VP Kamala Harris’ Solution to the Border Crisis is Thoughtful, Strategic…and a Proven Failure

I love Bill’s analogy of illegal immigration as a thermodynamic problem, as it turns an emotional problem into an abstract problem. I think there is one critical element missing though. Generally thermodynamic problems assume 2 or 3 connected but isolated bodies, to simplify the physics, but this analogy requires an additional input.
According the CIA World Factbook:
USA Economy
GDP: $20,524.945 billion (2019 est.)
Per Capita: $62,530 (2019 est.)
Growth: 2.16% (2019 est.)
Honduras
GDP: $55.825 billion (2019 est.)
Per Capita: $5,728 (2019 est.)
Growth: 4.8% (2017 est.)
Now here’s a stat I’m making up for this analogy: Absolute Growth, which is calculated by multiplying the GDP by the Growth Rate.
USA: $443 Billion
Honduras: $2.4 Billion
In the thermodynamic analogy, this absolute growth is akin to a laser striking each country, adding energy from an external source… and the laser hitting the United States is extremely powerful compared to all the economies in Central and South America, and is 184x more powerful than the laser hitting Honduras. Any effort to equalize temperatures must also deal with this external laser dumping heat into the system.
I’ll write about Thermodynamic Strategies next.

People want to leave their s***hole countries because they are lousy places to live. We can’t fix that, no matter how much money we throw at it. Money (or a lack of it) is not the primary problem– the culture of corruption in those countries is the problem. So if we can’t stop people from wanting to flee those places, how can we stop them from showing up on our doorstep? First, get rid of the incentive of welfare for those who manage to get here and get in. Second, make it clear that they will NOT get in. Build the wall! Third, make it clear that any immigrants that we choose to accept will be required to assimilate and pay their own freight. If churches or other private charities (or individuals) want to voluntarily help, that’s fine, but taxpayer dollars should be somewhere between zero and zilch!
I’m not anti-immigrant. The greatest complement anyone can pay us as a nation is to be willing to come here legally, jump through the necessary hoops, and become a part of our society. I have many very good friends who have come legally and are making the effort to be productive AMERICANS! I applaud them, and welcome many more like them.

claremontinstitute.com (salvos) dated 05.06.2021 by j stone titled pink shift.
wayne…i applaud your thought process but fear it may be too late. actually, at one time america was already at where you want us to go. the country is shifting and it ain’t going back. unfortunately.

I think Bill went off the rails on this one. His argument should make our Madame VP most happy because Kamala will argue that the thermodynamic solution will work this time because we’ll do it “right” whereas all those others didn’t do it “right” or didn’t do “enough of it.” Allow me to officer another point of view. Those nations spawning the traffic to America share a common feature: There is a vast difference between the rich and the poor. The rich are very rich (mostly thanks to American foreign aid) and the poor are very, very poor. In simple terms, the rich are rich through stealing it and when the very, very poor look to America they see a wealthy nation and, in their eyes, like all who are wealthy, We got it through theft (likely stealing if from them) and they feel entitled to come steal back all they can. No, I don’t think We can disabuse them of this notion leaving us an alternate thermodynamic solution. Insert lots of insulation between the hot and the cold. Secure the damn border and then be an example (like we once were). Those who finally figure out that We didn’t steal anything, but rather earned it, will hopefully begin working as hard as we do to create their own wealth. Then, when We see that effort taking place, We can more rationally provide assistance (foreign aid) to encourage and fertilize those efforts.

A friend recently turned me onto kiva.org. It’s pretty much crowd-sourced micro loans. You can loan as little as $25.00. Today I loaned $25 to start out to help a woman in Tajikistan pay for a medical procedure. Me and 6 other people so far are in this loan. You can choose the region of the world, types of things the loans are requested for and browse through people to help. Instead of throwing huge sums of money to disappear in a bloated government clusterf*ck, start small. You can take a smallish amount and keep loaning out to people over and over. We can help so many more people than the government can. We see that in our local communities every day. I can’t do a lot but I can do a little. If we all do a little, we can do enormous things for people. Someone across the world needs it much more than I do. So let’s get to work on it. God bless my fellow freedom loving Americans and Americans who just aren’t here yet. <3

Is there accountability? Do you have evidence that the money actually goes where you want and is used for what you intended? You called it a loan. Do you get paid back? I’m not challenging you or being adversarial. I do admit to being skeptical and am hoping that you are right and I am wrong. It also occurs to me that in general, G0d doesn’t ask us to lend to the poor, but to give to them. I’m not sure we should give expecting to get it back, but I do think there needs to be accountability.

You can go to the website and research it any time you’d like. I do give to charity but I also want to do other things. Feel free to give or lend however you’d like. Take care.

Scott, The solution has to be multi faceted. Provide no services or welfare to illegal immigrants. In other words stop paying people to break our laws. As Bill said use micro loans to start the capitalist process and have the patients to wait for results. It will take time, you cannot change every bodies heart all at once. As we see progress the corruption should fade away,if it does,encourage older forms of business to send jobs to those countries that take the idea of free market seriously and again wait. This is not a quick fix, but I think it is the only way it can be done.

Thank You Bill, I have been saying this for years. Make both economies equal and the problem is solved.

Our current administration believes in an authoritarian welfare state as the ideal, so whatever aid they give will be in that vein. But this won’t work in Honduras/Guatemala/El Salvador because they don’t have the productive capacity to support it.
And entrepreneurship is a wonderful thing, but it can’t flourish in the absence of basic property rights. Being a thief is very much like being an entrepreneur, except that the entrepreneur’s success is bounded by the market value of his effort: the thief’s is not.
To fix this, we have to be the change we want to see in the world. Start by enforcing the border and living limited government, and then we will have something worthwhile to share with the world. It’s not something we can do in two months, and it will require a new leadership committed to the ideas that the United States started with.
The icky part is that our current leadership >>is<< the change they want to see in the world. It just won’t work out that well for anyone.

