Friday, September 14, 2018

CALIFORNIA UNDER MEXICAN OCCUPATION: SOARING MURDER RATE, POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION

In California County With Highest Murder Rate, a City Confronts a Mass Killing

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/us/bakersfield-shooting-gunman-victims.html

A Kern County sheriff’s deputy near one of the shooting victims on Wednesday in Bakersfield.CreditCreditFelix Adamo/The Bakersfield Californian, via Associated Press

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BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — First two people were shot dead outside a trucking company on the southeast edge of the city. Then another was killed in front of a sporting goods store whose shelves are stocked with guns, and where on Thursday morning the only sign of what happened was a bullet hole in the wall and a faint drop of blood on the sidewalk. Finally, two more people were killed at a house not far away, before the gunman shot himself in the stomach.
Even by the grim standards of the place with the highest murder rate in California, the shooting spree that killed five on Wednesday night in Bakersfield, sparked by a domestic dispute, has shaken this industrial community.
“We have a lot of homicides, up and down the Central Valley,” the Kern County sheriff, Donny Youngblood, said.
Mr. Youngblood placed the shootings in the context of the nation’s epidemic of mass shootings, calling it, “our new norm.”




“Now it’s our turn,” he said.

Unlike many of the recent mass shootings across the United States that have drawn so much attention, this appeared to have started as a domestic dispute between a husband and his recently divorced wife, according to police officers.
The killings punctuated a deadly time for this city, which sits in the agricultural region of California’s central valley and also counts oil production as another important industry.
The authorities here blame the increase in the murder rate on killings involving gangs and drugs — part of the county is a border between two rival gang territories, said Lt. Mark King with the sheriff’s department.
The Kern County District Attorney, Lisa Green, said she had seen instances of domestic violence increase in recent years, as well as gang murders. She puts much of the blame for her county’s murder outbreak on California’s moves to reduce its prison population.
“I definitely believe the criminal justice reforms have released dangerous criminals who should be incarcerated,” she said. Mr. King agreed with that assessment and said that many in law enforcement did too. Criminal justice activists dispute the connection he said.
The region, about 115 miles north of Los Angeles, has missed out on the economic boom of California’s coastal areas. Even as the area’s farms feed the rest of the state, and the oil wells account for about 70 percent of California’s production, it is economically depressed: the county’s unemployment rate is over 8 percent, almost twice that of the state, and residents say gangs and drug use are rampant.
The killings on Wednesday began in a desolate section of southeast Bakersfield, an important city on trucking routes through the Central Valley, whose businesses cater to those passing through: auto body shops, truck stops, fast-food restaurants, self-storage.
The sheriff’s department identified the gunman as Javier Casarez, 54. The authorities said Mr. Casarez drove his wife to a trucking business near Highway 58, where he confronted another man, quickly killing him and then his wife.
Emily Meza, who owns an auto body shop next to the trucking company, was in her office when the shootings began. “I was in here with a customer and one of the workers ran in and said, ‘Lock the doors,’” she said.
Just as the shooting started, car alarms in the parking lot began wailing. “Then he did a U-turn and left,” she said. “He drove off.”
She was back at work Thursday morning, almost as if nothing happened. “You know, it’s just the adrenaline of the moment,” she said.
A third man was killed near the trucking company, and then Mr. Casarez, the authorities say, drove to a nearby home and killed two more people, a 31-year-old woman named Laura Garcia, and her father Eliseo Cazares, 57.
Mr. Casarez turned his gun on himself in the parking lot of an auto body shop, as a sheriff’s deputy ordered him to “put the gun down!,” according to body camera footage that the sheriff’s department made public. It all lasted about a half-hour, and when it was over six bodies, including Mr. Casarez’s, lay at multiple crime scenes.
“These cases are without a doubt overwhelming,” Mr. Youngblood said. “Multiple crime scenes. We had all hands on deck last night.”
He said the gunman used a .50-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun — which he described as, “one of the largest handguns that are made.” Mr. Youngblood said they have not determined whether Mr. Casarez owned the gun legally.
Mr. Youngblood said investigators were still trying to piece together the relationships between the victims and the gunman, and said the final explanation may go beyond domestic violence.
“We don’t know that yet,” he said.
Last year, Kern County set a record with 101 murders, according to a tally kept by KGET, a local television station, even as murders dropped across California. And according to statistics released by the state Attorney General, Kern County last year had the highest per-capita murder rate in the state, with almost 10 murders per 100,000 people.
Jose Sanchez, who lives next door to one of the murder scenes, said he knew his neighbors well, and was shocked. Mr. Sanchez, 43, an immigrant from Mexico who once worked the farm fields but now owns three trucks, said he has taken notice of the rise in murders here, but always felt a distance from them.


