Economic development can stem the export of people. However, if it is not accompanied by birth control and education of women so they can be part of economic development and not merely have status as baby makers economic development cannot keep pace with population growth.

Whatever the problems of South American countries are, it's up to those countries to do something about it; they are not America's problems. There is no right of illegal entry into the West. What happened to the 'all cultures are equal' blah? Oh. That's right. That's just another nonsensical Marxist slogan.

Well argued erudite, educated evocation. Economic development is the answer and if necessary via NGO's that allow development aid to completely bypass corrupt officials/government.

If a stable and honourable government is in charge then larger projects could be funded, like say, a nuclear power station.

Not just any nuclear power station but rather, MSR thorium. then with that built and operational, use some of that power, say offpeak, to run deionisation dialysis desalination plants, also built and operated using suitably trained or skilled local labour.

You change much and allow a certain amount of drought proofing while also creating numerous new employment opportunities. As well as entrepreneurial opportunities in associated service industries.

Have to say, If only Trump could be guided by such wise counsel, Alon!

The caravan could probably start heading in the other direction and as a veritable stampede!?
Alan B.

The problem with offering amnesty is that this has already been tried, in 1986 under President Reagan. The idea was that the US would give permanent residence to the estimated 3 million illegal immigrants, but that this would be followed by strict enforcement and sanctions on employers who hire illegal aliens, so as not to attract a flood of new illegal immigrants. The American people got the amnesty, but the politicians saw to it that there would be no enforcement. Their donors love illegal immigrants because they can be paid low wages and don't have rights. Now the number of illegal immigrants is estimated at 22 million.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0201193

Insanity is when you keep doing the same thing and expect a different outcome.

There is nothing wrong with extending some evidence based aid to Central America and preventing exploitation by US companies, but the people there are ultimately responsible for solving their own problems. No one forced the Guatemalans to more than quadruple their population since 1960.

Taking Alon Ben-Meir's advice would ultimately make the US as poor, populous, environmentally degraded, and conflict ridden as the places that people are risking their lives to escape. The same goes for Australia.

I have a different solution to stem the flow of unauthorised migrants. The first prong is not to let them in. The second prong is, if they do manage illegal entry, then promptly deport them.

I might add a third prong:get rid of citizenship rights for the American-born children of unauthorised aliens.

The US now has 12 million illegal economic immigrants, but has made a rod for its own back.

Effectively the US allows its immigration laws to be broken without any real consequences. "Sanctuary cities" refuse to enforce US immigration law, and past amnesties have merely promoted the expectation of further amnesties in the future.

Politicians in every developed country need to realise that, for many in developing countries, gaining permanent residence is like winning the lottery so that strong borders are essential.

ttbn, folk just don't pull up stakes and leave their farms, families and friends, to head into hostile territory and dehumanising nazi style gulags, if they're lucky, without compelling reasons! Any more than you would! Unless your world and lifestyle had all turned to shite!

We and every other decent humane developed society on the one and only planet we all share, send a certain amount of aid to other less well-off countries every year. And in comparison just a tiny fraction of the budget we spend on arms!

Often expended in the hopeless, forever unwinnable war on drugs and or, illegal immigration!

Better they are given reasons to stay and with far less expenditure, than that consumed keeping them out!? Than have our own culture swamped, then changed for the worse and forever, by being overrun by incompatible stone age cultures!

Perhaps you and your ilk, think that all they are good for is target practice, men, women children and their pets?
Alan B.

Bren find myself agreeing with you. And that all the entire generational issue of illegal immigration should be forced to relocate back to their ancestrial homelands! Even if that illegal immigation was a forced migrants bound in iron chains!

Given Terra nulus doesn't and never ever did stack up. It would seem all of us that have migratted here subsequetially, have no bonafide staus as legal citizens. I'd be okay, have a neice in Ireland, with a couch I could probably surf on? You?
Alan B.

Yeah, but what about the facts that

(1) migrants take our jobs, and

(2) none of them want to work, they all want to live on the welfare payments forked out by Aussie tax-payers.

And anyway, look at the congestion they cause. Traffic congestion gets about 5 % worse each year in Sydney, and guess what the migrant intake is: yes, 5 %. Migrants cause congestion, that's logically obvious.

