Border Crisis at El Paso

As federal immigration authorities continue to release migrants by the thousands, El Paso officials and local charities are near a breaking point in the sprawling border city.

Large groups of migrants, including a large contingent of Nicaraguans who crossed the border on Sunday, have been streaming across the Rio Grande in recent days. U.S. Border Patrol facilities housed more than 5,000 people on Wednesday and roughly 1,700 migrants were released, according to data from the City of El Paso.

El Paso Migrant Dashboard
https://www.elpasotexas.gov/migrant-crisis/

https://www.elpasotexas.gov/migrant-crisis/faqs/

Why are they allowed to cross into the country?
Migrants are provided asylum from economic oppression, drug trade, and human trafficking. Customs and Border Patrol apprehend and process the migrants before releasing them into El Paso. Migrants are assigned court dates to determine their status in the United States. Additionally, due to U.S. and Venezuelan diplomatic relations, Venezuelans are not able to be deported.

Does the City of El Paso detain these people?
No, the City of El Paso does not detain any migrants. The Federal Government apprehends migrants through Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). Once CBP has processed migrants, they are free to travel within the U.S. At this point, we help them coordinate transportation to their final destination.

The processed people then can disappear within the US. It would seem the US in effect has an open border.

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Meanwhile, I walked into a BK yesterday, saw four people behind the counter, and exclaimed “wow! fully staffed!”, as that is rarely the case in food service places around Detroit. A Wendy’s/Tim’s combination store that I used to patronize had one employee car in the parking lot, six cars lined up at the Wendy’s side, and the Tim’s side closed, when I drove by in late afternoon.

Steve

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As Fed Chair Powell was describing how inflation is being driven by the tight labor market (about 1.7 job openings for every worker seeking a job) I thought about the fact that the flood of immigrants coming over the border are not allowed to work legally.

Wendy

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Right and if you can’t work legally how do you support yourself? By working under the table for unscrupulous people illegally, for a much more modest wage. I can’t believe “we” as a country can’t get a handle on this.

Andy

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This is why this “problem” never gets fixed. Its great for riling up half the population though. Want to solve the “immigration problem?” Make employers liable for hiring someone without papers. Problem gets fixed fast.

Remember my story about dairy farmers in north rural Texas knowingly employing illegal immigrants, while constantly complaining about them being here?

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Exactly, some of my friends hire illegals for work because they are so cheap and then run them down for being illegal. You fine people who hire them 15,000 per worker all that will end. But then someone will cry that it is a tax and we shouldn’t be raising taxes on good Americans.

Andy

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That’s not really where the objection would come from.

Rather, it would come from immigrant advocates. There are approximately 8.1 million undocumented immigrants in the workforce. Removing them from the workforce would be an economic catastrophe for immigrant communities. Millions of households would lose their income. Businesses that serve communities with large proportions of undocumented workers would suffer as their customers could no longer afford their products and services. Etc.

That might have been a solution when nearly all undocumented workers were single men that were sending remittances to their families in their country of origin. If the likely outcome from effective employment enforcement was that the worker would simply leave, that might be tolerable. But when the worker is the head of household of a family that’s here in the U.S., and the outcome of the worker losing their job isn’t that they leave but perhaps their citizen children drop out of high school and get jobs so that someone legal can bring in a paycheck, there’s going to be different kinds of pushback.

Albaby

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Two year old news article. I suspect the current % of undocumented folks with jobs is roughly the same.

Undocumented workers are likely concentrated in agriculture, manufacturing, construction & meat packing.
Agricultural work has always been low pay. But meat packing was once unionized with good pay & benefits. The JCs of that industry utilized undocumented workers to bring vast profit to the bottom line increasing share holder value.

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/21/us/meatpackers-profits-hinge-on-pool-of-immigrant-labor.html

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When have our borders been effectively closed?

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El Paso ABC affiliate recent reports on the border.

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