Walls, Borders, a Dome and Refugees

The world is being redivided into regions of “order” and “disorder,” and for the first time in a long time, we don’t have an answer for all the people flocking to get out of the world of disorder and into the world of order.

.. The net migration flow from Mexico to the U.S. is now zero.

.. When it comes to our neighbors, Trump and Walker are making Americans both afraid and dumb, purely for political gain.

.. That is because the three largest forces on the planet — Mother Nature (climate change, biodiversity loss and population growth in developing countries), Moore’s law (the steady doubling in the power of microchips and, more broadly, of technology) and the market (globalization tying the world ever more tightly together) — are all in simultaneous, rapid acceleration.

.. “There is nothing in our experience that has prepared us for what is going on now: the meltdown of an increasing number of states all at the same time in a globalized world. And what if China starts failing in a globalized world?”

Refugees Who Could Be Us

António Guterres, the head of the U.N. refugee agency, said the crisis was in part “a failure of leadership worldwide.”

“This is not a massive invasion,” he said, noting that about 4,000 people are arriving daily in a continent with more than half a billion inhabitants. “This is manageable, if there is political commitment and will.”

We all know that the world failed refugees in the run-up to World War II. The U.S. refused to allow Jewish refugees to disembark from a ship, the St. Louis, that had reached Miami. The ship returned to Europe, and some passengers died in the Holocaust.

Iowans Question G.O.P. Talk on Illegal Immigration

“I’m as prejudiced as the day is long,” said Chuck Coghill, who runs a sign company in the rural town of Blue Grass with his wife, Michelle. “It’s a bad thing that all these illegal Mexicans are here.” He paused. “But they’re hard workers. They’re doing jobs that lazy Americans won’t do.”

.. some white-owned businesses have tried to cater to Latinos, tacking on “Se Habla Español” to their newspaper ads if they have even a single Spanish-speaking employee on staff.

.. “It’s twofold: you’ve got people here who want to work and employers who want to employ them,” said Cyndi Hammes from Wilton, a town of 2,800 people, as she left the post office on Tuesday afternoon. “Employers want to hire a lower-cost work force in order to cut their bottom line. They should be held accountable.”