The assimilation problem, is much of the problem! We were raised in Southern California, and I can tell you having a large influx of Hispanics changes your neighborhood big time. We experianced little to no blending of the cultures. The norm was blasting mexicana music all day and into the night, little ones roaming around the streets, chickens everywhere and the parks taken over with the same, people sleeping under trees drunk. We lost ours parks to them, could not take our kids there and this is not to mention the gangs. They took over the nice camping grounds in the San Gabriel mountains that were then closed due to the violence and drugs. So tragic, these areas are where I went as a child, so many wonderful memories now gone for future generations. No, not every culture is the same, the nice songs about lets all get along and the speeches about such ring hollow when so many new emigrants have no interest in American culture, but demand we accept theirs.

So true, I have similar stories. The thing I try to explain to those whom have never experienced this invasive culture clash, is why are these immigrants that are leaving their destructive cultures coming to America, and then want to create and live in the very same destructive culture that they left? Sadly this is now going on inside America. Socialist Californians are now leaving their destructive, wasteful, and unsuccessful socialist cultural disaster areas to move to conservative areas like Texas, and then trying to force these locations to change to conform to the areas they destroyed and left behind. Talk about the definition of insanity.

Scott, it sounds like you’re taking Harris’ spew of garbage (that she didn’t invent, stealing it from some other leftist politician whose answer to every problem is throwing money at it) and you’re putting a pretty pink bow on it and trying to make sense of it.
Call me isolationist if you want, but I think our generosity to other countries (microloans, handouts, State Department “gifts”, and other burdens on the U.S. taxpayer) should have evaporated the instant we started spending money that we didn’t have. That was some $28 trillion dollars ago.
Let’s clean our own house first. And that includes putting a freaking wall up. It would take a few years, but a complete overhaul of our so-called immigration system might also be considered.
Personally, I couldn’t care less WHY people are coming here. That’s a question that needs to be answered only after the flood has been dammed up. And the answer certainly doesn’t involve throwing money at the problem which solves nothing but line the pockets of corrupt politicians on the receiving end AND on the U.S. end.

In the iconic episode of The Twilight Zone called “To Serve Man” an alien civilization lands on earth promising to end hunger and war. They put invisible barriers around the countries (read enforce borders) and give them the technology to feed their own people and thrive. Of course, they are actually raising humans as food, …, but stay with me here.
If we enforce our borders, encourage countries to do what they are good at and enrich their economies through smart trade, with technologic assistance, it can be done. Then, we can ask those who are successful to legally emigrate to the USA if they would like to see if they can make it here, then the similarity between the show and the future immigration policy merge.

at any given time i estimate that as little as 10% of the human genome are capable of doing all those things that make life an enjoyable experience. even if i am off by a full 100% (that being 20% not 10%) it’s a complete futile effort to expect entire civilizations will figure out how to get those 80% (being sloths) off their collective asses. no social construct has yet to accomplish that feat.
even here in america, the greatest land of opportunity recorded history has ever witnessed, fully 50% of the population are willing to sit, watch tv and play with their cell phone as a lifestyle collecting their welfare, ebt, free health care and other free crap while the other half works and pays for it all. america has had a good run but the demographics have finally caught up with us.
follow the math.

Sort of sounds like retirement: “…even here in America, the greatest land of opportunity recorded history has ever witnessed, fully ??% of the population are willing to sit, watch tv and play with their cell phone [and their computers viewing BWDC, etc.] as a lifestyle collecting their [social security, pensions, personal portfolio investment dividends, and their IRA required minimum distributions (RMDs)].

Follows from the adage: “work for your money and then let your money work for you”. Not always easy for everyone to achieve, but clearly part of the path to the financially secure and independent “yeoman farmer” so prized by Thomas Jefferson as the epitome of a self reliant and free citizen of a constitutional republic.

I guess we need to pursue and demonstrate this as a successful domestic policy before we try to promote it as a foreign policy approach.

The problem seems to be a search for the lesser of two evils.
We have laws that are willfully broken by people seeking a better life than those found in Guatemala. Guatemala has corruption that limits the natural human desire to be at home.
Do we help people that won’t help themselves in their native lands?
Do we carry their financial burden here in the U.S.?
A really good answer would be “No.”
The lesser of the two evils would be an agreement that if micro loans are taxed, touched, infringed upon, manipulated, etc., etc., there will be no more “economic aid” (read “be my friend” money) until the behavior ceases.
Still, this is the same as deciding which lottery is better to win. In the end, all accounts remain the same and the daydreaming will last until real minds occupy the Whitehouse.

I just finished reading Apocalypse Never, by Michael Shellenberger. Thoroughly researched and eye opening, a must read which I recommend highly.

If we do spend money on third world countries, it should be spent on building reliable (coal, hydro, gas, oil, and nuclear) – not sustainable (wind and solar) – power plants. Cheap and reliable electricity will go a long way to quickly improving the livability of sh**hole countries. So that won’t be happening any time soon, since the thieves and psychopaths in our own gubmint are doing their best to knock us back into the dark ages by demonizing reliable energy (and closing down what they can – nuclear plants especially,) and pushing “sustainable,” but very unreliable, wind and solar – which BTW are not harmless to the environment.

So how do a people deal with a psychopathic, tyrannical gubmint who cannot be voted out? Steven Denis below has a viable solution.

What are the major differences between first world and third world? I’m counting the southern half of Europe as third world here. Different law systems. Roman law verses Jury law. There are a few first world country’s without Jury law, Japan etc, but they copy many mechanisms from American law that are a product of Jury law. There is Jury law in Belize, Panama and Costa Rica but nowhere else in the source countries. Reformation Christian verses pre reformation roman Catholicism. The RC beliefs in ritual salvation and penance leads to a culture that is more inclined to bribery and patronage systems. Most of the first world is reformation protestant in origin. Proper land deed systems. Every time there was a revolution south and central American governments created new over lapping land deeds but never successfully extinguished the previous ones. Australia is trying to help a 30 countries solve this problem. Its a major aid project. The USA can’t because one part of the sub prime mortgage mess was the defective digitization and destruction of land deeds, mostly in blue states, leaving the USA in a third world state. The other problem with third world deeds are that they are large acreages with rules that prevent sub division. That favors land monopolies.

