CHECKING THE NYT FACT CHECKERS

Today the NYT  published on line a piece under “FACT CHECK” entitled “Trump Repeats Unfounded Arguments in New Appeal for a Border Wall”, (originally appearing Jan 25, 2019) by Linda Qiu and Michael Tackett.

The piece repeatedly hammer the President for exaggeration and false claims regarding his push for a border wall (barrier, fence, etc etc. etc. )  “Even as he agreed to reopen the government the president used recycled inaccurate claims to press his case for a wall”, claim the authors.  They take great pains to pick out and exaggerate all HIS exaggerations.  The piece was not what I would call “balanced”.  No not from the NYTimes.  But after all the fact checking of the President.’s speeeech by these authors .I was struck by one fact the fact checkers published.  After berating the president and repeating the claim that illegal entry across the border is generally lower than it has been in many years , they slipped in an unvarnish fact.

NYT Fact: The monthly average of individuals attempting  illegal entry across the southern bored is 33,000 per month!   (Note: A more recent (March 4, 2019 estimate is double that number or over 60,000 illegals per month)

They ignored these facts: 

That figure (33,000 per month) indicates that almost four hundred thousand individuals per year are caught attempting illegal entry.   That is: every 2.5 years (during a low spell in activity according to the NYT) a million undocumented illegal aliens attempt to cross our southern border and get caught.  One must wonder how many illegals make it across successfully to settle in some distant  sanctuary city?  But even more troubling is that current law forces our border security services to take the names of these border violators, and after extracting from them a promise to return for their hearing give each one a court date, then release them into the nation where they promptly disappear!  What a joke.  As you might expect almost none of these individuals ever make it back.   Furthermore, probably very many more successfully evade arrest and wind up (with those who were caught ang given a court date) in some urban environment or sanctuary city to swell the ranks of the undocumented.  .  Think of what effect this situation has on low wage salaries, jobs, health-care services, education and other services.  The 400,000  attempted illegal entry per year (above)  is nearly is almost half (4/10s) of the  1,000,000 legal immigrants we process each year. 

At present, our known legal immigrant population is at a very high level comprising about 40,000,000 in a population of @ 333 million or about 12%.  There is a  tipping point where it becomes increasingly difficult to absorb and effectively assimilate such high numbers of foreigners.  Particularly vexing is the fact that we have no exact numbers on illegal immigrants.  The fact that we have had a porous border on our south though which people simply pour across leaves us with no actual counts on their numbers.    

Perhaps that estimate of 11,000,000 illegals presently  residing in our nation is a low estimate given all the years the Democrats (and Republicans) looked the other way and let this disaster occur. 

Thus if we do not pars  President Trump’s speeches as if they  were a legal brief presented before the Suprem Court— we can get the actual picture.  What is he saying?  That we have a severe security problem on our southern border. A miiilon new unvetted  immigrants every 2.5 years, crossing our border, is a major threat to our nation’s security, health and safety,  

That is what the President has said.  Do the facts require a “nit picking”  fact check?  NO

Is the gist of his argument valid?  YES