The post-Title-42 lull in border crossings is over
IN THE WEEKS before the end of Title 42, a pandemic rule that made it easy for America to quickly deport undocumented migrants, pundits predicted pandemonium. Newsrooms dispatched reporters to El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, California, where they described scenes of migrants waiting to cross the border. “It’s going to be chaotic for a while,” warned President Joe Biden. Yet when Title 42 expired on May 11th, things stayed calm. In fact, migrant encounters recorded by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) fell by more than 70% in the weeks following the policy’s end.
But the lull hasn’t lasted. Migrant encounters at the US-Mexico border rebounded by 61% between June and August, to roughly 233,000. Who is coming has also changed (see chart). Whereas about three-quarters of migrants caught by border patrol in October of 2019 were from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, migrants from those three countries made up a little more than half of apprehensions this August.
People fleeing other countries are making up the difference. Four years ago, fewer than 1,000 Venezuelans were caught crossing America’s southern border. But their numbers have surged as the country has languished under President Nicolás Maduro. In August more than 31,000 made the trip north. It is not just central and south Americans who are coming. The number of Russians crossing the border jumped following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. More Chinese and Indian migrants are wandering the borderlands of Arizona, California and Texas, too.
2023-10-05 07:47:55
Link from www.economist.com
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