Also, note that Texas is already a “minority-majority” state, with non-Hispanic whites comprising only 42% of the population.
The belief that Texas also wants to cut off its own access to Mexico, especially via a wall, can only be supported by people who don’t know shit about Texas.
(Correction: Texas is 40% Hispanic, not 43% as stated in the above post.)
292,000 crimes in a 6.5 year period? Think that matters when the statewide arrest numbers look like:
(2011: No partial year data found)
2012: 1,056,000 arrests
2013: 936,000 arrests
2014: 876,000 arrests
2015: 829,000 arrests
2016: 808,000 arrests
2017: 759,000 arrests
(2018 TXDPS report not compiled yet)
Total: 5,264,000. And that doesn’t include 1.5 years, which we will extrapolate as:
July 2011 - December 2011: 500,000 arrests (1.063 million occurred that year)
2018: 759,000 arrests (same as 2017)
Estimated total: 6,523,000 arrests.
292,000/6,523,000 = 4.47%
So, in the state with the largest border with Mexico, not even 5% of the crimes committed were committed by illegal aliens.
But wait, there’s more!
Texas has over 220 million people visit it from other States every year. While I cannot find TX crime statistics which detail the resident state of the criminal, I am quite positive that, of the 6.2 million crimes that were not committed by illegal aliens (including solicitation, possession of narcotics, fraud, property crimes, etc etc etc), to merely equal the numbers of crimes committed by illegal aliens, only .02% of the US-based visitors to our State would have to be arrested.
I think it’s quite reasonable to assume that some of the US-born visitors to this State end up fucking it up, right? I mean, most of these visitors are conventioneers, family trips through the State, etc… but surely some crimes happen. 1.2 billion people! And .02% is kinda low, but people usually get their criming on near home, true.
So… should we just build a wall around Texas? And since this is the case among all states, why not just stop there? Why not 51 walls - one for each state, + the country? (The Hawaii wall will be lit.)
To conclude:
Illegal alien arrests count for fewer than 5% of all arrests in the State with the longest border with Mexico. This is not a crisis.
Given 1.2 billion non-Texan Americans visited Texas in the same time period, it is reasonable to conclude that some of them committed crimes as well.
To be arrested in the same minuscule numbers as illegal aliens, only .02% of all American visitors to Texas had to be arrested. Whether or not this is reasonable is still left for debate. Additional data (even from other states) is welcome.
Which ranches? As I understand it, for the most part, the Rio Grande river divides Texas and Mexico. The wall sections end up not being quite on the river, so there’s a small amount of ranch land being lost for most of these ranchers. For some of the ranches, it’s a considerable section, but this isn’t usual. Hardly “kicking them out”.
I do agree the wall is a waste of money, and the OP is not arguing well with facts or reason, and that Texans generally don’t want a wall, but this point of yours seems questionable.
Did you not read the cites? The WaPo one, for example, clearly states:
For land owners, access to water is crucial. Why would I want to give up my Rio Grande boat dock so some hillbilly in Kentucky can “feel”, not “be”, safer?
I mean, seriously. Waterway rights are viciously fought for and protected, and this wall will be no exception - in fact, it would be a landmark case in this field.
And don’t forget the takings needed to provide access and support to this idiocy as roads allowing access to the wall will have to be built, the construction impact alone going far beyond the physical wall - and it all has to be on the American side, as Mexico wont stand for a single blade of grass to be disturbed on their national territory.
I mean, the more I think about the political morass the GOP would be in if this stupid thing ever passes, the more appealing the wall looks.
But, to answer the question: being suddenly denied centuries-approved waterway access and having a, say, 200-foot strip of land stolen by the Federal Government will count as being “kicked off my land”, especially here in Tejas.
Who, owning land on this lake, is going to want to lose access to it because some fool in South Dakota wants a goddamned wall?
What political party, knowing that 38 > 2, wants to convince the people of Texas that the people of South Dakota know what’s better to do with their lake property?
For some reason, I’m reminded of the parody of A Few Good Men that appeared in MAD Magazine:
Colonel Fessup: That’s a small price to pay for the job I do protecting the wall! If it wasn’t for me, that wall might move into your home town! How would you like to have it outside your window? What would happen to your view then?
Well, sadly, even the best of marriages fall apart.
Seriously, though - the wall was a non-factor in this state as far as why people voted for Dotard in 2016, and if it actually starts being built it will become an albatross for the GOP.
A belated thought occurs: could this end up affecting Kelo v. City of New London? Frankly, it represents quite an abuse of eminent domain and should go away.
I’m not intimately familiar with Arizona politics, either, though they just elected a Democrat to one of their Senate seats for the first time in over 20 years, when Kyrsten Sinema beat Martha McSally (in an extremely close race) to replace Jeff Flake.
After losing to Sinema, McSally was then appointed to the late John McCain’s seat (after John Kyl held it for a few months), but she’ll have to defend the seat in 2020.
This suggests that the Democrats may be gaining strength in the state, and as with Texas, the state GOP may not want to poke the eminent-domain bear, either.
If I filled up a stadium with all the victims of American gun violence, would that shock you? Would it convince you to confiscate all the guns in America?
What are your design plans to keep FM 2098 Spur access road open, and on American territory, if you decide to build along the shoreline?
Explain where the wall is going to be placed as to not affect operations of the Falcon State Dam. If placed on the shoreline, does the wall go on top of the dam?
How does the wall impact the 1944 Treaty for the Utilization of Waters of the Colorado and Tijuana Rivers and of the Rio Grande, which governs the use of the Falcon Lake facilities for both countries?
(I mean, I can go on and on about how this idiotic idea is a fucking nightmare for the GOP, based upon the delusions of people who can’t even be bothered to look at the border via Google Maps, but I think these 7 questions are interesting enough design challenges.)
Oh! And you have to block all this water access in a way which is politically acceptable to the largest state the GOP carries.
(And we haven’t even begun to explore what the fuck happens in El Paso, Laredo, the farms of McAllen and Pharr, Brownsville, and more. How is it even possible to build an impenetrable physical barrier which allows water flow throughs of the 10s of thousands of gallons an hour needed for irrigation purposes?)
JohnT, all of your questions have a single, easy answer:
Immigrants are bad and illegal. Why do you want more drugs and crime? An immigrant probably killed a nun once. You support nun-killers.
John, John, John. When will you realize facts don’t matter to the current occupant of the White House or to his supporters? We knew that the very first day when he proclaimed that the crowd for his inauguration was the biggest evah when it demonstrably was not.
Please take your links to Google Maps to the Pit. Yes, Google Maps once had nice features and maybe still does. But my clicks were ineffective, and I rapidly lost interest.
I thought you might be speaking of border stretches like this one. But if your link points to an interestingly-shaped border I’m too stupid and or ignorant to get Google to show it to me. :o
Coast to coast implies West to East. Oceans, not Ocean to a river. Its shocking to see how quickly some here glance over the crimes against USA citizens that Illegal aliens commit. I get it; you CAN’T hold any moral ground when I show you the victims number over 100,000. It’s a disgrace and needs to be addressed. Border security with a wall is the answer.
People asked for data, and I provided it to form one state ( Texas ). Should I look for more from CA, NM, and AZ?