What he found when he embedded with the caravan

Ami Horowitz decided to embed with the caravan. He found that 90-95% of the migrants are young male adults. Go here to see his video.

"Why would a Central American leave Central America to recreate it in America?"

Victor Davis Hanson writes at American Greatness,

A“caravan”—the euphemism for a current foot-army of more than 10,000 Central Americans—of would-be border crossers has now passed into Mexico. The marchers promise they will continue 1,000 miles and more northward to the U.S. border, despite warnings from President Trump that as unauthorized immigrants they will be turned away. No one has yet explained how, or by whom or what, such a mass of humanity has been supplied, cared for, and organized.

Once at the border, the immigrants further predict that they will successfully, but illegally, enter the United States, then claim refugee status, and finally rely on sympathetic public opinion—and progressive political activism—to avoid deportation.



Refugees, True and False
Central Americans claim they are “refugees,” forced out of their homes by violence and endemic lawlessness to save their very lives by migrating to the United States. They insist on that rationale because of quirks in American law that make it more difficult to deport resident “refugees” (especially those with small children) than ordinary illegal aliens seeking improved economic conditions inside the United States.

Yet the migrants are now for the most part well inside Mexico. The Mexican government has generously offered succor. No one is threatening their lives. Mexico has even offered temporary residence for those who seem to have good grounds to be admitted as true political refugees.

In response, the caravan migrants have ignored those offers, because the vast majority are not true refugees. They are mostly no different from the millions of illegal aliens who have entered the United States for higher wages, for the chance to send remittances to their families back home, and for the generous entitlements of American social services that supplement entry-level wages and subsidize remittances. (We keep ignoring that a 15 to 20 percent federal tax on all remittances sent from the U.S. to Central America and Mexico—around $60 billion a year—would, along with a wall, provide a deterrent to caravan immigration.)

...Would not Mexico be a much better place of refuge for the caravan people, given multiple affinities of ethnicity, language, history, and culture?

...It is not infrequent to hear from American ethnic activists that the current Spanish-speaking migrants are only “reclaiming” their ancestral frontiers in North America (as in American settlers took it from Mexican nationals who took it from the Spanish who took it from indigenous peoples who took it from other indigenous peoples).

Apparently, it is not the fear of Honduras that drives the caravans, but instead the desire to be among foreign Americans—more specifically, to live in a society blessed with constitutional law, protections of private property, free-market capitalism, open inquiry, individual rights, religious tolerance, gender and racial equity, due process, and an independent judiciary? And where exactly did that tradition arise that now oddly seems to work like a magnet for Latin Americans? If the United States is deemed so desirable, why could not the American paradigm be xeroxed in naturally rich, fertile, and inherently wealthy Central America and Mexico?

Immigrants, the ancestors of most of us, enriched our food, music, fashion, art, and literature by importing ideas, customs and practices from their mother countries, but they do not tamper with our core that has guaranteed our success: religious and political tolerance, adherence to the U.S. Constitution, English as the official language, free-market capitalism, and individual liberty.

No doubt some in the caravan are genuine political refugees seeking their salvation in America. A few already may have applied in their home consulates for legal residence and may already be learning English and the peculiarities of the U.S. Constitution.

But that is not the image the caravan conveys. For some reason, the caravan is a paradox, a contradiction and an irony of many thousands who are quite eager to violate U.S. law, to make claims upon their would-be host without serious reflection about why they are leaving one nation and demanding entrance into another—with the full expectation that their new home has no right to demand that all would-be guests fleeing lawlessness should first abide by laws.

Read more here.

Who are these caravan people, and who is funding them? Turn back the caravan!

Sarah Hoyt writes in PJ Media about the caravan of Central Americans who are in Tijuana seeking asylum in the United States.

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.

...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.

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.

...Doubtless with the cooperation of local governments this was assembled by some international organization, like one of George Soros’ open borders fronts.

...There is no other reason for them to, determinedly and as a group, make to our border, past all the other countries they pass on the way. If their goal was simply to rebuild their lives anew, they could easily do so in Guatemala, or Mexico, countries where their native language is spoken, and where the culture is much easier for them to integrate into. And there is no way if someone weren’t paying for their expenses, they would be allowed to continue as a multitude, through places in Mexico that they must be eating out of all provisions and where they must be taking up every free room.

These are not desperate refugees, making for our border past all the other countries, looking for a place of safety. These are at best economic immigrants who have heard the streets are paved with gold here, and who don’t understand that our wealth comes from freedom and hard work. (To be fair, neither do our native leftists.) At worst, they’re people with shady pasts, recruited, encouraged and pushed by governments and organizations that don’t mean us well, to show that our borders are weak and that we’re ripe for increased invasion.

Even were they desperate refugees, I’d like to point out that one of the theories for the fall of Rome is that the Germanic tribes were pushed into Roman territory by the pressure of the Huns invading their borders. Just because they’re refugees from war and disorder, it doesn’t mean they won’t destroy your law, your order, your culture and your country. Just ask Germany, forced to cancel Oktoberfest in many cities, due to their vast numbers of “refugees” from countries that don’t understand the difference between a party and an occasion for rape.

The borders must be defended, or we will cease to exist as a country, and the haven of liberty, the place where your hard work pays off, that immigrants and real refugees have sought throughout the centuries will cease to exist.

Ignore leftists looking to establish a permanent vote-farm. Ignore soft-headed liberals atwitter with the plight of “refugees.” Ignore even softer headed bishops, who think “Latin America” means an increase of their parishioners.

We must turn away this cold and calculated attempt at invasion so that the Statue of Liberty can continue holding her torch beside the golden gate, and so that people in the future who want to be Americans and work at upholding our unique beliefs, will have a place to go.

Turn back the caravan.

Read more here.

Caravan at the border

Elliot Spagat reports for the AP on the caravan of Central Americans who are in Tijuana, just across the border from San Diego, as they seek to enter the U.S..

Read it here.