The march of the “refugee” army ants

We’re accustomed to hearing illegal aliens, attempting to enter First World nations, described as “refugees” or “victims”, or words to that effect.  Their “plight” is blamed on wars, violence, crime, and other such disruptions.  It’s a constant drumbeat of propaganda in much of the mainstream media.  For example, the Wall Street Journal claimed last week that criminal gang violence is a major reason behind efforts by South Americans to come to the USA.

[In El Salvador,] Politicians must ask permission of gangs to hold rallies or canvass in many neighborhoods, law-enforcement officials and prosecutors said. In San Salvador, the nation’s capital, gangs control the local distribution of consumer products, experts said, including diapers and Coca-Cola . They extort commuters, call-center employees, and restaurant and store owners. In the rural east, gangs threaten to burn sugar plantations unless farmers pay up.

They have grown so pervasive that “you don’t know where the state ends and the criminal organizations begin,” said Mauricio Ramírez Landaverde, El Salvador’s minister of justice and security, who oversees the national police force.

. . .

The plight of Salvadorans is one explanation for the steady stream of migrants north. Thousands seek to enter the U.S. each year, either by petitioning for asylum or by crossing the border illegally. Researchers found most are propelled by fear of violence. Mexico and U.S. immigration officers apprehended 335,545 Salvadoran migrants from 2014 to the end of 2017, according to government data.

As one caravan of migrants now makes its way north through Mexico, hundreds of Salvadorans this week joined a new one pointed toward the U.S.

There’s more at the link.

Naturally, the rationale behind such articles is to persuade us to feel sorry for those finding themselves in that situation, and to feel more understanding towards their efforts to find a better place to live.  You’ll notice that the USA’s national sovereignty, constitution, laws, etc. are not mentioned anywhere in that report.  They’re effectively ignored.

There are three huge problems when it comes to refugees from that background:

  1. They bring their own culture with them, and all too often do not assimilate into the culture of their new home.  If their native culture was one where gang crime and violence was endemic, they will bring an acclimatization to such things with them.  Where do you think the two most violent Central American gangs got their start?  It was in Los Angeles, where El Salvadoran and Central American immigrants established MS-13 and Barrio 18.  The gangs then “exported” themselves (by way of deported members) to Central America, where according to the US Department of Justice, “These two gangs have turned the Central American northern triangle into the area with the highest homicide rate in the world.
  2. Very often, the “refugees” turn out to be young men of military age, rather than families or a spread of people from all ages, economic backgrounds, and social classes.  In other words, they’re economic migrants rather than refugees.  That’s been noted in Mexico with 2018’s “refugee caravans”.  What’s more, many of them are members of the same gangs that are plaguing the countries from which they came.  The US Justice Department states bluntly that “Criminal street gangs—mostly comprised of illegal immigrants—are responsible for the majority of violent crimes in the United States and are the primary distributors of most illicit drugs.”  Gang members come here to continue their criminal careers, not seek a more law-abiding alternative.
  3. Many illegal alien “refugees” – as opposed to lawful immigrants, who tend to work hard – come to First World countries with the active expectation of “freeloading” on welfare and entitlement programs in those nations.  That’s true in Germany, and also in America.  Many appear to want their new life handed to them on a plate.

    Americans now spend some $57.40 billion a year to cover the costs of more than 10 million mostly low-skilled foreign nationals who have come to the U.S. in the last decade, a study by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine found. Just as many are expected to flood into the U.S. over the next decade.

    According to a Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data in 2016, “immigrant-headed households use 41 percent more federal welfare benefits than their native-born counterparts,” … Foreign nationals and illegal aliens who sneak into the U.S. use nearly 60% more taxpayer-funded assistance than native-born Americans, the CIS study found.

    Harvard economist George Borjas says the cost of foreign nationals sucks money away from Americans.

    “Since 1965, we have admitted a lot of low-skilled immigrants, and one way to view that policy is that we were running basically the largest anti-poverty program in the world,” he said in 2017.

    Note, too, that the figures cited above apply largely to legal immigrants. Illegal aliens aren’t eligible (at least in theory) for federal benefits, but they get a lot of them from states instead – yet another drain on taxpayer dollars.

Furthermore, the actual numbers of illegal aliens in the USA appears to have been consistently – and persistently – underestimated.  As far back as 2001, the Orlando Sentinel reported:

New data suggest that the United States has nearly twice the number of undocumented immigrants that officials thought — possibly 11 million or more, compared with earlier estimates of about 6 million. If so, then roughly one in 25 U.S. residents is an illegal immigrant.

About 40 percent of illegal immigrants live in California, far more than in any other state.

The Census Bureau itself acknowledges that it may have underestimated — by 100 percent — the number of people who came to the country illegally in the past decade. Although the exact size of the undercount is unclear, “we’ve had a major change in immigration, no matter what,” said John Long, chief of the Census Bureau’s population division. “It’s either been a large change in our immigration, or a phenomenal change.”

Again, more at the link.

Just last month, a new study by Yale University found that the illegal alien problem has grown far worse since then.

Generally accepted estimates put the population of undocumented immigrants in the United States at approximately 11.3 million. A new study, using mathematical modeling on a range of demographic and immigration operations data, suggests that the actual undocumented immigrant population may be more than 22 million … After running 1,000,000 simulations of the model, the researchers’ 95% probability range is 16 million to 29 million, with 22.1 million as the mean.

More at the link.

We simply can’t afford to take in many more “refugees”, whether genuine or spurious – yet the pressure to do so from left-wing and progressive individuals and organizations is unrelenting.

