<>Southern Border Drama, and Migrant Issue.

EDITED, prolonged from a stream from my response to discussions/posts in Friends’ Facebook page.

LET us start with the numbers. On the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency, the U.S. encountered unauthorized migrants at the southern border 1.66 million times. From that point to April this year, the surge of illegal migrants, thousands in a day, stayed largely unchecked. And when Title 42 expired on May 11, migrant exodus heightened. 

       Title 42 is a Covid-19 public health restriction that easily affected migrants streaming through the U.S.-Mexico border, signed on Donald Trump’s time. Reason to shut the gates down. Yet weren’t the walls supposedly secured as a border partition? Application to enter requires paperwork? 

       Meanwhile, as migrants practically stepped in and out of the U.S./Mexico demarcation line from 2001 onwards, President Biden got busier with nonstop military aid to Ukraine in its war vs Russia on one hand and on the other, with military intrigue trajectoried at China in South China Sea, hinged on Taiwan.  

       And so as Trump’s indictment hugs headlines on alleged mishandling of top secret documents, which was also leveled at Biden this year, the border crisis stays as is. 

       Google how many migrants are still crossing as we speak… And so they overflowed in Texas, Arizona, and California; crushed fiscal management in New York; and prodded Republican Florida to fly them back to Democrat states. “You want them, there you go! Have them!” Insane, isn’t it?

       And as the neverending Washington partisanship drama continues in/around Donald, Republican firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert, backed by allies, calls for impeachment of Biden over his handling of the U.S. border with Mexico. 🗽🏃‍♀️🏃

MEANTIME, Biden son Hunter’s lingering issues with the law posed distraction or intermission albeit these feed the obvious Biden vs Trump caterwaul. Although the younger Biden’s case doesn’t deal with what I believe should be dealt with, which is his role in Ukraine’s natural gas ruckus, which figured in the eventual impeachment of Trump in 2019. Brings me to the question, what is the worst presidential wrongdoing?    

       What warrant/s impeachment, the ordinary personage may ask: The current handling of support for Kyiv on a losing war, with a $113 billion Congress-approved aid or taxpayer money, and the easy policing of border breaches or the “unconstitutional” storage of sensitive Washington documents by a Potus or his refusal to hand military aid to a corrupt leadership in Ukraine (during his term or in 2019)? Complex, isn’t it? But that isn’t the focal point of this blog entry. I leave the resolution of that case to the “experts.” Anyhow, your response would surely bank on partisanship angst, right? 

       Let’s instead talk of the southern border. 🗽🏃‍♀️🏃

MIGRANTS off the southern border.

       If the border issue is dealt with pragmatically as an immigration and crime issue, it could be solved, I think. Visa/passport etc is a no brainer country to country policy. Meanwhile, asylum isn't a picnic, it is a long process. 

       The U.S. border walls somehow weakened as drug cartel power rose from the 1960s’ street peddlers to more organized traffickers in the 1980s. In no time, narcopolitics juice wobbled leadership in Mexico or Central America. Add the complexities of U.S. trade relations with Mexico. The gate was "opened" wide, in fact a lot wider as partisan politics used the issue as election leverage or Left vs Right joust fuel. Ergo: To say people, especially children, are ferried into the border and across  without cartel facilitation is close to cluelessness. 

       From Félix Gallardo’s cartel reign in Mexico, emerged the Arellano Felix brothers, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, Amado Carrillo etcetera onto Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the most notorious drug lord of all time, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). From Colombia and elsewhere, illicit drugs flowed into the U.S. via the southern border to complement maritime shipments and airborne routes. Yet the land transport, as aided by political laxity, proved to be a most convenient passage.

       Hence, in 2008, the Mérida Initiative, a security cooperation agreement among the United States and the government of Mexico and Central America came into effect. The U.S. Congress authorized $1.6 billion for the three-year initiative (2007–2010) program, and so on and so forth.

       Yet did Merida really work? Mexican cartels generate annual revenues of $35 billion to $45 billion; some assert a profit high of $500 billion a year? Anyhow, cartels make roughly $500 million a year smuggling migrants into the U.S. Other sources claim this source of income has ballooned into a $13 billion industry. 🗽🏃‍♀️🏃

YET the migrant issue is tackled and quite loudly as Democrat vs Republican catfight. I concur with fortifying the border wall and tougher screening of border guards, budget of which is "spare change" ($8 billion, according to Trump’s estimation) compared with the Defense budget ($811 billion? from President Biden’s 2023 request of $886.3 billion) and at least what has been tossed to Ukraine ($75+ billion of the $113 billion approved last year). 

       In other words, the U.S. can effortlessly physically fortify the border and improve enforcement of border security even if Trump’s $8 billion is multiplied 10x or 20x. America has the resources. But then partisanship politics says nope. No way! 🗽🏃‍♀️🏃