Immigration Issues and Reform

[Zoo_View]

Right? Is it better that 100% of fentanyl is being brought in by citizens, rather than 86%?

If we deported all undocumented immigrants, and never allowed one back in, then you still have a huge fentanyl problem being brought in by all US citizens. Then what?

Invade Mexico.

 

[lightbluenc]

If Republicans lose elections this cycle it’ll be because abortion and other issues are a losing issue for them. It certainly won’t be because the average American trusts the Democrats more on illegal immigration.

Republicans would love to make this election about immigration and economy, rather than abortion and Trump drama/fatigue/being an old ass.

The problem is, the average citizen doesn't understand the immigration "problem" (or lack thereof). I am waaaay more informed than the average voter, and I still don't understand what the actual "problem" is. Just tell me the problem.

 

[Enigma94]

If you are looking to compare rates, then you are correct.

The other important issue is: what would happen to fentanyl volume if we somehow eliminated all entry of non-citizens? The answer is fairly obviously nothing: if most of the drug runners now are citizens, then they would surely recruit more citizens to run drugs. Or use larger shipments and fewer runners. Or any number of strategies. What won't happen is the drug cartels giving up and saying, "eh, a small % of our workforce has been taken from us. Let's just quit and take our winnings."

And in the meantime we impair our economy by attempting to mass deport a significant portion of our manual labor job force. Plus how many Hispanic people who are legally in the US get harassed as overzealous enforcement agents use the new mandate as cover to go after any and all people who "look like" illegals? It's emblematic of current Republican policy making - it feels good so let's do it, but not only does it not fix any problem it creates substantial new ones.

 

[altmin]

“Data show the Trump administration’s decision to close U.S. ports of entry to nonessential traffic during the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 had the consequence of accelerating drug traffickers’ shift to fentanyl, a more potent drug than heroin, which helped lead to an increase in drug overdose deaths.”

Synthetic Opioid Overdose Deaths Soared While Trump Was President

Overdose deaths from synthetic opioids soared when Trump was president, raising issues about efforts to blame Biden border policies.

www.forbes.com

also much easier to make fentanyl here than say grow opium poppies. profits go up

 

[superrific]

But if 14% of the people arrested for this are non-citizens, that doesn’t make the point some people evidently think it does. That’s still a way outsized percentage.

What it means is that non-citizens are not essential to the drug trade. You could stop all border crossings by non-citizens and the same amount of fentanyl would get through.

Combatting drug use with supply interdiction is a policy that we used to call "the war on drugs." It is a failed policy by every possible metric. It is arguably one of the most consequential and profound policy failures in US history. This idea that we can disrupt the supply of drugs by stopping the immigrants is just another (and particularly stupid) version of that same tale.

Here's the truth: overwhelmingly the people responsible for overdose deaths are the people who willingly put that poison into their bodies. Illegal immigrants are not responsible for your friend's death. Now, "responsibility" is the beginning of the story, not the end. A person who drove drunk as a 20 year old, crashed his car into a tree and is now a paraplegic -- well, that person is responsible for his paraplegia. Nobody made him do that. That doesn't mean we should just tell him F U every time he asks for assistance. Part of being an enlightened society is the realization that we all make mistakes, and our lives are better when we can support each other when we do.

I would never sit here and say, "oh, your friend was stupid and killed himself, such a shame." It is still a tragedy. There's almost certainly a longer story behind that death -- one that might involve issues like depression and despair, hopelessness, lack of job options, physical over-exertion leading to dependence on prescription pain killers, and even genetic factors that make people susceptible to addiction. And it's important to tell those stories, and learn from them, and try to make it so that these things happen much more infrequently.

Illegal immigrants are not part of that story. You make your friend's death into a triviality or worse when it's an occasion for you to punch down on migrants instead of learning about what actually caused it.

 

[HeelYeah2012]

Right? Is it better that 100% of fentanyl is being brought in by citizens, rather than 86%?

If we deported all undocumented immigrants, and never allowed one back in, then you still have a huge fentanyl problem being brought in by all US citizens. Then what?

Having a strong border is about more than just not letting the people in. It’s also about keeping the drugs out. A stronger border will result in fewer drugs flowing through it just like it will fewer people flowing through it.

