As I have been saying for some time the number of people entering the United States illegally is not limited to the “encounters” reported by Border Patrol. Those are high—roughly 250,000 per month but they don’t tell the whole story. In addition there are the “gotaways”, individuals who are detected by video or other means as alluded to in this story at PR Newswire. Those are estimated at an additional 50,000 per month.
Then there are those who enter the country and are neither “encountered” nor otherwise detected. We have no idea how many fit into that classification. The number of encounters plus “gotaways”, roughly 300,000 individuals per month, is a floor not a ceiling.
Contrary to the views of some coming into the U. S. illegally is not a victimless crime—it has wide-ranging run-on effects both in the U. S. and Mexico and other countries sending their people here.
Here much of the burden of illegal immigration falls on immigrants already here and native-born individuals trying to get into the labor market, particularly inner city blacks in the form of lower wages. It also changes the mix of work done here, providing an effective subsidy to hand work in agriculture, hospitality, construction, and other sectors. IMO we would be better off automating those jobs or not doing them here at all.
Paying coyotes for their human trafficking provides billions to criminal gangs in Mexico. Those gangs are now so powerful they are a threat to Mexican authorities. It also finances those gangs’ other activities including drug and arms smuggling.
How does one automate jobs in agriculture, hospitality, construction? Harvesting wheat or corn is one thing, lettuce is quite another. Paving is one thing, plumbing and wiring are another. Or how does one NOT do them? The jobs in those sectors are necessary and will be filled somehow.
I think we need a new word for “coyote.” It sounds like single, small, furry animals, instead of the very large, integrated, corporations that they are. The smugglers’ networks reach into every corner of the US (and Canada), and they move enormous numbers of people and large masses of goods of all kinds.
The “coyote” networks are transporting not merely people (almost all young males) seeking work or better prospects. They are delivering people, including children, who have been sold into slavery, labor slavery as well as sexual slavery, plus guns and explosives, plus agents and saboteurs from foreign countries. Just how many Iranian, Russian, Chinese, et al., sleeper cells are there in the US. How many arms depots?
To say that there are 200,000 or 300,000 people crossing the border does not begin to describe the magnitude of the inflows of people and goods. Nor does it indicate the amount of money involved. If the coyote fee is $1,000 (more likely $10,000) per person, the human traffic alone is $200 to $300 million per month. Counting every person and thing smuggled, could not the true figure be a few billion dollars per month? Maybe $50 to $100 billion per year? These sums are on the order of our military aid to Ukraine.
Mexico might be a failed state; if not, it is close. But the US cannot be far behind. MS-13 operates semi-openly in our cities. Its graffiti is on display in Columbus, Ohio. The old organized crime gangs like the Mafia provided public services like loan-sharking, gambling, prostitution, drugs, and “protection,” but did so discretely, and they relied on paying protection money to well-placed police, judges and politicians. The old gangs were pikers compared to the new international cartels. Just how much gang money is flowing into our political and legal systems?