Watchin' the water ...

Debate Over Water in Southwest Ignores Immigration

Updated: October 16, 2021

The Biden administration’s move to revisit a 2019 U.S. Bureau of Reclamation biological opinion that had relaxed restrictions on water access in California has drawn the ire of state and national Republicans, who issued a statement claiming that “California Democrats and the Biden administration now want to deprive [Californians] of water supplies.”

Yet as Republican and Democratic lawmakers do battle over environmental restrictions on water in the American west, the impact on water availability of one particular factor—mass immigration—has remained obscure.

“Even with improvements in water use, the water supply is going down,” said Jeremy Beck of NumbersUSA, a non-profit that aims to lower immigration levels, in an interview with The Epoch Times. “That doesn’t mean the Southwest is going to run out of water. It means they’re going to have to make some tough choices.”

Those choices could include increased investments in seawater desalination plants and pipelines to pump the desalinated water across hundreds of miles of desert.

Those plants are expensive, with one proposed facility in Pima County, Arizona projected to cost $4.1 billion. They can also take decades to build.

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In a 2020 report on development in Arizona, NumbersUSA estimated that 44 percent of Arizona’s population growth between 2000 and 2015 was due to international migration.

Internal migration within the United States has been another factor, accounting for 56 percent of the state’s growth during that period.

NumbersUSA also projected that Arizona’s population will increase another 3 million by the year 2050, “joining Phoenix and Tucson together into a single mega-city.”

That growth is expected to place additional stress on groundwater and the Colorado River. In August of this year, the federal-level Bureau of Reclamation declared a water shortage at Lake Mead along the Colorado River for the first time ever.

While population growth can stem from natural increase, in the future United States, population growth is likely to be fueled by immigration, both legal and illegal.

Beck cited projections from Pew Research, which suggest that 88 percent of U.S. population growth from 2015 through 2065 will be result from new immigrants and their descendants.

Many of the counties with the highest share of immigrant adults—legal and illegal—are in the southwest on or near the southern border, according to maps from the Center for Immigration Studies.

Pew Research has shown a similar pattern for illegal aliens in a 2016 analysis, with 2.2 million illegal aliens living in California alone.

Of course, as NumbersUSA’s analysis of Arizona shows, internal migration within the United States has been another source of pressure on the Southwest’s resources.

In recent years, many parts of the Southwest, particularly Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, have experienced net in-migration.

Yet internal migration in the country has declined in recent decades, reaching a 73-year low prior to the pandemic.

Additionally, the United Van Lines 2020 Mover Study identified just one Southwestern state, Arizona, among the top ten states for net inbound migration in 2020, at #5 in the country. Other Southwestern states, such as Utah (#17), Nevada (#22), and New Mexico (#20) were in the middle of the pack, while California (#44) ranked among the top ten states for net outbound migration.

Meanwhile, there are some indications that immigration, and particularly illegal immigration, is picking up under the Biden administration.

During just the past fiscal year, encounters between U.S. Border Patrol and illegal immigrants at the southern border have surged, reaching a 21-year monthly high in July 2021.

Senate Democrats sought to provide mass amnesty for 8 million illegal immigrants as part of the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, though the provision was blocked by Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough.

“There’s no question that the added demand of population will put increased stress on the water system,” said Beck. “These decisions will not get any easier with another 3 million people in Arizona and another 30 million in the American Southwest.”

Moar at

https://m.theepochtimes.com/debate-over-water-in-southwest-ignores-immigration_4035924.html

I'm going to let the nunchuck video slide, this AG pursues a lot of issues ...

Arizona AG calls for DOJ to probe Facebook after it says users can share info on how to enter US illegally

Facebook said information can reduce the likelihood of migrants being exploited

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is urging the Department of Justice to investigate Facebook’s "facilitation" of illegal migration into the United States after the tech giant said that it allows users to share information related to human smuggling and entering a country illegally.

"Facebook's policy of allowing posts promoting human smuggling and illegal entry into the United States to regularly reach its billions of users seriously undermines the rule of law," Brnovich said in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland. "The company is a direct facilitator, and thus exacerbates, the catastrophe occurring at Arizona’s southern border."

Brnovich had written to Facebook earlier this year about media reports that smugglers were using the social media platform, as well as others, to advertise their services to migrants.

In a letter sent to his office, in August, Facebook said that it does not allow criminal organizations to operate on its platform and prohibits content "that offers to provide or facilitate human smuggling, which includes advertising a human smuggling service."

However, it added: "We do allow people to share information about how to enter a country illegally or request information about how to be smuggled."

The tech giant said the policies were developed "to ensure we were prohibiting content relating to the business of human smuggling but not interfering with people’s ability to exercise their right to seek asylum, which is recognized in international law."

"Allowing people to seek and share information related to smuggling can also help minimize the likelihood of being exploited by human traffickers," the letter said.

The Tech Transparency Project said in April that it first identified the existence of 50 pages and private groups advertising human smuggling and provided their names to Facebook after the company had asked. While some were deactivated, in September the group said it identified an additional 40 Facebook pages and 17 Facebook groups that openly sell illegal border crossings.

One of the pages viewed by Fox News in June, titled "Viaje para estados unidos , cumple tu sueño" ("Travel to the United States, fulfill your dream"), contains a video purportedly showing six people inside a hotel room in McAllen, Texas – just across the border from the Mexican city of Reynosa.

"Thank god, one more group in mcallen tx," reads a caption next to the video.

"Thanks for the trust," it adds, before apparently listing prices of $1,800 to get from Reynosa to McAllen – and $5,550 from Reynosa to Houston.

Facebook told Fox News at that time that "we prohibit content that offers to provide or facilitate human smuggling.

"We rely on people and technology to remove this content, and work with NGOs and other stakeholders to combat ways our platform may be used by those who want to harm people," a spokesperson added. "We are constantly evaluating ways to improve our enforcement so we can most effectively find and remove content that breaks our rules."

In the letter to Brnovich, it gives a lengthy response on what it calls a "rigorous" ad review process, which is automated but then is supported by human reviewers to process re-review requests "but are continuously assessing ways to increase automation."

It also outlined how it will cooperate with law enforcement and report criminal activities to agencies "when we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent risk of harm."

But Brnovich told Garland in his letter that the tech company did not identify a mechanism to distinguish between authorized or unauthorized posts and called its enforcement mechanism a "paper tiger." It also accuses Facebook of failing to address sex trafficking, conflating it with illegal entry instead.

"It is the federal government’s duty to enforce its immigration and criminal laws, and specifically, the Department of Justice’s responsibility to investigate and prosecute these matters," he wrote. "Therefore our office requests that your Department investigate Facebook’s facilitation of human smuggling at Arizona’s southern border and stop its active encouragement and facilitation of illegal entry."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/arizona-ag-doj-probe-facebook-users-share-info-on-human-smuggling