorant have currently clustered into one party... And as I am fond of saying these last few days... It's not the Democratic Party.

Also... Thinking that the article you posted about a "big bust" in El Paso translates into some kind of iron clad proof that we need to spend billions on a wall along the border is the immature thinking of a child. It's literally childish in it's thinking. It's the thinking that goes along with supporting someone that literally ****s into gold toilets and thinking he's a tribune of the common man. It's the same thinking that for whatever reason, someone that's never worked a day in his life and who literally spent the past forty years pissing away the fortune his father left him (Uh... Yeah... Guess what? He's got no business acumen. He's literally been living off his father, all through his thirties, forties, fifties and even approaching his sixties. He's never truly accomplished anything great. ) has any kind of understanding of the lives of the average American. Lastly, I know your church leaders have sold you on him being Cyrus. He's not. He can't even spell Cyrus. What he can do it seems is get others to break all the supposed moral codes they claimed loudly and longly ruled their lives. Now? Not so much.

Once more... It's not too late. Some are lost due to stubborness forever but I assume someone out there is reading this and has had enough. All you have to do is accept that you all fooled yourselves and that yes... You ****ed up. Epically. What's more important now is that you understand how badly you ****ed up and honestly make amends. Reject fear mongering. Reject know nothingism. Reject letting your resentments rule you.

You can start today by educating yourselves on Trump's actual history. The information is easily accessible.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

Fact-checking Trump’s claims about a border emergency

"A big majority of the big drugs, the big drug loads don't go through ports of entry. They can't go through ports of entry."

Except of course...

Trump’s own government data undercut his claim.

Trump said he got his numbers from the Homeland Security Department. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is part of Homeland Security, reports that most of the drugs come through ports of entry.

CPB’s Office of Field Operations, working at ports of entry, seized 4,813 pounds of heroin during the first 11 months of fiscal year 2018, through Aug. 31, 2018. During the same period, U.S. Border Patrol, which works between legal ports of entry, seized 532 pounds of heroin.

The data also show that fentanyl, another opioid, was seized at ports of entry at a higher rate than at points between ports of entry. CBP recently intercepted a record amount of fentanyl worth $4.6 million at the Port of Nogales.

Information has its limits. The Congressional Research Service warned in December that "data on seizures are available, but these reflect an unknown portion of total drugs traversing U.S. borders."

In China, "a drug dealer gets a thing called the death penalty. Our criminal list, a drug dealer gets a thing called, how about a fine?"

Does this sound remotely true to anyone? Well... That's because even though he's the POTUS he's apparently totally unaware about how our criminal justice system works or what laws are on the books.

China does have a death penalty for drug dealers: Chinese law says that individuals who smuggle, traffic, transport or manufacture drugs and meet certain conditions can receive a death sentence.

But Trump exaggerated the usual penalty for a U.S. drug dealer. In the federal justice system — which Trump’s administration directly controls — most offenders are sent to prison.

Data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission shows that in fiscal year 2017, more than 95 percent of about 18,000 individuals sentenced in federal drug-trafficking cases got a prison sentence. Less than 3 percent received only probation. And 80.4 percent of those sentenced for simple possession got prison time, said Julie Samuels, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute.

"You have chain migration. Where a bad person comes in, brings 22 or 23 or 35 of his family members because he has his mother, his grandmother, sister, cousin, uncle. They are all in. You know what happened on the west side highway. That young wise guy drove over and killed eight people. … He had many people brought in because he was in the United States."

Once more... He can't help but lie.

This is unproven. Sayfullo Saipov, the Uzbekistan-born suspect on trial for the 2017 truck attack in New York, entered the United States in 2010 through the lottery program. As a green card holder, he could only petition for a spouse and unmarried children to come to the United States. Media reports indicate that Saipov married a woman who already lived in the United States and that their three children were born in the United States.


Trump’s broader criticism of chain migration is exaggerated. Theoretically, one immigrant’s arrival in the United States could lead to the immigration of an aunt or uncle — if the first immigrant becomes a U.S. citizen and petitioned a parent, that parent could eventually become a U.S. citizen and petition his or her siblings.

But no one can directly petition an aunt, uncle, cousin, niece, nephew, in-law relative or grandparent.

"And then you have the lottery — it’s a horror show. Because when countries put people into the lottery, they’re not putting you in. They’re putting some very bad people in the lottery. It’s common sense."

Again... A clueless and easily checked lie.

Countries don't send immigrants to the U.S. lottery. The lottery is administered by the United States, not foreign governments. Applicants are randomly selected, but they must meet education and work requirements to be eligible. Those who make it to the visa application process are vetted with background checks and security screenings.

"We will have a national emergency, and we will then be sued, and they will sue us in the Ninth Circuit, even though it shouldn’t be there."