The cultural contrasts engendered by the difference of the two predominant strains pf Christianity are pervasive. In ecumenical studies, the divergence is not of substance so much as emphasis, but occurs at a fundamental understanding of the nature of God.
Catholicism tends towards an emphasis on the immanent nature of God, and expresses itself by analogies, (God is love) how an an incarnate God is like us. This lends itself to a holistic apprehension of the world which positively gives rise to ecological concerns and constraints and negatively can be weighed down by such things as corruption and nepotism etc,
Protestantism emphasizes the transcendence of God, and on the unfathomable differences. It therefore allows a compartmentalization that led to the positive development of science and technology and objective standards. It finds a negative expression through alienation and deracination.

There is another part. In Europe and Britain both the Catholics and the Anglican church, the least protestant of the protestant churches, banned Puritans and other protestants from using royal banks, owning agricultural estates, and joining guilds. This pushed the protestant’s out to fringe industries like low quality ores, pottery, coal and in Holland sawing planks. All industries that boomed in the industrial revolution. It also meant the protestants were not taxed because banking, farming and guilds were the only things taxed! Untaxed and forced out of the capitals but industrious and frugal the puritans ended up cashed up and invented both share investment and spent on innovation & automation. That made the industrial revolution happen. If they had been taxed the money would have drained away to kings, capitals, rich bankers, and wars. None of this happened in the parts of the roman catholic world the Americas south of Mexico, the Philippines and catholic African colonies. As late as the 1990’s protestant’s were still persecuted in central America and Brazil.

I understand that after Pope Gregory in 1075 (or so?) established that the Papacy and Church was to be the controlling institution for ecclesiastical issues, removing control of appointing bishops, etc., from the local kings or other political leaders, then canon law developed in the 10th & 11th centuries to also foster greater emphasis on human rights, the role of the individual in society, etc. Do you know if the concept of jury trials was developed during that stage, as well, or did it follow later, or maybe even earlier from Anglo-Saxon law perhaps?

I would suppose the idea that your peer serfs and peasants and such were qualified to render judgement, via their membership on a jury, on your alleged criminal behavior required that they also have some legal position as individual persons of value.

In regard to this discussion of South and Central America and third world deeds, etc., Hernando DeSoto’s book on The Mystery of Capital [2000] is relevant, citing the need to establish legal rights to their capital [aka property] for the lower classes, not just the rich and connected folks. This then gives them a stake with which to obtain loans and invest further.

On the “sub prime mortgage mess was the defective digitization and destruction of land deeds, mostly in blue states, leaving the USA in a third world state” …. how do the local title companies handle this when properties are bought and sold? Did they end up destroying the physical hard copy ledger versions of the titles that would have acted as an interim backup until things settled down? Most land owners would also have retained copies of same for their eventual later use/need.

No the idiot bankers got all copies and shredded them issuing digital replacements. Some refused to hand them over and lost their loans. A few got lucky they sent a copy and the bankers never checked it properly. There are millions of properties with either no deed or two copies generated in the scramble at state and federal level to replace the lost deeds. The whole thing was because Ben Bernanke taught that the East coast and west coast housing markets were out of sync and could not crash at once. His students concluded that if they mixed the deeds digitally then that made them all crash proof. However to do that the paper deeds HAD TO DISAPPEAR!
Ben’s theory was wrong; he ignored that the west coasts ‘out of sync’ was triggered by WW2 demobilization and pay roll. There was nowhere in the pacific war for US troops to spend their money. When they were demobilized in California and Seattle they had 3 years back pay and bought homes there. The Seabees demobilized with all their equipment [they had been ordered to dump it all at sea] but they did not in all but one case. This added to the out of sync spike that threw out Ben Bernanke’s math’s. The troops had the cash, their wives had caught the train to LA and the Seabees had ship loads of free building materials and equipment Uncle Sam had paid for. Only the Austrian school economists talk and write about this and they did before the 2008 mortgage crash.

Once upon a time America represented opportunity only for those who yearned for the freedom and opportunity to succeed on their own merit. She attracted people who could quell the fear of failure with a vision of success.

There was “no free lunch” in the early days. The nations foundation, based on an amazing Declaration of Independence and a Constitutional form of government was intended to be “of and by the people” which resulted in a society and a culture that exploded with phenomenal progress and incredible success at every level of human endeavor and experience. This inspired millions of people around the world to want the same for themselves.

Some chose to immigrate, legally, in order to proudly participate, to become an American Citizen, and others chose to work toward building something similar in their own home, countries. The advancement of democracy and free market capitalism that still carries the world on it’s shoulders is a direct product of the American experiment.

We cannot, and never have been able to, actually export this, we can, and have only ever been able to inspire it.

People will always want to come here, the only questions are why, and how, and who are we inspiring to come and for what reason? For the opportunity, sure, some, but today there are many more, not so admirable reasons to come here and the folks attracted are less and less likely to manifest the qualities that once made America “the melting pot”.

America needs to set it’s own house in order. We need to first get back to fiscal sanity, which will happen, sanely with intention or insanely via consequence, i.e. bankruptcy. We then need to eliminate the government teat and put Americans back in the driver’s seat of their personal lives and their local governments. Finally, we must close the border, expel the illegal immigrants and secure the damn vote!

As for the other nations and people around us, perhaps we can once again become the inspirational example that will guide the best among us around the world to fight for the same thing in their own home countries.

