US Government trying stem tide of immigration - literally

Needs moar moat electrowires and alligators.

But really, this kind of thing now...

edited 17th Dec '11 9:25:26 PM by NickTheSwing

Sign on for this After The End Fantasy RP.

Makes me wonder if people are saying "fuck it" and seeing what they can literally get away with.

Remember, these idiots drive, fuck, and vote. Not always in that order.

"Drug catapult discovered on Mexico border"

So basically, yes. yes they are.

Reading the rest of that article, the drug catapult dosn't scare me. The "smugglers fled the scene in a Humvee" does.

HOW THE FUCK DID THEY STEAL A HUMVEE?!?!?!?!?

edited 17th Dec '11 10:17:52 PM by Joesolo

I'm baaaaaaack

The article even points out that most immigration flow has gone elsewhere. For the intent of stopping illegal immigration, this seems like a silly waste of time.

This won't solve anything. They will build an even bigger and even cooler underground tunnel. With more weed.

More Buscemi at http://forum.reelsociety.com/

Wow, I just realised the title was a pun.*Facepalm*

I'm baaaaaaack

The irony alone could probably power a whole episode of The Daily Show!

I highly doubt it's a military humvee, it's probably one of the civilian models you could find at a dozen dealerships five years ago.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Er, wait, didn't immigration dramatically drop off after the recession hit?

Infinite Tree: an experimental story

Probably, but keep in mind that Mexico has long been a much poorer country than the US. Even in the current situation, we're probably the land of opportunity to a lot of foreign folks.

About the only way we can fix the problems in Mexico is by eliminating the Cartels. The only way we can get in there and eliminate the Cartels is via direct military action, but Mexico would never let us do that, and no amount of support from us to them will kill the Cartels, only help the current govt maintain some semblence of order.

Ergo, we either deal with this problem by annexing Mexico, or we let it happen in America. Not really endorsing invasion of Mexico, but that's essentially what it would take.

A bit of military intervention would actually work though, we have lots of intel on the cartels, and they operate openly in broad daylight in most areas as they can easily challenge or defeat the members of the military or police that aren't on their payroll. If we had two or three task forces, we could roll up and do horrendous damage to the Cartels within the course of two weeks before they realized how fucked they were and went back underground. That's the price of operating openly the way they do, and the language barrier wouldn't be much of an issue, as we have loads and loads of spanish speakers.

I'm kind of for the annexation thing myself, gets rid of the entire issue of illegal mexicans working jobs at lower than legal wages, and all the factories we have in Mexico become ours. No longer having a border means no trade barrier issues when transporting goods made in those factories to the rest of the States.

Barkey, if you're going to have the balls to suggest something like that, you should also have the balls to not use wishy-washy political language to make it sound less heinous than it really is. What you're talking about is invading and conquering Mexico to solve a drug crime problem that exists due to the money we give their drug lords with our asinine drug policies and our economic policies that deliberately make Mexican industry noncompetitive in legally-alternative fields.

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

No stopping illegal immigration until Mexico gets under control. No getting Mexico under control until the cartels get the axe, and that won't happen until after drug trafficking becomes less lucrative. So what we really need to do is step back, look at this comprehensively, and take a solution that addresses all these concerns.

Or we turn the US into such a horrid place to live and work that nobody wants to work here anymore. The problem is that the US government is incapable of doing anything on a large, comprehensive scale, so we get counterproductive mishmashes of patchwork solutions that make the problem worse.

Ending the War on Drugs would help, in theory, but Mexico isn't going to get fixed until we starve the oligarchs. First step towards that is to remove their petty distractions.

It's either that or annexation, and I will not stand for imperialism.

I am now known as Flyboy.

How else do you propose starving the plutarchs in Mexico? Ending the War on Drugs and moving to a more sensible drug policy would at the very least cut the head off most of the money flow to the cartels that run the country.

Shut the border down.

Well, at least, shut the illegal immigration down.

None of this "let's build a (totally useless) wall!" nonsense, either, I mean an actual military presence.

Lemme dig up the article...

This and this.

I would tear NAFTA up (and maybe consider redrawing it, but I doubt it) and then lock the border down and make sure that the only people coming across do so legally (and I would make it easier to come across legally, for that matter, as well as possibly revise the citizenship requirements).

I am now known as Flyboy.

I just think we should triple the amount of work visas granted on a yearly basis and call it a day. Seems easier than creating bogus laws and stamping these people as illegals and demonizing them accordingly. The US's immigration policy has always been to discriminate against people who aren't of Western European descent.

I find it hard to justify military action when these people haven't done anything wrong in the first place.

You don't seem to understand exactly how bad Mexico has gotten. Ultimately no matter how many we allow in legally—unless, I suppose, we simply said "fuck it" and didn't regulate it at all—there will always be more who try to come illegally.

And the stupid shit racist laws actually came in sometime in between 1870 and 1930 (I can't remember exactly when). I know by the '20s they were getting really bad in the wake of WWI, but...

I am now known as Flyboy.

I will admit that the full gravity of the situation escapes me. At the same time, I don't believe that simply shutting down the borders will do anything more than cause more hardship and suffering to the poorest citizens of Mexico.

A better idea would be to try to choke off the financial flows into and out of the country.

Let me put it this way: my grandma goes to Mexico every year, and she's traveled extensively around it, and she's a native.

From what she's told me, Barkey's suggestion, while abhorrent to think about, is not disproportionate to the problem.

I am now known as Flyboy.

If that's the case, the solution seems like it would be to keep people from getting back in to Mexico, not to stop people from leaving.

If the situation is as bad as you claim, it would seem that the only people who would want to get into Mexico would be the drug traffickers and other ne'er do wells.

edited 18th Dec '11 3:54:40 PM by DarkConfidant

Well, you're a very intelligent person, and yet you already admitted to not knowing much about Mexico. The people in government there are good at propaganda. Most people in the US think of Mexico as "shitty near the border, but nice and pleasant with good beaches further south."

Read the articles I linked. The place is (now) a hellhole, and it's all the goddamned Right-wing corporatist-libertarian... I'm not sure what they are, really. They remind me of the Chicago Boys, but more insidious. Either way, they sank Mexico from Second World to Third World status in half a century.

I am now known as Flyboy.

Well, the dichotomy (trichotomy?) of Second-World isn't accurate - the Second World referred to the nations under the auspices of the USSR during the Cold War (the First World was the US and other Western Democracies, and the third-world was the nations not otherwise specified).

However, I do see your point, and the article is correct on why Free Trade is such a bad idea in practice - it increases the size of the economy, but it doesn't make people better off on the whole, especially not if you're in the bottom 10% of the economic spectrum. That's the problem with economic statistics - relating economic production in the aggregate doesn't tell the most important part of the story.

The definitions of the terms have been changed since the Cold War.

And, yes, that's my point. The articles even say, if we shut the border down, there would be a revolution in Mexico within a year.

I am now known as Flyboy.

Fair enough on the semantics. I'm just a traditionalist in word meaning...

As for the substance, it still seems like a problem that the US has to deal with - the States is part of this problem, and it has to take responsibility. Trying to stop illegal immigration is sort of like treating the symptoms instead of curing the disease. The problem is that there's just no political will to do anything in the US anymore.

Well, I agree, and support the idea of ending the War on Drugs, but as you said, the political will to do what would really help—forcing the oligarchs out of power, doing EU-style "cohesion funds," using a rewrite of NAFTA to enact stronger labor/environmental policies—just doesn't exist.

And at that, because the Right-wing has taken over the US anyhow, and has held it since the end of LBJ's presidency.

I am now known as Flyboy.