Wall of Fear
If you don’t build it, they still won’t come
The immigration policies of Donald Trump have made the news repeatedly since he took office. He has implemented or attempted to implement actions which limit legal and illegal immigration in the form of attempted travel bans, proposals to limit H1-B visas, increased requests for border resources, increased deportation rules, threats to withdraw federal funding to “sanctuary cities”, and, of course, the infamous border wall.
Many of these policies have been blocked or have failed, but the fear of the immigrant community is clear, and the data is showing it. Customs and Boarder Patrol has reported that the monthly apprehensions at the southwestern border have sharply increased after the election of Donald Trump and then sharply declined after he took office.
This is despite a steady rate of continued violence in Central American countries. It seems that, despite not building a wall, the effects of Trump’s immigration efforts are, indeed, keeping people from attempting to cross the boarder.
We may predict that this will cause an overflow of illegal immigration into Mexico, with no northern outlet. This blog will look at trends of illegal migration to Mexico in the next post.
So, he did build a wall. It’s made out of fear. And not just Mexico — but all of Latin America — looks to be “paying” for it.
