Immigration Realities, Chapter Two
The open Southwest border with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Border Patrol, functioning more as a welcoming committee than law enforcement, has brought multiple problems throughout the country. These include monkey pox and meliodosis, tropical diseases showing up in minority communities where illegal immigrants often go to try to blend in. With many of the cities being Sanctuary Cities, law enforcement is precluded from cooperating with Federal officials.
Even left-wing Mayors are beginning to lose patience.
In addition, according to the Department of Homeland Security, in March of this year, illegals encountered at the Southwest Border totaled 221 thousand, of which 123 thousand were expelled under provisions of Title 42. Those provisions have since been suspended. More than 80,000 were released into the United States with instructions to report on a specific date to a specific immigration court for adjudication of their asylum claims. Some are sent elsewhere without any instruction to do anything. Oops.
The Diaspora
Migrants are placed in buses and sent to various places in the US. For the most part, they are simply dropped off in the middle of town with no advance notice to officials. The local jurisdiction is then required to provide healthcare, housing and education for these people. The first to step in are typically religious-based organizations. The education requirement is particularly onerous because the people being waved into our country come from well over 100 other countries. Failure to provide healthcare at an emergency room is against Federal regulations; failure to provide a speaker of the patient’s native language is constructive denial of service. What does a small-town hospital do when it encounters thirteen obscure languages a day?
I currently live in Nashville, Tennessee. Over the years I’ve picked up quite a few languages, including most of the Western European ones plus Arabic and enough Hindi and Urdu to talk to taxi drivers. What little Pohnpeian and Marshallese I picked up is long gone. I also learned Lebanese, which is a combination of French, English and Arabic, using whatever language best meets the need of that part of the sentence. I can recognize Amharic, spoken in Ethiopia, and usually sort out 60% of written Russian/Bulgarian/Ukrainian. I should volunteer to work with those who need help, and did so until my health failed following multiple brain surgeries. Now I’m wheelchair-bound and gasping for breath from any exertion. Not going to be a lot of help except with Spanish-speaking workmen at the house.
Infrastructure and Supply Chain
A perverse result of the political decisions to lock down the economy is that areas that resisted Federally-ordered shutdowns are recovering far faster than other areas. Bluntly, Democrat-run states are recovering far slower than Republican-run states. Republican-run states become magnets for immigrants, not only from Democrat-run states, but also for those shepherded into the country by the Biden administration. In Nashville, we lack the infrastructure in health care and mass transportation to care for the influx. Emergency rooms are overflowing, and the Federally-imposed processes for adding a new hospital, or expanding a hospital, or adding capacity to a hospital, cripple any reasonable chance at advancement. Cost of housing is rising daily, and there is too little housing for new construction. The city sits extraordinarily close to the aquifer, meaning tunnels and foundations are problematic.
We have effectively turned over the control of our Southern Border to the Mexican cartels. The result is poor people being forced to give cartels all of their money to be allowed to cross. In the case of unaccompanied minors, the cartels can choose to smuggle them in or put them to work as sex slaves. This is as disgusting as anything I can imagine. We’re also further damaged our education systems, by diverting resources to providing healthcare or English-as-a-Second Language to children whose native language may be spoken by fewer than a thousand living people? There are thirty known languages with 460 or fewer living speakers.
Drugs
The amount of Fentanyl entering the country over the southwest border is a scandal. Deaths continue increasing every year while the cartels become rich. Overdoses were already increasing leading up to Biden’s election. Since then, there seems to be no limit to the number of Fentanyl deaths. And, people of color are far more often the victims.
God help us, because Biden won’t, and Pelosi and Schumer will protect Democrats by any means available, whether legal or not. It is time for a new Constitutional Convention.
I am surprised that Muriel Bowser says she doesn't have enough volunteers. DC is one area where there should be lots of people pitching in.
Yes. Except, I think, that opening up the Constitution to any more meddling might possibly be a very bad idea.