“There’s murders, but in my opinion they are mostly gangs and drugs,” he said.


Adios, Sanctuary La Raza Welfare State of California 
A fifth-generation Californian laments his state’s ongoing economic collapse.
By Steve Baldwin
American Spectator, October 19, 2017
What’s clear is that the producers are leaving the state and the takers are coming in. Many of the takers are illegal aliens, now estimated to number over 2.6 million. 
The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that California spends $22 billion on government services for illegal aliens, including welfare, education, Medicaid, and criminal justice system costs. 
                                                                                                                
BLOG: MANY DISPUTE CALIFORNIA’S EXPENDITURES FOR THE LA RAZA WELFARE STATE IN MEXIFORNIA JUST AS THEY DISPUTE THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS. APPROXIMATELY HALF THE POPULATION OF CA IS NOW MEXICAN AND BREEDING ANCHOR BABIES FOR WELFARE LIKE BUNNIES. THE $22 BILLION IS STATE EXPENDITURE ONLY. COUNTIES PAY OUT MORE WITH LOS ANGELES COUNTY LEADING AT OVER A BILLION DOLLARS PAID OUT YEARLY TO MEXICO’S ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS. NOW MULTIPLY THAT BY THE NUMBER OF COUNTIES IN CA AND YOU START TO GET AN IDEA OF THE STAGGERING WELFARE STATE MEXICO AND THE DEMOCRAT PARTY HAVE ERECTED SANS ANY LEGALS VOTES. ADD TO THIS THE FREE ENTERPRISE HOSPITAL AND CLINIC COST FOR LA RAZA’S “FREE” MEDICAL WHICH IS ESTIMATED TO BE ABOUT $1.5 BILLION PER YEAR.

Liberals claim they more than make that up with taxes paid, but that’s simply not true. It’s not even close. FAIR estimates illegal aliens in California contribute only $1.21 billion in tax revenue, which means they cost California $20.6 billion, or at least $1,800 per household.

Nonetheless, open border advocates, such as Facebook Chairman Mark Zuckerberg, claim illegal aliens are a net benefit to California with little evidence to support such an assertion. As the Center for Immigration Studies has documented, the vast majority of illegals are poor, uneducated, and with few skills. How does accepting millions of illegal aliens and then granting them access to dozens of welfare programs benefit California’s economy? If illegal aliens were contributing to the economy in any meaningful way, California, with its 2.6 million illegal aliens, would be booming.
Furthermore, the complexion of illegal aliens has changed with far more on welfare and committing crimes than those who entered the country in the 1980s. 
Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens. Granted, those statistics are old, but if you talk to any California law enforcement officer, they will tell you it’s much worse today. The problem is that the Brown administration will not release any statewide data on illegal alien crimes. That would be insensitive. And now that California has declared itself a “sanctuary state,” there is little doubt this sends a message south of the border that will further escalate illegal immigration into the state.
"If the racist "Sensenbrenner Legislation" passes the US Senate, there is no doubt that a massive civil disobedience movement will emerge. Eventually labor union power can merge with the immigrant civil rights and "Immigrant Sanctuary" movements to enable us to either form a new political party or to do heavy duty reforming of the existing Democratic Party. The next and final steps would follow and that is to elect our own governors of all the states within Aztlan." 
Indeed, California goes out of its way to attract illegal aliens. The state has even created government programs that cater exclusively to illegal aliens. For example, the State Department of Motor Vehicles has offices that only process driver licenses for illegal aliens. With over a million illegal aliens now driving in California, the state felt compelled to help them avoid the long lines the rest of us must endure at the DMV. 
And just recently, the state-funded University of California system announced it will spend $27 million on financial aid for illegal aliens. They’ve even taken out radio spots on stations all along the border, just to make sure other potential illegal border crossers hear about this program. I can’t afford college education for all my four sons, but my taxes will pay for illegals to get a college education.