…”guide the best of us”… thoughtful post. our country accepts all but attracts two types of bipeds. those who are inspired to work, engineer, build, craft, create, produce and experience the resulting rewards and those who are full of nefarious chicanery attempting to exploit the personal energy of others. unfortunately too many of the second group have now found their way into the control rooms of america.
fully half of all american adults pay no taxes, produce no products or provide any meaningful services while the other half pay the freight for everyone. nothing on the horizon convinces me that will be changing anytime soon. the left is trying to destroy us while the right is infested with the cancerous puss of globalism. we all have our opinions where this all started but most can agree that it won’t end well for our constitutional republic.

The first must be last and your last item FIRST. With continued illegal immigration and even legal immigration at the current numbers$, (MONEY MONEY MONEY ) every year, we are losing any chance to keep our republic. Even OUR LIFEBOAT CAN BE SWAMPED. CLOSE THE BORDER. FINISH THE WALL.

I like the idea of microloans. I would say raise tariffs on all goods coming out of China. Yes, it would force some industries back to the U.S. but some of those industries that moved to China had previously moved to Central America. Textiles, and sporting goods come to mind here. Central America was for a time our low-cost producer of choice before China became that low-cost producer.

The truth of the matter is this phony administration can’t solve problems at home. They stole the election. It is an illegitimate government. So you’re starting with a faulty premise. The democrats way of solving problems is by cheating. Actually all they do is create problems. Look at what they’ve caused at the border and all last year with the riots. Biden hasn’t solved a problem his whole career. It is ridiculous to think Kamala Harris who cheated her way into her position can go to these countries and solve anything when she can’t do it at home. The only way to solve the issue is for Trump to run and get re-elected in 2024 and finish the wall. He has solved problems his whole life. He knows how to deal with problems. We are watching some sick theatrical production with these people. It’s like bizzaro world.

Trump won in 2020. If he runs and wins in 2024, what will keep the left from just stealing it again? The only consequence so far is that the left has been rewarded for their chicanery with power , allowing them to further stack the deck against working Americans. Trump fought the swamp, and the swamp won. The swamp will not be drained by the denizens who live in it.

When you have a population which has been chased out of their own country, there is a simple, inexpensive way to solve this. It’s not the devastation of the hurricanes or any of that, it is a system which has failed them. Be it Honduras or Syria, when they show up at the border, issue each adult a surplus M-1 Garand, 250 rounds of ammunition and say to them. “GO GET YOUR COUNTRY BACK!” There isn’t a country on the planet where the official military and police outnumbers the civilian adult population. Generally it isn’t even close. (what? 1% of the US population?) El Salvador NEEDS the US’s “gun problem”…

It’s a very difficult topic. I am speaking as a South American.. You not only have to export the values of capitalism, individual freedom and individuals responsibility, but educate people so that they can make informed decisions when voting. Traditionally, Latin Americans love to rely on the goiverment to solve their problems. That’s why in virtually every country, there are leftsist governments, and the states in these grow and grow. Unfortunately the US will only get immigrants who will perpetuate the systems from which they have escaped.
To attempt to solve this, you have to somehow intervene in local affairs, which in top of it is resented in Latin America. Apart from improving education,one has to fight the drug cartels, and you know how difficult that is.
Microloans will help.
Anyway, you have to take care of your border.
It has cought my attention, though, that Americans seem very keen to protect migrants, and at the same time are not very willing to stop the killing of American babies (aka abortion).

You say we would have to educate people so that they could make informed decisions when voting. We haven’t even done that in our own country.
“Traditionally, Latin Americans love to rely on the goverment to solve their problems.”
Half or more of the US has that same attitude. It’s obvious to most of us on this forum that government very rarely solves anything, but rather, makes things worse.
The late Paul Harvey used to frequently remind us that “self government won’t work without self discipline.” We as a nation have mostly lost our self discipline. We want what we want, we want it right now, and we want someone else to pay for it. That is a prescription for disaster. We have become a nation of thieves, willing to steal from our neighbors by way of the ballot box. We (mostly) don’t rob our neighbors at gunpoint. We just vote to have the federal government rob them at gunpoint and then “redistribute” the loot to the rest of us. It’s theft, and I don’t see any hope of it stopping any time soon.

VP Harris does not want to solve the problem by making the illegal aliens home countries a better place so the people will stay there. She is just blowing wind. The Democrats need the influx of illegals to offset the shedding of their domestic voter base as the party moves further left.

The illegal aliens are needed to do the job Americans won’t do– vote democrat.

Raise the standards to qualify for immigration and the applicants will exceed these standards for the limited spots.

The mistake is in thinking the Democrats want to solve the problem they have no intention of doing that. They want to be able to say we are giving X to Y and then continue to have the problem to run on it next election cycle.

Honduras keeps experimenting with ZEDEs, which are kind of an attempt to export a working legal framework to Honduras. They’ve been working at this for over a decade though, who knows if they’ll manage it. If it works in Honduras, maybe Guatemala and other countries in the region will pick up on it. I hope they can manage it, but I’m not banking on them doing it.

I like the idea of the micro-loans that Bill Whittle mentioned.
1) It gives investment money to regular joes who are going to try to improve their lives with it rather than to politicians who are typically there for power. Especially hearing that the return rate is so high. It means the cost is extraordinarily low for the average taxpayer here.
2) Since these Joes (or Juans?) start up small businesses, that introduces the idea of capitalism and the free market on the ground level. You’re planting the seeds of prosperity in soil that is at its most fertile and open to the idea.
3) It spreads the wealth far and wide, rather than concentrating it in some government-run program where all the leeches will come to suck off the money before it does any good.
4) It creates an environment for more rags-to-riches stories to crop up, and that’s usually a huge inspiration for people who are struggling and don’t have the political resources/connections to make it the inefficient tribal way.
And lastly,
All these new businesses, run by locals, will improve the lives of those around them by providing services that weren’t there before. Say we funded a plumbing startup. Now they have a plumber to help them, instead of having to figure it out (or forget it) on their own. Say we funded a grocery startup. Instead of selling in an open-air market, with bugs and dust, those people have access to food that’s been sealed and stored out of harm’s way, making it that much safer to eat. Say we funded a small clinic or a tailor- you probably get the idea.
Every single one of those small businesses improves the quality of life for the individual on the lowest level, and brings to the poor far more than anything the rich, affluent, political creatures might claim to intend for the wealth our acting-sortof-president Kamala might be throwing at them.

