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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26209 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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Do you have a source for numbers on the amount of illegal immigration? All the numbers I can find are at least a few years old so don't tell me anything about the last three years. e.g., Wikipedia has charts that only go up to 2016.

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/border-numbers-fy2023

The 2.5 million encounters of migrants occurring at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year (FY) 2023 represent a new historic high, topping the prior year’s record, as has been widely noted since the recent release of year-end government statistics.

2.5 million encounters in a year sure seems like a lot. Presumably some were encountered, sent back and came again, others were never encountered at all.

It's also significant that over half were non-Mexican, Guatamelan, Honduran but from other countries.

Colombian, Ecuadorian, Chinese, and Indian migrants also reached the Southwest border in larger numbers in FY 2023, albeit in much smaller totals than Venezuelans.

Recall the scare about a PLA 5th column entering the US? I don't know about that but it looks like the US borders are so open they're sucking in people from other continents.

Presumably some were encountered, sent back and came again

I believe the actual process is: the illegals seek out border patrol to report to and then are released into the US with a court date.

And as you said: then there are the others who don't bother with that and don't show up in encounters statistics.

That is more recent than any chart I could find. The Wikipedia page I linked has that data going up to 2021 and I had also found it on Statista going up to 2022. Statista does mention a methodology change in March 2020, although it doesn't sound like it should affect that number.

But that's counting encounters at the southern border, which is very different from the count of illegal immigrants (which, admittedly, is a hard thing to count). Is the idea that you expect that number to be proportional to the number who make it across that border unnoticed? I'd worry about changes in enforcement over time adding a lot of noise there, especially if there's any policy changes encouraging repeat encounters for the same person. Also, this is ignoring illegal immigrants that enter through other methods; are you particularly more worried about the ones crossing the border illegally as opposed to overstaying visas?

Whats the actual deal with the Chinese illegal immigrants? Are the numbers actually high? If so are we to interpret this as the situation in China being much worse than we thought, or is it some clandestine operation? The latter seems super implausible. If the numbers of captured people are really that high I can’t imagine nobody would be caught with a suspicious gadget or spill the beans on interrogation.

There's lots of illegal Chinese immigrants. The trick is most of them come in legally for a brief stay and then just never leave. Their immigrant relatives help them get set up in America and they live relatively prosperous lives here compared to their lives in China.

And more recently many people of nationalities spanning the globe are pouring over the southern border. And a few of them are also Chinese. But presumably some other sort of Chinese people who can't easily scam the American visa system.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that, in the past five months, at least 4,300 Chinese undocumented migrants have been apprehended crossing the southern border, which amounts to more than double the number for all of the previous year.

One immigrant spoke anonymously to MSNBC about his experience, saying he feared staying in China after speaking out against government corruption. Fearing further retribution after being jailed twice, he fled, following instructions left by those before him on Chinese social networking apps. Detailed guides, videos and maps helped him make the journey largely on his own.

According to NBC, it's primarily political refugees. People who aren't feeling safe in China looking for somewhere rich and unwilling to extradite. Though it makes sense to sneak in some sleeper agents too - it's not like it's hard to procure guns or explosives in the US.

You can definitely be persecuted for speaking out, and everyone knows this. It’s also very hard to verify that you’ve been persecuted, so a whole lot of people claim refugee status who haven’t actually been persecuted.

We had a guy join my church for a few weeks, and he reported that he’d also attended Baptist, Mormon, and a whole bunch more. According to my Chinese wife accumulating a big list of churches you’ve attended is a strategy for claiming religious refugee status.

According to my Chinese wife accumulating a big list of churches you’ve attended is a strategy for claiming religious refugee status.

You can just list off different churches you've attended and pattern-match to somebody else's semi-recent claim of repression?

It didn’t make much sense to me. My best guess is trying to accumulate people that can confirm that you attended church services.

IIRC religious refugees are resettled with their coreligionists by preference.

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