If Immigration Creates Wealth, Why Is California America's Poverty Capital?




California used to be home to America's largest and most affluent middle class.  Today, it is America's poverty capital.  What went wrong?  In a word: immigration.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's Official Poverty Measure, California's poverty rate hovers around 15 percent.  But this figure is misleading: the Census Bureau measures poverty relative to a uniform national standard, which doesn't account for differences in living costs between states – the cost of taxes, housing, and health care are higher in California than in Oklahoma, for example.  Accounting for these differences reveals that California's real poverty rate is 20.6 percent – the highest in America, and nearly twice the national average of 12.7 percent.

Likewise, income inequality in California is the second-highest in America, behind only New York.  In fact, if California were an independent country, it would be the 17th most unequal country on Earth, nestled comfortably between Honduras and Guatemala.  Mexico is slightly more egalitarian.  California is far more unequal than the "social democracies" it emulates: Canada is the 111th most unequal nation, while Norway is far down the list at number 153 (out of 176 countries).  In terms of income inequality, California has more in common with banana republics than other "social democracies."

More Government, More Poverty
High taxes, excessive regulations, and a lavish welfare state – these are the standard explanations for California's poverty epidemic.  They have some merit.  For example, California has both the highest personal income tax rate and the highest sales tax in America, according to Politifact.

Not only are California's taxes high, but successive "progressive" governments have swamped the state in a sea of red tape.  Onerous regulations cripple small businesses and retard economic growth.  Kerry Jackson, a fellow with the Pacific Research Institute, gives a few specific examples of how excessive government regulation hurts California's poor.  He writes in a recent op-ed for the Los Angeles Times:
Extensive environmental regulations aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions make energy more expensive, also hurting the poor.  By some estimates, California energy costs are as much as 50% higher than the national average.  Jonathan A. Lesser of Continental Economics ... found that "in 2012, nearly 1 million California households faced ... energy expenditures exceeding 10% of household income."
Some government regulation is necessary and desirable, but most of California's is not.  There is virtue in governing with a "light touch."
Finally, California's welfare state is, perhaps paradoxically, a source of poverty in the state.  The Orange Country Register reports that California's social safety net is comparable in scale to those found in Europe:
In California a mother with two children under the age of 5 who participates in these major welfare programs – Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), housing assistance, home energy assistance, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children – would receive a benefits package worth $30,828 per year.
... [Similar] benefits in Europe ranged from $38,588 per year in Denmark to just $1,112 in Romania.  The California benefits package is higher than in well-known welfare states as France ($17,324), Germany ($23,257) and even Sweden ($22,111).
Although welfare states ideally help the poor, reality is messy.  There are three main problems with the welfare state.  First, it incentivizes poverty by rewardingthe poor with government handouts that are often far more valuable than a job.  This can be ameliorated to some degree by imposing work requirements on welfare recipients, but in practice, such requirements are rarely imposed.  Second, welfare states are expensive.  This means higher taxes and therefore slower economic growth and fewer job opportunities for everyone – including the poor.
Finally, welfare states are magnets for the poor.  Whether through domestic migration or foreign immigration, poor people flock to places with generous welfare states.  This is logical from the immigrant's perspective, but it makes little sense from the taxpayer's.  This fact is why socialism and open borders arefundamentally incompatible.


