Gaza is flattened and Israel is not backing down
A million plus Gazans are displaced
And now we are trading bombs with houthis and Iran
And remember that our border is entirely out of control and I still think that come October 2024 things are likely to be so spicy that our focus will no longer be on the precipitating events in Gaza. They will be on our cool headed response to some awful terror strike in the US. Have folks forgotten about the attacks on London and Madrid in 2004 and 2005? Those were not minor. Something like that happening here won’t be tolerated.
Great. Just great.
Edit: not sure what I’m on about? Check the news.
Relates to Houthis, Hezbollah, Israel and or Iran.
It sounds like you favor isolationism in the wake of the Gaza attack.
I think Biden has handled Ukraine and Gaza and Iran deftly. I do not think the sky is falling.
reaching US border crossings with Mexico has skyrocketed in the last two years.
"The number of migrants encountered at the U.S. border with Mexico from countries outside of Latin America and the Caribbean increased by 43% between the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years, according to CBP data."
A significant number are from China, but Africa and the Middle East are also increasing. There are over 20,000 new "encounters" a month in the CBPs Southern region with people who are not from South/Central America/Carribean or the big others (China, India, Russia) (per CPB dashboard).
The last year readily available 2019 - well before this surge -- that had specific country breakouts, CBP reported 34 Yemenis, 14 Iranians. For comparison, the 2015 Paris attacks were committed by 9 men, Brussels by 10.
Fortunately, to date, there has been only one attack linked to someone who crossed the US Mexico border illegally who then crossed into Canada. That one seems like more of a mental illness than a terrorist thing, though.
Considering how much we spend checking visitors and immigration through the front door (customs officials and screening at embassies, visas, and the port of entry screening efforts at airports), it seems foolish not to pay more attention to the unlocked screen door of the Southern Border. It'd be a hell of a lot more efficient to grease some palms in Brazil and drive up than to try to sneak in through JFK or Logan.
Came over the border. They also came over when illegal crossings were extremely high.
It seems pretty inefficient to fly agents to Ecuador and have them spend half a year getting through life and death situations to cross vs. Just using people who can get visas. I'd also note the refugees who tend to get asylum are the ones coming from China/Russia/Africa.
travel or counter-terrorism measures since 2000? Why would a ~3 day bus trip take 6 months? Getting a visa to the US from a rebellious part of Yemen, let alone multiple shouldn't be a walk in the park given, you know, that that part of Yemen is shooting at people.
And what does who gets asylum have to do with people sneaking across the border? Asylum seekers are fine with getting caught if they have reasonable expectation of getting asylum. Fine - but seeking/getting asylum is not a prerequisite for getting into the country and/or moving around it (whether for economic reasons or nefarious reasons). Getting in without getting caught OR taking advantage of the delays in processing are both opportunities for risk.
ABC story: "More typically, nonresponse or bureaucratic obstacles make returns difficult, if not impossible," global migration researcher Erlend Paasche wrote in a 2022 report. "If, for instance, the U.S. government approaches an origin country's embassy to request assistance in verifying identification and issuing travel documents as part of a removal, that country has various tools at its disposal to complicate the return."
With exceptions like Iran, it is relatively rare for countries to outright refuse to take back their own citizens, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
But China and Russia have been listed by the U.S. as two of the least cooperative countries when it comes to verifying and returning their would-be deportees. Other uncooperative countries include Cuba, Eritrea, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Iraq, Laos and Pakistan.
Countries can choose not to respond to U.S. requests or impose high bars for identity verification, making it difficult to prove the deportee's country of origin, according to Paasche.
Finally "they didn't do it that way last time" is one of the classic errors in warning. Below is a photo from the game program for an Army Navy game. The caption reads in part " It is significant that despite the claims of air enthusiasts no battleship has yet been sunk by bombs.". The program is dated November 29, 1941. The battleship in the picture is USS Arizona
I had the occasion to visit the big Walmart on the north side of town the other day, something I rarely do. As I walked the aisles looking for things, I heard a cacophony of languages--Haitian Creole, various African dialects, Amharic. The black and brown faces I encountered glowed with excitement as they shopped away, happy as clams. They were neither students at CSU nor tourists. They were migrants, and the few I talked to had arrived by bus from El Paso.