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Joe Biden is now officially the 46th President of the United States of America
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It is good news though.
Edit: It's a little more complicated than how I described, but it is two more reconciliations in addition to the one already used for COVID relief. You are correct. It's too bad the Republicans want to obstruct popular bills like COVID relief, voting rights, and infrastructure and that we're even talking about this.
Last edited by Lacius,
Breaking-ish news today is that according to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas the construction of Trump's wall may continue under Biden's administration despite a promise that he won't allow "another foot" to be built. This move to "fill in the gaps" is a response to an influx of illegal migrants at the border, particularly unaccompanied minors. Rather interesting considering we've been told that walls are ineffective for four years and there are better ways to handle illegal crossings.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/apr/5/dhs-may-restart-border-wall-construction-plug-gaps/
EDIT: Ninja'd.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/apr/5/dhs-may-restart-border-wall-construction-plug-gaps/
EDIT: Ninja'd.
Last edited by Foxi4,
Got to be BS, for public perception, now that migration numbers actually spiked by quite a bit. No?
Issue has always been, that you cant build/maintain a wall that vast by any sensible standards of spending, that couldnt be circumvented by people moving others in -- which is why you'd want to go with automated drones, and cameras and... That way you'd only need a response team close enough(?!).
edit: Ah, the commissioner says its BS.
(From the WP article linked.)
Status quo:
same article
Public polling currently:
Cant explain to public, that its still a bat sh*t crazy idea, once a president told them its not.
(The 'entire border walled' thingy. (Which 'filling gaps' applies is still a goal. Its not.))edit: Thats great also: Make hole in wall big enough for car, use road they build for your escape.
(In a region, where the road (to react faster) got finished, but the wall didnt.
Those are the parts, that are probably getting plugged still... edit: No was partly wrong real reason burried deep in the article:
Funds already allocated for this year. Meaning money available to spend.
Last edited by notimp,
I looked up the "The Senate Opportunity Fund" out of curiosity. Apparently it is a nonprofit from Wyoming.
Its still somewhat likely that public opinion shifted under the current news.
But looking at the overall situation is much funnier.
First rule of populism is - never fix the migration issue. Maybe be tougher on migrants for a little while, but NEVER solve the underlying issue. Its what brings you your votes. Fix it, and the votes are gone. No brainer.
Second, lets look at what happened with the funds. Most funds were invested in regions, where there already were (sometimes defunct) barriers. Good idea. The border control infrastructure is already there, its most efficient to start there. You built them roads, you gave them surveillance tech, now their jobs went from 'driving patrols in the boondocks' to sitting in climatized rooms, cruising on tarmac roads once on a while. Much better job.
You have a few friends in construction, hey they could use 1.4+ (edit he actually spent 15 in 4 years in total) billion USD a year -- everybody involved is happy. Issue still remains, if wall goes down, great road into the US for cartels.
And of course - maintenance cost. And operational cost more than 4x higher, if you plan to build the 'entire thing' - because so far you built it where its most easy to cross over from mexico.So - a project that has you increase operational costs by maybe 6x, has you investing in maintanance an equal amount as Trumps yearly spending times 7x (4x the size, and more expensive build costs in remote areas) at least every five years or so -- can be circumvented by hardware from home depot (electric steel saws), and increases efficiency for the cartels, IF they manage to open a gap big enough for a car - in a period shorter than response time. (Or if they have an accomplice park one on the other side, then human sized gap is enough.)
Bwaaaaaaha..
Yeah. No. This is dead in the water, past its current 'build out' stage. (Plus a little spending here and there.) Never ever.
(And for what? To prevent migrants from providing a net benefit to your economy from the second generation onwards? (How benefits are distributed is a different question.
))
Last edited by notimp,
some people here
Biden voters explaining how him continuing the build the wall and caging children is actually good when he does it pic.twitter.com/cte1e6j9JB
— 🦑🏳️🌈Smugly🏳️🌈🦑 (@smugry) April 7, 2021
It's just copium. According to Jan Psaki who stammered her way through the answer, "limited construction" will continue for as long as there are funds since you can't randomly decide to stop a project Congress has allocated funds for already. We knew this when Biden said he'll stop it last year, no big surprise. In typical Psaki fashion, you get two different things from each side of her mouth - construction is paused, and also continuing in limited capacity at the same time. It's the world's first Quantum Wall, simultaneously being built and not being built. Just say that you're building it because the law says you have to, at least that's honest, and significantly less hilarious.
.@PressSec on border wall construction: "There is some limited construction that has been funded and allocated for." pic.twitter.com/grUlcrPD3q
— The Hill (@thehill) April 6, 2021
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So now we're back to pretending Democrats are and always have been against any form of border security? Their counter-proposal to Trump's 7th century wall* was using 21st century technology to monitor the border instead. Which makes sense, because people are going to climb over regardless of whether it's a two-foot fence or a fifteen-foot wall*. Like Foxi said though, the money is already allocated, aka wasted, and there's no way to get it back.
* Anything with giant gaps in it isn't really a wall, now is it? It's just a taller fence, and it's not slowing immigration down in the least.
* Anything with giant gaps in it isn't really a wall, now is it? It's just a taller fence, and it's not slowing immigration down in the least.
Not according to the DHS. According to Homeland Security's own report, the wall allowed for reduced manpower at the border and its effectiveness measures between 70% and 87% depending on sector as far as illegal entries are concerned. The difference between policing a gap and policing the entire border is the scope - walled off sections only need surveilance (drones, CCTV) and the occasional patrol, an open and unsecured section needs boots and tires on the ground. All the nonsense about "cutting giant truck-sized holes" in thick steel slats or digging holes under the structure is complete poppycock - the area is monitored for any seismic activity and smuggling tunnels are found and intercepted routinely. As for the cutting, I've only ever heard of or seen small openings that a single person can fit through at a time because such a procedure needs to be quick and dirty. Border Patrol is rather quick to show up in the event of any disturbance, and wherever the full system is working, the wall's structural integrity is monitored. They have a very limited amount of time to take advantage of the breached barrier, and it takes a significant amount of time to breach it in the first place. It's 6mm thick steel slats - if you think you can cut it quick, grab a battery-operated angle grinder and give it a spin yourself, might take you a hot minute, and a few discs. No doubt the effectiveness will increase further as the construction is completed and the remaining infrastructure goes online.
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/10/29...ective-and-disrupting-criminals-and-smugglers
For the record, the recent influx at the border is *clearly* attributed to the change of both the policies and the language surrounding the illegal immigration debate. The reinstatement of catch and release and "softening" the approach by Biden's administration led directly to the influx, it's rather obvious. The language and the approach Trump used, albeit often unpleasant, served as a deterrent to illegal migration, and the statistics demonstrate that. Now the "cages" are overflowing with unaccompanied human-burritos and Biden's administration bears sole responsibility for it. It's his crisis, whether he wants to admit it or not (are we still denying that there is a crisis at the border? I'm not sure).
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Sounds like someone is fudging the numbers, because only 47 miles of new fence has been built since Trump's election. There's no way it's making that much difference on a 2000 mile-long border. It's also very easy to find video of immigrants going over, under, or straight through the new fencing. Whether border patrol shows up after the fact or not is irrelevant.
Partially. Criminalizing the process of seeking asylum, telling immigrants to wait just on the other side of the border in Mexico, and cutting off all humanitarian aid to the continent of South America while many of its countries were in crisis certainly didn't help the situation.
Well it's a good thing he plans to implement a path to citizenship then, because that's the only way we're gonna solve this problem long-term. Aside from handing down meaningful punishments (jail time) to corporations and business owners when they're caught employing undocumented immigrants, anyway, but neither party seems to have an appetite for that.
I'm absolutely going to count sections where the wall replaced dilapidated fencing and waist-high (often wooden) barriers because those are ineffective. Within those parameters, 452 miles of wall (there or thereabouts) have been built up until the end of his presidency with around a hundred currently under construction and then some in pre-construction phase. Presumably the sections still under construction will be completed since they were funded. I'm sure that you can find such videos, however statistics have a slightly larger scope than a handful of Liveleak videos you may have come across - we'll put those in the +/- 20% that are determined enough to slip through, no matter how they're deterred. At present, the result of Biden's "humane" policies are a humanitarian crisis, complete with smugglers tossing (sic!) children over the border wall because they know that even if they're apprehended or injured, they will be taken care of by the state. That's a 14-foot drop, dare I say mildly dangerous. Orange man was bad, but at the very least he didn't *incentivise* illegal migration by effectively giving them a promise of citizenship as long as they were willing to break immigration law first. I think it is perfectly acceptable and reasonable to offer an easy path to citizenship for legal migrants and I'm all for lowering the barrier of entry, but at the same time, if Biden and his administration are not willing to enforce immigration law (the enforcement of law being part of his responsibilities as chief executive) then you have no border at all and the whole debate is moot.
EDIT: I've added a few choice pictures of how some of the barriers looked like prior to being modernised just to drive my point a bit further. May as well not have been there at all.
The second one is particularly valuable since it shows exactly what problem was being addressed and how, a contrast between the old and the new. I'm sorry, I'm pretty sure I can lift my leg that high - the old barrier was useless.
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Once they've been paid, the vast majority of smugglers and coyotes don't give a damn about the well-being of others, children or otherwise.
He did incentivize illegal migration, by making it the only option. Why would anybody bother going through the process of seeking asylum if they're just going to be treated like the people who were caught trying to cross illegally anyway?
