You Keep Using That Word ("Crisis"). I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means.

I keep hearing about an "immigration crisis." And I'm hearing it from all points on the ideological spectrum -- even people who support immigration freedom are buying into this "crisis" talk.

A crisis is "an unstable situation of extreme danger or difficulty" or "a crucial stage or turning point in the course of something."

Immigration never has been, is not now, and never will be a "crisis."

People move all the time. They always have. They always will.

The "crisis" exists only in two kinds of minds:

First, the mind of someone who can't bear the thought of other people living their lives as they choose rather than as he chooses for them -- speaking a different language, listening to different music, eating different food, worshiping a different god than he would have them speak, listen to, eat and worship. It drives him ape, this idea that other people may not be like him and may not want to be like him. And this leads him to swallow nonsense like the supposed sanctity of "borders." If some brown, Spanish-speaking Catholic wants to move from Juarez to El Paso, it's the end of the world. But he'd look at you like you were nuts if you suggested he shouldn't be allowed to move from Richmond, Virginia to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The second type of person with this "crisis" in mind is the demagogue who wants the first type of person to vote for him.  Like Mencken, this politician knows that "the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

What these two types of "crisis" nutburgers have in common is the desire to run other people's lives.