Tea at Trianon: There IS a Border Crisis

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, March 1, 2019

There IS a Border Crisis

From The Daily Signal:

Provost’s comments run counter to claims made by Democrats and other Trump critics who argue that, because border apprehensions are down considerably from 20 years ago, there is no actual crisis. While the 361,000 people the Border Patrol caught in fiscal year 2018 is less than half of the 1 million who were caught in the 1990s and 2000s, Provost says there is more to the numbers than meets the eye.

“I’ve been asked many times how the current situation can be a crisis compared to years when we surpassed 1 million apprehensions,” the Border Patrol chief said to lawmakers. “To understand the numbers, you have to look at what’s happening on the ground.”

In years past, the majority of those apprehended at the border were Mexican nationals who, after taken into custody and documented by Border Patrol, were handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Enforcement and Removal Operations office for deportation. In present time, more than half of all border apprehensions are Central American children or families. Due to a 2008 trafficking law, the children cannot be immediately deported because these they are not from Mexico or Canada. Provost says the demographic changes have stretched her agency thin.

“Each day, nearly 25 percent of my agents are diverted away from our border security mission to care for, transport, and process family members and unaccompanied children,” she said Tuesday. “We know that when agents are occupied, narcotics smugglers, criminal aliens, gang members, and others use the opportunity to violate our borders and our laws.”

Agents are being challenged with other requests that are clogging their operations, in addition to the demographic changes. Many of the apprehended migrants are asking for medical care, requiring around 5,000 of her 2,000 agents to care and transport them to medical centers instead of manning the southern border. (Read more.)