Maybe you, like many of us, had assumed that so-called “migrants” illegally crossing our southern border from Mexico were, in the words of Emma Lazarus’ execrable poem, “tired . . . poor . . . huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” It turns out–surprise!–that what you’ve been led to believe isn’t exactly true. Some are simply yearning to cut the red tape of legal entry.
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) reported on the Senate floor last week that during a Memorial Day visit to the border at Yuma, Arizona, he saw evidence that some of that “wretched refuse” is evidently well-heeled indeed. Lankford:
When I got to the processing area, one of the Border Patrol agents walked up to me and said, “You see the lady behind you?” And I turned around and said, “Yes.” He said, “She’s wearing a Versace dress.”
For those of you who don’t get the significance of that, Versace designer dresses are not for the light of wallet. (Lankford did not provide a photo of the well-outfitted lady, but the saksfifthavenue.com website lists Versace “Day & Casual” dresses at prices ranging from $1275 to $3550.)
Thus is born a new category of illegal border crosser: what the Times calls the Glam Migrant, one who, in Lankford’s words, finds it “easier to come into this country illegally than legally.”
Our border with Mexico has become so porous, and any given illegal’s likelihood of simply being “processed” and then released to go anywhere in the U.S. so great, that Glam Migrants have found a better way than fooling with visas and other tedious bureaucratic details. They can simply fly into Mexicali, across the border from Yuma, walk through one of many gaps in the fence, and wait for a ride from the Border Patrol.
The practice has become so routine that the Patrol has had to establish luggage limitations for rides on their buses.
Partly due to the Glam set, Yuma has seen an explosion of illegals in the past couple of years. In February 2020, before the pandemic, just 1,002 illegals were apprehended in that sector. By this year, the numbers were 30,505 in March and 27,343 in April. Figures for May have not been announced. More than 17,000 of the April illegals were from Cuba and Colombia.
The enormous increase in Yuma’s popularity among illegals has resulted in large numbers of agents being pulled off of drug-interdiction duty to serve as, in Lankford’s words, “an Uber XL service” for the entitled alien.
Glam Migration. Only in America.
For more, see the Washington Times.