Why even have other countries if we're not going to trade and migrate across borders?

That’s not why countries are a thing smh

As it happens, that actually IS why we developed a sense of international community after a tribal mentality led to two world wars and our near destruction.

Countries happen because they want to govern themselves. Borders help keep out the unwanted.

The unwanted as in foreign leeches like the millions of illegal aliens Democrats have allowed to flood this country for the past 20 years.

Like the Asian man who married your unwanted ass so he can get his Green Card?
Must burn finding out you were used as a ticket to citizenship.

Wut?

Accurate

Countries happen because greedy warlords conquer territories so they can rob its inhabitants under the guise of protection and yes that includes all the States of the USA.

Want a cookie?

Make it 2.

But that doesn’t entail allowing illegal immigration. There is a difference.

Yeah, I've been telling your peers that we know that's not true because when it comes to expanding legal immigration to what it needs to be, you're always against that as well.

What does it need to be?

People have been saying for decades: it needs to be modernized and yes, sorry, increased. Immigrants with skills and education cannot get their foot in the door. People with corporate sponsors - literally people with promise of a job - cannot navigate the system. Quotas fill up too quickly. People who grew up in America and were educated in America and have a clean bill of health in terms of law enforcement cannot get a pathway to citizenship. There are no reliable ways to ensure citizenship beyond marrying in, and the end result is that people end up HAVING to break immigration laws: people need to change nationalities, people need to move, and they need legal ways to do that.

All of this was in the 2014 immigration bill that Republicans and Democrats worked out together but Boenher and Ryan never put it up for a vote (it would have passed).

And that's why "this is about illegal versus legal" doesn't wash. Because if you don't care about the legal immigration debate, it's heartless to pretend you care about it for the illegal immigration debate.

None of this should be news to you if you've been paying attention.

The thing is that I am all for increasing immigration of skilled people. What I like most people are against is being invaded by low-skilled illegal aliens who just drain our system and bring crime. We need border security and the Democrats don’t want it because illegal immigration from third world countries bring them new votes.

"Invasion" is a military term. These are civilians. They are overwhelmingly of working age and typically contribute more than they claim in assistance. Many sources have documented that the crime rate among them is lower than citizens of similar demographics. Immigrants are far more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators of it. Border security has been tight for some time now: illegal crossings have been in decline for about 12 years now, and that includes the Obama administration.

Border security has not been "tight." Fentanyl and heroin shipments from Mexican labs are increasing. I attended a webinar yesterday about this very topic. Lots of fentanyl comes from China, but it also comes from Mexico. They also report that there are massive tunnel complexes, which questions the effectiveness of the wall but not the national emergency. I don't think there is a 100% solution, but I do think a wall or some kind of physical barrier is an important part of whatever solution can be put together.

Absolute bull crap and you know it. I would say the invasions from south of the border in the last year have refuted your claim. And they are invasions. There is no excuse for illegal immigration and your statistics are BS.
https://www.immigrationshumancost.org

https://uspoliticsandnews.com/5-million-strong-wave-of-illegals-plans-to-storm-the-border-this-year/?inf_contact_key=71b3b8f6a66595b3864bc4eee03c206c1b0a3f0fd3ee5d9b43fb34c6613498d7&fbclid=IwAR3U3CizrmNmsrd1fjniaJShYrWhHdaH-McXqwmFUdfmIgNYb_yIEPqJG2g

I agree that we need immigration reform. We've needed it for 30 years, but Congress has been politicially deadlocked and can't pass anything without a crisis. I disagree that people _have_ to break the law. I also have doubts concerning how many immigrants are skilled and educated. No one sneaks across the border to practice law, or medicine or engineering.

No! They don't! That's what we've been trying to say: they fly in and overstay their visas, then they practice whatever it is they do if they can (although people with Master's degrees working as cleaners is also common). Not that many cross the land border outside legal ports of entry. A wall will have nearly no effect on any of this and that's what we've been trying to say.

Certainly that needs to be addressed. But border security and immigration reform refer to different, though obviously related, matters. The southern border is not secure (I'm not certain that any of our borders are). Drugs and illegal immigrants do enter the country from there. A physical barrier isn't total solution because it doesn't address the immigration debacles you mentioned above, but it does help to limit border crossing and the scope of the surveillance necessary to address illegal entry. Tunnels are, compared to crossing a river or walking over an imaginary line, expensive. They require more effort, technology and money. We'll never make the border totally secure, but making the cost of crossing it more expensive will at least increase our border security.

Right - that's another thing! People forget their economies of scale. The industrial quantitiesc of drugs that everyone is so terrified of cannot economically be shipped in a large series of small shipments. Mass transportation requires infrastructure: ports, truck hubs, things like that. Which is why most of the really big loads are smuggled in through legal ports of entries anyway - and we're back to this being a legal entryway problem.

If we ARE going to target the small scale mules doing this out in the boondocks, having slats in the wall that you can just hand stuff through makes even less sense.

I don't know what it is about black markets that make people assume that normal market rules are suspended- but ultimately, this has all the hallmarks of trying to fix a problem with too simple a solution.

Fentanyl changes the game, which is why it is so concerning. The amount necessary to "salt" one small french fry is enough to kill several people. The potency of it means that you don't need a truck. Cut heroin with it and the result is 50000 times as strong.

I grant you that simple solutions rarely work, which is why I don't see the wall as a solution by itself but more of "force divider" or limiter.