He presents this as though he's being done some injustice... But this is just how the government is SUPPOSED to work.

Here’s why we can expect lawsuits challenging the emergency order reaching the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, once lower courts have made their rulings: A large chunk of the U.S.-Mexico border falls within the circuit’s jurisdiction, specifically the 27 percent of the border that’s in California and Arizona.


@CJ

What can be said about a person that chooses to blindly follow a liar and fool? Seriously, he did nothing but continually lie yesterday. Every statement was practically a lie. And you think such a person is an ideal or even pragmatic leader? Why do you like that he lies to you and all of us?

And please... Refute the corrections I provided. You have a choice... To believe sourced journalism or a well known lying fool who can't even tell you how tall he really is.

 

[Lighthouse]

Krypton, you are really working yourself up over 1 poster who should probably be ignored anyway. The large text is unnecessary, and the moment you realized his arguments were in bad faith, you should have disengaged.

 

[Teelie]

What a senseless tragedy. Thank God Trump is getting us the wall and giving these families justice.

Does this mean that those people who were born here (white people, mind you) should also be deported from the country for drinking and driving? While his being an illegal immigrant is one crime, his drinking and driving is a whole other, unrelated crime.

Typical of a MAGA to (mis)use a baby's death for their own ends while ignoring anything to do with healthcare or safety of children after they are born (until it's a convienent political tool of course).

 

[Donner]

It's actually quite disgusting to use an infant's death like this. Must make some people feel so good about themselves. Yikes.

 

[godisawesome]

Does this mean that those people who were born here (white people, mind you) should also be deported from the country for drinking and driving? While his being an illegal immigrant is one crime, his drinking and driving is a whole other, unrelated crime.

Typical of a MAGA to (mis)use a baby's death for their own ends while ignoring anything to do with healthcare or safety of children after they are born (until it's a convienent political tool of course).

The tragic deaths of those kids isn’t an illegal immigrant case. It’s a drunk driving case. If Trump were being honest about these situations, he’d be heading a new Prohibition Party. Drunk Driving kills people far more reliably than their citizenship status.

But he ain’t, because he’s putting up a fake crisis and trying to give poeple something easy to affix blame to, because life is hard, and on some level, everyone has a psychological weakspot where we give in to impotent weakness and delusions instead of looking for actual solutions.

That’s what MAGA is. A “delightful” little delusion people can tell themselves over and over again because they are scared of the truth, allowing them to impotently swing at phantoms like children playing pretend.

The wall is an impotent, empty gesture from people looking for a placebo to their problems, real and imagined.

 

[CJ]

A Crisis At The Border? The Numbers Say Yes | Investor's Business Daily

Illegal Immigration: Democrats and the mainstream press accuse President Donald Trump of manufacturing a crisis at the border. The numbers tell another story.

As soon as the words "growing humanitarian and security crisis at our Southern border" left Trump's lips in his Oval Office address this week, Democrats and media "fact-checkers" were trying to dispel it as a deliberate lie.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump "must stop manufacturing a crisis, and must reopen the government."

The Department of Homeland Security claims that about 20% of illegal border crossers make it into the country. Other studies, however, say border agents fail to apprehend as much as 50% of illegal crossers.

Even at the lower percentage, that means that 104,000 illegals made it into the country in 2018 alone.

Trump's critics certainly don't bother to mention that those figures only count illegals the border patrol caught. It does not count the ones who eluded border patrol agents and got into the country.

NPR's "fact check" — like countless others — dismissed Trump's claim as false because "illegal border crossings in the most recent fiscal year (ending in September 2018) were actually lower than in either 2016 or 2014."

What they aren't telling you is border patrol agents apprehended more than 100,000 people trying to enter the country illegally in just October and November of last year. Or that that number is way up from the same two months the year before.

Nor do they mention that last year, the border patrol apprehended more than half a million people trying to get into the country illegally. And that number, too, is up from the year before.

Trump's critics certainly don't bother to mention that those figures only count illegals the border patrol caught. It does not count the ones who eluded border patrol agents and got into the country.

The Department of Homeland Security claims that about 20% of illegal border crossers make it into the country. Other studies, however, say border agents fail to apprehend as much as 50% of illegal crossers.

Even at the lower percentage, that means that 104,000 illegals made it into the country in 2018 alone.

Is that not a crisis at the border?

Pelosi and company also don't bother to mention the fact that there are already between 12 million and 22 million illegals — depending on which study you use — in the country today.

Let's put that number in perspective.

At the high end, it means that the illegal population in the U.S. is larger than the entire population of countries like Syria, Chile, the Netherlands and Ecuador. Even if the number is just 12 million, that's still more than the entire population of Sweden, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Ireland and New Zealand.