Oops, all of my ancestors were not only migrants, but most of them convicts as well. Nothing serious, just thieves, from one end of Britain to the other.

Please ignore this post.

Joe

I think they should give them all citizenship, & jobs as professors at NYU.

We would then see how much the elite like immigration, when it is their jobs on the line.

Should improve the average IQ of the teaching staff at NYU too.

Quote "Trump's demand of $20 billion to build a wall along the Mexican border is misguided, impractical, and a waste of precious resources that can change the lives of millions of people if invested wisely in these poverty-stricken countries."

Please advise exactly what you mean by "if invested wisely in these poverty-stricken countries."

A lot more than $20 billion has gone into Africa over the past years and it is still a wreck.

Don't come back with this it has already been tried.
"A fraction of $20 billion would change the socio-economic conditions in these countries. One billion dollars invested in economic development projects can provide food, drinking water, jobs, self-empowerment, and hope for better life for a million poor, displaced, and despairing people."

One problem is it is not a small community that needs fixing it is the countries as a whole in Central American.

I don't support the migrants or open borders agendas;
- but I'll meet the author halfway with an interesting book.

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/how-the-us-creates-shthole-countries-book-review/

//Oops, all of my ancestors were not only migrants, but most of them convicts as well. Nothing serious, just thieves, from one end of Britain to the other.//

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Unless, of course, they're the wrong sort of huddled masses yearning to be free. Apparently 'Murica has fulfilled its manifest destiny; they're full so f*&k off.

I do not support and Australia as a nation needs to cease all immigration by people’s other than those whom assimilate, support and genuinely accept the Judeo-Christian way of life.

In the case of the US problem, much can be laid squarely at the feet of current and past US foreign policy and hegemonic ambition. Most of these so called migrants are the results of economic vandalism overtly and covertly inflicted on South American countries, particularly those which do not succumb to the dictates of US government designs.

A good starting point can be found here:- http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man

A must read, if our politicians were of the same mind, we would not be in so much trouble.

Some words from Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Migrants MUST adopt the culture of the West or stay at home says EGYPTIAN president.

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said guests of Western counties like the UK, Germany and England “must completely abide by its laws, customs, traditions and culture”. He added: “If you are not willing to do this, don’t go.” His comments, which have been revealed by US research institute MEMRI, came last month at a World Youth Forum in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt.

The president said: “Every country has the right to protect its people and their interests.

“It must generally respect human rights in a framework that preserves its national interests.”

In the speech, recently reported by US-based research institute MEMRI, Mr al-Sisi criticised people who expect Western countries “to open their doors so that we can go there demanding to keep our own culture.

“You demand to go there with your culture which you consider to be non-negotiable. You say, ‘this is how we are and you must accept us [because of] human rights’. No.

“Don’t expect them to open the door for you so you can go into their country and cause trouble. No.”

He went on to criticise Middle Eastern nations for “fighting amongst themselves” and “not taking better care of their own countries.”

He said: “Instead of asking me why countries [in the West] close their gates to us, you should ask yourself why the people of Afghanistan don’t take better care of their own country.

“Why have they been killing one another for 40 years?

“[The same is true of] Pakistan, in Egypt, in Syria, in Libya, in Iraq, in Yemen, and in Somalia.

“We fight amongst ourselves in our own countries, and then we expect countries that work day and night to achieve progress to protect their people and to maintain a certain standard of living for them – we demand that they let us in so we can have part of their [success].”

I wonder what our Leftist multiculturalists will come up with to counter the Egyptian President? That is real slap down to Western self-haters and the Western political class.

ttbn They will ignore it, just as the gutless press will not ask them what they think of what he said.

Hear, hear and well said, Philip S.

How's that, ttbn?

From one clearly left of you, along with most FAIR-MINDED Aussies.
Alan B.

Thinking back aways and the humanitarian exodus from Nazi Germany, and stories like the ship of shame, where intending Jewish migrants were turned away country after country as they sought to escape the mindless brutality of the Third Reich, with all its well-documented excess. And then with countervailing stories like Schindler''s list. The biggest scam in history!

To the modern day and the death squads roaming the shanty towns and ghettoes of South America, killing the homeless and impoverished as if they were no better than feral animals?

I wonder how far the human race has progressed and whether or not it should be allowed to survive, but just be allowed to top itself by making the planet completely hostile to all life.

