There’s an Immigration Crisis, But It’s Not the One You Think

Good long interview with MPI’s Andrew Seles with a good overview of the substance and politics of immigration in the USA:

It’s become the Old Faithful of American politics: Every two or three years, there’s a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. It follows a predictable script: White House aides shy away from the term “crisis,” lest it suggest they’re to blame. Leaders of the opposition party repeat the term ad nauseam, spreading the perception of a crisis through sheer force of will. Media coverage features the same tired clichés: sensationalized “caravans,” b-roll of border fencing and windbreaker-clad TV reporters doing live hits from the Rio Grande or some dusty, mud-cracked vista. The immediate crisis passes, but the underlying problems go ignored, all but ensuring another crisis in a few years’ time. Lather, rinse, repeat.

“When something keeps happening to you over and over, you should ask why,” says Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that studies immigration. “Every two or three years, we get a spike of migrants coming to the U.S.-Mexico border. Yet we deal with this each time as though it’s a separate incident that can be controlled, rather than looking at the larger forces at play.”

Source: There’s an Immigration Crisis, But It’s Not the One You Think