US News
Middle-Class Migrants Fly to Mexico and Then Cross U.S. Border Illegally
Economic woes from the Covid-19 pandemic drive more-affluent people from Brazil and Venezuela to join poor migrants seeking refuge in the U.S.
More migrants illegally entering the U.S. to apply for asylum are members of South America’s middle class who fly to the border by plane, according to authorities and aid workers.
While the majority of people who come to the U.S. through Mexico are among the world’s poorest fleeing poverty and crime, such as the thousands of Haitians who recently formed a makeshift camp in Del Rio, Texas, the growth in middle-class migrants reflects continued hardship in nations such as Brazil and Venezuela from the Covid-19 pandemic and associated economic downturns, as well as political instability.
The U.S. government doesn’t keep track of how migrants arrive at the border or their financial status. But Chris T. Clem, the U.S. Border Patrol’s chief patrol agent in Yuma, said agents intercept people who say they recently flew to a Mexican border city nearly every day.
“They got off the plane and went to a cab or to a bus,” Mr. Clem said of the final leg of the trip to the border near Yuma for these more-affluent migrants. “They literally were driven up and just walked up and turned themselves over to us.”
The arrival of more-affluent migrants indicates that the pandemic and its economic aftershocks are pushing some people to seek refuge in the U.S. who likely wouldn’t have come in the past.
“The global recession really made people lose hope,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. “It’s a big deal to go from being middle class in your country to be undocumented in the United States.”
South America and the Caribbean last year lost about 26 million jobs—the biggest economic contraction of any region in the world, according to the International Monetary Fund. And Brazil recently surpassed 600,000 Covid-19 deaths, second in the world only to the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University data.
As with other people traveling in families who enter the U.S. illegally and request asylum, most are released to shelters and then travel elsewhere to wait for their claims to be adjudicated, a process that can take years due to immigration-court backlogs.
Unlike poorer migrants from Central America and Haiti, though, middle-class migrants often leave the shelters soon after arriving for flights they booked ahead of time.
On a recent Wednesday morning, a group of about a dozen people from Venezuela walked up a river levee near the Colorado River, which marks part of the border in Yuma, looking for Border Patrol agents to surrender to. Members of the group, which appeared to include a mix of adults and teenagers, said they took three flights and a bus to arrive in Algodones, a Mexican city across the border from Yuma. They then walked into the U.S. through a wide gap in a border fence. In total, the trip took about two days, compared with months on the road that migrants from Haiti and other countries have reported.
The next day, several Brazilian migrants were released by immigration authorities to the Casa Alitas migrant welcome center in Tucson.
“We were informed by others about the process they took,” Silvana Ribiero de Santos, a 33-year-old mother, said of her family’s decision to fly to Mexico from Brazil. “In my country it is very bad. [People] don’t have anything.”
In Arizona, to vote in federal elections (President, the House, and the Senate) you are required to swear (under penalty of perjury) that you are a U.S. citizen…
But there is no proof requirement.
Official Arizona Secretary of State Citizenship Requirements for Voting:
The federal government relies on the attestation of the individual, the penalties for false statements, and the states’ efforts to cross-check information to maintain the integrity of the voter registration process (Source).
The process is largely based on the honor system.
The Associated Press recently reported this fact:
Source: https://apnews.com/article/arizona-voting-laws-citizenship-proof-50dafd68f8dd4af5cf669afa62efdf19
Currently, there is no national database or system that verifies the citizenship of voters directly. There is no guaranteed audit at the federal level specifically targeting “federal only” voters who have not provided proof of citizenship.
What about election audits? Wouldn’t non-citizen voters get caught?
Non-citizens in the country on parole awaiting an asylum hearing could potentially be identifiable in databases used for post-election audits, such as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, which is designed to verify the immigration status of individuals (Source).
As for “gotaway” illegal immigrants who evaded entering in a documented fashion, it would be significantly more challenging to identify them in databases for the purposes of a post-election audit.
Since they have not been processed through official immigration channels, they would not have records in the same databases that document legal entries and immigration statuses. Therefore, they would not be easily identifiable through the standard verification processes used in post-election audits.
I’ve seen studies that claim non-citizen and Illegal Immigrant voting is extremely rare… What about those?
Studies such as those from the Brennan Center for Justice (link), indicate that non-citizen voting is extremely rare based on available data and the significant legal risks involved.
However, these studies rely on the analysis of documented cases and official records, which would not include undocumented individuals who evaded detection entirely.
For “gotaway” illegal immigrants, since they lack official records, there would be no straightforward method to audit their voting activity after an election. This is a limitation of the current verification systems, which are designed to prevent ineligible voting using the records available. The rarity of non-citizen voting cited in studies is based on the assumption that the risk of severe penalties, including deportation and imprisonment, serves as a strong deterrent against such actions.
In summary, while there are robust systems in place to deter and detect ineligible voting, the nature of undocumented entry into the country creates a gap in the ability to audit post-election voting activity for those individuals. The extent to which this occurs is unknown, and the studies available do not account for individuals without any official records.
All things considered, voting is only a small fraction of the overall concerns that Americans are expressing related to illegal immigration and asylum into the United States.
Gallup recently reported:
Quote from Gallup:
“For the third month in a row, immigration is the problem Americans name more than any other as the most important facing the U.S. While immigration has not ranked as the top problem often in Gallup’s monthly trend, it stands alone as the most politically polarizing issue in the past 25 years of Gallup’s measurement.
The record surge of migrants at the southern U.S. border in December brought even more focus on the issue — and while attempted crossings have eased slightly since then, they are expected to increase as spring continues. President Joe Biden’s approval rating for his handling of immigration has been persistently poor. With the presidential election about six months away and immigration top of mind, the issue remains a significant vulnerability for Biden as he seeks reelection.”
Source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/644570/immigration-named-top-problem-third-straight-month.aspx
Health
Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, Has Been Diagnosed with Terminal Cancer
This follows his transfer to a medical facility in December
The new comes from a letter he wrote:
