AlofRI said:

@TKDB He DOESN'T read. He doesn't even read his intel reports because he knows more that his intel community, so what's the sense of writing ANYTHING to him?  The: oops, there's a #3 is that I don't donate to him, and he listens to NO one that doesn't. I hope that clears things up.  :-)

TKDB said:

@CYDdharta

Did Clinton tell the truth during the entirety of his time in office?

What of some of the other past POTUS's as well?

"To be fair though, his "intel community" was just proven to be undermining his administration since before Trump was elected president.  It's hard to put much faith in people when you know they're lying to you."

WordsMatter said:

@CYDdharta I find it absolutely hilarious that you disliked my comment. I remember having debates on immigration where you claimed that immigrants come in then all disappear into sanctuary cities to send money back to their families to bring into sanctuary cities. So explain to me how having the government pay for these immigrants rides to sanctuary cities is any different than what you hated so much before, aside from the fact that you are paying for it now? Or is it just because Trump said it that you love it and you think you are "sticking it to the libs" by helping immigrants do exactly what you cried foul against just a couple months ago.

WordsMatter said:

@CYDdharta "So you pick up people sneaking into the US, then what?  They claim asylum and disappear into a sanctuary city while awaiting a hearing, start a family and have some anchor babies, and march for amnesty while sending money to family members in central and south America so they can do the same."

"That's because you're not paying attention to what's actually happening. Illegals are NOT being deported hours later, they're claiming asylum as soon as they're caught.  At that point they can NOT be deported until their case is adjudicated.  The adjudication process take month or longer.  The illegals are allowed to roam free inside the US during that time.  Then, more often than not, they skip their court date, and just stay as illegals.  In addition, by-and-large, Hispanics settle near the US-Mexican border, creating a border land of divided loyalties like Kashmir and Gaza.  This is a very bad thing."

"There is no difference.  You do realize that most of the sanctuary cities are down by the border, right?"

"And, even ignoring that, you're still wrong even according to YOUR OWN SOURCE.  Half of the STATES on the border are sanctuary STATES.  Obviously every CITY in those STATES are SANCTUARY CITIES."

https://www.debateisland.com/discussion/3258/is-a-wall-on-the-u-s-southern-border-a-good-idea

Every single quote is you! According to your own beliefs illegal immigrants were already settling in sanctuary cities all along the border. So why in God's name do you want to pay with your taxes to help them achieve what you believed was their ultimate goal!? Is it because Trump is your supreme leader and anything he says or proposes must be a perfect idea?

MayCaesar said:

@CYDdharta

Think about it: if a given city or state has chosen to legally harbour undocumented arrivals, then on the territory of that city or state the arrival is no longer illegal. A state that made it legal for a Mexican citizen to seek refuge in it no longer classifies that citizen as an illegal immigrant.

You see, an undocumented immigrant is recognised as illegal by the federal government - but the federal government's authority does not necessarily override the state or the municipal authority. Depending on how much you respect the state and municipal autonomy, your position on whether harbouring undocumented immigrants is illegal or not will change significantly.

You can disagree with the policy, but calling it "aiding and abetting criminals" is a somewhat subjective judgement, if not outright incorrect. Something that has been declared legal is no longer illegal; it is pretty simple.

This is one of the reasons why I have said for a long time that the best solution to the problem of illegal immigration is to make all immigration legal - that solves the problem by definition. Now, Friedman in the video I linked above explained why this would not work well in the modern US system, and I agree with him - but in conjunction with significant reduction of the role of the government in the US economy, that policy would, indeed, be advantageous. It worked well in the US until 1914, and it will work well in the future if the size of the government from that period is replicated.

I understand your position, but I do not think you have considered all the sides of the issue.

MayCaesar said:

@CYDdharta

Why not? That is the whole idea of the decentralised state system in the US: to give the states enough independence from the central government so they can enact their own policies, overriding federal rulings.

Which policy trumps the legal system - municipal, state or federal one - strongly depends on the policy in question, and I do not see why the policy on immigration should necessarily be in the federal hands.

MayCaesar said:

@CYDdharta

You realise very well that the Rule of Naturalisation is separate from the treatment of the undocumented foreign arrivals. Naturalised individuals are the individuals who have been granted the American citizenship, and there are millions of both legal and illegal immigrants in this country right know who have not been granted that, including myself.

MayCaesar said:

@CYDdharta

I do not think you understood my objection. The Rule of Naturalization refers to the rules of granting and revoking citizenship of the individuals, as well as what the rights and responsibilities of citizens are. The Rule of Naturalization has nothing to do with the general legality of the individual being on the territory, local or federal.

It may be a national issue, but I do not think there is a consensus on whether this is exclusively a national issue or not. I do not think it should be in any case: I believe in strong state and municipal rights, in the right of people in a given town or state to decide how they live and how they treat visitors. I fail to see what business, for example, you should have in how people thousands miles away from you treat undocumented arrivals.

I do not live in Texas and do not expect Texans to cater to my desires in terms of law-making. Why should they expect me to cater to theirs?

"Mario Garcia sits in the doorway of his tire shop in Gracias a Dios, Guatemala, a short distance from the border with Mexico, watching the unfettered flow of migrants headed north. By his estimate, up to 1,000 migrants cross over into Carmen Xhan, Mexico, every day.

"This is an open border," Garcia says, with a knowing smile. "There's no immigration control on this side or the other side. Anyone can go across freely."

The migrant trail that begins in Central America and ends in the United States must cross the Guatemala-Mexico border — where immigration control is light to nonexistent. More and more migrants are choosing to start their journey up through Mexico in the remote, hilly village of Gracias a Dios — Spanish for "Thanks to God."

In recent months, Gracias a Dios has become a trafficker's boomtown, and what happens here helps explain the recent surge of migrants entering the United States."