Admittedly the drug problem is more complex than the illegal immigration problem because there are such sophisticated ways to get drugs transported now.

 

[EyeballKid]

Having a strong border is about more than just not letting the people in. It’s also about keeping the drugs out. A stronger border will result in fewer drugs flowing through it just like it will fewer people flowing through it.

This is patently false, as has been pointed out several times over.

 

[superrific]

A stronger border will result in fewer drugs flowing through it just like it will fewer people flowing through it.

This was the theory of the War On Drugs. It was a complete failure.

In the battle between smugglers and border guards, smugglers will always win because they have several advantages:

A. They have a strong profit motive. Border guards do not.
B. They have much more enthusiasm, because they have much more at stake.
C. They have a much less challenging task. Border guards are trying to stop all entry. Cartels are just trying to get some product through. If they get some product seized and their mules captured, it eats into their profits a bit. They will just make more product and recruit more mules.
D. Smugglers get to see where the border guards are when making their plans. The border guards do not have that luxury. They have to defend a 2000 mile border, whereas smugglers can direct all their resources where they perceive a weakness.

Interdiction for drugs will never work. It never has, and for the above reasons (and many others), it never will. And repackaging the war on drugs as a war on illegal immigrants will be even less successful.

 

[superrific]

he's trying to find answers for his friends death, and if part of that is figuring out answers for what that could or could not be, then I think he's learning and trying.

After his response to the numerous posts about the issue, do you stand by the assessment that he's just trying to find answer for his friend's death? That is, if there even is a friend.

 

[Milk and Cookies]

Having a strong border is about more than just not letting the people in. It’s also about keeping the drugs out. A stronger border will result in fewer drugs flowing through it just like it will fewer people flowing through it.

Admittedly the drug problem is more complex than the illegal immigration problem because there are such sophisticated ways to get drugs transported now.

The drugs come through legal ports of entry not illegal crossings. Did you read anything posted?

 

[HeelYeah2012]

What it means is that non-citizens are not essential to the drug trade. You could stop all border crossings by non-citizens and the same amount of fentanyl would get through.

Combatting drug use with supply interdiction is a policy that we used to call "the war on drugs." It is a failed policy by every possible metric. It is arguably one of the most consequential and profound policy failures in US history. This idea that we can disrupt the supply of drugs by stopping the immigrants is just another (and particularly stupid) version of that same tale.

Here's the truth: overwhelmingly the people responsible for overdose deaths are the people who willingly put that poison into their bodies. Illegal immigrants are not responsible for your friend's death. Now, "responsibility" is the beginning of the story, not the end. A person who drove drunk as a 20 year old, crashed his car into a tree and is now a paraplegic -- well, that person is responsible for his paraplegia. Nobody made him do that. That doesn't mean we should just tell him F U every time he asks for assistance. Part of being an enlightened society is the realization that we all make mistakes, and our lives are better when we can support each other when we do.

I would never sit here and say, "oh, your friend was stupid and killed himself, such a shame." It is still a tragedy. There's almost certainly a longer story behind that death -- one that might involve issues like depression and despair, hopelessness, lack of job options, physical over-exertion leading to dependence on prescription pain killers, and even genetic factors that make people susceptible to addiction. And it's important to tell those stories, and learn from them, and try to make it so that these things happen much more infrequently.

Illegal immigrants are not part of that story. You make your friend's death into a triviality or worse when it's an occasion for you to punch down on migrants instead of learning about what actually caused it.

I’m not trying to cast full blame over my friend’s death to anyone besides him. He absolutely owns a large piece of that for putting drugs into his body in the first place, regardless of who knew (if anyone) that it was laced with fentanyl when it killed him.

Him and a lot of my other childhood friends from back in my hometown take pretty hard drugs regularly. I’ve gone to bachelor parties and been amazed. I don’t hang out with them much anymore because I moved away and started a career in a bigger city, but we are all still lifelong friends from the bonds formed growing up playing sports together.

So yeah, to be clear here I’m not trying to say he was fully a victim. Partially so, but he owns the majority of the responsibility for his death because he put drugs into his body, and taking something that has been laced is a risk you take any time you take cocaine or Xanax or whatever else.

