Crisis or Not?

In an article in the the Washington Post Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti declaim that there’s a crisis at our southern border:

The last three presidents have each had to grapple with a sudden arrival of thousands of unaccompanied migrant teenagers and children along the Mexico border, but the challenge facing President Biden in recent weeks is an unprecedented one. Never before have so many minors arrived so fast.

Over the last three weeks, the average number of teenagers and children crossing into the United States without their parents has topped 550 per day, according to the latest government data reviewed by The Washington Post. Border officials are on pace to take in more than 17,000 minors this month, which would be an all-time high.

The influx has overwhelmed the government’s ability to safely shelter and care for the minors before delivering them to family members and vetted sponsors living in the United States, a challenge complicated by the coronavirus pandemic. Photos released Monday by Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) showed teens packed into a South Texas tent facility operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection that was at 1,500 percent of its pandemic-rated capacity as of Sunday, per CBP data. Cuellar’s office said the photos were taken over the weekend.

As evidence they produce the graph above. They add an interesting statistic:

The last three presidents have each had to grapple with a sudden arrival of thousands of unaccompanied migrant teenagers and children along the Mexico border, but the challenge facing President Biden in recent weeks is an unprecedented one. Never before have so many minors arrived so fast.

Over the last three weeks, the average number of teenagers and children crossing into the United States without their parents has topped 550 per day, according to the latest government data reviewed by The Washington Post. Border officials are on pace to take in more than 17,000 minors this month, which would be an all-time high.

The influx has overwhelmed the government’s ability to safely shelter and care for the minors before delivering them to family members and vetted sponsors living in the United States, a challenge complicated by the coronavirus pandemic. Photos released Monday by Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) showed teens packed into a South Texas tent facility operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection that was at 1,500 percent of its pandemic-rated capacity as of Sunday, per CBP data. Cuellar’s office said the photos were taken over the weekend.

I wonder how the claimed relationship was established. It should also be noted that projections are not established facts but IMO we’re close enough to the end of March at this point that the projection should be pretty close.

Meanwhile, at The Week Ryan Cooper says that nothing of the sort is happening:

There is a problem at the border, but it is not remotely a “crisis.” It’s an administrative challenge that could be solved easily with more resources and clear policy — not even ranking with, say, the importance of securing loose nuclear material, much less the ongoing global pandemic, or the truly civilization-threatening crisis of climate change. The mainstream media is in effect collaborating with Republicans to stoke unreasoning xenophobic panic.

Here’s what’s happening: in short, the number of people trying to cross the border has skyrocketed over the past month. There has been a particular surge in unaccompanied children — according to the Department of Homeland Security, average apprehensions of unaccompanied children have increased from 313 per day last month to 565, on average. It’s unclear why this is happening exactly, though presumably it has something to do with a new president who isn’t such a racist maniac, and the hope that vaccination is beginning to beat back the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S.

Now, there are genuine challenges here. Tens of thousands of people trying to sneak across the border is, at a minimum, unsafe (many have died trying to do so). And as Felipe De La Hoz writes at The New Republic, unaccompanied minors are a particularly thorny issue — the Biden administration wants to avoid the negative press of “kids in cages,” but one can’t simply turn young children loose with no one to care for them. The natural solution is to house them in a decent facility for a short time while host families are located. But then again, the facilities for caring for these kids are typically underfunded and loosely regulated, and often run by unscrupulous contractors with a history of abuse.

But all of these problems are, in principle at least, easily fixable. With some more money the government could build more holding facilities so children aren’t stuck for days or weeks. With more staff the immigration courts system could be beefed up to process asylum applications in a timely fashion (as required by U.S. law, incidentally). Probably most importantly, comprehensive immigration reform could rationalize and streamline the legal immigration process, which is currently a Kafkaesque nightmare.

That actually sounds like he’s describing a crisis to me but he doesn’t like to use that word. Can we agree that tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors presents problems we don’t need? Would that be fair?

There’s a lot to decompress in these pieces. The problem does not primarily belong to the Biden Administration but to the House. Urgent action by the House is needed. The money that Mr. Cooper wants to spend will not appropriate itself.

Which is more humane, more compassionate? Finding “host families” for these young people or returning them to their countries of origin? As Mr. Cooper intimates I don’t think there’s an obviously right answer. Host families can be abusive. Without better resources for establishing the veracity of claimed relationships than we have we may be releasing children into the hands of human traffickers of one form or another.

I would add that for young people over the age of 12 if they do not already speak English fluently they probably never will and the economy of the 21st century is dramatically different from that of the 19th century. Being able to speak and at least to some degree read and write in English is a necessity. Incomes for people with less than a high school diploma have been languishing for decades.

I agree with Mr. Cooper’s observation that devoting more resources to promoting economic growth in Mexico and Central America would pay dividends across many areas. It’s easier said than done and doing it requires Congressional action.