We’re facing a human version of the march of the army ants.  They move from place to place, eating everything edible in their path, animal or vegetable, leaving a trail of barrenness in their wake.  The unending stream of Third World refugees seeking a better life in the First World will similarly strip barren the very cornucopia from which they hope to benefit.  The refugees aren’t going to stop coming, and the problem will only get worse.  What are we doing to protect ourselves?  And how can we do so without compromising our own humanity?  We can’t just ignore those in need.  The Golden Rule most definitely applies to our conduct towards them.  If we can’t afford to let them into our country (which we most certainly can’t – that’s an unavoidable economic reality), then what can we do to help them solve the problems in their own countries, so that they no longer seek to come here?

It’s an unanswerable conundrum . . . but it’s one that we’re going to face every single day, because the “refugees”, real and/or spurious, won’t stop coming.  Somewhere, somehow, we have to find a workable solution – or be overwhelmed.

Peter

14 comments

  1. If gangs were running our country the way they allegedly run the government and economy in El Salvador, patriotic and freedom-loving armed Americans would be assassinating the gang leaders and other gangsters until the problem was eliminated.

    =Steve

  2. What I wonder: who is supporting the caravans? Thousands of people do not walk thousands of miles without logistical support. Who is paying for the support?

    There's an opportunity for some serious investigative reporting here. Surely one of the conservative news organizations should look into this?

  3. Just as it's the job of the Defense department to win wars, it should be the job of the State department to win the peace. State should be sponsoring schools in the affected countries that teach capitalism, and sending diplomats who can nudge the existing governments away from socialism and toward capitalism.
    Alas, the US Dept of State and the Dept of Education ate both heavily infused with socialist cheerleaders, encouraging the very behavior that's causing all the problems. And why not? Being solidly based in collective economics was what attracted these folks to government service in the first place, and what helps their prospects for promotion within it.
    This is also the reason for the furious resistance to Trump. Should his ideology become dominant, we'd see more people from Hillsdale U and fewer from Yale in government. Lots of people would stand to lose their jobs or get passed over for promotions. Oh the humanities!

  4. Near as I can tell, Latin America has two problems: 1) Our "War On Drugs" and 2) a screwed system of property rights inherited from the Spanish Conquistadors and the Catholic Church. Until these two very large problems are corrected, anything anyone tries to do about the refugee / immigration problem is just painting over the rot.

  5. Over at According To Hoyt guest poster Bill Reader is doing a series of in depth articles examining the instigators and funding of the caravans. Most enlightening.
    There is no way that our immigration problem will not continue to worsen until we end granting automatic citizenship to any baby born on US soil, stop the practice of chain migration, and restrict the flow of government subsidized welfare to those in this country illegally.
    If private charities want to help illegals that's their right, but a free ride paid for by American tax payers has to stop somewhere or it will eat us all alive.

  6. The newsweasels have been quoting "11 million illegals" since the mid-90's. Knowing that an average of a million illegals enter the country every single year, there must be at least 30 million here now.

    The illegals are everywhere now.

  7. If their goal is simply to escape El Salvador then why not apply for asylum in the first country they come to?

  8. We can't just ignore those in need. The Golden Rule most definitely applies to our conduct towards them.

    I can't claim to be a pastor, but I've read the Bible every day for years and I've never seen where it said I should put myself into poverty to help someone else out. If I have an extra coat, I should give it to help, but I'm not supposed to give away my property until I'm in poverty. As the saying goes, it's not a suicide pact.

    Over 3 billion people in the world live on the equivalent of less than $2.50/day. That's an improvement around the world. But that represents roughly 1/10 of the population in the US. They would probably all move here if there were no restrictions on immigration. To accommodate 10 times the population we have while the rest of the world empties out would be that suicide pact.

    It simply can't work; it would destroy the US. The US has frozen immigration in the past to try allow waves of immigration to assimilate. If anything, we need to do that now.

  9. Matthew 15:25, 15:26

    Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.

    But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

    Even Our Lord prioritizes help… and it is questionable if the US can handle what we already have on our plate. Adding more makes that even more difficult (I see California turning into a third world country already). Then we can all starve together!

  10. Disclaimer; I am not a Christian. I am an agnostic, and a Crank. That said, a couple of simple solutions occur to me.

    1) We could erect a large sign that reads, in appropriate languages, "If you aren't prepared to try to immigrate legally, and generally play by the rules, we don't want you. Go. Away."

    While that most likely won't have the desired effect, we follow it by machine-gunning the majority of the first caravan, and leave the bodies to rot under the sign. Extra points for arranging heads on spikes.

    2) If the Left really wants us to take responsibility for the whole freaking world, we could begin an era of renewed Colonialism. Mexico would be relatively easy, and would leave us with a southern border a good deal shorter than the one we have now. Then, every few years or decades we could take in a new territory previously belonging to some polity that has been annoying us.

  11. This will either end when they realize they can't come in, or it will end at the end of machinegun barrels.

    I'd prefer A, but Option B would be an excellent lesson to 3B would-be follow-on waves to finally learn, in order to avoid the same fate.

  12. I don't want ANY of them coming across the border.

    I want the ones already here to leave.

    They should be legally encouraged to leave under their own power.

    The alternative is forcing them to leave. I expect it will get to this point. Not many people will be happy with the results, especially the snowflakes and their fellow travelers .

    If we want the US to survive, it must happen. I expect Western Civ to fail without the US. I doubt the EU can maintain it on their own. Their culture is lacking too much to stop their slide into oblivion. They might have survived just WW1, but WW2 was their death knell.

  13. I don’t have the solution, but I’d rather say we warned them about the landmines vs telling some young soldiers to open fire on women, children and gang members illegally trying to get into the country. I don’t know if I could live with myself if I was the one running the gun…

    I hear it’s how about hey do that to protect America’s bases in areas of conflict… sounds kind of like the border!

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