Trump Threatens To Shut US Border To Block Migrant Caravan
Trump Is Threatening To Shut The US Border With Mexico as a migrant caravan of 4,000 people is making it's way from Honduras.Trump has demanded that Mexico and Guatemala do everything they can to stop the migrants from coming to the US. He has even threatened to suspend aid to these countries.This could be bad news for democrats going into the Mid terms as immigration is a core issue for moderates and conservatives. If the Democrats appear weak on migration and illegal immigrants it could bolster the republicans.
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A Honduran migrant caravan of 4,000 people is currently on its way to the United States.
The Mexican government is dispatching federal agents to its southern border to prevent them from crossing into Mexico.
Donald Trump has threatened to suspend aid to Mexico and Guatemala if they don't stop this caravan.
He has even suggested shutting down the southern border and dispatching the army to prevent these people from getting into the U.S.
All the while, There has been a spike in illegal border crossings, and the Washington Post reports that we are seeing record levels of families and children traveling on their own.
This could be bad news for the Democrats.
Immigration is a core issue for conservatives, and the midterms are about 20 days away.
This is likely going to rile up conservatives and a group we call the politically disengaged, who also find immigration at their core values.
When we're talking about moderates, this is something that might actually get them to vote for conservatives if the Democrats aren't going to be strong on immigration.
Now, aside from the issue of the migrant caravan, we've also got a viral video being pushed by some Republicans showing men handing out cash to what they claim are Honduran migrants heading into the U.S.
So we're gonna do a bit of fact-checking, but first, let's take a look at what's going on with this migrant caravan and what Donald Trump has to say about it.
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From NBC News, Honduran migrant caravan grows to 4,000 amid spike in U.S.
border crossings.
The Mexican government has sent 500 extra federal police to its border with Guatemala in anticipation of its arrival, say documents obtained by NBC News.
The story says that part of the caravan, which has split into two groups, is approaching the Mexico-Guatemala border amid a surge in border crossings on the U.S.-Mexico border.
In September, U.S.
Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 41,400 undocumented immigrants, up from 37,544 in August, according to numbers not yet released publicly but obtained by NBC News.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the numbers of families and children traveling on their own surged to record levels in September.
The story adds, police have been sent in part to quell protesters in the state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala, who are advocating for the safe treatment of the immigrants, according to the documents.
Cooperating with the United States on strict border policies has been met with a serious backlash in Mexico, and it contributed to the election of President-elect André Manuel López Obrador.
In response to the caravan, Donald Trump tweeted, In addition to stopping all payments to these countries, which seem to have almost no control over their population, I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught.
And if unable to do so, I will call up the U.S.
many criminals from entering Mexico to the U.S.
In addition to stopping all payments to these countries, which seem to have almost no control
over their population, I must in the strongest of terms ask Mexico to stop this onslaught,
and if unable to do so, I will call up the U.S. military and close our southern border.
The assault on our country at our southern border, including the criminal elements and
drugs pouring in, is far more important to me as president than trade or the U.S. MCA.
Hopefully Mexico will stop this onslaught at their northern border.
All Democrats fault for weak laws.
We can see that illegal border crossings have spiked.
41,400 reported cases from the US Border Patrol.
We can see that there are record numbers of families and children traveling on their own.
And now we have a migrant caravan of 4,000.
This is a huge issue for conservatives.
And in my opinion, it's not just about border security, but I think there's a huge opportunity that Trump is taking advantage of.
By tweeting in no uncertain terms that he will stop these migrants, he is going to rally people in this country who believe in controlling our borders to vote Republican in the midterms.
But we also may have potential misinformation.
There's a video being circulated from a Republican showing men handing out cash to what appears to be the migrant caravan.
The story might not be fake news.
It might be real.
But let's take a look at the facts and try and figure out what's actually going on.
This video from Representative Matt Gaetz said, Breaking.
Footage in Honduras giving cash to women and children to join the caravan and storm the U.S.
border at election time.
Soros?
U.S.-backed NGOs?
Time to investigate the source.
In the video, you can see that there is a man handing something out to people, but we can't really tell what he is handing out.
It looks like it might be cash, but I'll be honest, in trying to fact check the story, I could find very little.
For all we know, these are people going to a football match and he's handing out drink coupons.
I'm being a bit facetious.
I think the simple solution is that it's likely someone handing out cash, but we don't have any evidence necessarily that it is the migrant caravan.
But one researcher has dug into the story and here's what he found.
Travis View said, I have an incomplete fact check of a Matt Gaetz tweet.
Spoiler.
I don't know what's going on.
Congressman Gates tweeted a video depicting men handing out money to what appeared to be people in the Honduran caravan.
This video came from the Facebook page of one Enrique Vitanza.
Vitanza is a Honduran resident, but when I asked him via Facebook Messenger about the source of the video, he claimed the video was sent to him by friends in Guatemala.
If that's true, then Gates's claim in his tweet, the video is footage in Honduras, is false.
On the more substantial point, the content of the video, he did characterize it as footage of men giving money to people in the caravan.
He speculated on possible political sources of the money, but had no clarifying information.
So here is where we are at.