I don't disagree that the previous fencing was useless, but I do contend that the new fencing is equally as useless AND more expensive. Even in the worst shape I've ever been in, I guarantee you I could scale it and get back down without issue. It's money that should've been spent on infrastructure, pandemic relief, or a million other things that might've actually have a positive impact for the average American.
When the wall construction started there was no pandemic, so it's disingenuous to suggest that this spending was frivolous and in a time of desperate need. I'm glad that we agree that the border was in a sorry state before Trump took to modernising it, as both of his predecessors did. I'll have to disagree in regards of effectiveness since I trust numbers more than I trust your anecdotes - you cannot drive a vehicle through that thing unless you intend to ram into it and topple a section over (which has happened at least once and led to some 13 casualties, so clearly it's not a very bright idea). The numbers show that the measure worked, I see no evidence of "fudging" since similar results were observed in other countries where border walls were erected. Of course *no* barrier is completely impenetrable, some portion of illegal migrants will always manage to find a way to cross the border, however the wall is definitely a large obstacle that makes it significantly more difficult, particularly for larger groups. It's also worth noting that the style of wall that was erected was a direct result of negotiations with the opposition party. It wasn't originally intended to be steel slats at all, however this solution seemed to tick all the boxes and it fit the requirements of border agents themselves.
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I wasn't suggesting that, but there will always be unexpected events (natural disasters, pandemics, infrastructure emergencies, etc) for governments to contend with. Putting that money away for a rainy day obviously would've been a better use for it, hindsight or not.
Indeed we'll just have to agree to disagree on that. Border patrol obviously doesn't report on the number of immigrants that manage to make it over the fence and then evade authorities, because they don't know. I'd wager a guess that the ten extra minutes it takes to scale the taller fence results in a 15% higher capture rate at most.
The number is derived from the apprehension rate, not the evasion rate. If Border Patrol apperhends X people in one period of time and Y in another then they've recorded a Z% increase/decrease. They're not basing their numbers on guesses, they're basing their numbers by comparing them to, for instance, the same time last year. Your wager is based on pure speculation, but you cop to that, so I have no reason to give you a hard time over it. I understand this is a contentious issue - it was a contentious issue for the last couple of years, so I get where you're coming from. With that being said, relaxing border policy perhaps wasn't the best of ideas in the middle of a global pandemic when public resources are already stretched thin enough. Can't be helped now, I suppose - here's for hoping the problem gets resolved soon.
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Well that certainly brings the accuracy of their statistics into question then, as they have no idea whether fewer people are attempting to cross during a given day/month, or more managed to evade them during that same period. It's not a blind guess, but there is guesswork involved.
Cruelty as a blanket immigration policy simply wasn't sustainable. And for his part, Biden did tell immigrants to hold off for a while, but what we're seeing is an influx of mostly children who wouldn't have survived on their own in Mexico or central America. I do expect a resolution, but given the scale of the problem, not for a few years at least.
The numbers are as accurate as can be, which is to say "pretty damn accurate" considering the area is monitored 24/7 and patrolled every day. You're getting better results with reduced manpower required, not much to complain about. You're comparing like to like, the methodology hasn't changed, so whatever result you see is an accurate representation of percentage change.
Yeah, I remember that TV spot where he asked them nicely. It was hilarious, I couldn't believe he actually did it, or that he and his handlers thought it'd work. It was kind of embarrasing, all things considered - made it look like he doesn't have a handle on the situation at all (which he doesn't). I'm surprised the media aren't storming the border like Ted Cruz did the other day, I'd expect those vultures to camp there 24/7 to capitalise on some misery, as they always do.
I find it interesting that you actually believe this level of migration is caused by "asylum seekers" and not seekers of economic opportunity who are sneaking their children in to use as anchors in anticipation of some kind of "family reunification", which is plausible once the whole "pathway to citizenship" malarkey (ha!) rolls out. You might have more faith in humanity than I do - all I see is a new spin on the old cuckoo scam.
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IIRC Democrats were pushing to fund drone monitoring precisely because the entire 2000-mile border isn't being monitored, and certainly not all at once. Monitoring via aircraft is a big waste of fuel and can only capture so much square mileage at a time.
So now we're pretending everything is hunky-dory down in Central and South America? That's a bit too cynical even for you. A lot of their parents are dead due to cartel/gang activity, and some of them were knowingly sent to their deaths via deportation from the Trump administration. Not all of the children have family in America either, and finding new homes for them is going to take a long time.
For humans, survival comes before economic considerations, always.
Last edited by Xzi,
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A @ Aglae Pheryl:Is anyone familiar with former forum opg.life ? I missed the transition to the new forum over the week end (was scuba diving in the sticks with no internet connection). If anyone in touch with any members please pm me.
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