Microloans won’t work, for two reasons: (i) as George M says below, 2 sets of national bureaucracies with agendas won’t let it happen; and (ii) I can hear now the screams of “cultural imperialism”. Exporting capitalism? Depends what you intend to export. A lot of us outside the US see it as broken right now: a clearly stolen presidential election, including in part via the imposition of unconstitutional rules and diktats by multiple states simultaneously; an ex-SecofState whom the world knows to have acted illegally for years and years and she gets away with it; a current president compromised by his own and his son’s Chinese connections; a single party federal state burning its own cities and saying nothing to see here, with the active connivance of all the most powerful social media platforms in the world; jurors escorted to a criminal trial by men armed with machine guns to protect them, and they’re terrified not to convict; senior politicians openly calling for mob justice … Who needs to import any of that? Central America already has it! Exporting the American genius version of capitalism which [added later: embodies social mobility and] celebrates and rewards risk and innovation? That would be great, but you have at least a generation or two’s work ahead of you to repair the recent and present damage first. That means education and more education, which requires that good people control local education districts. It’s dull work, but someone has to do it. And rebuild.

Do what Milton Friedman suggested, no benefits for illegal immigrants, if you allow open borders.

won’t work. the blue states will all do workarounds and give drivers licenses and id’s which create voters which rigs elections which destroys the republic.
you don’t negociate with hitler. respectfully robin, i suggest brushing up on nevil chamberlain. he tried it, was duped and failed miserably.

Either do what Bill has proposed and try to lift the individual up from where they are and stop feeding the socialist dictatorships they live under or build a bigger wall and close our southern boarder until Mexico takes responsibility for the flow of illegal immigration through their country. Embargo on all goods to and from Mexico.

Sorry.
You cannot.
Micro loans would be a way to help but, as you know, you would have to get them by Two bureaucracies, both ours and theirs.
And you know that ours would never agree to something as simple as that and “theirs” would require their baksheesh and still steal the rest if they could…
The only way to right This World again would be to re-instill values that don’t involve materialism – you know – G-d; Family; Humility; Charity; etc….
And, that ain’t gonna happen… maybe… How ya gonna make ’em like farm life again, once they’ve seen gay Paree!?
Or –
A teaching from Rabbi Israel Salanter-The founder of the Modern Musar or Jewish Ethical Mindfulness Movement
When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. But I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my country. When I found I couldn’t change my country, I began to focus on my town. However, I discovered that I couldn’t change the town, and so as I grew older, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, but I’ve come to recognize that if long ago I had started with myself, then I could have made an impact on my family. And, my family and I could have made an impact on our town. And that, in turn, could have changed the country and we could all indeed have changed the world.

Bill, Who could argue with that? Well, leftist who hate capitalism of course.

. There was a system that did as Bill suggested but time bypassed it. However the results of this system can still be seen in the world, a mixed bunch ranging from the super successes, to the adequate to the failures. But as Empires got a bad press can’t see this being tried by any law n order societies again.

Really we need to do like china does with their belt and road initiative and leverage our loans so that we basically have total control of a country after they take our money.
Otherwise Milton Bradly was onto something in 1982…

First, staunch the flow of illegal aliens by controlling the border. Not just those seeking a better life, but those seeking to harm us get in that way.
Allow charities to do their thing, but our main focus should be on trying to set an example for others to aspire to and offer help to those that ask for it.

norway has the system down pat.

Scott, a very interesting right angle, and I agree that this issue with the border is a problem. I don’t think what Kamala Harris is suggesting will work. Bill your idea of micro loans is a good one and may be a step in the right direction, but for me, and this may not be what you are looking for, but I always look at things from a historical perspective. History has always been my forte. And one of my most favorite periods of time was the Roman empire. Rome face the same issue with barbarians like the Vandals, Sueves, Alans, and Visigoths. These people invaded Rome because of the wealth Rome had. They moved in and settled taking what they could. And Romes response was to go ahead and except them for purposes of a tax base and source of military recruitment. However as a result because of this, Rome lost north Africa and Spain. This coupled with the decadence and decay resulting from incompetent rulers brought about Romes fall. Unfortunately I see the same thing happening to the United States today. These people from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are coming up here not just to get away from the hardships in their countries, but because, and I am not saying all of them, but some of them because they perceive they can get free government assistance. Add to that the drug cartels using it as well to transport drugs into the country, which leads to the decay this country is experiencing. The Democrats do nothing to discourage this, even inviting them with ideas if they can get government assistance, just to gain a voter base to keep them in power. And these people not all mind you, but some, are not wanting to assimilate into our country, they want to import their country here, as we have seen with the convoys of the past with some people flying their national flags.
To get to the point, what we need to do is cut off that access to government assistance to those immigrants that come here illegally. We need to deport those that come illegally, but we also need to set up a means to make it possible for those Who genuinely want to come here to be Americans to be able to immigrate through the proper channels. That’s just my thought, hope it might be some help.

