# Fall 2018 Central America migrant caravan to the US

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-2018-central-america-migrant-caravan-to-the-us/823313>\
**Category:** Politics & Elections\
**Created:** [October 22, 2018, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-2018-central-america-migrant-caravan-to-the-us/823313 "2018-10-22T01:39:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 216

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**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\
**Post date:** [October 30, 2018, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fall-2018-central-america-migrant-caravan-to-the-us/823313/216 "2018-10-30T11:26:30Z")

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> [@Gladys\_Overnow](#):
>
> It’s the Dems who have refused to do anything about the issue just so they can use it for political gain.

What, exactly, should we do about a group people who constitute a drop in the bucket of our yearly immigration, a thousand miles away, traveling on foot with no resources, claiming to seek asylum in the US? You’re treating this like an emergency, like a disaster - but, as pointed out in another thread:

> [@Trump and the right's immigration stances are pushing the left towards open borders.](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-and-the-rights-immigration-stances-are-pushing-the-left-towards-open-borders/823407/126):
>
> First of all, you’re off in your numbers by a factor of 3-4. Secondly, 3,000-4,000 (the 14,000 number is _wildly_ off)? On average, the USA has dealt with about 67,800 asylum applicants per year over the last 6 years (discounting 2018, as the numbers aren’t fully in yet). The number of people caught crossing the southern border illegally number in the tens of thousands _per month_.

The border patrol is more than capable of handling it. We don’t even know that there’s going to _be_ an issue. If the caravan keeps shrinking at the current rate, there will be nothing left by the time it reaches the border. Assuming it doesn’t shrink at all, the border patrol is still probably capable of dealing with a few thousand people asking for asylum - they get upwards of 20,000 just about _every single month_. So it’s a tiny, slow-moving problem that may resolve itself. It also happens to get wall-to-wall coverage on Fox News for some reason - weird, right?

So why are we treating it like a huge problem? Why should we be criticizing the democrats for “not doing anything” (this may be a good time to recall that most border states do not have democratic statehouses, and that every branch of the federal government is currently republican-controlled) when there’s really nothing that needs to be done? What should the democrats be doing?

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