It is, in short, a massive number.

 

[Sithborg]

Security agencies say no.

Especially when DHS and the DOJ has been caught lying.

EDIT: Those numbers are definitely looking like the false ones.

 

[Donner]

I'm shocked that CJ wouldn't fact check his source. SHOCKED!

 

[Sithborg]

It is also highly racist.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

Even if those numbers are 100% correct... Sorry, in a nation of over 300 million 100,000 illegals entering is a drop in the bucket. It's NOT an "invasion". Certainly the majority are probably families or working age males coming here for, GET THIS, work. Not to suck off the government teat and certainly the smallest percentage are "hardened criminals".

The migrant surge on America’s border slowed long ago

Mr Trump says a wall is needed in order to stop people pouring into the country illegally. In fact, the tide had slowed long before he made his pledge. The number of apprehensions of people attempting to cross the border illegally peaked in 2000, when America’s Border Patrol made more than 1.6m arrests, over 98% of which were of Mexicans. By Barack Obama’s term in office, apprehensions had fallen to an average of just 400,000 a year—about where they stood in 2018. In 2017, the last year for which data on migrants’ country of origin were available, only 42% of the apprehensions involved Mexicans.

Counting arrests does not necessarily yield a reliable estimate of the number of border-crossers who manage to evade detection. The authorities’ success at catching illegal immigrants can vary; they may wind up detaining the same people multiple times. Nonetheless, the Pew Hispanic Centre, a research organisation, estimates that the total who do make it through has fallen as well, to less than a third of its peak level.

Plus... INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY?

Investors Business Daily - Media Bias/Fact Check

Overall, we would rate Investors Business Daily Right Biased based on right leaning economic and market positions. We would also give them a High factual rating on strictly investing and market news. However, editorially IBT is clearly a Questionable source with promotion of right wing conspiracy theories and numerous failed fact checks.

All statements involving Investor's Business Daily | PolitiFact


Similar to but not quite in the same league as a Wall Street Journal, IBD is fine as source for information and analysis of the stock market but if you want serious unbiased editorial content you need to look elsewhere.

 

[jolldan]

Shamima Begum: 'A lot of people should have sympathy for me,'

"I didn't know what I was getting into when I left.

"I was hoping that maybe for the sake of me and my child they'd let me come back.

"Because I can't live in this camp forever."

I have not a single drop of sympathy for this women, I do for the child that is unfortunately caught in the middle of it all. Unfortunately it seems due to international law we will likely have to take her back as well. Can only hope that if she does get back in to the UK they lock her up and throw away the key, clearly unrepentant and just wants to get out of there before she gets wiped of the map like what's happening just now to the last of ISIS caliphate in Syria.

 

[2kt09]

Except I think the wall is a stupid idea no matter what. You do not think some people will tunnel under it and how will the wall deal with people who overstay their visas? Plus the wall will cause environmental damage and seize private land on the border, how is that "small government"?

Here is the big question, how much do undocumented immigrants use in benefits compared to Americans? Is it so big that it justifies this wall?

The overstay visas category would likely come from that lawful 5%

 

[Sithborg]

So, the emergency declaration may in fact be null even before it gets to courts.



This is the kind of thing a competent administration would work out before hand.

 

[Schlosser85]

It's probably actually a small mercy this administration can't ever get its **** together.

 

[Herofan]

What if some people do not want their money to go to pay for this wall, how is that not ''spending other people's money?''

It is doing that and that's one good reason it shouldn't be done by the president unilaterally.

Big government is good, property rights mean nothing and you spend other people's money as much as you want, as long if its for the glory of a Republican President, you guys all abandoned the ''small government'' stance when Bush was in power too (hey, why even complain about the GOP wants to waste 20 billion on this wall, when the actually wasted 1 trillion dollars in Iraq, in a war that made the world less safe, at this point, I should expect the GOP to waste a ton of money on harmful things).

Trump saw that as such a waste and making conditions worse that he, against many in the Republican party, resisted calls to invade and take over Syria and/or North Korea.

 

[Herofan]

Because the FACTS are you are wrong about the border "crisis" based on the number of crossings. It's not at some all time high.

That it isn't an unprecedentedly bad crisis, not the worst it's ever been, doesn't mean that it's not a big problem and spending significant resources to try to reduce it is at best ridiculous. Especially if the illegal border crossings decreased because of the recession and Obama's (controversial among the left (and later maybe reduced)) enforcement measures including deportations.

 

[Herofan]

You point out those tragedies, yet offer no evidence that a wall will work.

Here's some empirical support that it will reduce illegal immigration, even if probably not as much as in this prior case.
GOP senator says Israel border fence cut illegal immigration

 

[Sithborg]

I think comparisons to Israel is not the best.