Why Big Government?
Since 1960, California's population exploded from 15.9 to 39 million people.  The growth was almost entirely due to immigration – many people came from other states, but the majority came from abroad.  The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that 10 million immigrants currently reside in California.  This works out to 26 percent of the state's population.

This figure includes 2.4 million illegal aliens, although a recent study from Yale University suggests that the true number of aliens is at least double that.  Modifying the initial figure implies that nearly one in three Californians is an immigrant.  This is not to disparage California's immigrant population, but it is madness to deny that such a large influx of people has changed California's society and economy.


Importantly, immigrants vote Democrat by a ratio higher than 2:1, according to a report from the Center for Immigration Studies.  In California, immigration has increased the pool of likely Democrat voters by nearly 5 million people, compared to just 2.4 million additional likely Republican voters.  Not only does this almost guarantee Democratic victories, but it also shifts California's political midpoint to the left.  This means that to remain competitive in elections, the Republicans must abandon or soften many conservative positions so as to cater to the center.
California became a Democratic stronghold not because Californians became socialists, but because millions of socialists moved there.  Immigration turned California blue, and immigration is ultimately to blame for California's high poverty level.

REALITIES OF A STATE IN MELTDOWN:


THE INVISIBLE CALIFORNIA

De facto apartheid world in the Golden State.


https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270265/invisible-california-bruce-thornton


Reprinted from Hoover.org.
In 1973, as I was going through customs in New York, the customs agent rifling my bag looked at my passport and said, with a Bronx sneer, “Bruce Thornton, huh. Must be one of them Hollywood names.”
Hearing that astonishing statement, I realized for the first time that California is as much an idea as a place. There were few regions in America more distant from Hollywood than the rural, mostly poor, multiethnic San Joaquin Valley where my family lived and ranched. Yet to this New Yorker, the Valley was invisible.

