President Neelix threatens to shut down southern border if Mexico doesn't stop immigration

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Cuz yeah, already cutting foreign aid to the countries those immigrants come from is a great way to ensure there won't be people fleeing here.

Who am I kidding? This is another case of "it's not a bug, it's a feature".

[Yukaphile]

What's the legality of this? Trump wants to be a dictator, but even the President has limits on what he is allowed to do. Isn't the only way to "shut down" a border by stopping all immigration? And that would require a vote in Congress.

[G-Man]

To be fair, illegal border crossing is skyrocketing, we can't just turn them back because they are not from Mexico, and a large subset are claiming "credible fear" (even though statistically the vast majority will not qualify for asylum and less than half will actually bother applying for asylum) in order to gum up the system more, and the courts have blocked everything he has tried to do to fix the problem.

If the totally worthless Democrats in Congress would actually work with the President to fix our asylum process, he wouldn't be resorting to desperate measures to try to force Mexico to help us control border crossings. (Let's remember that the the current Mexican President basically said that every Central America has the right to come to the U.S. during his campaign, and that Mexico is helping to bus people from the South of Mexico to the North).

But half of the Democrats are still in denial that there is a problem (mostly using 1.5-year-old data from FY2017 to claim that border crossings are at historic lows), and the rest admit there's a problem but do not seem to care about finding a way to deal with it. (In reality, they are hoping to add as much of the third world to America as possible so they can get more voters. If it means typhus outbreaks in L.A., feces all over the streets in San Francisco, towns overwhelmed by the influx so be it).

The Border Patrol is completely overwhelmed.

I'm not saying that closing the border is the greatest idea, but it is a desperate move because practically everyone other than Trump (including a lot of Republicans who want cheap labor for their donors) have no interest in actually stopping the crisis on the border.

[G-Man]

My point is: it's awful easy to make fun of Trump and to insult his attempts to get control of this problem. But no one else is even trying to do anything, and the Democrats either deny there is a problem or try to push policies (like the DREAM and PROMISE Act) that will encourage even more people to make illegal crossings (in hopes of getting in under the next amnesty).

If the Democrats were interested in doing anything, I would be more sympathetic. But the Democrats want de facto open borders (however much they deny this). We need more detention space and an end to the Flores settlement if we want to end catch-and-release (instead, the Democrats fight like mad to reduce detention space, which means more catch-and-release).

I have not heard a single Democratic proposal to get control of the southern border (more agents by itself is not enough).

When will Speaker Janeway do anything to help?

[Draco Dracul]

I'm all for him doing this, because I want Texas to turn blue. And this will accomplish this quite handily by taking a baseball bat the the Texan economy which is heavily driven by trade with Mexico. The loss of Texas will in turn end the ability of the GOP to win the presidency. Additionally it will likely break his ability to carry the white working class because this would shoot the US auto industry in the head as most domestically produced cars are at least in part dependent on Mexican produced parts.

My point is: it's awful easy to make fun of Trump and to insult his attempts to get control of this problem. But no one else is even trying to do anything, and the Democrats either deny there is a problem or try to push policies (like the DREAM and PROMISE Act) that will encourage even more people to make illegal crossings (in hopes of getting in under the next amnesty).

If the Democrats were interested in doing anything, I would be more sympathetic. But the Democrats want de facto open borders (however much they deny this). We need more detention space and an end to the Flores settlement if we want to end catch-and-release (instead, the Democrats fight like mad to reduce detention space, which means more catch-and-release).

I have not heard a single Democratic proposal to get control of the southern border (more agents by itself is not enough).

When will Speaker Janeway do anything to help?

You do realize that the entire point of reducing the detention spaces is to force ICE to focus on actual criminals? Right? Like rather than just rounding up huge numbers of desperate people to hold for god only knows how long due to the insufficent number of immigration judges, that they would actually become focused on grabbing human traffickers and the drug traffickers that fund them.

[Darth Wedgius]

There's something wrong with that headline. Oh, wait, I see it:

"President Neelix threatens to shut down southern border if Mexico doesn't stop Illegal immigration"

I wonder why so many on the left like to say things like "anti-immigrant" instead of "anti-illegal-immigrant." If I were a suspicious man, I might tend to think someone was being dishonest. It is then fortunate that I am by nature an optimistic man full of, if not bubbling with, unbridled happiness and faith in my fellow man.

[Draco Dracul]

There's something wrong with that headline. Oh, wait, I see it:

"President Neelix threatens to shut down southern border if Mexico doesn't stop Illegal immigration"

I wonder why so many on the left like to say things like "anti-immigrant" instead of "anti-illegal-immigrant." If I were a suspicious man, I might tend to think someone was being dishonest. It is then fortunate that I am by nature an optimistic man full of, if not bubbling with, unbridled happiness and faith in my fellow man.

Because every time in the last decade when there has been a proposal that would increase security, while also expanding legal immigration it's been shot down by the right, most notably the gang of eight deal which passed with a veto proof majority in the senate, but was not even allowed on the floor in the House.

[Darth Wedgius]

There's something wrong with that headline. Oh, wait, I see it:

"President Neelix threatens to shut down southern border if Mexico doesn't stop Illegal immigration"

I wonder why so many on the left like to say things like "anti-immigrant" instead of "anti-illegal-immigrant." If I were a suspicious man, I might tend to think someone was being dishonest. It is then fortunate that I am by nature an optimistic man full of, if not bubbling with, unbridled happiness and faith in my fellow man.

Because every time in the last decade when there has been a proposal that would increase security, while also expanding legal immigration it's been shot down by the right, most notably the gang of eight deal which passed with a veto proof majority in the senate, but was not even allowed on the floor in the House.

That is what is known as a non-sequitur. Voting against an increase in legal immigration does not make it logical to conflate measures against illegal immigration with measures against legal immigration. If I say I don't want apples, then not wanting an increase in my orange consumption does not make my anti-apple measures in any way anti-orange.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

This just in, Trump said something.

[Draco Dracul]

There's something wrong with that headline. Oh, wait, I see it:

"President Neelix threatens to shut down southern border if Mexico doesn't stop Illegal immigration"

I wonder why so many on the left like to say things like "anti-immigrant" instead of "anti-illegal-immigrant." If I were a suspicious man, I might tend to think someone was being dishonest. It is then fortunate that I am by nature an optimistic man full of, if not bubbling with, unbridled happiness and faith in my fellow man.

Because every time in the last decade when there has been a proposal that would increase security, while also expanding legal immigration it's been shot down by the right, most notably the gang of eight deal which passed with a veto proof majority in the senate, but was not even allowed on the floor in the House.

That is what is known as a non-sequitur. Voting against an increase in legal immigration does not make it logical to conflate measures against illegal immigration with measures against legal immigration. If I say I don't want apples, then not wanting an increase in my orange consumption does not make my anti-apple measures in any way anti-orange.

Yes, but it does mean you're anti-fruit rather than just anti-apple, and fundamentally implies that the anti-apple legislation is in fact anti-fruit legislation or at least a prelude to it.