Of Refugees, Borders, and Invaders By Sarah Hoyt

https://pjmedia.com/trending/of-refugees-borders-and-invaders/

Apparently the “caravan” of Central and Middle [oops! — Ed.] Americans that was headed towards our Southern border, still is headed towards our Southern border.

Sure, Mexico has stopped openly lending support, and the lawyers accompanying the merry band have stopped telling them it’s a shoe in, but they’re still coming.

The truth of the matter is that Mexico might not be lending open support to this attempt to test US borders, but they are in fact lending it their support, by not arresting these illegal aliens on their soil (Mexico has much tougher immigration laws than ours) and not offering them asylum there.  Instead, they let what must be a significant and large multitude continue towards the US border.

Why are they doing it?  The answer is fairly obvious.  From the linked article:

The Central Americans, many traveling as families, on Sunday will test the Trump administration’s tough rhetoric criticizing the caravan when the migrants begin seeking asylum by turning themselves into border inspectors at San Diego’s San Ysidro border crossing, the nation’s busiest.

They’re coming to test the “Trump administration’s tough rhetoric”.  In effect, they’re coming to test our borders and our decision to uphold their integrity.

It shouldn’t need to be said, but I’ll say it: I am not against immigration.  It would be stupid and weird for me to be against immigration, given that I’m an immigrant myself.

I am not, however, a believer in open borders.  The whole open borders project is a weird project of intellectual elites who view themselves as the aristocrats of the world and all cultures similarly blighted and in need of their input. It was never realistic, and it is less realistic than ever for the US.

The US, while a nation, possessed of territory, like all nations, is something quite new in the history of the world, as our founding principles are a radical departure from past countries and an effort to create a citizenship of belief.

Because I am quite devoted to our founding principles and the liberty which they secure us, I don’t believe in immigration simply for economic necessity or to escape this or that.  While those are valid motives to immigrate anywhere – including here – you should come here with the intention of becoming an American, or as my friend, Dave Freer, himself an immigrant to Australia, puts it, FIFO: Fit in or F**k off.

This “caravan” coming to “test” our borders is the very antithesis of FIFO, and in fact, if we do not find a way to turn it away, and ship these people back where they came from, we might as well consider our borders non-existent.  And you know what you call a country with non-existent borders?  Not a country.  To study the fate of such a land, read up on the tragedy of the commons.

If we are open land whom anyone may come and settle in, first we need to stop the welfare system because pioneers by definition don’t get welfare.  And second, we can kiss our culture and our founding principles goodbye, because, in the face of a massive invasion by another culture, there is no way to make anyone acculturate (a painful process at best) or fit in.

I know that many people on the left and right will emphasize the plight of the people in this caravan as “refugees” and bring up both the long tradition of Americans taking refuges from anywhere, when they were in peril of their lives, and the breach of such a policy, such as the turning away of boats full of European Jews fleeing the holocaust.  They’ll say that the turning away of these “refugees” is an act of malice and racism.

In fact, it is neither.  There might be many reasons to take in refugees, but one of them is not to accept a caravan composed in other countries and passing through many countries on the way here.

Take one of the members of the caravan: Nefi Hernandez, who planned to seek asylum with his wife and infant daughter [who] was born on the journey through Mexico, worried he could be kept in custody away from his daughter. But his spirits lifted when he learned he might be released with an ankle bracelet.

Hernandez, 24, said a gang in his hometown of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, threatened to kill him and his family if he did not sell drugs.

First of all, I beg leave to not believe his dire peril, or at least that the story is somewhat shaded.  Sure.  Maybe he sold drugs for this gang, then did something they didn’t like and got in trouble, but I don’t believe drug gangs are in the habit of threatening someone to make them join the trade.  There is something that doesn’t hang together there.

But in addition to that, a drug gang, no matter how lawless the country, is not a government.  Even if they wanted you to sell drugs in this particular village, in this particular province, they’d be unlikely to follow you to the next province or the next village, let alone the next country.  Hernandez comes from Honduras.  That means to get to Mexico he had to cross another country, probably Guatemala.  And to get to the US he had to cross another country, Mexico.

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