Caravan Contradictions bit.ly/2AzMP2x
“Caravan”—the euphemism for a current foot-army of more than 10,000 Central Americans—of would-be border crossers has passed into Mexico.
Marchers promise they will continue 1,000+ miles northward to the U.S. border, despite warnings from Trump that as unauthorized immigrants they will be turned away. No one has explained how, or by whom or what, such a mass of humanity has been supplied, cared for and organized.
Once at the border, the immigrants further predict that they will successfully, but illegally, enter the United States, then claim refugee status, and finally rely on sympathetic public opinion—and progressive political activism—to avoid deportation.
If past experience is any guide, they are quite right in thinking they can melt into the population, ignore future legal summonses, and count on the de facto amnesty that currently protects 22 million illegal aliens, the vast majority from Mexico and Central America.
Border crashers assume rightly that U.S. security agents and the military will not use force, on the principle that Central Americans appearing on CNN battling helmeted Americans with batons and tear gas is bad American “optics.”
Central Americans claim they are “refugees,” forced out of their homes by violence and endemic lawlessness to save their very lives by migrating to the United States.
They insist on that rationale because of quirks in American law that make it more difficult to deport resident “refugees” (especially those with small children) than ordinary illegal aliens seeking improved economic conditions inside the United States.
Yet the migrants are now for the most part well inside Mexico. The Mexican government has generously offered succor. No one is threatening their lives. Mexico has even offered temporary residence for those who seem to have good grounds to be admitted as true political refugees.
In response, the caravan migrants have ignored those offers, because the vast majority are not true refugees.
They are mostly no different from millions of illegal aliens who have entered the US for higher wages, the chance to send remittances to families back home, and for the generous entitlements of American social services that supplement entry-level wages and subsidize remittances.
What Is America to Them?
Is the US a saintly or sinful place? Weirdly, and by the very same people seeking its succor, it is often deemed a cruel and awful place—especially a cruel and awful place because it does not open its borders to the world to enjoy cruelty and awfulness.
Is the US a saintly or sinful place? Weirdly, and by the very same people seeking its succor, it is often deemed a cruel and awful place—especially a cruel and awful place because it does not open its borders to the world to enjoy cruelty and awfulness.
Interviews with some of the migrants reveal this ongoing irony. Most claim that they have no intention of diverting their odyssey to any other country. Only America will do.
No doubt some in the caravan are genuine political refugees seeking their salvation in America. A few already may have applied in their home consulates for legal residence and may already be learning English and the peculiarities of the U.S. Constitution.
But that is not the image the caravan conveys. The caravan is a paradox, a contradiction and an irony of thousands who are quite eager to violate U.S. law, to make claims upon their would-be host—
-- with the full expectation that their new home has no right to demand that all would-be guests fleeing lawlessness should first abide by laws.
