The Big Lie on Immigration
by digby
Can you see what’s wrong with this story?
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reinforced President Donald Trump’s immigration rhetoric on Friday, saying the United States is quickly approaching “a moment of crisis” because of the “record number of migrants” spilling into the United States.
Speaking side-by-side with Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray Caso in Mexico, Pompeo emphasized the “importance of stopping the flow [of migrants] before it reaches the U.S. border,” but deferred to Mexican authorities on how to deal with the issue.
“We are deeply aware that the way that Mexico will handle this,” he said as he glanced over at the secretary, “is your sovereign decision. Mexico will make its decision — its leaders and its people will decide the best way to achieve what I believe are shared objectives.”
Pompeo emphasized throughout his remarks that Trump has been “very clear” that immigration is the largest issue that Americans face, but said he was “confident” that the two countries would converge on actions to benefit both countries, after alluding to the work the countries made on its recent trade deal.
He also said it was the “uniquely American burden” to “fix U.S. laws in order to handle this burden.”
Trump’s frustration over the immigration has escalated as of late, lashing out at Democrats at a campaign rally on Thursday for being behind a “caravan” of Honduran migrants traversing through Guatemala onward to the United States, just weeks before the midterm elections.
Earlier this week, in a series of tweets, Trump threatened to cease aid to Honduras if its migrants did not stop and return to their home country, while also suggesting his might deploy the military to shore up the southern border and pull out of a trade deal.
Politico must have run out of “room” because they forgot to fact check the Secretary of State’s outrageous lie.
From 1990 to 2007, the unauthorized immigrant population tripled in size – from 3.5 million to a record high of 12.2 million. During the Great Recession, the number declined by 1 million and since then has leveled off. In 2015, there were 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S., accounting for 3.4% of the nation’s population.
The decline in the unauthorized immigrant population is due largely to a fall in the number from Mexico – the single largest group of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. Between 2007 and 2015, this group decreased by more than 1 million.
This is nothing more than a Big Lie to gin up the immigration issue among the haters. There are tens of millions of them.
But to use the Secretary of State for such a menial partisan task is a new low. But then Pompeo seems to have been more than happy to do it because he’s a partisan hack and always has been.
And Politico didn’t do its job. Instead, it just blasted out this Big Lie by the supposed “statesman” giving it the imprimatur of foreign policy instead of what it is — a cheap partisan stunt to boost turnout.
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