Per the original poster of the video, the video was filmed in Guatemala, not Honduras.
The video does depict men handing out money to people in the migrant caravan.
The source of the money or the reason they are being given cash is unknown.
I reached out to Travis and asked him if he had any information beyond his tweets, suggesting that, for all we know, this could be drink coupons for a football match.
He responded.
Yes, it could be.
Sadly, the video isn't high enough quality to make out what was being handed out.
The man who posted the original Facebook video was confident it was money, though.
And he didn't strike me as a wild conspiracy theorist.
For example, he thought that the men might be with the cartels, or Venezuelan socialists, or from the Guatemalan left, but cautioned he was only offering his hypothesis.
And this is the original source of the video.
I think this is really important because when we're dealing with these issues, you're going to see a lot of misinformation.
And this video is going viral.
As of right now, it's got around 33,000 retweets.
But let's get to the meat of the issue.
Migration.
And whether or not these people should be coming into the US.
This is bad news for Democrats, in my opinion, because it is a very small faction of Americans who are absolutely okay with an unlimited number of people just coming into the country.
It is a very small faction of people who believe we shouldn't have borders.
The average American believes we should have borders.
Look, conservatives definitely want more border policing.
Many conservatives are okay with legal immigration.
There are many Democrats who are okay with legal immigration, want more of it, but still want borders.
It wasn't that long ago that Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were saying we needed more border security.
This wave of open borders activism, it's relatively new, and it's not what the average American wants.
But we also need to think about compassion and empathy for the people who are trying to come to this country.
Because just bringing them in won't solve any of their problems.
In fact, it could make their lives worse.
You can't just take a large group of people and place them into an economy.
It doesn't work that way.
What happens when large groups of people enter the country is that ghettos form.
People's standard of living goes down.
It's bad for the migrants, and it's bad for us.
This is why the United States does allow refugees and asylum seekers and legal migrants to come in with controls, so we can make sure that we're maximizing an opportunity for everybody.
It is good when more workers come in the country and we have a place for them.
But if you just bring in a random and large group of people, they end up forming tent cities.
They get placed in ghettos.
They suffer.
Drug abuse runs rampant.
Crime runs rampant.
It is not good for anyone to be putting people in impoverished areas and making them suffer.
I mean, it's the old saying.
You give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but you teach a man to fish, you feed him for the rest of their lives.
What that means is, we have controls for a reason.
Because we do want to help these people.
We are legally obligated in many circumstances to consider asylum for these people.
But if we can't control for it, they will end up in worse off positions.
This is an article that I talked about not too long ago, but I want to bring up again because it's very important when talking about migration.
This is from the Foundation for Economic Education.
It says, Why Conservatives Can't Understand Liberals and Vice Versa.
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt says many people today live in a moral matrix.
The article highlights five moral foundations.
Care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity.
But what Haidt says is that liberals recognize harm and fairness.
Liberal-minded people, however, reject the three remaining foundational values.
Loyalty, authority, sanctity.
While conservatives accept them.
It's an extraordinary difference and it helps explain why many liberals and conservatives in America think the other side is bonkers.
The important point is that Liberals tend to only accept the idea of care and fairness, and they reject loyalty, authority, and sanctity.
But this can be a problem.
The far right would sacrifice the weak in exchange for order.
That's a problem, too.
But if the left is going to welcome in people into a system where it can't handle them because they care about the people and they believe in fairness, by rejecting the other three moral foundations, they're only going to cause more harm.
And this is why I think that the moderates in this country, independents, the politically disengaged, and conservatives think immigration is an extremely important issue, and the left tends to be more for open borders.
The left wants to minimize harm.
They want to care for people and be fair.
But if you just bring people in, you're not actually solving the problem.
You're potentially making the problem worse.
How can we, as a society, maximize the amount of good we can do for these people while making sure no one is harmed?
If we just bring them in because on the surface it sounds like it will make life better, we're wrong.
It'll make life worse for most people.
It could disrupt the economies, it could put a strain on public resources, and it could force these people to live in dangerous ghettos where they're not going to be better off.
Admittedly, a dangerous ghetto in the United States is much less dangerous than Honduras, so there is potentially some benefit.
However, we need to make sure there's space for them.
We need to make sure that they can have jobs.
We need to make sure that there's going to be enough money to support them and for them to work and contribute to the economy.
Otherwise, we just bring everyone down and we increase the amount of harm we do.
It's important to recognize all of the moral foundations.
While not going so far into the direction of order and authority that we would sacrifice the week and miss out on real opportunities.
There may be people who want to come to this country who absolutely do fit into our economy and it will benefit everyone for them to come here.
But that's exactly why conservatives and your traditional liberal believes in border controls because we want to make sure we know where these people can go to maximize the benefit to everybody and minimize harm.
The far left that wants complete open borders would only maximize harm.
It just doesn't make sense.
But that's just my opinion.
Let me know what you think in the comments below and we'll keep the conversation going.
Do you think Trump should shut down the southern border and just keep these people out?
Do you think we should take into consideration their individual circumstances and maybe actually bring these people into the country?
Again, let me know what you think.
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