BritInParis

Happy to be corrected but afaik asylum seekers are not automatically detained in the US whilst they await a decision.

kimilseung

The government has the right to detain them, though applicants have the right to be considered for parole if their application has reasonable grounds. It was ongoing in the courts concerning who and when people are released, and I assume the court cases will continue for some time.

Shard

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scrubbedexpat099

You claim asylum, you get in, most disappear well that is how it has worked so far.

Fleeing gang violence seems to have been twisted to be an Asylum claim, which of course many US Citizens could also claim.A fair chunk of London etc could claim.

I assume that they could be detained and presumably the numbers processed can be limited, after all they are in Mexico so no urgent need to admit.

BritInParis

That was my limited understanding.

The military are there to provide logistical support to the US Border Patrol. Whether they’ll be prevented from actually crossing the border in order to be able to claim asylum remains to be seen.

scrubbedexpat099

Asylum claims are processed at a PoE, I assume logistical support is needed elsewhere.

jeepster

I was watching a pbs program about illegal immigrant restaurant workers in NYC making less than minimum wage. So they started organizing into unions and protesting their low wages I believe it was $6/hr. They interviewed one of the illegal's and he said in Mexico he makes $6/day. So instead of protesting in Mexico City for higher wages they migrate up to NYC and protest up here where they are making 8 times they're rate in Mexico. By migrating to the USA nothing changes in Mexico. The same can be said for Central America. The Spanish caste system needs to change but it won't if all the energy is spent migrating up north.

kimilseung

Thanks for getting back and explaining your reasoning

Lion in Winter

I get where you're coming from on this, but Mexico and Guatemala (I know less about Honduras) are some of the most poltically and socially active countries I've ever known. People have, and are, working extremely hard to try to change things for the better and change the power and economic structures for the better, often to the point of giving their lives for it. The powerful economic interests in both countries, very much interwoven with and supported by the US in particular, make such change very, very difficult, and yet the struggle and agitation and work go on.

In the meantime, Mexicans working in the US (don't know the figures for the other two countries, but surely smaller since they are tiny countries) send home about 26 billion dollars a year. Only oil and tourism supply more money. Families, and in some cases whole municipalities, depend on this money. Not only does it feed and clothe people, it builds roads, schools and sanitation systems in poor and rural areas where the Mexican government is not. The economies of the two countries are interwoven from the wealthy at the top to the poorest at the bottom. Looking at the very poorest people, facing a miserably poor life with no chance of changing it, and expecting them to just "stay at home and fix things" in some way is unrealistic at best. To actively blame the migrants themselves for all this, and portray them in the negative light that some do, is reprehensible and simply betrays a lack of understanding of the situation. Not that Trump cares.

The timing of this particular "caravan" is interesting, and could either help or hurt Trump.

Shard

Good post Lion. I think too often people underappreciate the importance of migration in funding development in the former home country. Similar situation in the EU with Eastern Europe (and beyond). In this century, the world is becoming much more mobile and connected, and the old notion of guarded nation states is going to have to evolve. There is a mutual economic interest in seeing the development of neighboring foreign countries or regions. Trump and Brexit are both steps backward in this regard, but they are waves against the tide.

Hiro11

I read today that it's estimated by the Border Patrol that 2,000-5,000 undocumented migrants are apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley alone every week. That's up 30% since last year. Of these about a third of apprehended adults are travelling with children. In fiscal 2018 (which ended in September), over 63,000 "family units" were apprehended in the the Rio Grande Valley alone. Obviously, the number for the entire country is some multiple of that already huge number. What's even more incredible is that this is down about 80% since the peak in 2000 when 1.6MM people were apprehended on the Southwest Border.

The scale of this issue is incomprehensible to me, complicated by the legal matters of asylum and birthright. Some of the moralizing here is a bit ridiculous given this deluge. There aren't easy answers. There are 12MM undocumented people living in America, that's 4% of the population and a population about the size of metropolitan Chicago and metropolitan Boston combined. What do we do, deport Chicago and Boston? Allow a population the size of Chicago and Boston combined that has no legal right to be here to stay? What about people who put in the work to go through legal channels and the obvious double standard? What legal protections are available for undocumented people here? How are we going to educate all of these kids? What about medical care? What about security, which is a valid concern? It's not simple.

BEVS

Yes.

The lesson should be that if you seek to meddle or to make change in a country other than your own, then accept responsibility for that country's populace . Do not cry invasion *sigh* & then moan & screech . Take them in without question when they are suffering due to that "intervention" /meddling.

If you are not prepared to accept the consequences for the policies of your own country then don't act or collude on those policies. It is the common person like you or me that suffers.

Take. Them. In.

I haven't time to go back to post but someone wrote that in some areas of the US the Hispanic immigrants were taking work from the Afro- Americans in one post.
That is historically actually not correct. It was always Hispanic immigrant low paid foreign worker driven .

Giantaxe

The history of US "meddling" in Central America is really up there with some of European colonialists' behaviour. Guatemala, for example, suffered a CIA-drive coup in 1954 and then decades of civil war that followed on from that. It's hardly a surprise that some of these countries have the issues they do.

scrubbedexpat099

Dozens of LGBTQ migrants settled into a local shelter in Tijuana (located just south of San Diego) on Monday, The Washington Post reported. Various U.S. and Mexican LGBTQ organizations allegedly helped fund their trip to the border by bus, allowing them to get ahead of the rest of the group.

“We were discriminated against, even in the caravan,” said Erick Dubon, 23, a Honduran migrant traveling with his boyfriend. “People wouldn’t let us into trucks, they made us get in the back of the line for showers, they would call us ugly names.”


https://news.yahoo.com/first-migrant...111807326.html

Somehow vaguely amusing.

zzrmark

What would be amusing would be if your new governor and his 1st man offer them sanctuary in your state.