Just by exponentially increasing the volume of CO2 in our atmosphere and joining Venus, also in the Goldilocks zone, but just too hot because of the CO2 and evaporate content of her atmosphere.
TBC. Alan B.

How about what, Alan? Philip S is right. The media will ignore it. My question was rhetorical. And I wouldn't have thought that Philip was “clearly to the left” of me on this subject.

Cont. But back to Nazi Germany. Hitler was both mad and brilliant. Mad because he labelled the Jewish ethnic minority he enemy of the state, simply to confiscate their wealth!

When instead he should have appointed them a CEO's and board members of the banking fraternity and in all areas of business and commerce, with that achieved, planned and executed a winter campaign against the Russians as a war of liberation for Ukraine, which would have seen the Poles/Czechoslovakians, joining in as virtual allies, ensuring the Blitzkrieg was aimed first and foremost at the Rusian bear/communism!

Given how easily the Russians were decimated in the initial onslaught, only saved by a scorched earth policy, the Russian winter. Quickly brought to their knees? Without the west lifting a finger!?

A pause and rebuild would have allowed him to further develop the beetlebug/V2.

He could have finished a couple more Bismarchs and a much larger submarine fleet, plus gotten his jets operational in significant and frightening numbers before launching a campaign against the middle east. By bypassing France and heading there via neutral Belgium.

The west would have thundered and rumbled but would not have done very much against an enemy that could have defeated Russia in just a few weeks if It had someone like Rommel in charge/properly equipped. Without British involvement, we would have not gotten involved nor one suspects America?

Japan could have been instructed to limit its hostilities to mainland China, after which she also could have spent several years consolidating her territorial gains.

Today wiser heads prevail, those who would rule the world are taking tiny unresisted bites, to the point where like China, to big to put back in their box? With paying a monumental empire destroying price!

That along with climate change drought/encroaching desertification has led to, north of fifty million, refugees now seeking refuge wherever they can find it. As so ably described by the Egyptian President!
Alan B.

The best way to solve poverty in South America, is for the white population of North America to swap continents with the people in South America. South America is actually a much richer continent than North America, and having it populated entirely by Europeans and Asians would turn it into the worlds richest country.

Then North America would turn into a poverty stricken hellhole, and all of the people in North America would be trying to get into South America. Everybody wants to live with the white guys,

It's the people. stupid.

//South America is actually a much richer continent than North America, and having it populated entirely by Europeans and Asians would turn it into the worlds richest country.//

Do the Spanish not count as Europeans anymore? This is a new development; I didn't even know they wanted to get out of the EU. Apparently they're a lot more efficient than the Poms.

History lesson for Tony Lavis.

The Spanish and the Portuguese began the process of European settlement of South America. The Incas and the Aztecs were interesting civilizations, having no metal tools or animals capable of work other than Llamas and Alpacas. But they still had operating gold and silver mines, efficient sewerage systems, and skilled stone masons. Mexico City was the largest city in the world at the time of the Conquistadors. All the Spanish and Portuguese had to do was take over operations from the bloodthirsty native upper classes and they were in business. However, serious revolutions in the 19th century which were essentially native uprisings against their Spanish and Portuguese colonial masters saw the re establishment of native rule in most SA countries. Like Africa, SA has gone downhill since then.

North America was settled by the North European people, and all they got was a lot of trees, and savage Indians who were difficult to suppress. By any application of reasoned logic, South America was more advanced, easier to conquer, and a richer continent. The amount of Silver and gold taken from South America at that time was so enormous that Spanish coinage almost became the world currency.

If you think that all races and cultures are equal, perhaps you could explain why North America (USA and Canada) became so successful despite their original handicap, while South America became a sheethole despite it's obvious advantages?

Could it be that the culture of the Protestant North European people was at that time much superior to that of the Catholic Southern Europeans? And that the Southern Europeans today have learned a lot from the Northern protestant Europeans? They no longer do what the Pope and their religion dictate, and they have realized that Science and technology are the keys to prosperity. Which is something the Muslims should be thinking.

Anyhoo, one aspect of Catholic teachings have been kept in South American countries. And that is to breed like flies. SA is now hideously overpopulated and that is nobody's fault but the South Americans and the Catholic church.