Quote:
Originally Posted by manaboutown
Back in the 1950s when I was growing up in NM chile and other types of farmers along the Rio Grande valley in Southern NM used to hire illegal aliens to cultivate and harvest their crops. The illegals were hard workers and cheap. The Mexican border was of course nearby, right across the Rio Grande, and the wetbacks or wets as locals called back them did literally swim and wade cross it to work. They took their wages back home to support their families. They did not commit much crime. It was a peaceful situation and beneficial to all parties.
Today the situation is vastly different. Drug cartels, human trafficking, terrorists, M13 and other gangs as well as petty criminals who cross the border to steal in one way or another then flee back to Mexico constitute a huge proportion of the flow.
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...and most of that is done AT the border gates, and via airplanes. Drug cartels aren't sending mules to spend countless weeks enduring near starvation, severe dehydration, on foot with inadequate supplies and even decent shoes, to cross the rivers and tramp through wilderness. That just flat out isn't happening. The drugs are coming in at the border gates. And they're coming in at the border gates because the US has insufficient technology and staff to handle the influx. The government is now pulling even more resources away from the border gates, in order to build the wall. Instead of, y'know, adding more staff, getting more technology, and maybe even adding a few more gates so that more people can get stopped, HUMANELY, vetted HUMANELY, and their status as refugees and asylum-seekers determined HUMANELY.
The vast majority of people crossing illegally into this country away from the actual border gates and checkpoints, are refugees and asylum-seekers and others wanting risk their lives for a shot at improving those lives - if they survive the trip. Imagine how miserable your life must be, to risk it for a shot at improvement, knowing that when you finally make it to the other side, someone could catch you, pull your children away from you and send you to a detention camp, and then put your kids into other detention camps that are mismanaged, and you might never see them again. They know this is a risk they take, and they're willing to take it anyway. Imagine how horrific your family's life must be, in the place you live, that you would risk that to come to another country. Those are the *majority* of people trying to come here illegally.
The *majority* of the people whose lives aren't that horrific, are travelling right through the gates.