# So the "swarms" that are supposedly coming over the border are they comitting murder and meyhem and are they the "trash" trump claims them to be **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [June 1, 2024, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397 "2024-06-01T22:55:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2024, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/41 "2024-06-02T19:30:33Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > They cam here to work on jobs Americans do not want to do. > [@bump](#): > > …I’ve always been a bit astounded at the notion that Mexican immigrants are somehow lazy. Those guys WORK, and work hard. They bust their asses like nobody else on the hottest, sweatiest, dirtiest jobs that there are. Absolutely true! ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2024, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/42 "2024-06-02T19:36:21Z")
Here ya go- > **[6 of the Rarest Languages Still Spoken Today](https://pacsafe.com/blogs/pacsafe-blog/6-of-the-rarest-languages-still-spoken-today)** > > Ever heard of Njerep? What about Liki? Chances are slim because they’re 2 of the rarest languages out there. According to the UN, there are approximately 6,000 languages that risk becoming extinct, which is tragic in and of itself. In response, they... _Ever heard of Njerep? What about Liki? Chances are slim because they’re 2 of the rarest languages out there. According to the UN, there are approximately 6,000 languages that risk becoming extinct, which is tragic in and of itself. In response, they have created the Endangered Language Programme, meant to support the preservation of these languages, with the intention of never losing them. Curious to find out a bit more about these mysterious tongues? Check out our list of some of the rarest languages still spoken today._ But I will bet a million quatloos that not one single “illegal” has come here speaking any of these as their primary language. Not to mention two of them are native American languages! ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2024, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/43 "2024-06-02T19:58:00Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > But I will bet a million quatloos that not one single “illegal” has come here speaking any of these as their primary language. I’m trying to figure out how groups numbering in the single digits can “swarm” anything. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2024, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/44 "2024-06-02T20:27:10Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#): > > Yeah, but they’re shit-hole languages. “French?” Who’s ever written anything important in _that_ language? 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2024, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/45 "2024-06-02T20:31:22Z")
In the website linked to by DrDeth, it says that there are approximately 6,000 languages “that risk becoming extinct”. If you look several tens of thousands of years in the future, every current language will become extinct (and maybe mankind will also become extinct). Ethnologue (a website that tries to list every current language) says there are 7,139 languages at the moment and 1,514 of those have less than 1,000 living speakers. That means that some of those 6,000 languages that “risk becoming extinct” currently have more than 1,000 speakers. It’s estimated that nine languages die each year. I think that they have a odd definition for a language being currently at risk of dying out. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2024, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/46 "2024-06-02T20:48:17Z")
I’m a bit of an expert on this. Your facts are basically right (and thanks), but the “nine per year” is very misleading. We are in a half-century of accelerating language loss (and a few dozen examples of watered-down, not-really-living-anymore language rescues.) The number has declined from about 7000 to about 6500 in the last 40 years, and will very likely decline to about 5000 in the next 30 years. (Keep in mind exact numbers are impossible, as many language/dialect “boundaries” can plausibly be defined in any of several ways — Zapotec in one town might not be intelligible in the town three valleys over, while Norwegian and Swedish are usually considered by scholars to be one language, etc. Ethnologue tends to be a “splitter” rather than a “lumper.”) Key example: Queens, New York (appropriately!), which has the highest language diversity in an area of its size anywhere on Earth — but this is a temporary phenomenon, from about 2010 to about 2040, by which time the children of all those scary immigrants will mostly be speaking just English. (Sorry if this is a hijack. Carry on — I’ll say no more.) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2024, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/47 "2024-06-02T21:16:50Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > “French?” Who’s ever written anything important in _that_ language? Yeah, they don’t even have a word for “entrepreneur”. > [@JKellyMap](#): > > Key example: Queens, New York (appropriately!), which has the highest language diversity in an area of its size anywhere on Earth — but this is a temporary phenomenon, from about 2010 to about 2040, by which time the children of all those scary immigrants will mostly be speaking just English. But in 2040, won’t there be new immigrants there speaking yet other languages? ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2024, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/48 "2024-06-02T21:26:35Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > But in 2040, won’t there be new immigrants there speaking yet other languages? Good point…but according to John McWhorter, by the middle of this century they’ll be speaking so much English, or regional lingua franca (Swahili, etc.), or standard “national” language (Mandarin, etc.) —- generally as their second language — in their home countries, that they will mostly speak just that (and not their smaller, declining “local” language) as soon as they come here, if they’re not already using that bigger language most of the time already. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2024, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/49 "2024-06-02T21:52:37Z")