BLOG: FEINSTEIN & BOXER THREE TIMES ATTEMPTED TO INSERT IN VARIOUS BILLS AN AMNESTY FOR FARM WORKERS TO REPAY THEIR BIG AG BIG DONORS.
ONE-THIRD OF ALL FARM WORKERS END UP ON WELFARE AS SOON AS THE ANCHOR BABIES START COMING
Coastal Californians are sometimes just as blind to the world on the other side of the Coast Range, even though its farms, orchards, vineyards, dairies, and ranches comprise more than half the state’s $46 billion agriculture industry, which grows over 400 commodities, including over a third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts.
Granted, Silicon Valley is an economic colossus compared to the ag industry, but agriculture’s importance can’t be measured just in dollars and cents. Tech, movies, and every other industry tends to forget that their lives and businesses, indeed civilization itself, all rest on the shoulders of those who produce the food. You can live without your iPhone or your Mac or the latest Marvel Studios blockbuster. But you can’t live without the food grown by the one out of a 100 people who work to feed the other 99.
A Politically Invisible Valley
Living in the most conservative counties in the 
deepest-blue state, Valley residents constantly see 
their concerns, beliefs, and needs seldom taken 
into account at the state or federal level.
Registered Democrats in California outnumber registered Republicans by over 19%, and the State Legislature seats about twice as many Democrats as Republicans (California’s one of only eight states nationwide with a trifecta of a Democratic and two Democratic controlled legislative bodies).
California’s Congressional delegation is even more unbalanced: in the House of Representatives, currently there are fourteen Republicans compared to thirty-nine House Democrats (at least half of those GOP districts are in danger of turning blue this fall); half the Republicans represent Central Valley districts, none bordering the Pacific Ocean. The last elected Republican US Senator left office in 1991. The last Republican governor was the politically light-pink action-movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose second term ended in 2011.
This progressive dominance of the state has led to policies and priorities that has damaged its agricultural economy and seriously degraded the quality of life in the Valley.
Despite a long drought that has diminished the run-off of snow from the Sierra Nevada, projects for dams and reservoirs are on hold, seriously impacting the ag industry that relies on the snowmelt for most of its water. Worse yet, since 2008, a period including the height of the drought, 1.4 trillion gallons of water have been dumped into the Pacific Ocean to protect the endangered Delta Smelt, a two-inch bait-fish. Thousands of agricultural jobs have been lost and farmland left uncultivated, all to satisfy the sensibilities of affluent urban environmentalists. And even after a few years of abundant rain, Valley farmers this year are receiving just 20% of their South-of-the-Delta water allocation.
Or take California’s high-speed rail project, currently moribund and $10 billion over budget just for construction of the easiest section, through the flat center of the Valley. Meanwhile, State Highway 99, which bisects the Valley from north to south for 500 miles, is pot-holed, inefficient, and crammed with 18-wheel semis. It is the bloodiest highway in the country, in dire need of widening and repair. Yet to gratify our Democratic governor’s
high-tech green obsession, billions of dollars are 
being squandered to create an unnecessary link 
between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. That’s $10 billion that could have been spent building more reservoirs instead of dumping water into the ocean because there’s no place to store it.
The common thread of these two examples of 
mismanagement and waste is the romantic 
environmentalism of the well-heeled coastal left. 
They serially support government projects and 
regulations that impact the poor and the aged, who
are left to bear their costs.
The same idealized nature-love has led to regulations and taxes on energy that have made California home of the third-worst energy poverty in the country. In sweltering San Joaquin Valley counties like Madera and Tulare, energy poverty rates are 15% compared to 3–4% in cool, deep-blue coastal enclaves. Impoverished Kings County averages over $500 a month in electric bills, while tony Marin Country, with an average income twice that of Kings County, averages $200. Again, it’s the poor, aged, and working class who bear the brunt of these costs, especially in the Valley where temperatures regularly reach triple digits in the summer; unlike the coast, where the clement climate makes expensive air-conditioning unnecessary.
Deteriorating Quality of Life
It’s no wonder then that Fresno, in the heart of the 
Valley, is the second most impoverished city in the
poorest region of a state that has the highest 
poverty levels in the country and one of the 
highest rates of income inequality. Over one-fifth 
of its residents live below the poverty line, and it 
The greatest impact on the Valley’s 
deteriorating quality of life, however, has been 
the influx of illegal aliens. Some are attracted by 
plentiful agriculture and construction work, and 
others by California’s generous welfare transfers
— California is home to one in three of the 
country’s welfare recipients— all facilitated by 
California’s status as a “sanctuary state” that 
regularly releases felons rather than cooperate 
with Immigration and Customs Enforcement 
(ICE). As a result, one-quarter of the country’s 
illegal alien population lives in California, many 
from underdeveloped regions of Mexico and Latin
America that have different social and cultural 
mores and attitudes to the law and civic 
responsibility.
The consequences of these feckless policies are 
found throughout the state. But they are 
especially noticeable in rural California. There 
high levels of crime and daily disorder—from 
murders, assaults, and drug trafficking, to 
driving without insurance, DUIs, hit-and-runs, 
and ignoring building and sanitation codes—
have degraded or, in some cases, destroyed the 
once-orderly farming towns that used to be 
populated by earlier immigrants, including 
many legal immigrants from Mexico, who over 
a few generations of sometimes rocky 
coexistence assimilated to American culture 
and society.
Marginalized Cultural Minorities
More broadly, the dominant cultures and mores of the dot.com north and the Hollywood south are inimical to those of the Valley. Whether it is gun-ownership, hunting, church-going, or military service, many people in the San Joaquin Valley of all races are quickly becoming cultural minorities marginalized by the increasingly radical positions on issues such as abortion, guns, and religion.
Despite the liberal assumption that all Hispanics favor progressive policies, many Latino immigrants and their children find more in common with Valley farmers and natives with whom they live and work than they do with distant urban elites.
Indeed, as a vocal conservative professor in the local university (Fresno State), I have survived mainly because my students, now more than half Latino and Mexican immigrants or children of immigrants, are traditional and practical in a way that makes them impatient with the patronizing victim-politics of more affluent professors. They have more experience with physical labor, they are more religious and, like me, they are often the first in their families to graduate from college. As I did with the rural Mexican Americans I grew up with, I usually have more in common with my students than I do with many of my colleagues.
And this is the great irony of the invisibility of the “other” California: the blue-coast policies that suit the prejudices and sensibilities of the affluent have damaged the prospects of the “others of color” they claim they want to help. Over-
represented on the poverty and welfare rolls, many
migrants both legal and illegal have seen water 
policies that destroy agricultural jobs, building 
restrictions that drive up the cost of housing, 
energy policies that increase their cost of living, “sanctuary city” policies that put back on the 
streets thugs and criminals who prey mainly on 
their ethnic fellows, and economic policies that 
favor the redistribution rather than the creation of wealth and jobs.
Meanwhile, the coastal liberals who tout a cosmetic diversity live in a de facto apartheid world, surrounded by those of similar income, taste, and politics. Many look down on the people whom they view as racists and xenophobes at worst, and intellectually challenged rubes at best. This disdain has been evident in the way the media regularly sneer that House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes is a “former dairy-farmer” from Tulare County, an origin that makes “the match between his backstory and his prominence” seem “wholly incongruous,” per Roll Call's David Hawkings.
Finally, those of us who grew up and live in the rural Valley did so among a genuine diversity, one that reflected the more complex identities beyond the crude categories of “white” or “black” or “Hispanic.”
Italians, Basques, Portuguese, Armenians, Swedes, Mexicans, Filipinos, Southern blacks, Chinese, Japanese, Volga Germans, Scotch-Irish Dust Bowl migrants—all migrated to the Valley to work the fields and better their lives. Their children and grandchildren went to the same schools, danced together and drank together, helped round up each other’s animals when they got loose, were best friends or deadly enemies, dated and intermarried, got drafted into the Army or joined the Marines—all of them Americans who managed to honor their diverse heritages and faiths, but still be a community. Their most important distinctions were not so much between races and ethnicities, though those of course often collided, but between the respectable people––those who obeyed the law, went to church, and raised their kids right––­ and those we all called “no damned good.” Skin-color or accents couldn’t sort one from the other.  
What most of us learned from living in real diversity in the Valley is that being an American means taking people one at a time.
That world still exists, but it is slowly fading away—in part because of the policies and politics of those to our west, who can see nothing on the other side of the Coast Range.