Americans are imbecilic (in general) in that they want to give every privilege and freedom that we have to those that have snuck through our borders. Sleep around Kamala’s plan is to also give it to those that stay behind in their own countries by giving them money. That is the democrat’s basic plan for nearly everything – print and then give away money. It will solve every problem. NOT! as Scott Ott said. Fraud and failure again.
I, as an American, don’t owe these illegals anything. Not a loan. Not foreign aid. Nothing. Not a home. Not food, Not a phone. Not a car. Not a job. It is likely much too late for the millions of illegals that have already arrived and that are now untraceable.
Staunch the flow by building the fence. Then remove the incentive for stealing into our country illegally. Biden is picking them up just like Obama did and sending them all over our country with care packages. I believe Democrats are doing this because they think they will join their party and become voting Democrats (or at least help maintain the census so US Representatives stay where they are); it is not a humanitarian thing. Otherwise the Party would check up on them and see that they are adjusting and doing well; they don’t do that. Democrats just give them free stuff and more money. Democrats are creating an incentive for illegally stealing into our country.
Legal immigration to become an American is acceptable. That opportunity is enough incentive. Immigrants should pay the price (and they willingly would) – not tax paying Americans. By doing what Democrats are doing, they are dissuading LEGAL IMMIGRATION – why would anyone pay a price when you can just steal in and then get everything for free?
Those that have gained access illegally and are caught should absolutely be deported back to the other side of the wall (not to their home countries at tax-payer expense). As an absolute last resort, shooting those that are caught in the act of leading those that are stealing across the border is not so terribly far out of line – it is what I would do if they were stealing into my home. Dissuade them. Anyone that drops an infant over a 15 foot fence needs to be shot. REMOVE the incentive.
How many people would I need to shoot before criminals got the idea to not drop people into, or break (jump the fence) into my home?
The (drug) cartels that are making this possible for so many, need to be wiped out. A monthly strafing Air Force run of the cartel’s quarters would likely get the message across until we get the border secured.

This is the exact same problem we face here in America not only in poor rural areas but also in urban ones.
Bill’s onto something with micro-loans, the point being that it has nothing to do with government. It’s not a “program.” It’s person to person, which is true charity (even when it’s paid back), and benefits both the giver and the receiver.
The real answer is for people to take things into their own hands and go into poor areas (inner city, rural, or Guatamala) and not so much evangelize as offer people a way up (not necessarily a way out).
The Mormons do a good job of this in their communities. They get people off the streets, get them clean, get them a job, get them training, and get them a personal mentor.
We can do this with adults but I think it’s even more important to do it with teenagers (high school, not college students). Offer them “study abroad” type opportunities to learn how the system works, open them up to entrepreneurship, then send them back into their own communities (with moral and financial support) and let them do the cleanup, the hiring, and the evangelizing.
Funding cannot be done by any governmental entity. It has to be individuals and social organizations. Rotary, churches, whatever.
There has to be a willingness there, as Scott says, not forced on anyone. Find the individuals who want to find a better way, and show them how they themselves can effect change.
This is what we’ve been so brutally taught ourselves about the stolen election. As Bill says, we are the Kraken. It’s got to be done at a grassroots level. And all around the country, people are starting to fill all those empty Republican party positions, and it’s the grassroots that has forced the election audit in Arizona and in other states to come. Only individuals taking responsibility for their own problems can fix societal problems.

As many have said, staunch the flow. It means an effective wall. Then, Shark Tank Guatemala. The US Gov is terrible at picking winner…so don’t. USG gives a small tax break (say 3-4%) to folks who loan. The rest of the incentive is in them getting the 96+% back, building a team or company that maybe they further investe in in that country.
Capitalism, in the afternooon. Minimal US Gov presence makes for market growth on both sides. Someone will start a company helping micros (there are some now as noted before) that will work within USG (minimal) regulations, helping bound risk, reward so people feel safe and smart for doing it.

Bracero program.

Continuing Bill’s analogy of immigration and thermodynamics: I suggest a R27 layer of batt insulation. It comes in many vertical arrangements known as a “wall”. Or in political discussions “The Wall”.
The second phase is a true declaration of war and traditional war actions on the cartels of Mexico. Find them, kill them and move on…

Agreed; this is war. Wipe out the cartels. They are the ones making money … indirectly from us, American citizens. They are charging the illegals and then the illegals get in to the US and we give them back free stuff paid for by American tax money.
In my comment I recommend a monthly strafing run of the cartel home quarters until we get control of the border. I’m sure we could find them with satellites.

I’m with Bill. I’ve been a supporter of Kiva (microloans) for years and have helped a lot of people start or increase their business. I have also established a non-profit (Groundbreakersnj) that is freeing women from the sex trade in Kenya (and recently in Uganda) and giving them the training needed to become financially independent. This enables them to get their children back (many of whom were living on the street) and send them to school so they don’t have to sell their body or live on the street. Nothing will solve the problem for everyone. But the one who has been helped is solving the problem for their family.

Mico loans assume you can pick winners (we can’t). Then if any of them succeed the corrupt political/power structure extract any gains. Our aid will go either directly or indirectly into the pockets of the powerful and allow them to strengthen their hold on the society.
No one granted us aid in throwing off the British tyranny (except the French who came in late and with limited but crucial forces after we had already laid it all down under penalty of death and ruin).
The solution is for them to change their system, it can not be changed from outside. To the extent we facilitate the migration of the disaffected, we reduce the internal motivation for liberation. Same for aid, micro or other wise. Did it work in Iraq?
Once they mount a serious, sustained effort to throw off their shackles, then we can assist as the French did for us. It might have to get much worse before the sheep revolt. Many of their most likely to revolt have already left so we have indirectly reduced the near term possibility for internally generated change. Can change come non-violently? I doubt that as per Venezuela. Their ingrained cultural norms argue very much that even if they revolt, their replacement structure will lack the values necessary to resist going back to the same centralization funded by the same corruption they have now. Show me a latin American country that has escaped this cycle.
What we are getting is a merging of temps by destroying our cultural values by importing folks who prefer to keep their values in opposition to assimilation. There are indeed many of our localities that are third world. How do you think this has happened? Unregulated immigration has overwelmed our ability to assimilate. It has also delayed or prevented the source countries from progressing toward liberty and prosperity.
Europe is struggling with migrant Muslims and the dynamic is much the same. You can lose your culture when this reaches a tipping point. They may already be there and we may be close.
To the extent that we have engaged with these source countries economically, we might have transferred some of our values, but that goes both ways. Witness China and our double stardards the corporations practice.Seems to me that our power structures and gradually adopting the CCP modes of operation here as well as there.
My solution is to reduce incentivizing migration and proping up corruption that generates it. Let it cook and intervene when you are certain it has a net benefit toward value changing. Our government is incapable of such distinctions. I support overseas missionary and their educational and health efforts. That would include the administering of limited micro loans.
Sorry for the length of this post, but sound bites can’t begin to cover the complexities.

