Someone recently told me that fewer German soldiers crossed the border into Poland during the 1939 invasion than illegals crossed the Mexican border into the United States in 2006. Is this true? Does anyone have a reliable cite for either or both numbers?
Illegals cannot be reliably documented or counted, as their entry is clandestine.
The point is moot.
Well, according to Wikipedia there were 1.8 million German soldiers involved in the invasion of Poland. This doesn’t seem too unreasonable, but if you wanted to check it you’d have to find a rough estimate for the combined sizes of the 3rd, 4th, 8th, 10th, and 14th German Armies, which were the ones who participated in the invasion.
Also, do keep in mind that illegal immigrants only rarely have Panzers and Stukas.
Even if true, what on Earth relevance do these two numbers have to each other?
…and seldom, if ever, wear jackboots and pretty uniforms
Of course not, but their presence, numbers, and numbers of annual crossings can be inferred from other available information–just as we estimate the prevalence of many illegal activities.
The General Accounting Office (pdf) cites 1.13 million apprehensions of attempted illegal Mexican border crossers in 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available. They estimate that 450,000 people crossed successfully and were not apprehended.
Of course, some people get apprehended more than once, and many who cross successfully were apprehended during earlier attempts. So the total of about 1.6 million illegal Mexican border crossings represents fewer than 1.6 million people.
Most sources agree with a German invasion force of 1.8 million in 1939. So even counting people who cross the Mexican border and are apprehended (and thus do not remain in the country), and even counting every apprehension as a separate individual, the claim appears to be false.
As well as mind-numbingly meaningless.
Then this would be accurate: the number of Mexican illegal aliens in four years equals the number of German soldiers that invaded of Poland.
Well, let’s give this all the serious consideration it deserves:
1939: A German army of 1,800,000 men, armed with the most sophisticated weapons in current use, invaded Poland, a nation of around 35,000,000 people on 150,000 square miles.
2006: A loose collection of 250,000 men and women, armed with the clothes on their backs, invaded the U.S., a nation of over 300,000,000 people occupying 3,679,192 square miles.
Clearly, the U.S. has much more to fear from an invasion of willing workers that represents 0.0833% of its population than did Poland from an invasion of hostile soldiers that consisted of 5% of its population. Why the Poles only faced 60 soldiers for every immigrant that threatens us.
Germany was invited! Punch was served!
None of the source I could find suggest anything like the 1.8 Million troops that invaded Poland (“up to half a million per-year” seems to be an oft quoted figure: http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/44.pdf or Illegal immigrants in the US: How many are there? - CSMonitor.com).
Even if it was correct its a completely meaningless statistic. How about “We need national health insurance as there are more Americans without health insurance than there are Jews that died in the holocaust”.
I remember that day so well, you wore blue, the Germans wore gray.
In addition, illegal immigrants come to find work and better lives.
The German army? Not so much.
No, Germany gate crashed the party and never even brought a bottle