Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/05/biden-imposes-strict-migration-limits-at-border.html
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This definitely feels like a decision made purely for political reasons. I have a lot of friends and family who are more traditional centrists Democratic voters, and they’ve almost all bought into the lie that the recent immigration surge is a huge problem and has to be stopped. Again, I don’t know why some Democratic voters are so eager to accept right wing talking points, but that’s nothing new. See also: Hillary Clinton is evil, Joe Biden is a socialist/communist, trickle down economics, etc. So Biden, I think, thinks he has to do this to win in November. I think it’s a mistake, and I think it may hurt his chances of winning because it’s going to drive progressives away. After 3 years of the most progressive administration since LBJ, he’s clearly moving back to the middle for the general election. I really think it’s a mistake. I’m still going to vote for him, but I am disappointed.
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Maybe it’s because (Zap! Pow! Dams burst! Bombs go off! Wasps
fry: ttssss!) they agree with them.
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So we were the xenophobic monster the whole time?
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Ok, let me rephrase. I don’t know why some Democratic voters so eagerly agree with right wing talking points.
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Immigration is a problem, but too many people isn’t the problem. It’s the horribly complex and punishing process that is the problem. When our borders were more open (i.e. we processed more timely), illegal immigration was a minor problem. When we made moving back and forth more administratively heavy and costly, people decided going outside the system was just easier…you know, like how people are once again pirating more since D+, Netflix, and all the other services keep raising their prices and lessening offerings.
The administrative loops are designed to make it complicated, with all sorts of checks and stops that exist to just exist and drive my six sigma wired brain crazy. I’ve had several relatives sent all the way to start because they missed a checkbox on a form. I had one, after years of work, have his permanent residency denied because he couldn’t recall one trip out of country (on a temp resident card, as allowed) that happened 6 years previously. He had to start over completely (forms and money) and just gave up.
The US highly benefits by immigrants and immigration. Multiple studies have shown and confirmed this. We need to make it easier which would also lead to more control over the people flowing through the process. The tens of thousands of new jobs in the original border plan actually did a good deal to help move this forward, but thanks to Trump they nuked it.
It’s annoying that Biden and the Dems play by the rules, since if Trump was in the same situation with the same desires, you know he simply would have done it and dared people to try to stop him, which they wouldn’t have.
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I mean, we know all politicians are terrible, but WHY?
Are there really that many border states that are swing states?
Are they trying to “win over” some of the Dumpf base/ some sort of Republican appeasement? THAT always works.
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I understand he is doing it for politics, but we actually need more working age people in the US, not less. And migrants commit less crime % wise than native born, so the fear of migrants is irrational. plus migrants make new and interesting food, that I can have at restaurants. Imagine if we didn’t let in the Italians like the US was so scared of! There wouldn’t be American pizza!
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This. As well as starving the system of resources. Along with the complexity of the process, the GOP has starved the immigration system of magistrates and other staff who process immigration cases. This isn’t incompetence - it’s sabotage. It’s how they get numbers like “millions of crossings a day” that they can shout about, when “crossings” does not remotely equal “ persons.” It takes one individual ~50 crossings to get their case settled.
Solving these problems were part of the bipartisan immigration bill T**** ordered assassinated a couple months back. The GOP doesn’t want to solve them; they want to keep making immigration an artificial problem.
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19 posts were split to a new topic: Maunderings Upon American Empire
… it must be, my TV says so 
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Disappointing, and I wonder how effective it’ll be - the sort of people for whom immigration is a major issue are also the sort of people who are ill informed/reality resistant. So odds are good the people he’s trying to appeal to won’t even know he’s done anything.
Immigration isn’t really a border state issue, though - it’s more an issue in non-border states where people think it’s a much bigger issue in border states than it actually is, and think it’s an issue in their state, too. (The number of times I’ve heard someone in, say, North Dakota talking about how there’s too many immigrants and there’s no room left in the country… as they gaze in the direction of their nearest neighbor, five miles away.)
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100%.
people who live on the border benefit from easy transit across the border. they have family and friends on both sides. and jobs take might take them across daily
vanishingly few people who live on the border - regardless of their overall politics - like the gop idiocy of border walls and razor wire. it’s all about the parts of america - where talk radio and fox reign supreme
eagle creek fought abbott over the seizure of their park
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I’ve been saying that if politicians wanted to fix immigration (or at least the asylum part) instead of bloviating about it, they would hire more immigration judges. Because adjudicating asylum requests in a timely fashion would be better for most people even if the percentage of applicants granted asylum didn’t change.
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… are these the same people who say there is a “demographic crisis”
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We need to go first on that front.
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According to the latest statistics, Japan’s fertility rate — the average number of babies a woman is expected to have in her lifetime — stood at 1.2 last year. The 727,277 babies born in Japan in 2023 were down 5.6% from the previous year, the ministry said — the lowest since Japan started compiling the statistics in 1899.
South Korea stands at 0.9, Hong Kong at 0.8, China at 1.2. This should constitute a demographic crisis indeed. US at 1.7 is in better shape, but well below replacement level. Anywhere under 2.2 relies on immigration to continue to exist.
List of countries by total fertility rate - Wikipedia
(Worth noting that the world rate stands at 2.3, right at replacement level. Maybe the population is starting to level off? Maybe? 
)
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… “having fewer millions of people” may not be exactly the same as “ceasing to exist” 
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Maybe not instantaneously, but @anon29537550’s assertion is correct unless someone manages to make people immortal. Eventually, with a sub-replacement-threshold birth rate, a species ceases to exist.
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