As long as the drugs are mostly being used by white people, it will be someone else’s fault, and sadly, if the drugs are mostly being used on Native American lands, nobody will care, period. ---
**Author:** ![OttoDaFe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ottodafe/32/356_2.png) [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2024, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/50 "2024-06-02T22:45:55Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#): > > Sorry, it’s impossible to pronounce their names. Whatever the spelling, they’re pronounced “Throatwarbler Mangrove.” ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2024, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/51 "2024-06-03T13:19:19Z")
I wasn’t aware of that statistic. Do you have a cite for it? ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2024, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/52 "2024-06-03T13:26:39Z")
Regardless of who is using those drugs, assuming it’s not being produced locally, it’s coming from somewhere, and blaming immigrants from Mexico is an easy target. Totally wrong, but easy. I think at least some of it is being made here. I rarely read in the paper about busts of drug producers in Montana, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Law enforcement is understaffed throughout the state and people don’t want to fund adding additional police enforcement, so nothing changes… ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2024, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/53 "2024-06-03T15:53:16Z")
AIUI, most of the fentanyl and it’s ilk are coming into the country thru the ports, and much of it is originating in China. It’s a lot harder to blame a container box than a human being with a face, for problems real and imaginary. ---
**Author:** ![veryfrank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/87869e/32.png) [@veryfrank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/veryfrank)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2024, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/54 "2024-06-03T16:28:00Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > Add me to the list of folks curious about the countries we’ve never heard of where they speak languages no one knows. I tell ya, those damn swarming native Cornish and Manx speakers…both of them. ---
**Author:** ![Tfletch1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tfletch1/32/5340_2.png) [@Tfletch1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tfletch1)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2024, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/55 "2024-06-03T17:53:59Z")
> [@dolphinboy](#): > > I wasn’t aware of that statistic. Do you have a cite for it? > **[Who is sneaking fentanyl across the southern border? Hint: It's not the migrants](https://www.npr.org/2023/08/09/1191638114/fentanyl-smuggling-migrants-mexico-border-drugs)** > > We know that illicit fentanyl is flowing into the U.S. from Mexico. Yet we rarely hear from the couriers who smuggle most of it through legal ports of entry. This is one of their stories. Drugs are coming through ports of entry because cartels can better control the progress. In addition, traffickers don’t trust migrants to carry the drugs. Their going to go with US citizens or people authorized to cross the border. ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2024, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/56 "2024-06-03T20:59:22Z")
That makes sense if you think about it. The problem is that fentanyl is still getting across the border, and it’s apparently hard to detect it. Homeland Security needs to come up with a better way of checking vehicles crossing the border legally so that we catch more of it. Building a wall from “Sea to shining Sea” isn’t going to really help that much. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2024, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/57 "2024-06-03T21:04:03Z")
You are correct, of course, but the people responsible for right wing propaganda continually conflate the two issues (fentanyl and immigration) to create one, simple boogeyman, which tastes great and is less filling to Faux News viewers, compared to understanding, ya know, the facts about each one. ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2024, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/58 "2024-06-03T21:04:35Z")
Do you have a cite for that? I was under the impression that the chemicals used for making fentanyl came from China, but that the drug itself was primarily coming from Mexico. I would think that Homeland Security would be more interested in checking a container from China than the trunk of a car from somebody returning from a vacation in Baja… ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2024, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/59 "2024-06-03T21:13:11Z")
I will look, but my understanding is labs in China and India make both the components of fentanyl, as well as the finished product in the form of both pills and powder (which is cut into other drugs). I understand it is also being made in Mexico from those components, then smuggled across the border via ports as well as the frontier. Essentially, it seems it is shipped in various forms to various places and then arrives in the US as a finished product. But anyway, we are starting to stem from the thrust of this thread regarding “swarms” of immigrants pouring over the border. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2024, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397/60 "2024-06-03T21:20:40Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > Maybe “[Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cain-says-hes-ready-for-questions-about-ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan/).” Is that the one-time Republican presidential candidate who died of Corona-Rona-Rona-Rona-virus-virus because he didn’t believe in wearing a mask-ask-ask? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-the-swarms-that-are-supposedly-coming-over-the-border-are-they-comitting-murder-and-meyhem-and-are-they-the-trash-trump-claims-them-to-be/1002397.md?page=4)