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Agree. At the same time, my hunch is that the incentives in current safety net policies are only a mild part of the incentive to migrate. Another thought is that those programs could include significant waiting periods of residence before immigrants become eligible.

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A hugely disproportionate number of illegal immigrants come from Central America's Northern Triangle--Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador--which have had among the highest murder rates in the world. El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele recently took drastic action, locking up many gang members. El Salvador overtook the US as the world's No. 1 incarcerating nation, but their murder plummeted. So we have a little experiment running: It will be interesting to see Bukele's effect on the El Salvadoran component of illegal immigration.

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When my parents came to the United States just before World War II, they weren’t guaranteed housing and three meals a day. They had to be sponsored by somebody, so they would not be wards of the state.

In libertarian land, taxpayer funded incentives for migration would not exist.

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I have a good friend who came here from Mexico when he was about 12, said in the hills he grew up in you had to join narco gangs or leave, or else violence would ensue. Says it was pretty much universal where he grew up.

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