ABOUT BRUCE THORNTON

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, and a Professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State University. He is the author of nine books and numerous essays on classical culture and its influence on Western Civilization. His most recent book, Democracy's Dangers and Discontents (Hoover Institution Press), is now available for purchase.
Washington, D.C. (September 14, 2018) – A report by the Center for Immigration Studies analyzes new data from the 2017 American Community Survey (ACS), released by the Census Bureau Thursday, showing the nation’s immigrant population (legal and illegal) has reached 44.5 million – the highest number in U.S. history. Growth was led by immigrants from Latin American countries other than Mexico, as well as Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The number from Mexico, Europe and Canada either remained flat or declined since 2010. The Census Bureau refers to immigrants as the foreign-born population.

“American continues to experience the largest wave of mass immigration in our history. The decline in Mexican immigrants has been entirely offset by immigration from the rest of the world. By 2027, the immigrant share will hit its highest level in U.S. history, and continue to rise,” said Steven Camarota, the Center's director of research and co-author of the report.

Excel tables are available upon request.
The full report will be posted next week.

Key findings:

• As a share of the U.S. population, immigrants (legal and illegal) comprised 13.7 percent or nearly one out of seven U.S. residents in 2017, the highest percentage since 1910.

• The number of immigrants hit a record 44.5 million in 2017, an increase of nearly 800,000 since 2016, 4.6 million since 2010, and 13.4 million since 2000.

