Immigration

Not All Borders Are Land Borders

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It’s been pretty obvious that the Biden administration and their supporters have wanted the southern border to be substantially open.  But for some reason, they don’t seem to have extended this idea to other ways of entering the US:  airports and seaports.  I haven’t seen any proposal to eliminate the customs & immigration facilities at international airports, or at passenger-handing seaports.

Why not?  It would certainly be more convenient for all international travelers, and especially for those who want to migrate to the US:  no traveling through deserts, jungles and swamps, no need to fear robbery, murder, and rape on the way, no need to pay off the drug cartels.  Just buy an airline ticket: surely much more affordable than the other path, as well as more convenient, considering the high extortion payments demanded by the cartels.

What would be the reason why open-borders advocates do not push for this logical extension of their ideas?

One hypothesis might be that the people who buy airline tickets would include a higher mix of financially-better-off people than those who are willing to make the grueling trip across the southern border…and those people would be (a) less-likely to vote for Democratic candidates, and (b) more likely to compete for jobs held by members of key groups within the Democratic constituency.

Any other theories?

Does the Bear Market start tomorrow?

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Tomorrow, the vaccine mandate for truckers in the US begins. The Canadian border is already affected by the Canada mandate and there is already some pain. Truckers work alone although a small number share driving with wives or other partners. Their exposure to the general public is minimal in their work life. The same mandate by the US will block most Mexican drivers from bringing fresh fruits and vegetables into the US. All three groups of drivers have a low compliance with vaccination. The result will likely contribute to the supply chain crisis, which has only worsened the past few months.

Now, The stock market is showing weakness.

Energy policy has driven up oil, fuel, packaging and gas prices. Transportation costs have skyrocketed. Emission regulations have driven up port costs and delayed transportation; fracturing the supply chain. Vaccine mandates have hit the manufacturing and processing sectors. Legislative policy and COVID spending have artificially inflated the economy. Monetary policy has devalued the dollar and driven even higher inflation.

The mandate will affect 50% of US truckers. Mexican truckers are unknown but Canadian truckers are already demonstrating in Ottawa.

Into this hurricane of stagflation, the fed is going to raise interest rates. The stock market could lose half its inflated value. The NASDAQ is already responding to the storm clouds. Employment is going to start getting really sketchy. Congress will eventually announce their remedy, which will be more spending – and the dollar gets worse.

A market expert is predicting a bear market.

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Who are the Afghans evacuated ?

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The Biden evacuation was botched. We all agree on that but what happened and why ? The Afghans who were interpreters and who worked with the US military were given, or were supposed to be given, special visas. These were called “Special Immigrant Visas” and were for Afghans who worked with the US. We are now reading that The majority of these people were not evacuated.

WASHINGTON—The U.S. estimates it left behind the majority of Afghan interpreters and others who applied for visas to flee Afghanistan, a senior State Department official said on Wednesday, despite frantic efforts to evacuate those at risk of Taliban retribution.

In the early days of the evacuation effort, thousands of Afghans crowded Kabul’s airport seeking a way to flee the country. Some made it through without paperwork, while American citizens and visa applicants were unable to enter and board flights out.

The U.S. still doesn’t have reliable data on who was evacuated, nor for what type of visas they may qualify, the official said, but initial assessments suggested most visa applicants didn’t make it through the crush at the airport.

The Biden administration now boasts that 120,000 Afghans were evacuated. Who are they?

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California agonistes.

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I moved to California in 1956 to attend college. Los Angeles was a paradise. The weather was great. The traffic was no problem. I learned that the LAPD did not take bribes and was not amused at attempts to offer them. After growing up in Chicago, I had learned to put a ten dollar bill behind my driver’s license in case I was stopped. In Los Angeles, I did so and was lectured about the consequences of offering a bribe by a stern LAPD officer.

I lived in the fraternity house and one year slept on an outside second floor porch. I had four blankets on my bed but no problem, with flies or mosquitoes. I remember flying back to Los Angeles one New Year’s Eve from Christmas vacation in Chicago. The palm trees told me I was home. There was a brush fire in the hills but it was nice to be back. I would sometimes drive up to Sunset Boulevard just to see the city at night. The TV show, “77 Sunset Strip” showed just what it looked like. We would drive into Hollywood and sometimes eat at Villa Frescati. We had a lot of fun. Too much fun as I lost my scholarship.

The first sign of trouble was described in Victor Davis Hanson’s book, “Mexifornia.” There was trouble before that as the Watts Riot in 1965 began the endless pandering to the angry mobs.

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How is the Shutdown Going ?

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We are now in week three of the partial government “shutdown” over the refusal of Democrats to fund any of Trump’s wall. They see this as another “Read My Lips” situation which, if they can make Trump back down, it will kill his re-election campaign just as it did to Bush in 1992.

But Trump’s base takes the wall itself seriously, and, like George H.W. Bush’s 1988 campaign pledge on taxes, the wall has become the president’s “read my lips” albatross. His supporters may not abandon him over it, but Trump’s re-election hinges entirely on their enthusiasm. Yes, they will vote for him, but will they engage in the get-out-the-vote activities that drive to the polls enough additional voters to put Trump over the top?

How is that going ? Even Texas Monthly, no friend of Republicans agrees.

Jet skis dropping off pregnant women. Chinese border crossers in fancy workout attire. A park full of could-be spies. These sights of the Rio Grande are almost hallucinatory, but they don’t seem to alarm Spratte. They seem to fatigue him. Not long ago, he says, agents’ mouths would drop open when they’d hear about a group of fifty immigrants getting caught. Now, he says, “if you tell me, I’ve got a group of fifty, I need help, I would laugh at you. If you said, I’ve got a group of three hundred, now that would be cool, because that would be a new record. And the records are only going to keep increasing.” (According to Spratte, agents in the Valley have had a single pickup of around 280 immigrants.)

Trump visited the wall yesterday and CNN’s Jim Acosta gave Trump a hand at making his case.

I know this might be hard for you to comprehend Jimbo, but the reason why all of Twitter has been mocking you today is because you were at a part of the border WITH A WALL. So yes, of course it was working. Replicate that across the border & we’ll all be safer. #RealNews #ByeBye

It did not look too good for Acosta to brag about how safe it was near a wall. OR fence, if you prefer.

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