Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness
A“caravan”—the euphemism for a current foot-army of more than 10,000 Central Americans—of would-be border crossers has now passed into Mexico. The marchers promise they will continue 1,000 miles and more northward to the U.S. border, despite warnings from President Trump that as unauthorized immigrants they will be turned away. No one has yet explained how, or by whom or what, such a mass of humanity has been supplied, cared for, and organized.
Once at the border, the immigrants further predict that they will successfully, but illegally, enter the United States, then claim refugee status, and finally rely on sympathetic public opinion—and progressive political activism—to avoid deportation.
If past experience is any guide, they are quite right in thinking they can melt into the population, ignore future legal summonses, and count on the de facto amnesty that currently protects 22 million illegal aliens, the vast majority from Mexico and Central America. Border crashers assume rightly that U.S. security agents and the military will not use force, on the principle that Central Americans appearing on CNN battling helmeted Americans with batons and tear gas is bad American “optics.”
But for all the staged midterm theatrics, the caravan illustrates the abject ironies and paradoxes of the entire illegal alien project.