The saddest story for me in drug related deaths like this one is seeing the tragedy of how tough the whole situation has been on his parents, and on some of my other buddies who were closer to him than I was. Luckily he wasn’t married and didn’t have young kids or anything that he left behind. But still, the people left behind have a hole that can never be refilled. And so it’s a problem worth trying to solve, or at least reduce (drugs will never be fully eliminated from the population, but fentanyl is an absolute deadly killer)

 

[HeelYeah2012]

After his response to the numerous posts about the issue, do you stand by the assessment that he's just trying to find answer for his friend's death? That is, if there even is a friend.

This is extremely disrespectful. Of course there really was a friend. I have a lot better things to do than fake the death of my childhood friend to try and score message board points against you goobers.

You even suggesting I would make this up makes me want to just disengage from the conversation with you.

 

[lightbluenc]

Having a strong border is about more than just not letting the people in. It’s also about keeping the drugs out. A stronger border will result in fewer drugs flowing through it just like it will fewer people flowing through it.

Admittedly the drug problem is more complex than the illegal immigration problem because there are such sophisticated ways to get drugs transported now.

Agree yeah. And aren't they stopping more drugs now than the previous administration like you said? Seizures up 800% or whatever the figure was?

How does Trump say he'll make a stronger border by deporting all these folks. But the way he says he'll do it, you don't think he'll actually do that. So what is he doing differently than what's happening now?

I am begging you to change my mind on this, and sell me on it.

 

[superrific]

I’m not trying to cast full blame over my friend’s death to anyone besides him. He absolutely owns a large piece of that for putting drugs into his body in the first place, regardless of who knew (if anyone) that it was laced with fentanyl when it killed him.

Him and a lot of my other childhood friends from back in my hometown take pretty hard drugs regularly. I’ve gone to bachelor parties and been amazed. I don’t hang out with them much anymore because I moved away and started a career in a bigger city, but we are all still lifelong friends from the bonds formed growing up playing sports together.

So yeah, to be clear here I’m not trying to say he was fully a victim. Partially so, but he owns the majority of the responsibility for his death because he put drugs into his body, and taking something that has been laced is a risk you take any time you take cocaine or Xanax or whatever else.

The saddest story for me in drug related deaths like this one is seeing the tragedy of how tough the whole situation has been on his parents, and on some of my other buddies who were closer to him than I was. Luckily he wasn’t married and didn’t have young kids or anything that he left behind. But still, the people left behind have a hole that can never be refilled. And so it’s a problem worth trying to solve, or at least reduce (drugs will never be fully eliminated from the population, but fentanyl is an absolute deadly killer)

Then try to solve that problem instead of attacking migrants.

If your goal is to reduce fentanyl deaths, then one place to start is to make naloxone widely available. Biden did that, and Trump did not. Drug addictions should be treated as health issues, and Obamacare in fact made drug rehab one of the essential covered services (remember that the Pubs are STILL! trying to kill Obamacare). It's Dems who are putting money into community organizations to fight drug addiction, and at the federal level it's basically only Dems doing that.

So if you want to reduce the incidence of deaths, there's one choice and it ain't the one you're making.

 

[superrific]

This is extremely disrespectful. Of course there really was a friend. I have a lot better things to do than fake the death of my childhood friend to try and score message board points against you goobers.

You even suggesting I would make this up makes me want to just disengage from the conversation with you.

I don't know you. Are you saying that it's ridiculous to suspect that some biographical details shared on message boards aren't always true? I can take your word for it, and I have been, but you're nuts if you think I'm going to assign a 0% probability to the "HY2012 is making things up" option.

I've said many times that my wife is a child psychiatrist. That's not verifiable or observable. I would not expect you to assign a 100% probability to that claim being true.

 

[HeelYeah2012]

I don't know you. Are you saying that it's ridiculous to suspect that some biographical details shared on message boards aren't always true? I can take your word for it, and I have been, but you're nuts if you think I'm going to assign a 0% probability to the "HY2012 is making things up" option.

I've said many times that my wife is a child psychiatrist. That's not verifiable or observable. I would not expect you to assign a 100% probability to that claim being true.

Simply put, it’s a dick move to question the legitimacy of a death that someone brings into a conversation. Way more so than questioning someone’s relative’s occupation. And even more so because I’ve been an active member of this board for years and I’m not just a drive-by poster who has no history here.