Well said. Excellent points.

I agree totally. As it is, with the help we have been giving these countries we encourage the corrupt regimes to stay in power. We should stop the flow of illegals, and at the same time, cut all foreign aid to those countries. Then the situation will come to a head, because without the west propping them up they are not sustainable.

The first hurdle to overcome …. is that “typically” interaction between countries is done through governments. And our government has become very lax about spending money without putting enough conditions (mile markers, if you wish ) to benchmark the progress.The swamp loves to spend “other peoples'” money.
We need an unbiased commission or think tank that can go to, say Guatemala, and assess the strengths and weaknesses in that country and suggest a roadmap for developing the free market potential *before* sending money. The commission would need to first sell themselves to the local government, develop trust, and be clear that the advice given does NOT guaranty fiscal backing. Based on those assessments, then money could be invested.
I support a number of international projects through “Kiva”, basically a loan system that does not rely on political entities. Projects are “merit based” with realistic assessments to determine feasibility for payback of loans. It has checks and balances. I can “see” my investment and also see the progress in individual loans and feel a part of the effort.

Step 1 (to me) is we the US have to shut off the border. Build the wall, impose the laws for legal entry. That at least halts the current flow and takes one crisis off the board for distraction. After that I suspect it would be an ongoing diplomatic effort to work with those countries’ governing entities to begin trying to change their ways. As Bill said with micro loans, start moving them towards selfsustainment through capitalism ways. Give the man a fish or teach them to fish.

Hello Scott – Bill partially answered the question of what to do and how to do it at the end of the MB2A Diet Woke episode. (13:35 in to be exact.). I.e., ..Lead by example. ..Help the system reveal itself, Etc..

The other part has to do with something called principled forgiveness. The full explanation of that can be found at Prager University (https://youtu.be/6xsVM_gd0Tc).

The basic principles of that hold that if people are unrepentant about their dangerous behavior – especially after we request that they stop – then we may have to “Release” them from our lives.

As a proud, sovereign, capitalist society, that may come down to secession. Another way to think of it is like amputating a gangrenous limb. Hopefully not.

In any case good, I know which side of the wall (or the gangrene) I’ll be on!

Oh, and crypto currency micro loans effectively skirt the problem of bureaucrat obstruction. That is a prime example of how to lead by example!

Oops. Wrong comment. Wrong video. I’ll be back.

Well … First of all … (My daughter in-law says she shudders when I say that phrase.)

We must get control of our borders. We need to have the same degree of border security that nearly every other nation on Earth has and ALL other Western industrialized nations have. There’s nothing racist or nationalistic or unreasonable about having control over our own borders. There just isn’t.

That’s not going to happen as long as Democrats are in power. The track record of past performance on that issue for Democrats is abysmal. So let’s just get the truth out in the open and force Democrats to admit they are not for secure borders. They always try to deflect the discussion to the matter of “compassion” so they can paint us as big meanies. It’s not compassionate to encourage people by baiting them with a better life so that they endure hardship, abuse and death trying to get here. We need to control that narrative a lot better than we’re doing. That’s where we start …

I’ve done some studying on micro-loans in third world countries myself. The results appear extremely promising but it depends on who you ask.

NPR thinks micro-loans are a waste of time and effort, too little too late. Of course NPR is an entity that survives on massive tax subsidies and likely cannot see the forest for the trees — So thinks the solution to every problem is more really, really big trees.

CBN (Christian Broadcast Network) on the other hand administers its own micro-loan program and is chock full of stories of glowing successes and lives vastly improved by this sort of economic assistance. But then CBN (which I hold in very high regard and just wish Pat Robertson would step down before he falls down) is an organization funded by contributions so … If they want people to contribute they are likely motivated to present the program in the best possible light.

(I’m being honest here, religious affiliation is not always rooted solely in real piety. Religious celebrities are people just like any other, with the same flaws and foibles that plague the rest of us. If you want to know the sincerity of a religious personality look at his wife. If she’s a painted bimbo bedecked in baubles you might consider taking your donations elsewhere. This does not militate that the Faith is false, you can pick bad examples of rotten eggs in all walks of life. If that were not so, America is not the nation we believe it to be because we’ve got some awfully flawed leadership. I’m not interested in the railing of anti-theists on this topic for these exact reasons. The point here isn’t the validity of Faith, it’s how to get control of our borders and if you can’t see that you’re just not very bright.)

Thus there are those who argue both ways. Like anything else, the facts are probably somewhere between the extremes.

Micro-finance has the added benefit of creating grass roots allies in places that might unfairly look on the United States as a villain. If a government in that kind of place can claim the benefits to its citizenry of programs that improve the lives of its populace, that’s a double benefit. The government is actually motivated to lifting the population out of grinding poverty with little or at least less chance of corruption. People’s lives improve, their government can take some credit and in doing so become more popular, both the people and the government are motivated to look on the U.S. as a friend and ally. It’s a win-win situation that expands U.S. influence for the good and so worth the monetary costs as long as those costs remain in some semblance of reasonable.

Regarding the concept of micro-loans and micro-finance the chief problem as I see it is one of administration. If we let our government handle it we end up with yet another bloated bureaucracy. If we let private institutions handle it we end up with suspicious reporting of the efficacy of the program. A solution needs to be found for this dilemma.

Still, history has shown that pouring money into poor nations via their governments is a mistake. Airports may be built but they’re not built to handle air traffic and improve the lives of the citizenry, they’re built to provide opportunities for graft and cronyism.

