"Hyperventilating About the Caravan"

This piece by conservative writer, Mona Charen, appeared in this morning's paper.  From the article:

"A caravan of ragtag would-be immigrants is making its way through the nations of Honduras (per capita income $4,630), El Salvador (per capita income $7,540), and Guatemala (per capita income $8,000) to Mexico.

The response in the U.S. (per capita income $60,200) — panic.

Hyperventilation is seemingly the response we bring to all challenges in 2018 America. We’ve seen caravans before. There was a 1,500-person caravan that marched north just this past April. Of the band, only 400 actually reached the border and requested asylum. On average, about 22 percent of asylum requests are granted."

"....Now, contrary to the tone of some left-leaning coverage, it is not inhumane to say that there is no “right” to enter the United States. We don’t have an open-door policy. We have laws and procedures. One of those is asylum....Clearly not all asylum requests are bogus or manufactured, but some are. Things are desperately bad in Honduras and other Central American nations (though not in Costa Rica — per capita income $16,100). Some frantic people really do need asylum. Would you repeal our asylum laws because some make unverifiable claims?"

What she has said so far isn't exactly news. Others have said it before. Even some conservative pundits.  What is news, in my opinion, is that she called out Trump for his demagoguery:

"President Donald Trump has been sounding the klaxon. The caravan is an “assault on our country” that the “Democrats had something to do with” and contains “criminals” and “unknown Middle Easterners.” He threatened to cut aid to Central American nations, which the Heritage Foundation has cautioned against, since U.S. aid helps those nations fight drug traffickers and other criminals.

The White House issued talking points describing the caravan — still nearly 1,000 miles away — as a “crisis,” and the Pentagon has announced the deployment of 800 troops to the border. Really? Even if all those folks with strollers and roller bags could cover 10 miles a day, it would still be 2019 before they reached the Rio Grande."

Ms. Charen then goes on to say:

"There are now an estimated 4,000 footsore marchers. Over the course of the next few weeks, the number will dwindle. Many will seek asylum in Mexico. Others will turn back.

Though you’d never guess it from the tone of our politics, illegal immigration is at a 40-year low. Mexicans (per capita income $17,740) once accounted for 98 percent of illegal crossings. That has now dropped to 50 percent. Mexico is getting more prosperous, which, for many reasons, including illegal immigration, is what we should want for all of Latin America.

The total number of yearly illegal entries has declined from 1.5 million in 2000 to about 300,000 today. We might want to increase the number of immigration judges on the border, the better to process claims of asylum. But let’s keep our perspective. As the Weekly Standard’s Jim Swift reminds us, during its heyday at the turn of the 20th century, Ellis Island was admitting 5,000 immigrants per day."
"A caravan of poor people marching north to signify their misery is not a national emergency. Our inability to keep our heads might be."

Maybe someone from their side of the aisle saying that the emperor has no clothes will cause Republicans to pay more attention than if the usual suspects say it.