And lastly, my likelihood of making such a thing up is even less when it’s well known that I have a real life friend (groomsmen in each other’s weddings) who is also an active member of this comminity and has posted on this very thread. So if I just started making up deaths of people close to me that weren’t true, he’d be here to call me out on it.

I stand by what I said - super disrespectful and proves you take this stuff all too seriously to even entertain that I would lie about such a thing.

 

[CRHeel94]

Another reason this issue is personal to me is that I had a childhood friend who died from fentanyl overdose last summer. The fentanyl issue is closely related to illegal immigration, although not exactly the same issue. See below.

“Trafficking of fentanyl appears to largely occur at the southwest border, where 90% of the drug seized by CBP is found. Over the past year, the agency seized 850% more fentanyl compared to 2019 and seized nearly twice as much fentanyl in fiscal year 2023 compared to the previous year, according to data from the agency.”

“Authorities say Mexican drug labs are responsible for taking Chinese precursor chemicals and turning them into deadly fentanyl product. Fake pills resembling real prescription drugs like oxycodone are part of the scourge that has made its way into "every community," as one federal official put it.”

Full article: Border officials seize a lot of fentanyl but say it's complicated problem to solve

This might sound counterintuitive at first.
Cracking down on illegal immigration has made things more dangerous and exacerbated the drug smuggling. Why? By making it much harder to get across the border, there is a greater profit motive for coyotes (human trafficking). This has drawn the cartels into the business, giving them another revenue stream and way of getting drugs into the US. Now, I'm by no means suggesting an open border, just pointing out one of the collateral effects of cracking down on immigration.

 

[lightbluenc]

I'm still struggling to find the main concern for immigration being the problem that it apparently is.

It cant be economic, crime, job related, or now healthcare related with drugs.

Just tell me the problem and how trump is going to fix it. Although the ways he said he's going to fix it, apparently he's not going to do. So I don't know what to think now.

 

[superrific]

Simply put, it’s a dick move to question the legitimacy of a death that someone brings into a conversation. Way more so than questioning someone’s relative’s occupation. And even more so because I’ve been an active member of this board for years and I’m not just a drive-by poster who has no history here.

And lastly, my likelihood of making such a thing up is even less when it’s well known that I have a real life friend (groomsmen in each other’s weddings) who is also an active member of this comminity and has posted on this very thread. So if I just started making up deaths of people close to me that weren’t true, he’d be here to call me out on it.

I stand by what I said - super disrespectful and proves you take this stuff all too seriously to even entertain that I would lie about such a thing.

All right. I didn't question your claim specifically because it was you; it was rather an expression of a more general distrust for reported anonymous anecdotes. But anyway, you make some good points here. I retract what I said.

 

[CFordUNC]

As someone who is both pragmatic and moderate ideologically, I just am not ever going to believe that Republicans actually care about immigration and border security as anything more than election year pandering, until they actually do more than just talk about how big of a crisis the border is. In other words, I want to see action from the Republicans before I believe that they actually care about fixing what is a legitimate problem.

I keep coming back to it, and I will continue to keep coming back to it. If immigration and border security is truly the existential crisis that Republicans claim that it is, then why did they block the most comprehensive by partisan immigration and border security legislation that we have seen in United States Congress in generations? Why did they block legislation that would have specifically beefed up our physical and technological border security? Why did they block legislation that called specifically for a substantial increase in the physical number of border agents as well as asylum officers? Why did they block legislation that would enable any future president, regardless of party, to close off the border entirely when the system becomes overwhelmed? Why did they block legislation that would help overhaul the process for seeking asylum in the United States, and which would impose an “emergency authority” that would leave asylum fully out of reach for those crossing between ports of entry for much of the next three years? Why did they block legislation that would address issues like work permits and years-long waits for asylum-seekers, and also raise the initial standard a person must pass in order to access our asylum system?

Again, it was a Republican-dominated bill full of major Democratic concessions, drafted and brought to the table by a staunch Republican senator in a deep red Republican state. Why was it blocked by the Republican presidential nominee?

And why is any Republican voter trying to piss on me and tell me it’s raining by acting like immigration and border security are a major existential crisis, but apparently not enough of a crisis to actually put electoral pressure on the Republican Party to put its money where its mouth is?