"There's some opportunity to provide a smoother, faster, more well-planned movement than just starting out walking and taking a 30- to 45-day journey through all the different countries and across all the different borders," said Derek Benner, executive associate director of Homeland Security Investigations.

The mayor of Gracias a Dios, Marvin Hernandez, explains that the village came into being nearly a century ago when a family fleeing the Mexican Revolution settled just across the border in Guatemala. 

"They said, '¡Gracias a Dios!' and it stuck," Hernandez recounts. "Now the migrants crossing in the other direction are saying it."

Hernandez says he noticed about two years ago that more travelers were passing through the town, population 750.

"Since then, it's increased a lot," he says.

Hernandez built a restaurant, Comedor Azteca, with money he earned when he worked as a cook in Virginia in the early 2000s. "The migrants come in and eat a meal before they cross," he says. "It's good for my business."

Day and night, buses arrive here from the state capital of Huehuetenango and unload families from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and the interior of Guatemala.

Some of them assemble at a run-down, aqua-colored stash house in the center of town, behind a soccer field and next to a Jehovah's Witness kingdom hall. On a recent afternoon, about 150 adults and kids were waiting around for their trip northward — spilling out the front door, sitting under trees and lounging on the grass."

"They scattered when a reporter approached. Then a heavyset, scowling man bolted out of the stash house, waved his arms and yelled, "This is private property! Get lost!"

Migrants who cross at Gracias a Dios typically pay coyotes to arrange transport all the way to the U.S.-Mexico border — 1,800 miles away. The going price is $5,000 to $7,000 for a package deal for an adult and a child.

Passenger vans and other vehicles pick them up in Gracias a Dios and carry them to the city of Comitán, an hour inside Mexico. Several local observers, including Gracias a Dios' mayor, say the migrants breeze through a Mexican federal checkpoint, just south of Comitán, because the coyote pays off immigration officials."

"In Comitán, the migrants board tourist buses to Mexico City. There, they transfer to express buses that speed to places near the U.S.-Mexico border like Ciudad Juárez, where they wade across the shallow Rio Grande and surrender to the Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas.

If there are no delays, the trip can take as little as three days.

Julio, who declined to give his last name because he plans to cross into the U.S. illegally, traveled from El Salvador's capital, San Salvador, to Gracias a Dios to avoid the caravans and take the bus route instead."

"Big caravan, big crime, big problems," he says, standing outside a boarding house across the soccer field from the stash house. "I'll cross with two or three other people, and we'll get where we're going and try not to attract attention."

Julio knows he needs to sneak into the U.S. undetected by the Border Patrol because adult migrants who are caught traveling alone are typically detained and put on a fast track to deportation.

Many migrants are also aware that if they bring a child with them, they won't be detained — the so-called "catch and release" policy that infuriates President Trump. If migrant families ask for asylum and pass a credible-fear interview, immigration agents usually release them into the U.S. with a notice to appear in immigration court, because detaining families is difficult under current U.S. policies."

"That is Javier's plan. He's also from San Salvador and staying in the same rooming house as Julio. He declined to give his full name because he plans to cross into the U.S. with his wife and three kids.

Asked why his family was making the trip north, Javier says, "President Trump has to defend his nation, but the United States for us is like a mother, a mother who looks out for these small countries that we come from."

Trump is contending with an increase in unauthorized border crossings, which officials said were on pace to hit more than 100,000 last month, the highest level in more than a decade. On Sunday, Trump announced that Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, whom he reportedly clashed with over the surge, would leave her post.

In late March, Trump threatened to close the U.S.-Mexico border if Mexico didn't act to stop the flow of migrants.

Within days, Trump backed off that threat and then made a new one. He gave Mexico a "one-year warning" to address the migrants and drugs crossing the border or he would slap tariffs on car imports from Mexico."

"Trump also credited Mexico for doing more to address immigration. On Friday, he tweeted: "Mexico, for the first time in decades, is meaningfully apprehending illegals at THEIR Southern Border, before the long march up to the U.S. This is great and the way it should be. The big flow will stop."

But there is no evidence of that in places like Gracias a Dios, where the flow of immigrants continues to grow. The majority of them are families and unaccompanied children from Central America, which represents a historic shift in immigration."

NATIONAL

A Surge Of Migrants Strains Border Patrol As El Paso Becomes Latest Hot Spot

"It used to be that the Border Patrol mostly apprehended Mexican men crossing into the U.S. to find work. On warm nights, in plazas across Mexico, mariachis still sing sad songs of the exodus of their countrymen who went to el Norte to pursue their dreams.

"I swam the Rio Grande, ignoring the dangers. La migra turned me away, and I found myself in Nogales. I went to another border crossing, and they pushed me to Juárez," say the lyrics to the famous migrant ballad Los Mandados.

But all that has changed. The Border Patrol now apprehends more Central American families.

But why now? Why the current surge of migrants?

"Social media has motivated lots of people, hasn't it? It's saying if you don't go to the U.S. now, you might not be able to go tomorrow," says Olinto Laparra, a prominent businessman in the region of Gracias a Dios. He says he knows lots of people who've left for the U.S. lately.

While he's talking, he steers his pickup to avoid giant potholes that pock the highway that hugs the rugged Guatemala-Mexico border.

"How do you like our roads?" Laparra asks sarcastically. "Look at our sad reality."

He blames state and federal leaders in Guatemala for stealing money they're supposed to use to maintain highways and bring services to remote villages. He says it's all part of a corrupt system that perpetuates poverty and allows rampant gang violence, and that is what's driving Guatemalans out of their homeland.

"Mr. Trump can close the border whenever he wants to," Laparra concludes, "but the people will keep crossing. They have a lot of desire to overcome and get ahead."