Trump has declared a national emergency to handle illegal
immigration across the southern border. So is it really a national emergency or
not?
In 2018 a total of 396,579 illegal immigrants were arrested
trying to cross the border with Mexico.
That is the total that were caught. How many were not caught?
The ICE itself thinks it catches about 90% of those who try
to cross, but independent experts doubt the figure is that high, and various
estimates run between 55% and 85%. Let’s
assume perhaps 75% (3 in every 4) get caught.
That means the actual number of attempts – successful and unsuccessful –
ought to be around 528,000, or say half a million per year as a rough estimate.
So do half a million people attempting to enter the country
illegally across the southern border constitute a national emergency or not? It’s not as many as in some past years (in
2000 more than 1.6 million were apprehended trying to cross the border), but a
half million is still a lot of people.
Perhaps how one feels about this depends in part on whether
one can lose one’s job to an illegal immigrant. The only contact wealthy
liberals in gated communities have with such people is when they hire cheap
gardeners or maids. On the other hand people with marginal jobs flipping hamburgers
or picking vegetables in the Central Valley feel the threat directly.
There is of course the separate question of whether a physical
barrier is the best way to handle this situation. The Obama administration apparently
thought so, because it built about 700 miles of barrier before Trump became
president, so current Democratic opposition to the barrier seems suspiciously
political. Still, it is a valid question – would more high tech solutions (sensors,
drones, helicopter patrols, etc) work better? Would they work as well? Would
they cost less, or more?
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