• There were also 17.1 million U.S.-born minor children of immigrants in 2017, for a total of 61.6 million immigrants and their young children in the country — accounting for one in five U.S. residents

• Between 2010 and 2017, 9.5 million new immigrants settled in the United States. New arrivals are offset by roughly 300,000 immigrants who return home each year and natural mortality of about 300,000 annually. As a result, the immigrant population grew 4.6 million from 2010 to 2017.

• The 9.5 million new arrivals since 2010 roughly equals the entire immigrant population in 1970.

• Of immigrants who have arrived since 2010, 13% or 1.3 million came from Mexico — by far the top sending country. However, because of return migration and natural mortality among the existing population, the overall Mexican-born population actually declined by 441,190.

• The regions with largest numerical increases since 2010 were East Asia and South Asia (each up 1.1 million), the Caribbean (up 676,023), Sub-Saharan Africa (up 606,835), South America (up 483,356), Central America (up 474,504), and the Middle East (472,554).

• The decline in Mexican immigrants masks, to some extent, the enormous growth of Latin American immigrants. If seen as one region, the number from Latin America (excluding Mexico) grew 426,536 in just the last year and 1.6 million since 2010.

• The sending countries with the largest increases in the number immigrants since 2010 were India (up 830,215), China (up 677,312), the Dominican Republic (up 283,381), Philippines (up 230,492), Cuba (up 207,124), El Salvador (up 187,783), Venezuela (up 167,105), Colombia (up 146,477), Honduras (up 132,781), Guatemala (up 128,018), Nigeria (up 125,670), Brazil (up 111,471), Vietnam (up 102,026), Bangladesh (up 95,005), Haiti (up 92,603), and Pakistan (up 92,395).

• The sending countries with the largest percentage increases since 2010 were Nepal (up 120%), Burma (up 95%), Venezuela (up 91%), Afghanistan (up 84%), Saudi Arabia (up 83%), Syria (up 75%), Bangladesh (up 62%), Nigeria (up 57%), Kenya (up 56%), India (up 47%), Iraq (up 45%), Ethiopia (up 44%), Egypt (up 34%), Brazil (up 33%), Dominican Republic and Ghana (up 32%), China (up 31%), Pakistan (up 31%), and Somalia (up 29%).

• The states with the largest increases in the number of immigrants since 2010 were Florida (up 721,298), Texas (up 712,109), California (up 502,985), New York (up 242,769), New Jersey (up 210,481), Washington (up 173,891), Massachusetts (up 172,908), Pennsylvania (up 154,701), Virginia (up 151,251), Maryland (up 124,241), Georgia (up 123,009), Michigan (up 116,059), North Carolina (up 110,279), and Minnesota (up 107,760).

• The states with the largest percentage increase since 2010 were North Dakota (up 87%), Delaware (up 37%), West Virginia (up 33%), South Dakota (up 32%), Wyoming (up 30%), Minnesota (up 28%), Nebraska (up 28%), Pennsylvania (up 21%), Utah (up 21%), Tennessee, Kentucky, Michigan, Florida, Washington, and Iowa (each up 20%). The District of Columbia's immigrant population was up 25%.

Data Source. On September 13, the Census Bureau released some of the data from the 2017 American Community Survey (ACS). The survey reflects the U.S. population as of July 1, 2017. The immigrant population, referred to as the foreign-born by the Census Bureau, is comprised of those individuals who were not U.S. citizens at birth. It includes naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents (green card holders), temporary workers, and foreign students. It does not include those born to immigrants in the United States or those born in outlying U.S. territories, such as Puerto Rico. Prior research by the Department of Homeland Security suggests that 1.9 million immigrants (legal and illegal) are missed by the ACS.


