In this crucial election year, where American democracy is at stake, immigration has become a major issue, not only because of its urgency but also because of its political intractability.
A few months ago, we had a bipartisan deal in the U.S. Senate that President Biden promised to sign, but then Donald Trump said no from his exile in Florida, and the sycophants in the ever more cult-like Republican Party followed their leader’s instructions. A much needed agreement on the border between the U.S. and Mexico was dead.
Meanwhile, the migrants just keep coming across the border — over a million in the last six months — as San Diego County, just south of here in Los Angeles, has become the leading entry point for the tens of thousands trying illegally to enter the United States. The 60-mile border between San Diego and Mexico has, for the first time since the 1990s, writes the Los Angeles Times, become the busiest border crossing along the two thousand mile long US/Mexican border, with 37,370 arrests in April.
As San Diego and California are experiencing increased illegal border crossings, the numbers in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas to the east have declined, reflecting changes in smuggling routes and Mexican enforcement against migrants traveling atop freight trains heading north to the Texas border, but also anti-migrant measures by the far right Republican governor, Greg Abbott.
And it’s a new kind of migrant arriving, no longer primarily from Mexico or the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Now, 80 percent of those arrested come from much further away — from China, India, Turkey, Brazil. The most dramatic increase has been in the arrests of illegal migrants from China, or 24,000 between only October last year and March this year. But those trying to cross the border illegally are also up in stunning numbers from other countries: India +331 percent, Brazil +622 percent, Turkey +88 percent, Ecuador +499 percent.
The allure of America and the hope for a better life are still strong incentives for so many around the world, as Ry Cooder sings in his beautiful and haunting song, “Across the Borderline,” but:
“When you reach the broken promised land
And every dream slips through your hands
Then you'll know that it's too late to change your mind”
I have listened to it a lot, lately.
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