It is well past time to try a different approach. America can be the shining city on the hill for the whole world but that’s not happening the way we’re doing things now.

We need to learn this kind of lesson if we’re actually going to be helpful in any meaningful manner. As my grandmother used to say — “Even a dumb donkey doesn’t bump his head in the same place twice.”

Micro-loans are a good idea. The best proof I saw was years ago seeing an article in The Nation whining that while micro-loans help, they’re not enough. Any idea disliked by The Radical Left has to be good.

Thye solution is even simpler. Just start telling foreigners what a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic place America is. If we can get foreigners to hate America as much as Democrats do the problem solves itself

Lol … I don’t know about that. Seems to me like the Democrats have been saying exactly that for quite a while yet more are coming than ever before. It doesn’t work because while they’re saying that they’re telling every miserable wretch that can walk, drive or fly here to —

“Come pick this carcass while there’s still some good meat on it. We’ll let you in the back door.”

Well, Scott, the FIRST thing we need to do is to stop elevating things like hating our system to the level of virtue — here in this country. It’s hard to sell something when you’re selling, or at least supporting selling, not believing in it.

You have to BE the shining light on the hill and believe in it yourself. You can’t be selling “see that shining light on the hill? That’s the REASON your life sucks!”

Outside of that, there really isn’t much we can do. BE the thing you’re selling, and sell the thing you’re being.

Combine that maybe with some micro-loans if you want to to try to spread the idea “infectiously’, but the idea can’t spread when the world is being sold the idea that the only reason America has succeeded is greedy white males exploiting everyone else. We have to show that race doesn’t matter instead of selling the idea that race, that group-identity, is EVERYTHING (the idea that what now passes for Academia in the West is selling).

The example of the “slum” area across the lake and the culture is actually a good one. Happiness does not come from having things (you do have to have enough to eat and have adequate shelter… but beyond that …) Happiness comes from what you do with your time. And if you like raising chickens and keeping multiple dogs and working on your car in your yard, telling people “no, you have to live in THIS setting under THESE rules so you can be more like US to be happy has a kind of arrogance to it and, frankly, it turns out it’s flat wrong.

Then there’s the happiness conundrum itself. You can’t have happiness unless you know what sorrow is. You can’t have a “better” lifestyle without the existence of suckier existences.

And you can’t have “diversity” without allowing for people whose pursuit of happiness means three dogs, and a yard full of chickens with junk cars. And somewhere in the country they can pursue it.

Re: the triangle—Can wind turbines run on humidity? Are dump fires elevating carbon emissions? Are the 3 countries food deserts? Do triangle women have abortion rights? Are each country’s voters being suppressed by voter ID? Are these some of the concerns Harris will be be bringing to solve the problem? Use your imagination, or better yet, DON’T.

I appreciate this video because Bill, Scott and Steve expose the bait and bait and bait scenario of the Leftists. Always look at what the other hand is doing.The other hand is dirty and it stinks to high heaven.

I don’t accept the premise that Harris is trying to solve the problem. She is trying (what a ruse) to build up her creds as a foreign affairs expert before she takes jobama’s place. This is a dog and pony show which has nothing to do with solving illegal immigration. It’s also a deceptive “stall ” until they get enough illegals into the country to meet their amnesty needs or whatever. If they really wanted to solve the illegal alien problem, they would continue to build and finish our border wall. PERIOD! Start with that, but no way will they spend OUR money on an actual solution. Damn their deep state devilish hides!!!

i’m not sure ott really believes what he say half the time.

“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.” – Thomas Sowell

Thank you Phil for bringing up Thomas Sowell. His “Basic Economics” chapter 23…. International Disparaties in Wealth. I must have read and listened to that chapter on Audible at least 30 times. . Scott, take Sowell’s book down from your Kindle’s “virtual” shelf and thumb over to that chapter.
I’ll wait. (really long pause)
I’m not sure if we can craft long term wealth, prosperity and security and force it anywhere we want. Debbie Downer..yeah yeah yeah, I know, but it’s not “just a bad day, or week or year or decade” for that part of the world, in spite of billions of US tax dollars being ‘Requested-Approved-Allocated-Spent’ there. Every year, every decade, every administration.

“There are no solutions”. That is a tough admonition for an engineer to accept. Surely, Shirley, there is some way to translate (and transfer) our American creedal idea of constitutional republican government elsewhere in the world. Even though it is largely derived from Northern European Protestant culture, with adaptations over the years from other societies.

Further comment at Wesley Bruce at 2:15am.

BTW- Heels up Harris has little interest in solving the problems “there”.
She is using this idea to take our eyes off of their real goal- massive immigration to swamp our present system and society.

Knowing a bit of her history in achieving political ambition, I seem to pronounce her name “Kamal-toe” Harris.

H.U.H. Nice. I see what you did there and I’m sure Willie Brown agrees.

An entire episode and not one mention of: The Rule of Law.
No solution can be effective absent Law.

I agree with you on “The Rule of Law”, but we also need to recognize that that means “good” law. Laws that are short and understandable, not changing all of the time, not so voluminous as to be over whelming and confusing, etc. Where judicial interpretations are valid and wise, and precedents remain stable. Ideas covered by Madison in one of the Federalist papers, I believe.
And in our constitutional republic’s world, something that is not quite so much administrative law (that includes the legislative, executive, and judicial functions within the Executive Branch because Congress abrogated their role and delegated details of the law to the agencies). Thus they are not accountable for the actual regulations and restrictions under which we find ourselves living.

I also vaguely recall that in one of his books Francis Fukuyama cited the rule of law as one of the two or three core requirements for decent civilization.

Wait, now there’s value to living in the culture you grew up in? Does that apply to all of us?

Excellent catch!

Not to white Americans

not if you’re white of course. never forget that.

“We have to give people some sort of hope that, if they stay, help is on the way.” — Vice President Kamala Harris

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“We have to give people some sort of hope that, if they stay, help is on the way.”
— Vice President Kamala Harris