US Sees 38 Percent Jump in Families Apprehended at Southwest Border


Immigration loopholes spur rush for the border, immigration officials suggest
September 13, 2018 Updated: September 13, 2018   
WASHINGTON—Cross the border into the United States with a child, claim asylum, and you’re home-free.
That’s the message smugglers and migrants are hearing, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“Smugglers and traffickers understand our broken immigration laws better than most and know that if a family unit illegally enters the U.S., they are likely to be released into the interior,” DHS spokesman Daniel Hetledge said in a Sept. 12 statement. “Specifically, DHS is required to release families entering the country illegally within 20 days of apprehension.”
The number of family units crossing the southwest border illegally and claiming asylum jumped 38 percent in August over the previous month, according to the latest numbers published by Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
More than 12,700 individuals who were part of a family unit (at least one adult and one child) were apprehended by Border Patrol after crossing the border in August. That’s 3,500 more than in July.
“It’s really telling that the numbers have increased so much in a one-month period, during the time when this was in the news so much,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy at the Center for Immigration Studies. “The court-imposed catch-and-release policy is a major enticement for people to come here.”


A Border Patrol agent by the U.S.-Mexico border west of Nogales, Ariz., on May 23, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
A Border Patrol agent by the U.S.-Mexico border west of Nogales, Ariz., on May 23, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

CBP said the increase in family units is “a clear indicator that the migration flows are responding to gaps in our nation’s legal framework.”
“We know that the vast majority of family units who have been released—despite having no right to remain in any legal status—fail to ever depart or be removed,” Hetledge said.
He said that through the third quarter of fiscal 2018, only 1.4 percent of family units have been repatriated to their home country from non-contiguous countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Individuals from those three countries make up almost 98 percent of family units apprehended.

Catch-and-Release

At issue is a court judgment dating back to 1997—called the Flores Settlement Agreement—that mandates immigration authorities to release family units from custody after 20 days. On top of that is a 2015 Obama-era amendment that says children can’t be detained in adult facilities—forcing either separation or release.
That means the administration can’t prosecute illegal border crossers without separating the adults and children—which is what started happening in April when a “zero tolerance” policy was reinvigorated.
An outcry ensued when around 2,500 children were temporarily separated from adults who were in custody pending their cases.
Trump issued an executive order on June 20 to stop the separations, and a court injunction gave the government less than a month to reunite the families.
The 2,500 children represented about one-quarter of the number of family units that entered each month in the last several months. Most have since been reunited; however 14 of the adults were discovered to not have a familial relationship with the child or were convicted criminals, for crimes including rape, child abuse, and kidnapping.
Without the ability to separate adults for prosecution, authorities have no choice but to release them without consequence.
“This is exactly what even the Obama administration lawyers predicted when the judge ruled back in 2015 that they could not detain kids with their parents,” said Vaughan.
She said the continuation of catch-and-release is a “major motivation” for illegal entry.
“The family-separation uproar was not really representative of all cases, and it certainly didn’t seem to have deterred many people from coming,” Vaughan said.


Hondurans Fidel Arcangel Gonsalez Meza, 26, and his 5-year-old son, at the Sacred Heart Church in McAllen, Texas, after corssing the border, on May 30, 2017. (Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times)
Hondurans Fidel Arcangel Gonsalez Meza, 26, and his 5-year-old son, at the Sacred Heart Church in McAllen, Texas, after corssing the border, on May 30, 2017. (Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times)

Amendment Denied

Trump’s executive order also resulted in Attorney General Jeff Sessions requesting amendments to the Flores agreement. One would allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain families together in ICE family residential facilities, and the second would allow ICE to detain families longer than 20 days.
The amendments would enable an immigration case to be adjudicated while the aliens are in custody, which takes a median of 40 days, rather than years if they’re released into the country.
It also means that those who don’t qualify for asylum (usually around 80 percent), or some other immigration benefit, can be readily repatriated.
On July 9, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, which issued the Flores order, declined to amend the 20-day provision.
Meanwhile, on June 28, the Defense Department said it had been asked by DHS to help house and care for “an alien family population of up to 12,000 people,” a Defense spokesman said.
The total number of family units apprehended by Border Patrol so far in fiscal 2018 is almost 90,000.